2.8 Faculty

Core Requirement: The number of full-time faculty is adequate to support the mission of the institution.  The institution has adequate faculty resources to ensure the quality and integrity of its academic programs.  In addition, upon application for candidacy, an applicant institution demonstrates that it meets Comprehensive Standard 3.7.1 for faculty qualifications.

X Compliance
   Partial Compliance
   Non-Compliance

Narrative:

Types of faculty at Georgia State University are defined in our Faculty Handbook [1]. Faculty is broken down into 1) Full-Time University Faculty [full-time faculty with academic rank regardless of tenure status (includes  academic professionals, full-time instructional faculty, Librarians, Counselors & Administrators)]; 2) Part-time Faculty (contracted to work less than full-time within an academic year); 3) Part-time instructors (teach on a per course, per term basis); 4) graduate teaching assistants; and 5) Adjunct faculty (hold BOR rank but are not paid for instruction).  Only full-time faculty are eligible to pursue tenure although all full-time faculty are not on tenure track. 

As of Fall 2006, GSU boasted a full-time instructional faculty of 1,046 with 72% on tenure track and 86% holding the terminal degree.  Furthermore, our full-time instructional faculty is responsible for teaching 68.9% of all credit hours taught [2] (see also Standard 3.5.4) and our student faculty ratio is 17:1.

The adequacy of our faculty resources, as outlined in our mission statement [3], is evaluated continuously through our strategic plan process and the annual update of our action plans [4].  Additionally, each academic program assesses the adequacy of its faculty resources in the academic program review process [5].

Multiple sources are available and used for comparison of our faculty resources to our peers.  For instance, we provide a university dashboard that contains peer faculty information in Section D [6],and each department can access, for their discipline, comparative instructional workload data from the Delaware Study and salary information from the Oklahoma State University National Survey of Faculty Salaries. Individual departmental data can be found on the Institutional Research website by selecting a college and then a department. [7]. 

Supporting Documentation:
  1. Faculty Handbook, Section 306
  2. Credit Hours Taught by Faculty Type and Department
  3. Georgia State University Mission Statement
  4. Strategic Plan
  5. Academic Program Review Process
  6. Georgia State University Dashboard
  7. Links to Delaware and OSU Salary