The Faculty and the Design and Implementation of the Curriculum

The core of the permanent ELI faculty consists of those teachers who have been selected on the basis of competitive searches in which teachers with knowledge and experience are sought - usually a minimum of three years’ experience for a full-time teacher. (This open search in recruitment is required by the university, but it is also important because the quality of the delivery of instruction depends on the expertise of those in the classroom.) These faculty members are given responsibility for the development of the curriculum described in the rest of this chapter and in detail in Appendices I—III. They hold meetings to write, review, and edit the curricula. They also provide guidance for the teachers who teach the curriculum at the beginning and end of the term. Further revision is then often made based on the feedback from how well the semester went in terms of the textbook exercises and pace of the class. Thus, the orientation and end-of-term meetings allow for constant review and adjustment of the curriculum. Teaching loads for full-time faculty who carry out administration vary from one to two classes per semester, with contact hours being about eight per week. For full-time faculty with no administrative load, there is usually a maximum of 12 contact hours per week, although this can increase to 16 if an overload is needed.

The research in the IEP that is presented in the following chapters crucially depends not just on one researcher or even a team of researchers

The IEP at the University of Pittsburgh 23 but also on a group of dedicated, collaborative faculty, graduate students, and part-time instructors.

As part of an academic department, the Pitt IEP employs and supports a limited number of graduate teaching assistants (TAs). These graduate students are usually MA in applied linguistics students, but some of them are PhD students who carry out research on language development in the IEP. (Recent examples are Li Juffs, 2015; Martin, 2017; Naismith, Han, Juffs, Hill, & Zheng, 2018; Spinner, 2011; Vercellotti, 2017.) Graduate student involvement in the IEP is a great strength. Once students have had at least the basic training in the linguistics methods class, they bring new views into the IEP and provide a stimulus to full-time IEP faculty to think about the curriculum as they explain it to the graduate students and guide them in its implementation.

Last, and by no means least, part-time instructors are a vital resource for the IEP. These instructors are hired on an as-needed basis. All are fully qualified with appropriate master’s-level training, but some teachers (for one reason or another) either do not desire full-time employment or the IEP cannot financially guarantee full-time employment due to the unpredictable rise and fall in enrollments. The part-time instructor pool constitutes a vital part of many lEPs.

An administrative overview is provided in Tables 2.1 through 2.2. These tables have changed since the research for the corpus was originally collected, but they are an illustration of how an IEP can be organized in terms of administration and teaching. In the case of the Pitt IEP,

Table 2.1 ELI Administrative Structure: Responsibilities of Administrative Faculty

ELI Director

• • ELI budget
• • Liaison with university (Dean, administrators, offices)
• • Works with

Administrative o Associate Director-Operations (Associate

responsibilities Director-O) & Marketing/Activities

Coordinator)

• o Requests for new programs/courses from within the University (works with Associate Director-0 and Marketing/Activities Coordinator)
• o ELI publications
• • Reports on ELI accomplishments to the Dean
• • Research Co-Ordinator
• • Representative for professional organizations, for example, UCIEP
• • Supervises MA and PhD graduate students.

Teaching responsibilities Teaches three linguistics classes (not in the IEP) per year

Supervision of graduate student research

Table 2.1 (Continued)

Administrative

Responsibilities

ELI Associate Director

• (O = Operations)
• • Employment: point of contact for new part-time instructors; arranges interviews; maintains faculty resumes and verifies academic credentials
• • ELI schedule: devises ELI teaching schedule for each term
• • ELI database: interfaces with designer, trains ELI admin, and faculty, oversees implementation and management
• • ELI registration: overall organization (including signage)
• • Overall operations -arranges . . .
• o Major ELI admin meetings, sets agenda, leads meetings
• o Major ELI faculty meetings for beginning and end of term: sets agendas, leads meetings
• o Repairs to classrooms/Ts office or equipment
• • Visitors to ELI
• • Assists with design of new programs as needed (works with Director, Marketing Coordinator, and assigned faculty)

Teaching

responsibilities

Supervision

responsibilities

One class per term

Three curricula, for example, Grammar 3, 4, 5

ELI Associate Director (T = Teachers)

• • Helps to ensure that Ts are following university policies (e.g., sexual harassment training)
• • ELI Faculty Handbook
• • Approves ELI T requests for substitutes for non-medical reasons
• • T training and supervision:
  • o New T orientation (organizes - works with all ELI admin)
  • o New TA videos o Organizes T observations
  • o Organizes peer observations
  • o Organizes T mtgs to facilitate institutional communication
  • o Works with T representative
• • Linguistics responsibilities:
  • o TESOL Certificate

Coordinator

• o Advising
• o Serves on MA and PhD committees
• o Attends faculty meetings
• • ELI Technology/ o Oversees ELI

Technology Asst, and equipment/CALL

• Attends closing ceremonies - speech Ix/yr

One class per term

Two curricula Technology

Coordinator

The IEP at the University of Pittsburgh 25

Table 2.2 Other Essential Faculty Administrators

the director is also a tenured professor and SLA researcher. This situation has been the case since the founding of the institute, and it also provides a link to graduate education in the Department of Linguistics.

The Director and the Associate Directors work closely together, with the Director having extensive interactions with upper administration and budget, while the Associate Directors are responsible for the day-to-day operation of the IEP. In addition to the director group, essential curriculum planning and teaching is done by other members of the administrative faculty. The list of these positions and very basic responsibilities is in Table 2.2.

In addition to these major functions, other full-time or part-time faculty may take on other ad hoc roles in administration. The total numberof faculty members for the IEP, which teaches between 250-350 full- and part-time students annually, including the Director, are 12 full-time faculty, 1 to 3 graduate students (varies with financial commitments), and approximately 12 part-time instructors, who may teach between one and three courses per semester either in the IEP or in the classes that the ELI provides to support matriculated students. (The part of the ELI that supports matriculated students is not part of the discussion in this book, but the IEP is integrated into the university and the department in several complex ways, including testing and ESP courses. These activities are not immediately relevant to language development in rhe IEP but provide a framework in which it can thrive.)

An important aspect of the professional training and status of the IEP faculty is that the IEP belongs to two professional organizations: University and College Intensive English Programs (UCIEP) (www.uciep.org/) and English USA (www.EnglishUSA.org). The Pitt ELI was a founding member of UCIEP in 1967. UCIEP requires its member institutions to employ faculty with at least an MA in a field related to linguistics and language teaching. Some supervised teaching by students in an MA program is permitted. Similarly, the CEA standards for faculty (Faculty Standard 1, http://cea-accredit.org/images/pdfs/2018_CEA_Standards. pdf) also state that for higher education, the MA with TESOL training is the appropriate level of education. Thus, the teaching staff of the IEP follows standards set by recognized professional organizations.