Planning for faculty leaves

After just three semesters with the CS faculty at full strength, I was on maternity leave this spring, and one of us will be on sabbatical each of the next six semesters. You may wonder how we are managing these leaves as a department.

First and foremost, I am pleased to announce that Rohan Loveland will be joining us as a visiting assistant professor for the 2018-19 academic year. Dr. Loveland earned his Ph.D. in Engineering at Oxford University. He comes to us from Los Alamos National Labs and Dynafit via an adjunct professorship at New Mexico State University. He looks forward to teaching a course on Machine Learning at Whitman in spring 2019.

More of the story below!


My recent maternity leave was the least planned of these leaves. I approached the Dean late last July to request a spring maternity leave, which she of course granted.

As I failed to mention in an earlier post on my pregnancy, hiring faculty to cover my scheduled courses during my maternity leave was a significant project. Ideally this is not the responsibility of the parent-to-be, but rather their department chair. It doesn’t work so well when the chair is the parent-to-be.

We opted not to post a formal advertisement as this is rarely necessary (in other disciplines) and a national search for a one-semester position is unlikely to succeed. I started with my social network and reaching out to department chairs and graduate program advisers in the Pacific Northwest. This yielded one excellent candidate with whom I had a delightful email conversation before he decided to focus on finishing his dissertation instead. (Not a decision I can fault, but it was disappointing!)

Ultimately it took the efforts of several people, with Andy and John reaching out to their personal connections, John getting recommendations at CCSC-NW 2017, and Associate Dean Lisa Perfetti reaching out to colleagues at neighboring institutions. Just before pre-registration, we hired Robin Greene from Walla Walla Community College to teach CS 167, and James Klein (emiritus) from Walla Walla University to teach an upper-level software engineering course. I’m grateful we found them.

It was not only my teaching responsibilities we had to divide, but my departmental responsibilities. Andy, John, and I sat down and enumerated as many of those responsibilities as we could. Andy took a few, and John took on the role of interim department chair. I am glad he received a half-year’s chair’s stipend; it was well-deserved. Last summer I made up a monthly calendar of departmental tasks and deadlines, which I think John found helpful, and I found helpful as well. However, the work was not all routine and expected, as a few issues arose that he had to respond to mid-semester.

Finally, my advisees were distributed randomly between Andy and John. While I had invited my advisees to state a preference, only one did.

I’ll follow up later with a more personal post on how my maternity leave went.


By contrast, our sabbatical leaves have been under discussion since the summer before John and Andy started at Whitman. As pre-tenure faculty, they are each entitled to apply for one-semester leaves in their third and fifth years, or a one-year leave in their fourth year. Since we didn’t want them both on sabbatical at the same time (leaving me alone), they agreed to apply for one-semester leaves, with John taking the fall and Andy the spring. Both applied for and were granted leaves for the 2018-19 academic year. They will apply again for the 2020-21 academic year.

I am eligible for a one-year sabbatical (at 82% pay) after four years of full time teaching—which happens to fall in 2019-20, between my junior colleagues’ leaves. During a full-year leave at Grinnell, I really missed the classroom around March, so left to my own devices I might have been inclined to apply for a one-semester leave here (which also would have given me 100% pay). However, it seems better for the department if I take a full year, so that we have a continuous need for a sabbatical replacement from Fall 2018 until Spring 2021. I am grateful that the Faculty Handbook explicitly states parental leave is to be counted as a semester of full-time teaching for purposes of sabbatical eligibility. Otherwise, our careful plans would have been upset.

When a sabbatical leave is granted, the department chair is invited to submit a proposal for a sabbatical replacement. As the Faculty Handbook points out, such requests “are not automatically granted). Fortunately, we were granted a sabbatical leave based on the following rationale:

Though a new program, computer science is experiencing strong enrollments. We have 16 declared CS majors in the class of 2019, and we expect as many in the class of 2020. This means we must offer all 200-, 300-, and 400-level core courses at least once in the 2018-19 academic year to support declared majors.

