Faculty Information

The material below is a compilation from several sources, and while it is intended to be helpful, it can never be exhaustive. Any obvious omissions and errors should be pointed out to the director of composition.

SYLLABUS

COURSE DESIGN

CLASS SIZE

ADD/DROP PERIOD

CLASSROOMS

FACILITIES

OFFICE SERVICES

E-MAIL

REPORTS

COMPLAINTS

BIG BROTHER

SYLLABUS

· Post your syllabus online through the link on TopNet. We also need a hard copy of your syllabus(es), which you may place in a wire basket on a table in the Mailroom (CH 119).

· Weekly office hours are expected for on-campus faculty. Please post your availability on your syllabus and on your office door, and send Tomitha Blair your schedule for reference.

· Formulate your class policies using the guiding notion that the syllabus is a form of contract. Make sure you would be comfortable following those policies objectively, dealing with any “loopholes” or “judgment calls,” and defending your arrangements.

· In addition to the breakdown of grades and class activities, each syllabus should include the following policy information. The text for those marked with an asterisk (*) is available at <http://www.wku.edu/~david.lenoir/syllabusstatements.html>.

o Attendance policy

o Last day to drop with a “W” and the 60% point of the semester (for “FN” grades)

o Make-up work policy

o Plagiarism policy (And please note that while flagrant abuses should be penalized stringently, each of our general education courses should include a pedagogical component relative to this issue.)

o Course Goals/Objectives*

o SACS assessment notice*

o ADA notice*

COURSE DESIGN

• Assignments: Teachers in 100, 200, and 300 should construct their classes so that students write a variety of formal, in-class, and informal essays.
• Exams: Generally, any exams in these general education courses should include written portions so that students will gain experience in taking written exams.
• Grading: Official departmental grading and evaluation standards for formal written work accompany this document. Teachers are encouraged to make these standards and their own specific grading criteria available to students.
• Attendance: Teachers should publish and carefully explain their attendance policies in the first week of class and take roll at each class meeting. Teachers must keep and turn in attendance and records as requested. See the attendance policy in the catalogue to make sure your policy is in line with university policy. You are expected to hold class at every session for the full allotted time.
• Late work: To avoid misunderstandings, publish and carefully explain policies regarding late work.
• Journal writing: Journals and other forms of informal writing can be an important part of 100, 200, and 300 courses. Teachers might use journal writing to help students develop voice and style in their own writing and to provide a space for students to develop the topics and skills needed for the more formal papers. Journals might be graded at a minimal level to provide some feedback to students, but journals should be considered a place for students to investigate the possibilities of their own writing. While students should be encouraged to write freely in their journals, teachers still should set parameters for what is acceptable. Students should understand that journal writing is not the same as writing in a diary. Journal writing should allow for free expression; however, making serious threats, writing about actual felonious activity, or seriously expressing suicidal thoughts in a journal entry may require action on the part of the teacher.
• Literature and reading assignments: Teaching critical reading skills is a vital element of writing instruction, and students in English 100, 200, and 300 should be provided with adequate instruction in critical reading. English 100 and 300 readings should focus on non-fiction essays, with an emphasis on analyzing how writers make rhetorical choices. English 200 readings should focus on developing the critical reading skills learned in 100. Teachers should remember to focus on writing facility in English 100, 200, and 300 classes by stressing how critical reading can foster better writing.
• Grammar: Teaching appropriate usage conventions is an important and vital element of English 100, 200, and 300. However, we encourage teachers to make instruction part of a well-rounded curriculum emphasizing rhetorical and critical skills. Students need to know that their syntactic and grammatical choices are crucial, and they should be encouraged to explore and learn the concepts that guide what is considered “correct” by current standards. However, instruction in grammar should be based as often as possible on the students’ actual needs and should be contextualized to their own writing whenever possible. For instance, sample sentences containing various or specific grammar or syntax problems could be collected from student papers and students could then be asked to work on these sentences in groups. Or, students might be assigned to work on grammar and syntax problems that are specific to the errors they make in their own papers.
• Plagiarism: Teachers are urged to construct assignments so that the opportunity for plagiarism is reduced. Teachers can help reduce plagiarism by asking students to submit topics shortly after the assignment is made, by reviewing student drafts of the assignments, by making assignments timely and varied, and by requiring students to turn in copies of their sources. Students who are suspected of plagiarism should not be accused without proof. The best tactic is often to try to make the student aware of your suspicions in order that he or she might realize the mistake. Teachers and students should be aware that plagiarism is a serious matter that could earn students a zero for the assignment or a failure for the course, and it is recommended that teachers publish a policy on plagiarism their course syllabi. Teachers are encouraged to bring difficult problems of suspected plagiarism to the composition director for consultation. Please note the Plagiarism Abatement information.)

