While some departments claim a need for additional tenure and tenure-track faculty, the College only filled 150.75 of the 165 FTE slots last year, according to information from the 1999-2000 Annual Report of the College.
As of last academic year, the College was farther behind the FTE than usual because of a larger number of retirements and resignations, according to Associate Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Physics Robert Hilborn.
"We try to fill those spots, but we're always lagging behind," said Hilborn, who added that lecturers and other non-tenure-track faculty help to increase the number of faculty teaching in departments, though they are not included in the FTE count.
But Hilborn added that an increase in the FTE cap might be beneficial.
"We need some flexibility, and perhaps by making an increase in the FTE cap, we would accommodate more [departments]," Hilborn said.
In 1976, when the school went coed, the Trustees decided to freeze the FTE cap at 150, an economic trade-off that would allow the size of the student body to increase from 1,250 to 1,500.
"There was an implicit agreement when women were admitted that the College would have to abide by an FTE cap," said Professor of Classics and Women's and Gender Studies (WAGS) Rick Griffiths, a member of the Committee of Six. "Their logic is that the College cannot grow infinitely. Faculty are the single largest cost for the institution."
The number of faculty in a department determines how many advisees each professor must take on, the number of students in each class and the amount of work that each professor assigns.
Some departments, such as law, jurisprudence and social thought (LJST) and psychology, are forced to turn students away because of overenrolled courses. This problem could be alleviated by the addition of faculty members.
"What students may not realize is that it is hard on faculty to have to turn people away-it is hard as a professor to make those decisions, and students who are not given a space in a class are obviously disappointed," said Assistant Professor of Psychology Catherine Sanderson. "We would love to hire more professors, but yes, the FTE cap means that we are in competition with other departments for new positions."
"It's a limit we keep rubbing up against," said Griffiths. "It's good to know how big the pie is before we all take a slice."
Every year, departments must submit requests for new faculty slots to the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP). These departments must compete with one another for slots that are opened up by professors who have recently left the College.
When the College establishes new departments, as it did for LJST in 1993, WAGS in 1987 and Asian languages and civilizations in 1983, most of the faculty positions are either shared with an existing department or are taken from another department.
"Those positions come from somewhere," said Griffiths. "It does set realistic limits to any sort of planning we do. It takes sometimes years to get [new faculty] approved."
According to Professor of Economics Walter Nicholson, who chairs the Committee on Priorities and Resources (CPR), it is the CPR's responsibility to review the FTE cap.
"We probably won't do it this year," said Nicholson, who added that he does intend to have the CPR examine the FTE cap next academic year.
According to Nicholson, it is the role of the CEP to determine which departments receive faculty slots.
Nicholson added that a few years ago, most of the team coaches were removed from being considered as part of the FTE number, effectively adding approximately 10 slots under the cap.
In April of 1987, President Peter R. Pouncey, in his report to the Trustees, wrote, "I believe that we must attend to the question of increasing the size of the faculty ... [I]n any year, the regular teaching faculty of the College may number less than 120. The point at issue is not so much the teacher/student ratio per se, but the actual consequences of such straitened numbers in terms of education."