If the four course sections lost to sabbaticals in 2018-19 were not replaced, then we would have to eliminate three of the four sections of CS 167, and one of two sections of CS 270. CS 167 is our only introductory course for majors and non-majors. It is a popular course; both sections filled in fall 2017. Eliminating multiple sections of CS 167 would mean closing juniors and seniors out of the course to make room for first-year students. Even then, this would disrupt our pipeline for the major and create an overwhelming demand for CS 167 in 2019-20. If sections of CS 167 were again cut in 2019-20 when Davis is on sabbatical, this would eliminate opportunities both for non-majors and potential majors. Therefore, the four course sections lost to sabbaticals must be replaced to maintain the new computer science program’s momentum.

Our experience hiring locally to teach Davis’s courses during a spring 2018 parental leave suggests we might not be able to find local talent to teach all necessary course sections. Hiring a full-time visitor will provide an extra course section for 2018-19 relative to our normal staffing, but student demand supports it. In fact, we’ve added an extra course section taught by Albert Schueller (Math) each of the last two years.
We have sequenced sabbaticals to ensure no more than one faculty member is on sabbatical at any given time. In fact, we have sequenced sabbaticals so that exactly one faculty member is on sabbatical each semester over the next three academic years. We recommend advertising a two- or three-year visiting position, for several reasons. First, this will reduce the number of searches over the next three years. Second, according to a recent survey, about 25% of advertised faculty positions in computer science are going unfilled because there are not enough qualified candidates. A two- or three-year position is much more attractive than a one-year position, and should increase the size and quality of our applicant pool, and thus our likelihood of hiring a satisfactory candidate. Third, if we are successful in hiring a two- or three-year visitor, this will increase continuity for our students, resulting in better teaching and advising.

We were not authorized to hire with a two- or three-year contract, but we were able to advertise the position as renewable up to three years.

As part of the position proposal, we also submitted a tentative three-year teaching schedule:

2018-19

Faculty Janet Davis Andy Exley John Stratton Visitor
Fall 2018 CS/Math 220
CS 267
CS 495 (half course)
CS 167
CS 310
CS 320
SABBATICAL CS 167
CS 270
Spring 2019 CS 167
CS 370
CS 496/8 (half course)
SABBATICAL CS 210
CS 317
CS 327
CS 167
CS 270
Elective
Total # Courses 5 3 3 5 

2019-20

Faculty Janet Davis Andy Exley John Stratton Visitor
Fall 2019 SABBATICAL CS 167
CS 320
CS 357
CS 270
CS 310
CS 495 (half course)
CS 167
CS 220
Spring 2020 SABBATICAL CS 167
CS 327
CS 210
CS 370
CS 496/8 (half course)
CS 167
CS 270
Elective
Total # Courses 0 5 5 5

2020-2021

Faculty Janet Davis Andy Exley John Stratton Visitor
Fall 2020 CS/Math 220
CS 267
CS 495 (half course)
CS 167
CS 310
CS 320
SABBATICAL CS 167
CS 270
Elective
Spring 2021 CS 167
CS 370
CS 496/8 (half course)
SABBATICAL CS 210
CS 327
Elective
CS 167
CS 270
Total # Courses 5 3 3 5

Our rationale:

We have tentatively assigned several sections of CS 167 and CS 270 to the visitor because these are courses (Introduction and Data Structures) common to most computer science curricula, hence that a visitor is most likely to be comfortable teaching. We have also tentatively assigned a section of CS 220, a course that any computer scientist should be able to teach given adequate prep time. We highly recommend advertising the position with an open research area, in order to maximize the size, quality, and diversity of the candidate pool. We plan to revise the given teaching assignments in order to accommodate the research expertise and/or prior teaching experience of whoever is hired.

Rohan is enthusiastic about gaining experience with teaching intro and data structures. One disadvantage of this approach is that some students will take their first two semesters of CS (CS 167 and 270) without taking a class from one of our regular faculty. We’ve also discussed the possibility of mixing up teaching assignments amongst the regular faculty, to keep ourselves fresh and bring new perspectives to our core courses. So, while we’ve decided to stick with the original plan for next year, we may revise our plan for the years beyond.

I’ll take back the chair’s responsibilities for 2018-19, and we’ll have to look more carefully at who takes John’s and Andy’s other departmental responsibilities while they are on leave. They have agreed to hand advisees back and forth between them for the next two semesters. John will likely serve as chair again when I am on sabbatical in 2019-20 (assuming my proposal is approved). Since we now have experience transferring these responsibilities, I’m confident it will go smoothly.SaveSave

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