CLASS SIZE

The department must, from time to time, defend its class enrollment caps. To aid in that and to provide a consistent front, ONLY the department chair can overload a course.

· NO ADDING OF STUDENTS ABOVE LISTED CAPACITIES IN ANY ENG 100, ENG 200, and ENG 300 CLASS, including WEB SECTIONS.

· Not fair to instructors or to students to have to decide who has a better reason/excuse for needing in the class.

· Not fair to office staff who must routinely tell students our policy; if an overload appears online where everyone can see the violation, the policy is very difficult to enforce.

· How many more students should be allowed in above the cap if you were to let one in? We avoid this quandary by drawing the line at the number listed online.

· The office staff routinely checks enrollment numbers and can see behind the scenes if an instructor provides a capacity override pass to students.

· Students should not be allowed to sit in on a full/closed gen ed class beyond the Add/Drop period; students must register for the course via TopNet if a space opens up.

· No waiting lists are available due to the nature of the WKU course registration system; students can add and drop at will, so instructors have no way of holding a space for a student.

ADD/DROP PERIOD (and other attendance issues)

· Students can freely drop and add classes until a set time—usually midnight of the Tuesday of the second week of the semester—as long as openings are available. (Check the academic calendar each semester for confirmation.)

· Students MAY be dropped for non-attendance if they miss—without the prior approval of the instructor—the first two class meetings of a course which meets two or three times per week or the first class meeting of a course which meets once per week. Drops for non-attendance are accomplished by the instructor via TopNet.

o Consider e-mailing first-offense students a warning (in classes with multiple meetings).

o Non-attendance drops, if any, must be completed by midnight of the last day that students may add a full-semester class.

o Contact Kimberly Boswell or Karen Schneider if you wish to attempt a coordinated effort to drop a student for non-attendance and add a student who is looking for an opening in your full/closed class.

o Discourage late adds.

· Students may withdraw from a class by using TopNet until the posted withdrawal deadline. Please remind students of this option prior to the deadline. Student Schedule Exception Appeal forms must be used after the deadline, but only in situations that are truly exceptional. Poor academic performance alone is not an acceptable reason for late withdrawals.

· FN grades are issued for students who stop attending prior to the 60% point of the semester, which is identified each semester on the academic calendar. Instructors must note the last day of attendance when issuing an FN grade. Students with FN grades are obligated to repay any financial assistance funds they received to pay for the course.

· While individual instructors may formulate their own specific attendance policies, those policies should be reasonable and should be clearly stated in the course syllabus. An important exception to whatever attendance policy you may wish to employ is that absences for university business—including participating in university athletics—and for active military service are not considered absences against a numeric count. Such students should, however, be held accountable for completing or making up their work. You may reasonably expect such students to provide appropriate documentation of their activities.

CLASSROOMS

· If you open a window, close the window before exiting; if you find a window left open, please close it. Birds and snakes have entered open windows; theft, vandalism, rain damage, and energy conservation are other concerns.

· No food or beverages are permitted in the computer classrooms. Only bottled water may be consumed at the center tables. Keyboard damage and carpet stains are our main concerns.

· If you arrange the desks in a circle, please return the desks to rows unless you have made arrangements with the instructor occupying the room immediately following your class.

· Please have your students tidy up the room or take time to do it yourself.

· Please erase all dry-erase writing on the whiteboards to minimize permanent staining. Cleaning wipes are also available for areas that start to “shadow.”

· Please turn off all computers, projectors, and lights.

· Lock all classroom doors to rooms that contain technological equipment.

FACILITIES

· Special rooms and technological equipment are available by reservation. Please contact Kimberly Boswell for assistance. Please report any malfunctioning or damaged equipment to Kimberly.

o CH 15 = Computer classroom

o CH 125 = Theater/Film viewing room

o Portable projectors

o Laptops

o Computer carts with projectors

o Portable document camera

o CH 101 = RPW conference room

· CH 124 is the Student Study & Activities Room. Tables, chairs, and a microwave are available for current English students to use. The room is occasionally reserved for scheduled activities such as English Club meetings. Food and beverages are permitted.

