Questions for Faculty Senate Meeting regarding BAM with Associate Vice Chancellor McCullock - November 11, 2021

      One specific question that has come up involves cross-college and interdisciplinary credit hours. If a faculty member is teaching a course listed for example in a unit such as Bredesen Center (e.g. a DSE or ESE course) and the faculty member is based in a department (say Math for example) do the credit hour tuition revenue for College of Instruction go to A&S (where the faculty member is housed in Math) or to Bredesen (in which case Bredesen gets 100% of the tuition revenue)? A similar question arises with courses such as First Year Studies which is taught by lots of faculty in many Colleges. I ask because this affects how Deans may or may not allow faculty to teach in interdisciplinary units, and this issue will grow as Bredesen is scheduled to expand tremendously. I had assumed that the College of Instruction revenue should go to the instructor’s College. A similar question arises with State appropriation revenue for a graduate student completing a degree. If a Bredesen student is directed by someone in Math, then does A&S get the 21% piece of State appropriations for that student when the degree is completed or does Bredesen? Again, if A&S gets nothing then there is strong incentive for the Dean to restrict directing grad students outside the College.
 
    I hope you can also provide a clear description of how graduate student support will be handled in BAM. If a College hires a non-TN GTA they are charged the out-of-state tuition plus the in-state maintenance fee right? If the GTA takes courses outside the College then the College is not getting the full tuition back and a non-TN GTA costs a lot more than a TN GTA, right? So again this provides incentive for a College to restrict what courses a GTA takes outside the College.
 
   I am also trying to calculate the relative incentive for a College to hire a TT vs a NTT vs a GTA to teach courses. Perhaps you have already done this calculation though? My quick assessment is that hiring a GTA (particularly in units where the GA is not instructor of record) is very expensive relative to hiring a NTT faculty member – a GTA costs about 35% more than a NTT faculty member even if the GTA takes all their courses inside their College. So this is both a disincentive for Deans to offer GTAs as well as an incentive for Deans to focus offers of GTAs to units which require their GTAs to be instructors of record.