The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will offer more courses to keep NIU students free of a course crunch, LA&S officials say.

LA&S Dean James Norris has announced his college will be teaching 100 more course sections per year within the next three years.

In light of budget cuts motivated by the Illinois Board of Higher Education’s Priorities, Quality and Productivity initiative, he said, “I suggested to some departments that they try to teach a few more courses.”

The move is not only in response to state budget cuts and pressure from the IBHE, but also is a reaction to a growing realization that workloads between LA&S departments might not be equal.

Last semester the college reviewed and made recommendations on the course loads and workloads of all LA&S departments.

“What I was trying to do was put our house in order,” Norris said. “At the end of three years we will be able to say ‘There’s less discrepancy now than there was a few years ago.’

“There’s a lot of teaching which goes on (in LA&S). I am only making sure it is done quickly.”

The effort will be accomplished without the addition of any new faculty members, Norris added.

Norris said the department of English would “phase in nine course sections per year for the next three years. All of these will be either general education or undergraduate courses taught by full-time professors.”

Charles Pennel, English department director of undergraduate studies, confirmed the move.

“As long as we’re so short on funds all of the full professors will be teaching an extra course every two years,” he said. “What we’re also doing is taking the people who are administrating or who have won teaching awards and asking them to teach an extra course.”

Norris noted those faculty members teaching more courses were the college’s “best” teachers. “What we’ve asked is for the tenure track faculty to teach more.”

Pennel said, “The extra teaching won’t meet all the student demand. We do need more help, but this is a start while we wait for help.”

Norris commended the English department on its willingness to take up the task. “Not only did these people not protest, they said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.'”

He added, “The same thing is happening in my department—history. I asked them to teach a few more courses and they said ‘yes.'”

In regard to the process as a whole, Norris said, “Some departments were asked to teach 10 or 15 more courses. Some were told they don’t need to teach any more at all.”