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An administrator's perspective on meeting changing curriculum needs with limited resources
Several factors are driving change in how we deliver animal science courses. These include budgetary pressures, changing student demographics, high facility costs, and increasing pressure to replace tenure track faculty with non-tenure track teaching positions. All of these are occurring at the same time enrollment in most animal science programs is growing. Animal science is often singled out as a high cost area of undergraduate education. The fact is, we are more costly. There are significant costs to maintain animals, teaching farms, and provide labs which utilize animals. These costs continue to rise at a time when most teaching budgets are flat or declining. In addition to growing enrollments, the typical student no longer comes from a farm/ranch background. This increases the need to provide additional hands on experiences with animals. I believe we provide a much better education for our students when we offer opportunities for hands on experiences, but those experiences are costly. Deans and provosts want more than just fundamental beliefs. They want to see proof these experiences result in a better educational experience for students. As faculty members and administrators, we need to do a better job at providing the data and information which makes this case. Academic departments are also under increasing pressure to use more instructors and less tenure track faculty in our teaching programs. Instructors and lecturers have an important role to play in the education of our undergraduate students. However, it has been my experience that it is important to have faculty with a greater depth and breadth of training in upper division courses. This is especially important in the core disciplinary courses and in senior level capstone courses. Faculty teaching these courses must have the depth required to develop meaningful material and answer highly technical discipline related questions raised by students. As the rigor of the course increases so does the likelihood that a faculty member with a terminal degree will be best equipped to teach the course. It is also important to have a framework in place to ensure continued professional development for all teaching faculty, regardless of rank or classification. In summary, there will be continued pressure from multiple sources that will necessitate changes in how we teach animal science courses in the future.
Keywords:
Change, teaching, students, costs, faculty