•  
• Dean's Office
• Development & Alumni Relations
• Faculty
• Fiscal Administration
• Graduate Programs
• Human Resources
• Media & Public Relations
• Planning
• Research
• Undergraduate Programs

Home > Faculty : Internal Faculty Visitors Guidelines for the Pilot Phase

Internal Faculty Visitors Guidelines for the Pilot Phase

Questions concerning CLA's guidelines for the pilot phase of the Internal Faculty Visitors program should be directed to the Office of the Associate Dean for Faculty.

---

General Statement

Most faculty members in CLA teach in a single unit and perform service in a single academic unit.  A few faculty have joint appointments or have arrangements that allow them to teach and perform service in two or more units, but these faculty are the exception.  What is not the exception, however, is faculty with interests and expertise that span multiple disciplines.

Sometimes these multidisciplinary interests and strengths are nurtured through interdisciplinary programs and initiatives that allow faculty members from different departments to come together and co-teach short term seminars or courses. However, such opportunities are rare, often limited to teaching only, and hardly available to all faculty when in fact, a vast majority of CLA faculty could function successfully and profitably in the areas of teaching, research, and service to advantage of themselves and the college if they could be housed for short-term periods in other departments besides their own home department. 

CLA seeks to lower the barriers that deter cross-departmental cooperation, cross-fertilization of teaching programs, and interdisciplinary research.  The Internal Faculty Visitors Program is one facet of these efforts.

Guidelines and Procedures

An Internal Faculty Visitor is a tenured faculty member whose tenure unit and budget home are in one CLA department but who has, for a defined period of time, partial or full teaching and service responsibilities in another CLA department. The period of time can be continuous or episodic in order to place the least burden on the home and host departments. For example, a member of the statistics department might have 50% effort in the psychology department for two years (four consecutive semesters), or a professor of theater might have 100% effort in the English department for four semesters spread over a total period of four years.

It is expected that the temporary and partial “move” of an internal faculty visitor to a host department will aid the advancement of specific research and/or pedagogical initiatives of the faculty member in ways that will also benefit the host and home departments.

Budget and costs for an internal faculty visitor remain in the home unit. Annual and merit reviews are conducted by the home department, but the host (visited) department provides information to inform the deliberations of the home department.  Teaching, research, and service in the host department count fully toward the annual and merit reviews conducted in the home department.  The home and host departments must collaborate to ensure that an internal faculty visitor is not in any way disadvantaged by her or his status as an internal faculty visitor.

Applications

Internal faculty visitor relationships are established by letter of application to the Associate Dean for Faculty. To ensure sufficient time for curricular, programmatic and fiscal planning, letters of application from faculty wishing to participate as internal faculty visitors should be submitted to the college one year prior to the semester in which the proposed internal faculty visitor arrangement is scheduled to begin. Letters of application must be accompanied by statements of support and endorsement by the chairs/directors of the home and host departments.

Letters of applications should include the following information:

• Home and host units;
• Term and effort level for the visit, and how these were determined;
• Purpose and motivation for the visit, and how these were determined;
• Specific inter- and transdisciplinary initiatives that the collaboration between home and host departments would enable;
• Courses to be taught in the host unit;
• Resources provided by the host and home units during the visit, including a careful discussion of space issues (e.g., office space, studio space, etc).

Applications for the Internal Faculty Visitor program should be submitted to the Office of the Associate Dean for Faculty.

Considerations and Conditions

• Internal faculty visitor relationships shall begin and end so as to coincide with the beginning and ending of semester appointment dates.
• Internal faculty visitor relationships are generally not appropriate for tenure-track, probationary faculty, or for contract or visiting faculty.
• Internal faculty visitor relationships can be ended early by mutual agreement of the faculty member and the home and host departments. Such terminations shall occur between semesters.
• Faculty are not eligible for sabbatical leaves, single semester leaves, or other faculty development leaves while participating in the internal faculty visitor program.
• If an internal faculty visitor buys out of a course through external research funding, salary funds return to the home department.
• If an internal visitor requests an unpaid personal leave, the reduction in effort can occur in either or both of the host and home departments by mutual agreement of the faculty visitor and the two departments. If such a leave necessitates additional instructional costs, departments must request those funds through standard college procedures.
• If an internal faculty visitor goes on medical leave, the department(s) of instruction are responsible for requesting funds for replacement teaching through standard college procedures.

Effective Fall 2009