Friday, October 19, 2001

Administrators may be back in classrooms
By Jacque Petersell
Staff Reporter

Administrators may be asked to teach at least one course a semester to alleviate faculty shortages and to share their expertise in the classroom.

Members of the University Core Curriculum re-design committee, consisting of administrators and faculty, are discussing the idea but no decision has been made, said Richard Enos, chairman of the committee.

Enos said the presence of administrators in classrooms reflects an emphasis on the education students receive rather than saving costs.

“It’s not that we’re worried that we can’t afford (other teachers),” Enos said. “We just have many talented administrators.”

James Riddlesperger, a political science professor, said having administrators in the classrooms will help spread the teaching load in the department without hiring new people.

“We can’t teach as many people as we would like to and (having administrators teach) would help this out,” Riddlesperger said. “The first thing we need to do is to make best use of the people already here.”

Riddlesperger said most faculty think there is a need for additional professors within each department.

Mary Volcansek, AddRan College of Humanities and Social Sciences dean, who will be teaching a constitutional law class this spring, said there may be time conflicts between her duties as a dean and as an instructor.

“There may be a problem for students to have access to me when they have a problem,” she said. “But we will work around that. People tend to get things done that are really important to them.”

Enos said the time constraints could be worked out by distributing the work load, re-assigning jobs and hiring other staff members. Those measures, however, would be costly.

“That is why (this idea) is only a wish-list item,” Enos said.

Riddlesperger said he wouldn’t demand to have administrators in the classroom because of their other responsibilities. However, he said not having administrators in classrooms is a loss for students because they could be learning from experts.

“People who are promoted to administrative positions are experts in the classroom (and) it’s a shame they aren’t in the classroom,” Riddlesperger said.

Enos said the idea of having administrators teach will take several years to implement.

Volcansek said one benefit to being back in the classroom will enable her that she can to better understand students while in a classroom setting.

Enos said having administrators back in the classroom will be beneficial to the UCR redesign committee because administrators will be able to see first hand how the UCR is implemented in classrooms. These administrators would teach UCR and upper level courses.

Jacque Petersell
j.s.petersell@student.tcu.edu