Rationale

The Kinesiology Department appreciates the opportunity to request an additional faculty position. Since 2007, our department has grown from 45 declared majors to a current count of 104 declared majors, reflecting an average annual growth rate of 12.7%. We currently advise 245 students, serving roughly 20% of Westmont’s student body. Our core of faculty advisors average 35-40 advisees each. Because we are a relatively small teaching faculty, we must resort to very large class sizes in order to accommodate these students. The mean class size for our department is 22.0, higher than any other department with the exception of RS. In addition to the large class sizes, we have to resort to using adjunct faculty in efforts to gain coverage. Of the 50 units of coursework required of our major, 22 of those units are taught by adjuncts. It is important to note that while we have realized a doubling in our declared majors over the past six years, our FTE has remained a constant 4.58. Finally, our department has become extremely limited in our ability to teach elective courses. We have important courses on the books such as Sport Nutrition, Clinical Nutrition, Fitness for Older Adults and Physical, Psychological, Sociological Aspects of Aging that simply cannot be taught for lack of teaching load availability.

Funds for this new position would be supplemented by the reduction of one adjunct position totaling $30,000.00 and partial units from Kathy LeSage’s 2/3 load, expiring this spring.

Beyond the statistical case made above, we are at a pivotal point in our department. While we celebrate our growth and success, it is inevitable that service to our students and our work as faculty members cannot be sustained. Heavy teaching and grading loads, advising more students than we can possibly handle (based on our commitment to quality and thoughtful advising that goes way beyond the selection of classes each semester), and the important task of writing recommendation letters are all potentially affected, given our present department resources. For example, we are thrilled with the acceptance rate our students are experiencing in top allied health programs, including 4 grads at USC (ranked #1 in PT and OT), Mayo Clinic, Boston University, University of Washington, Emory University, Loma Linda University and Chapman (all top programs in our field). For example, last year Chapman University’s PT program accepted a class of approximately 40 out of an applicant pool of roughly 1200. Two of our graduating seniors were accepted in that class. However, this process of writing recommendations is time consuming and frankly overwhelming, given the number of graduates we serve.

Vision Casting

When we submitted this request last year, we knew we had a need for a new position, but we lacked a vision regarding how that potentially new position might fit into our curriculum and vision for the future of our department. Senate wisely realized this as well and turned down our request. Since that time, we have lost a full-time faculty member, hired a new member of our department and passed a new curriculum. We can therefore see more clearly what the teaching needs will be in the future. At the same time, we have had many discussions about what the next step should be in our department. Our new curriculum reflects these discussions. We are fully committed toward ensuring that every student in our department leaves with either an internship or research experience. This is a requirement in our new curriculum. I had meetings with Brad Berky at the Westmont in San Francisco program this summer, setting up internship sites that will greatly benefit our students and help the WSF program with sustainable numbers. We are not only committed to internship/experiences locally, but globally. To support this approach, Gregg Afman took our first group of students to Bath, England this summer for a month long research project in conjunction with the University of Bath and a highly acclaimed exercise physiologist.

So what might this new position look like? Most of our majors eventually pursue a career in the allied health fields of physical and occupational therapy and physician assistant. We have always had a small core group of students interested in nutrition and public and global health, but could only support these interests with a required nutrition course and a 2 unit public health elective offering. The nutrition courses (8 units) are currently being taught by an adjunct. We see this potential new position anchoring the nutrition and public and global health direction in our department. The bigger picture combines our desire to provide high quality internships with the global vision of the college. There are numerous international internships available for students with these interests. We have already been talking with several international off-campus programs about possibilities in this regard. In addition, this new position would help to cover the Foundations classes, freeing up faculty loads to cover other major required courses taught by adjunct professors.

We sincerely thank you for considering our request. Should we be given an additional position in Kinesiology we would envision greater help in advising, decreased class sizes, greater course offerings, an emphasis in nutrition and public and global health and greater opportunities for research and internships.

Christine Milner

Faculty Position Supporting Documentation

Enrollment in course during the past 3 years

(enter course enrollment with year and term)

Dept/
Cr Num. / Course Title / Fa
2011 / Sp
2012 / Fa
2012 / Sp
2013 / Fa
2013 / Sp
2014
KNS 040 / Nutrition (4) / 45 / 39 / 43 / -- / 39 / 45
KNS 150 / Exploring Public Health (2) / -- / 13 / -- / 16 / -- / 8
KNS 072 / Foundations (2) / -- / 26 / 50 / 51 / 25 / 47

New Course Offerings (if any):

Proposed Title / Proposed audience (GE, majors)
Food Systems (taught this fall on a trial basis) (4) / GE, KNS, SOC, BIO
Global Health (4) / GE, KNS, SOC, BIO
Global Health Internships (2)