--- Forwarded Message from "Jean-Jacques d'Aquin" <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 16:20:54 -0600 (Central Standard Time)
>From: "Jean-Jacques d'Aquin" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: LLTI-Editor <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re:  Teaching loads
>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Organization: University of South Alabama

There is no such thing as an "average lab administrator".
You need to set categories based on such factors as:
        # of students served
        type of setting/equipment used
        lab/learning center mission statement and objectives
        chain of command and relationship with "clients"
        funding and responsibilities for same

Our campus is that of a state 4 yr research university with 12,000
students.  Approximately 700 students attend our Foreign Language
Department first year courses each term because they have a foreign
language requirement for graduation. About 50 more go beyond into a minor
or major.  We are presently in the very first steps of changing from an
audio-cassette analog console type to a digital, computer based multimedia
language learning center.  The present lab serves as a "library"; no
classes are taught in the lab.  The projected learning center would
include small seminar rooms that are "smart" (wired and equiped for
multimedia) for upper division class meetings.  The lab has no budget for
student assistantships, upkeep/maintenance, or any short or long-term
upgrading

The original "lab director" position was based on a one third course
reduction load as compensation for the time/effort required to
administrate the facility.  In reality it was more like 20-25% than 33%.
With the change to "learning center", more technology knowhow, more time
and effort involving Instructional Design/pedagogy issues along with
inservice faculty training, will require a full time, dedicated position,
with NO additional classroom obligations beyond the faculty & assistant
training that will be necessarily on-going.  I doubt that this will
happen, and that the present release-time situation will be in use until
the "slave labor" situation blows up and there is a resignation, a
"letting go", or a descent into less than mediocre productivity.
By the way, the operating budget for the institution and each of its
divisions is at the 1985 level, there have been no salary raises in the
last three years, approximately 15% of the faculty lines have been frozen
so that what would have been someone's salary when a position opened up,
now goes to shore up departmental budgetary deficits.

Now, how does the terrain look from where you are sitting?  :)

Cheers!

Jean-Jacques d'Aquin, Language Lab Director
University of South Alabama, HUMB-322, Mobile, AL 36688
VOX 334-460-6291 FAX 334-460-7123