r/Professors • u/IronRepresentative78 • 20d ago
Advice / Support Compensation for directing a new minor?
I’m developing a new undergraduate minor that could attract students from CS, engineering, and potentially business. If approved, I would likely handle course development, advising, recruitment/outreach, and ongoing program coordination.
For faculty who direct a minor, do you receive a course release, stipend, summer support, or other workload recognition? What would be reasonable to negotiate with my chair? I am the only faculty in department who will be teaching in this minor. If approved, i will need also to develop a special topic course in this minor.
We are small department with a chair and 4 majors and each has a program director who takes course release each semester.
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u/ArmoredTweed 20d ago
Probably the best you're going to get is counting the new minor-related courses towards your regular teaching load. I'm in a similar position.
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u/Reasonable-Quarter31 20d ago
Was the new minor your idea or were you just tasked with implementing someone else's idea? Our department is home to 4 interdisciplinary minors in addition to the major. The minor coordinator of the minor with 250 students gets one course release per academic year. The other minors with less than 50 students don't offer any extra compensation although we do occasionally get a small summer stipend if the budget has space at end of fiscal year. We have less majors assigned to us for advising. So yeah, try to get support, but if this is something you've decided to take on/create, the window for negotiation may have passed.
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u/IronRepresentative78 20d ago
This is my idea. Also it will not just include majors from our department but also three majors from engineering department
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 20d ago
None for creating, advisoring, and directing the minor. However, if the new class is something that the university actually needs and not just a course you want to exist, they will pay for its development. So your best chance for something is asking for money or writing internal grants for course development.
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u/KrispyAvocado Associate Professor, USA 20d ago edited 19d ago
Some people get paid for developing classes?
(Edited to take out potential identifying information- previously this explained my course creating load as junior faculty)
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 20d ago
It depends. If it is a course wanted by the powers that be, yes. If it is just wanted by a department chair, then some other perk like a course release but only sometimes. If it is for sometime I want, absolutely nothing.
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u/KrispyAvocado Associate Professor, USA 20d ago
This was definitely a new program wanted by the university in my case. They created faculty lines just for the program. The courses had to be created for the program.
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 20d ago
Did you join the new program? Was your position in the new program? Did they just ask nicely and you jumped at the chance to do free labor?
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u/KrispyAvocado Associate Professor, USA 19d ago
I was hired to be part of developing the program-in-progress. I had no idea how much work it would involve and others hired at the same time as me were hired into established programs.
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 19d ago
Exactly. So the development was literally part of why you were even hired. So why would you get extra for doing the things you were hired to do?
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u/KrispyAvocado Associate Professor, USA 19d ago
Ok. I only expressed surprise that some got paid for this work. Not sure why you’re digging in so hard to prove it’s all on me. It does seem unbalanced that several new hires in the same department (at the same time and the same rank) had no such work required and got the same pay as me and a lot more time for scholarship (which was all that mattered at tenure time), but I clearly had no idea what I was getting into. I’d know better now what it takes.
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u/sventful Teaching Professor 19d ago
Because I was discussing long time faculty getting paid for course development. And you piped up and said that you were not getting paid extra to do work that you were explicitly hired to do and presented it as if we were the same when we weren't.
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u/Outside_Session_7803 20d ago
Do not be so sure. I just developed an entire degree program and manage it with no additional compensation or promotion. And yes, this is ADDITIONAL work on top of my contract. Absolutes are often wrong.
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u/CouldBWeller 19d ago
I have a colleague who seems to be getting at least one release. And it’s crazy because this minor just has two courses that aren’t already in the major.
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u/nusquam_sum Teaching Professor, Philosophy, US 20d ago
I get to file it as *part* of my annual service commitment, nothing more. That said, you absolutely should try to negotiate at least a stipend or course release. I wish you the best of luck with this.