Category: Terms of Employment for Full-Time Faculty

The full-time teaching load for studio faculty is 18 contact hours and for faculty teaching lecture courses, nine contact hours per semester. There are faculty who teach both studio and lecture courses; three 3-credit courses are considered a full-time load irrespective of the contact hours.

A faculty member’s responsibilities extend over the course of an academic year. The academic year begins the Monday of the week before the week in which classes begin in the Fall semester, and concludes with the Student Exhibition opening on the day following Commencement. While a faculty member’s responsibilities fall primarily within this part of the calendar cycle, the responsibilities of full-time faculty members may and often do require them to perform duties at times outside the academic year. Faculty members are required to honor reasonable requests from the President, the Provost, the Deans, or Department Chairs to attend to faculty responsibilities (for example, on-campus departmental meetings or representing the department or College at various events) at times other than the regular academic year.

Full-time faculty are eligible to receive employment contracts of up to three academic years in length. The contract is in the form of a letter of appointment that incorporates the policies, duties, responsibilities, and other information contained in this Handbook. An appointment is to a specific department, and, in some cases, to a section or concentration within that department, but this does not preclude teaching outside of one’s department. With the issuance of an initial contractual letter of appointment, faculty members are given access to the CCS Faculty Handbook. In certain circumstances, a faculty member may be employed without a contractual letter of appointment. In such a case, the faculty member is employed at will, and either CCS or the employee may terminate the relationship, with or without cause, at any time.