While the College has added new departments and programs, the full-time equivalency (FTE) cap, which determines how many tenure and tenure-track faculty the College can employ, has remained at 165 for the past 15 years, although the cap has been reconfigured to effectually add 10 spaces by eliminating coaches from FTE consideration.
As the enrollment size for departments increases, the need for more FTEs also rises. Yet, the need for FTEs in a department cannot always be met, President Tom Gerety said.
"The College could not add new departments at this point without raising the FTE cap," Dean of the Faculty Lisa Raskin said.
According to Raskin, in recent years only computer science has grown by a single FTE slot. "The general sense in the administration is that replacements have priority over new positions," added Raskin.
Gerety said that it is difficult for the College to move tenure positions around to other departments once they have already been established. "There is a kind of institutional momentum," Gerety said.
Professor of Computer Science Lyle McGeoch said that computer science had made requests for an FTE for years before finally hiring Assistant Professor of Computer Science Scott Kaplan '95. Currently, computer science has four FTE slots.
Enrollment and the need to encompass a range of areas in particular fields of study require more FTEs in departments, according to some faculty.
"Part of the factor [for gaining one FTE in computer science] was based on growing enrollments and to cover a whole sub-area in which we had no expertise in," McGeoch said. "Professor Kaplan's research area is computer systems and ... by hiring someone who had real expertise there, that meant real change in the quality we were able to offer."
Since the creation of the computer science major in 1989-1990 academic year, the number of majors has ranged from three in the first year to as many as 17 in the 1996-1997 academic year.
The LJST department has also been petitioning for a new FTE since 1994. The College established the LJST major with a minimum of three FTEs in 1993.
In the creation of new departments, no existing department has lost any FTEs, according to Raskin.
Yet, while no department has lost any FTEs, new departments that also need FTE positions may make it harder for already existing departments to expand.
Professor of Political Science Robert Tiersky said that, while creation of new departments such as LJST might not have a direct effect on particular departments, the number of tenure positions available in general may be affected.
"It would be hard to say what the effect of LJST has been on political science tenure; the most likely answer is none," Tiersky said. "LJST's arrival may have affected the total slots available for new tenures in the faculty at large but not political science in particular."
Gerety agreed that the decisions of the administration about tenure always has consequences. "Anything that we do has an impact elsewhere," Gerety said.
Department sizes change for many reasons. Some of these reasons include professors retiring, leaving, becoming deans or not getting tenure. Departments can lose a tenured faculty member without an immediate replacement. This may leave growing departments with even less tenured faculty, resulting in a higher student-to-teacher ratio in the department.
The lack of tenured faculty in departments can result in larger introductory courses, less limited-enrollment courses and more students being turned away from classes they registered for.
In the case of LJST, three FTEs and four visiting professors teach in a department with an enrollment of 666 students in the 2000-2001 academic year. This number has grown from 318 students in the 1990-1991 academic year. Yet the number of FTEs for LJST remains at three.
Among the four newest departments or programs, LJST has had the highest number of majors each year, except for its first year. In the Class of 2000, there were 27 LJST majors, as compared to 15 computer science majors, eight Asian Language and Civilizations majors and three WAGS majors.