Teaching Assignments
Curriculum Committee
The Genome Sciences Curriculum committee meets quarterly, and at least once a year with the chair. The committee’s charge includes carrying out periodic reviews of the department’s undergraduate and graduate offerings, reviewing proposals for new courses, making teaching assignments, and evaluating faculty requests concerning their teaching obligations. Teaching assignments will be made in the fall for the following year, and requests from faculty regarding their assignments should be received by November 1.
Teaching Responsibilities
Faculty teaching responsibilities are in the form of 5-week units. All 5-week courses count as one unit, apart from GENOME 361, which counts as two. Faculty teaching responsibilities are set at their hiring.
- Those with two units per year are Abitua, Beliveau, Brewer, Bruce, DeWitt, Dunham, Eichler, Feder, Fowler, Green, Harris, MacCoss, Noble, Pallanck, Queitsch, Schweppe, Shendure, Starita, Thomas, Trapnell, Villen.
- Those with one unit per year are Hamazaki, Hawkins, King, Sakaue (26-27), Wei.
- Emeritus, Joint, and Research Faculty willing to teach when needed: Cuperus.
The Department’s goal is a roughly comparable teaching load (according to hiring commitment) among all faculty, both in terms of courses taught and the contact hours/student enrollment of these courses.
Based on the balance of accumulated units, a faculty member can request an exemption from teaching one unit in the following year. The curriculum committee will evaluate this request in the context of available alternative faculty to teach the relevant course or the possibility of the Department not offering the course in the coming year. Faculty can request to use units before they are earned. Units that are not used carry over to subsequent years. A sabbatical year approved by the University counts the same as a teaching exemption.
If a faculty member is granted a year off from a course that is then taught by someone else, then the expectation is that the faculty new to this course can continue teaching the course in future years if the faculty member desires. In this case, the faculty member taking time off should return either to teaching a different, existing course or should develop a new course.
A spreadsheet is available to all faculty listing past and current teaching obligations and status of units. Courses taught for other programs do not count toward the departmental commitment unless approved in advance by the chair.
light gray shading = no teaching responsibility
purple shading = one unit per year
yellow shading = no teaching responsibility (on leave; chair)