Personnel

The workload policies of the College require that full-time faculty have a teaching load of 18 semester hours/academic year.  These hours can be spread across the fall and spring semesters.  Full-time lecturers have a workload of 24 semester hours/academic year.  Department chairs are required to teach six semester hours/academic year.  Release time is granted to program directors and coordinators for administrative duties.

No full-time faculty member or lecturer is required to only supervise candidates in the field.  The unit policy with regard to supervising student teachers is to award one semester hour of teaching for conducting all observation visits and reports for two student teachers.  At the graduate level, faculty are not released for more than three semester hours/semester.  Consequently, the maximum number of student teachers for whom they would have full responsibility would never be greater than six/semester.  It is rarely the case that a graduate-level faculty member would have such a field supervision role, however.  Instead, the practice has been to require that the field experience directors and other full-time faculty visit each student teacher in their placement at least once during their internship.  This practice was established to corroborate the ratings of the assigned student teaching supervisors.

Table 6.2 provides evidence of the number of full- and part-time faculty over several years.  The unit has made increasingly good use of its full-time faculty for teaching over the years.  Initially, full-time faculty had more field supervision duties than teaching assignments.  This meant that candidates did not benefit as much from them as course instructors.  Hiring more field experience supervisors allowed for more courses to be taught by full-time faculty.  A part-time staff member was also hired to handle more clerical assignments, previously handled by full-time faculty.

Another means for increasing program coherence and integrity has been the consistent hiring of  the same small cadre of part-time faculty.  This consistency has resulted in much more cohesive programs of study, as well as having full- and part-time faculty who are committed to delivery of high-quality instruction.  Hiring part-time faculty with connections to school districts has also yielded good connections with a variety of schools and school districts.

The unit currently employs five full-time and one three-fourths time staff members.  Full-time staff include Sheila Brady, who serves as the Certification Officer for all programs and the Program Advisor for the graduate program teacher candidates; Angela Fowler, who serves as the Academic Manager for the undergraduate program; Jane Cecil, who staffs the ILPIIRC (Illinois Parent Information Resource Center) grant as the Early Childhood Parent Coordinator 75% of the time and as professional staff  to the early childhood program the remaining 25% of her time; Everlydis Cabrera, who serves as the administrative assistant for the graduate programs; and Yolunda Kincade, who serves as assistant to the director for the undergraduate program.  The part-time support staff employee, John Stroud, provides assistance with data entry.

Funds are allocated within the unit’s budgets for conference registration, travel, and meals.  Faculty are all able to attend at least one conference each year.  At present, it is not required that they be presenting at the conferences.  Conference attendance has included those with a focus on technology.  Two of the unit’s full-time graduate faculty have attended the annual LiveText conference for the past two years.  Department professional development funds are used to pay for their registrations. 

Part-time faculty are also able to request funding for attendance at conferences.  In addition, field experience supervisors receive a stipend for attendance at orientation and training meetings conducted by the field experience directors.

At the undergraduate level, three faculty members (one full-time and two part-time) have presented their research on using technology in the early childhood classroom at numerous international and national conferences over the past several years. The program budget has supported these presentations. During 2006, the Provost’s Office purchased equipment (5 tablet computers) that would further extend this research.

The Early Childhood Education program co-hosted an annual international educational technology conference with the former Interactive Multimedia program and ViewPoints Research (technology pioneer Dr. Alan Kay and ViewPoint Executive Director Kim Rose have served as consultants to the research being conducted in the program) from 2003 through 2007. The 2007 event drew participants from five continents. This conference received significant support from the Provost’s Office, the Deans of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Media Arts, and the two program budgets. It was open to all Columbia faculty wishing to attend.