Southwestern Community College employs an adequate number of full-time faculty to provide instruction and coordination in each of the College’s degree programs. Full-time/part-time faculty ratios, faculty workload, average class sizes, and positive student feedback are indicators that SCC has adequate faculty resources to ensure program quality and integrity, consistent with the College’s mission to be “a comprehensive learning and teaching institution offering high quality innovative instruction and support to all who need and value these services.”

Definition of Full-Time and Part-Time Faculty
Southwestern Community College defines full-time employees as being employed on an annual basis with the expectation of employment for a subsequent period. Part-time employees are employed for a specific time period with no implication of continued employment (1).

Full-time / Part-time Ratios
At the start of the 2005-2006 academic year, SCC employed 59 full-time faculty members and 72 part-time faculty members (2). Therefore the full-time faculty constituted 45% of the entire faculty, a percentage which is higher than both the North Carolina statewide average of 44 percent (3), and the national average of 34 percent for public two-year institutions (4)(5). A comparison with similar-sized community colleges in North Carolina reveals that Southwestern Community College falls in the middle of the range for percentage of full-time faculty, as shown in the following table (comparison data collected through the College’s access to the North Carolina Community College System Data Warehouse).

Workload
The curriculum faculty workload policy (6) establishes the minimum and maximum teaching loads (by credit and contact hours) for the College’s full-time faculty. Faculty in the Arts and Sciences divisions generally teach between 15 and 25 contact hours (15-18 credit hours) per week. Faculty in the Career Programs and Health Sciences divisions teach between 17 and 28 contact hours (16-18 credit hours) per week, depending on the number of labs and clinicals they teach.

The average number of sections taught per semester by full-time faculty is about 5.5 and by part-time faculty fewer than 3 sections, as shown below.

Additionally, the following table demonstrates that our full-time faculty teach 60% or more of all curriculum courses.

Class Size
Average class size for the last two years, 2004 and 2005, has been 12 or fewer students per class (7). Enrollment in most classes is capped in the low to middle twenties. This is a very positive reflection of the student/faculty ratio at SCC.

Student/Faculty Ratio
The student-faculty ratio for all students and faculty in the North Carolina Community College system during 2004-2005 was 22:1. The ratio between faculty and students at Southwestern Community College both full- and part-time was less than 21:1.

Student Satisfaction
Student satisfaction with the quality of instruction at SCC is demonstrated by the fact that two of the highest mean scores on the 2005 Student Climate Survey were that “The quality of instruction in my field of interest meets my expectations” and that “My instructors were available to help me outside of class (8).” Both of these responses are indicative of adequate number of faculty to meet the college mission. Furthermore the Annual Survey of Curriculum Graduates for 2003-2004 indicates that 95% of respondents were satisfied with the “Quality of instruction in program area courses” and 98% were satisfied with the “Overall quality of academic programs (9).”