Contact person: Greg Brown, Associate Dean
Summer School income has become a major source of funds for a department's discretionary spending. Consequently, heads should carefully plan the summer course schedule.
Heads negotiate with instructors concerning pay for courses. Each department may have its own policy on summer pay. The only restriction is that the maximum an instructor may earn is 22.2 percent of the full-time academic year salary in return for six credit hours of courses (11.1 percent for three credit hours). See UW Regulation 5-173. For estimating income, heads should use the figure supplied by the Dean's Office for the expected return per credit hour. (For Summer 2007 the amount returned to departments was $60 per credit hour.) Clearly, the goal is to minimize expenses while maximizing income.
A common mistake in planning the summer budget is to forget to budget for fringe benefits, i.e. Employer Paid Benefits (EPB). Unlike state personnel money, tuition money does not come with fringe benefits attached. For an instructor who is full-time during the academic year, use 20 percent of the summer salary as an estimate of the fringe benefits.
Be aware of other activities that must be funded: instructors for discussion groups, instructors for laboratories, and possibly faculty for advising during freshman and transfer orientations. Include these costs in your budgeting.
Another common error is to view each course as needing to at least break even. This is not necessary. Instead, all the department’s courses considered as a group must at least break even. Frequently, a department has one course with a large profit and some with small deficits; but the total set of offerings breaks even or produces income.
Choose to offer courses that have a chance for significant enrollments. Pay instructors the negotiated salary. Of course, heads on 20 percent stipends in non-PhD. departments must teach during the summer without additional compensation, thereby potentially increasing earnings substantially.
Keep in mind the orientation schedule (Monday and Thursday afternoons for the college meeting and advising in the departments) when you plan the faculty’s summer teaching schedule to avoid time conflicts for the person who is advising.
Please submit a copy of your course offerings and budget to the Dean's Office business manager when you submit your class schedule to the registrar.
The Registrar publishes a list of class sessions and daily starting times for summer classes. Please follow these guidelines. They are intended to reduce the class conflicts students may encounter. The anticipated result is the opportunity for students to enroll in more classes. Exceptions to these guidelines must be approved in advance by the College's associate dean.
The UW deans have established a rule that any individual course may be offered only for one credit per week. For example, a three-credit course may be offered during no less than three weeks.
Courses are listed in the Summer Class Schedule. Students from campus and remote regions of the state and country make plans based on the published course offerings. Therefore, it is important to teach the classes advertised if at all possible. Two factors should be considered before canceling a course: 1) Has the course attracted the minimum number of students—five for upper-division courses and 10 for lower-division courses? Classes that enroll the minimum number of students may not be canceled. 2) If under-enrolled, can the class continue and the course offerings of the department as a whole break even or make a profit? If you determine that an under-enrolled course should not be offered, you must check with the Associate Dean Greg Brown before canceling the course.
If a class is canceled, it should be done at least a week in advance of its starting date. The department must notify all enrolled students immediately after the decision to cancel has been approved. We do not want students to move to Laramie only to find out that the course has been canceled.
Academic Affairs offers a program for innovative courses. The specifics vary from year to year. Watch for the announcements for the coming summer.