Info for Instructors and Lecturers

Educational Requirements

Non-tenure-track faculty include instructors, senior instructors, lecturers and teaching assistants. Instructors and lecturers should have at least a Master’s degree. A senior instructor should have a Ph.D. or terminal degree. In special circumstances, the college may hire a lecturer without a Master’s degree if that person has special expertise in a particular field and the appointment is approved by the Dean’s Office. However, if the individual is teaching a graduate level class they must be eligible for the graduate faculty.

Title Based on the Number of Credits Taught

Lecturer

UC Denver rules state that an individual who teaches course(s) up to 6 hours credit per semester is classified as a lecturer, who is paid by the course according to a schedule prepared by the Dean’s Office. This position is not eligible for benefits.

Instructor or Senior Instructor

UC Denver rules state that an individual who teaches courses totaling more than 6 hours credit per semester is considered to be working at least half-time, is classified as an instructor or senior instructor, and is eligible for benefits. Generally, a full-time instructor teaches 24 credits (8 3-credit courses) per AY. Instructors are paid according to a schedule prepared by the Dean’s Office.

The Hiring Process

Department Chairs are not allowed to hire additional instructors or to convert a lecturer to an instructor without approval by the Dean.

Usually instructors are hired for the AY and lecturers for the semester. Summer is
considered separate. Individuals who have been instructors for the previous AY and are going to be instructors for the next AY are considered instructors for the summer, no matter how many courses/credits they are teaching.

Instructors must be hired using a search process approved by Human Resources.
An individual hired by UC Denver for the first time has to provide a social security card, an 1-9, and either a driver’s license or a passport and pass a criminal background check.

Teaching Awards

Each spring there is a faculty awards competition at the College and Campus levels. CLAS gives three awards for non-tenure track teaching, and these winners compete in the Campus-level competition. Faculty who win awards at the College level cannot be candidates again for five years. Tammy Stone in the Dean’s Office
sends department chairs information on the competition and deadlines early in the spring semester.

Performance Review Process

This policy covers instructors and senior instructors. It does not cover lecturer positions, but teaching by lecturer (who may have titles as adjunct or attendant rank faculty) should also be evaluated by each primary unit. All of these categories of faculty have responsibilities only for teaching.

The primary unit (i.e. academic department) and the College should evaluate non-tenure track teaching faculty every year. The review process should be completed prior to the end of the Spring Term of the year in which the review is conducted for lecturers. Instructors must be included in the same annual merit process that tenure/tenure-track are involved in.

The primary unit should devise a review process for the non-tenure track faculty that allows a full review of their teaching. The goals of this review process are to ensure that teaching faculty are sufficiently knowledgeable about current developments and trends in their discipline, that teaching is done in a quality manner, and that student learning outcomes established by the primary unit are achieved.