A Message From Academic Affairs
Dear Colleagues,
The last four years have seen substantial full-time faculty hiring at Augustana. The total number of full-time faculty has risen from 144 to 175, or 23%. This dynamic period of growth has contributed in myriad ways to student learning, enabling the college, for instance, to strengthen majors across campus, offer new classes, significantly strengthen the general education program, and lower the student:faculty ratio, even as we have lowered the average class size and sharply lowered class sizes for first-year students. Our growth has been guided by annual requests for hires from departments and the strategic plan.
I thought I would share data on faculty hiring with you. The tables below provide a view on the hiring we have done over the past four years, and I welcome your thoughts.
Additional Faculty Lines
We have added tenure lines in every major department and multiple lines in several. The following tally of tenure and visiting appointments includes faculty joining the college in 2009-10:
| Dept. | tenure | conversion | visiting* |
| Anthropology | 1 | ||
| Art History | 1 | ||
| Biology | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Business | 2 | ||
| Chemistry | 1 | ||
| Comm Studies | 1 | ||
| Education | 2 | ||
| English | 2 | 3 | |
| Geography | 1 | ||
| German | 1 | ||
| History | 2 | 1 | |
| Music | 1 | 1 | |
| Music Ed | 2 | ||
| Philosophy | 1 | 1 | |
| Political Sci | 1 | ||
| Psychology | 2 | 1 | |
| Religion | 3 | 2 | |
| Spanish | 1 | ||
| Theatre | 1 | 2 | |
| Total | 27 | 7 | 7 |
* Only additional lines beyond 2004-05 are listed here.
Only the smallest majors have not seen additional full-time lines so far—even some of them have benefited (art history and philosophy) because of contribution to gened--and most of those departments have received additions through part-time instruction or visiting appointments.
I would be glad for your thoughts on these data and for any suggestions you might have about needs for faculty hiring in the years ahead. While we have seen the largest portion of faculty hires, I hope to continue to add two-three lines per year for the next three years. Such growth will depend on our ability to successfully enroll classes, work that each of us as faculty can help to accomplish.
Yours,
Jeff Abernathy
Center for Vocational Reflection