To KSU’s advantage, seventy-seven percent (77%) of its faculty hold the doctoral degree. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), our regional accreditation agency, requires that students receive at least 25% of their major degree course hours from a person who holds the earned doctorate or the equivalent of the terminal degree. (See Appendix D).
While the university possesses a well-qualified teaching faculty, this report represents the starting point of reassessing the distribution of faculty relative to institutional programs and their enrollments. As an example, the data outlined in Table 3 shows areas where the institution is understaffed in red. There are five programs (Criminal Justice, Human Development and Family Studies, Mass Communication and Journalism, Physical Education, and Public Administration) where student demand outweighs the institution's ability to provide adequate faculty to serve in the roles of advisement and teaching. The student to faculty ratios for these programs far exceeds the institution's ability to serve these students adequately. Traditionally, these areas are served by extending resources to hire adjunct faculty to teach courses, but still leaves a shortage of faculty to advise students majoring in these programs. Table 3 also indicates that there are 16 overstaffed programs (African Studies, Agriculture/Aquaculture, Biology, Business Administration, Chemistry, Electronic Technology, English, Environmental Studies, Fine/Studio Arts, Information Technology, Mathematics, Music, Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Spanish, and Special Education).
Keep in mind that student to faculty ratios for many of the programs that appear overstaffed with faculty based on the number of majors in their program (Table 3) are not overstaffed when their support of the general education requirements are considered. (Biology, Chemistry, English, Fine/Studio Arts, Liberal Arts/WYS, Mathematics, Music, Social Sciences, Spanish) (Table 5)
This review is the first step in considering a serious reduction of faculty. Our tenure-track faculty members (44 faculty members are tenure-track) have received official notification of “non-reappointment.” We also have 33 faculty members who as “non-tenure-track faculty” are subject to yearly term appointments. We will be using the data provided by this report to make decisions regarding areas where additional faculty members are needed (Criminal Justice, Human Development and Family Studies, Mass Communication and Journalism, Physical Education, and Public Administration) and reducing the number of faculty members in overstaffed areas (African Studies, Agriculture/Aquaculture, Biology, Business Administration, Chemistry, Electronic Technology, English, Environmental Studies, Fine/Studio Arts, Information Technology, Mathematics, Music, Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Spanish, and Special Education) while maintaining our ability to meet the needs of our students in the area of general education requirements.
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