· The Writing Center is a campus resource available to all students. Locations include CH 123 and DUC A330. Hours vary depending on graduate and undergraduate student staffing assignments. Current hours and additional information are available at <http://www.wku.edu/pcal/index.php?page=writing-center>.

· CH 105 is the Faculty Lounge. A small refrigerator and microwave oven are available for faculty use. Coffee may be available for a small fee; please provide your own mug. Please clean up after yourself. On occasion, the room may be reserved for a departmental meeting, MA oral exam, or other departmental event.

· The kitchen area of the main office is for use by the office staff only.

· CH 127 is a computer lab operated by the university, not the department. Students needing to print copies of assignments should be directed there (or elsewhere) rather than the department office. The printer in the office is for faculty use only.

OFFICE SERVICES

· If you need to cancel a class meeting, please e-mail Tomitha <tomitha.blair@wku.edu> and follow that up with a phone call to the main office at 745-3043 or 745-3044. The office should be notified even if you have made arrangements for covering the class.

· The office requires 24-hour notice for copy jobs. During the first two weeks of the semester, there are no exceptions. Consider alternative means of delivery for long or frequently used texts. Many times, material can be posted online, held on room reserve at the library, or made available through a local copy service.

· The department does not sell Scantron sheets or “blue books.” The History Department (CH 200) does, as does the university bookstore.

· If you want your class to turn in assignments to the office, please inform the office staff in advance and provide an appropriately labeled folder.

· If you receive a package too large for your mailbox, the office staff will leave a note in your mailbox and hold the package for you. Please take the notice to the office to collect your package in a timely fashion.

· Please take all outgoing mail to the main office for correct processing.

E-MAIL

· Please check your WKU email account frequently—as a general rule, at least once a day.

· Your WKU account can be set to forward all messages to a preferred email account (e.g., hotmail, yahoo, gmail).

· Note that, in addition to the desperate messages from procrastinating students, you will receive occasional messages of important information from the department. (E-mail is currently our primary means of distributing department information.)

· Do not allow your account to go over quota; not only do you need to delete messages, but you also need to empty the trash folder regularly.

REPORTS

Note these duties well, and endeavor to complete them on time. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are accomplished online via TopNet at <https://acsapps.wku.edu/pls/prod/twbkwbis.P_WKULogin?ret_code=5>.

· Drops for non-attendance (optional)*

· 5^th-Week Assessments*

· Student papers for SACS assessment

· Final grades*

· Grade records (In addition to final grades submitted via TopNet, instructors who are not teaching the following semester should turn in a copy of all class grade records.)

COMPLAINTS

· Student complaint procedures are governed by university policy, outlined in the Undergraduate Catalog.

· In a nutshell, the sequence runs thus: A student should try to resolve issues directly with the instructor first. If unsatisfied, the student may appeal to the composition director, who will then confer with the instructor and (likely as not) moderate a meeting of the two parties. If unsatisfied, the student may appeal to the department chair, then the dean, and ultimately beyond.

· The “usual” complaints regard grades, attendance policies, slow response times, and (unfortunately) attitudes.

· The best defense against student complaints is clarity in the syllabus and objective interaction with students.

· At the first sign of trouble, ensure that you keep careful records—notes, copies of relevant documents, etc.

BIG BROTHER

Your teaching will be the subject of some assessment measures.

· Student evaluations (i.e., SITEs) are administered in the latter half of the semester.

· Part-time instructors will be observed at least once each semester by the composition director, the department chair, or their designee.

· The department has a vested interest in you; assessments will be conducted with the intent of assisting where appropriate.

· Note, however, some “red flags” to work to avoid:

o Extreme grade distributions. A large number of A’s—an entire class, the majority of a class, or even a plurality of a class—suggests a lack of rigor. (Distributions skewed in the other direction suggest other problems, equally undesirable.) We do not expect the monolithic “bell curve,” but grades should reflect the diversity of ability and work we know to be represented in a class.

o Frequent and/or substantial breaks or early class dismissals.

o Political, social, or religious proselytizing.

o Sarcasm. (Many students don’t recognize it; others don’t understand it; some don’t appreciate it; only a few really enjoy it.)

o Incomplete or late reporting of items in the “REPORTS” section.