Office Hours-Faculty

According to the TCNJ Reappointment and Promotions document, faculty should aspire to offer high caliber, effective teaching characterized by “thoughtful mentorship and advising that contribute to students' cultural, social, and intellectual lives;” (p. 4). In order to meet this goal and consistent with the College's core belief that "The College's faculty and staff take pride in offering a personal educational experience to every undergraduate and graduate student" all faculty must be accessible to students in a variety of ways.

Acknowledging the teacher-scholar model and the character of our campus as a primarily undergraduate and residential college, all faculty, regardless of type of appointment, must provide opportunities to students for in-person meetings. with them as one mode of accessibility.

Faculty meet expectations for accessibility to students when they are:

• Flexible:  Faculty members are expected to be flexible in terms of the modes by which students gain access to them; those modes include but are not limited to electronic communications (e.g., email, phone, instant messaging, message boards), office hours, and on-campus appointments.
• Available for in-person meetings:  Whenever a concern, issue, question, or student need cannot be easily addressed by electronic communications, faculty should have face-to-face meetings with students. To encourage face-to-face meetings, all full-time and part-time faculty members are required to hold office hours each week. Full-time faculty members must hold office hours for a minimum of 160 minutes (the equivalent of two 80-minute course meetings) each week. For part-time faculty members (i.e., those with fractional appointments), the minimum number of office hours is determined by the fraction of the appointment (e.g., a faculty member with a 5/8 appointment, the minimum expectation is 5/8 of 160 minutes or 100 minutes of office hours weekly). The timing and spacing of the office hours is determined by the faculty member.
  Adjunct faculty are not required to hold regularly scheduled office hours but are expected to be available to meet students outside of scheduled class time as necessary.
• Responsive:  Faculty are expected to respond to student concerns, issues, questions, or needs.  Responses may come in the form of communication or directing students to additional sources of support (e.g., tutoring center, writing center, other students, administrative units) when the faculty member cannot satisfy the student’s concerns, issues, questions, or needs.  Faculty are expected to respond to student inquiries and requests within a reasonable amount of time, and to specify the typical expected time for response in the course syllabus (see 5c below).
• Clear and explicit information about modes of accessibility:  Faculty must clearly communicate how they will be accessible to students on course syllabi. Course syllabi must include a passage that includes the following elements:
• Days and times of scheduled office hours.
• Means by which to communicate with the faculty member outside of the class period (e.g., email, phone).
• Clear expectations for faculty response time to electronic communications (e.g., “I normally will respond to email within [insert timeframe]”).

 

Recommended by CFA, approved by Provost, spring 2011. (also: Memorandum of Agreement 91)