The daunting scope of this scheduling task may be interpreted best through the perspective of English 102, Writing for a Liberal Education. It's the only class at Towson that every undergraduate must pass.
Bob Giordani, the registrar and associate vice president for academic affairs, is the "scheduling czar," working with department chairs to make sure there are enough sections for students next fall.
Giordani explained how administrators account for enrollment growth, using English 102 as an example.
"The average freshman is taking 15 credits, and we're adding 350 freshmen next fall. Half of them will take English 102 in the fall and half in the spring, but we typically have a few more sections in the fall than in the spring. So if 200 students take English 102 in the fall, and there are an average of 20 freshmen in each section, that means 10 more sections," Giordani said.
And don't forget: "Of course, some of the transfer students could need English 102, too," Giordani added.
Every additional section of English 102 needs a professor, of course. Scheduling the sections and finding faculty members to teach them is the responsibility of English department Chair Edwin Duncan.
"We have applied for, and I don't know if we're going to get, four full-time lecturers," Duncan said. Each lecturer teaches four courses a semester, so hiring four would add 16 new sections. It sounds like a good solution, but hiring new professors also creates problems.
"One of our problems is finding space for all the faculty members we're hiring. They have to have an office, they have to have a computer, and we don't have the space right now," Duncan said.If the University continues its aggressive growth, the problem will be compounded each year, he added. "In 2007, you're going to need more, and there is no more space," he said.
According to the most recent projections by enrollment management, Towson will add the equivalent of 800 full-time students next fall. Because some students don't sign up for a full-time load of 15 credits, the campus "headcount" is expected to increase by about 1,100 students, to 19,103. This increase is projected to include 727 undergraduates and 365 graduate students. Each department on campus begins building next semester's schedule shortly after the start of each semester. Faculty members begin the process by submitting schedule requests to their chairs. "For next fall, chairs would look at last fall, and perhaps the fall before that," Giordani said. "They look at how many sections they've needed in the past, and then how many more students we'll have, and then add sections accordingly."
Making room for more freshmen is relatively easy: all first-year students need to fulfill about a dozen general education classes. But transfer students are a little bit trickier.
"Until you get the students here, you don't know for sure how many of each major you'll have," Giordani said, "and transfers will come trickling in until June."
He offered a hypothetical example using the marketing department.
"Let's say 20 percent of all transfer students are business majors. Of that 20 percent, let's say a quarter are marketing. If we're going to have 350 new transfers, and 70 are going to be business majors, and 20 are going to be marketing majors, how are we going to find classes for 20 more students?"
If each new transfer wanted to take three marketing courses next fall, the department would need to find 60 more seats. At that point, the department has two options: increase class sizes or add sections.
Giordani described the situation a department chair faces when he or she needs 30 more seats for a lecture class offered 10 times in the fall. "I have a choice. I can take my 10 sections and put three more students per section and make it 33, or I can find a faculty member to teach another section," he said.
If the department's faculty members are unable to take on another class, the chair must hire someone, perhaps on a part-time contractual basis, to teach the course. And that's how it comes back to English 102. For Duncan, more freshman students need more sections of English 102, and more sections of English 102 need more professors, and more professors need more money (and more space).
If Duncan doesn't receive funding for the new lecturers, he will have to hire more adjuncts for next fall. He said he prefers hiring full-time faculty members because they seem more dedicated. Departments will finish submitting their fall schedules this week. Fall 2006 registration begins Wednesday, April 6.
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