Three management instructors will get bumped to part-time so the business school can get reaccredited.

The loss of the full-time instructors will require regular faculty to assume an increased teaching load.

NIU’s management department shuffles the instructors because of the standards of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business. Those standards require NIU’s management program to have half of its full-timers publish outside work and three-fourths of them participate in other scholarly activity.

That’s a problem because the accreditation team counts all full-time faculty, whether they are professors or instructors, when making up the standards. NIU’s management department has eight full-time instructors which are not responsible for doing scholarly work outside NIU.

In order to make the requirements, Management Department Chair Daniel Wunsch looked at full-time instructors.

Because these requirements apply to all full-time teachers, including instructors, and instructors don’t do research, Wunsch was going to cut the work of all full-time instructors.

However, after reevaluating the number of full-time faculty and instructors, Wunsch found that he did not have to cut as many as he thought, so he will be able to keep five of his full-time instructors on a full-time basis. This will be based on seniority.

During the next three years, half of the full-time faculty will be expected to have at least one refereed publication and three-fourths will be expected to have some type of other scholarly activity, according to a memo Wunsch sent to management professors, instructors and faculty assistants.

A refereed publication is a book or article which the author sends to experts in the field for feedback on the article’s worthiness for publication. The experts are usually from other universities. Scholarly activities include presenting a program and being published.

Management Instructor Brad McDonald was originally going to be bumped. He said he was upset about full-time instructors no longer at NIU on a full-time basis and therefore would be forced to take a pay cut.

McDonald, who will not be cut as part of the department changes, said the AACSB wants faculty to be current in their field. But he doesn’t agree with the idea that faculty can become current by having a refereed publication.

He said most of the full-time instructors have outside jobs, making them current in the field.

Associate Professor Bert Simpson, who is on the tenure track, said the change would force the people currently working on refereed publications to do even more publications in order to pull the load of the full-time instructors who will now be counted as full-time faculty.

According to the AACSB, the reaccreditation process lasts two years. The first year is a self-study year in which the college evaluates itself and prepares a self-study report.

The second year the Continuing Accreditation Committee does an analysis of the report and a team of AACSB representatives does an on-site visitation of the college.

Wunsch said on the third year, the AACSB monitors the ratios.

According to Wunsch’s memo, the changes in the management department will occur during the next three years. The accreditation will be complete by that time. He said he will experiment with full-time instructors being part-time during the three years to see what it is like.

After the three years, NIU can go back to the old system without penalty. “They (AACSB) cannot force you to maintain the changes,” Wunsch said.

College of Business Dean Richard Brown said although the accreditation process is voluntary, if a college is not accredited the school cannot attract most full-time faculty.

When a school gets accredited, the assembly sends corporate executives to look at the school’s admission policies, curriculum, faculty and students compared to faculty, said Sharon Barber, director of communications for the AACSB.

Brown said 1983 was the last time the college of business was accredited.