Dear Colleagues,

as the teaching schedules for Fall 2025 are being finalized within the constraints of fewer available classrooms due to the upcoming LARTS refurbishment, some faculty are going to be told by the Dean’s Office/Registrar that their long standing teaching schedule cannot be accommodated and that there will be changes to one or all of day, time and location for their courses.  With this is mind, I want to remind everyone of the contractual language around teaching assignments. 

From Article VIII(A):

Faculty teaching assignments shall be decided by the Department Chairperson in consultation with members of the department and must be acceptable to the Dean of the College or School. In the Law School, faculty teaching assignments shall be decided by the Dean or Dean’s designee in consultation with members of the department and must be acceptable to the Law Academic Council.

Faculty may be assigned to teach classes between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. In no case will faculty be required to teach a class that ends more than eight (8) hours after the beginning of their first class of the day.

 School of Law faculty may be assigned to teach classes between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. In no case, will faculty be required (1) to teach a class that ends more than eight (8) hours after the beginning of their first class of the day, or (2) to teach classes on more than five (5) days in a week.

Despite the CBA allowing classes to run until 10 pm, I would hope that no classes will be scheduled to end after 9 pm so as to allow students to catch the last bus from campus if they need to.  Ideally, classes scheduled to run after 6 pm would be restricted to those students who live on campus, but that might be too difficult to coordinate.

In addition, the Faculty Federation has been informed of a proposal being made by the Administration to address the reduction in the number of classrooms; this proposal is that two sections of a course be combined into a single section with the course cap doubled.  If the faculty member has no objections to teaching this larger section (pedagogical considerations must be taken into account)  it needs to be clearly understood by everyone that this double section will count as two courses in workload calculations (the Administration’s proposal does include this proviso). 

A related idea would be to increase course caps and run some courses every other semester (or year) to reduce the total number of courses running each semester (and the number of classrooms needed).  I don’t know if this has been proposed and it is further complicated by the need to ensure students can progress to graduation with fewer course offerings available, but if this were to happen, it should count as two courses in workload calculations. 

To be certain that this is the understanding, the Faculty Federation will present an MOA to the Administration that states this action is being done only because of the LARTS refurbishment, that it will cease once the LARTS classrooms are again made available, and that is it not precedent setting in any way.

In Solidarity!