Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon Portland Community College

Part-Time Faculty Teaching Load

The PCC Faculty /AP Agreement limits part-time faculty teaching to less than .82 of a full-time faculty teaching load (1.0 FTE). Faculty teaching load is determined by an instructor’s weekly class contact hours, which are weighted according to the types of courses being taught. For example, lecture classes are weighted by multiplying each weekly contact hour with a load factor of .068. Thus, a three-credit lecture class that meets three hours a week carries a teaching load of .204. A full-time instructor could teach five such classes, for a total load of 1.02. However a part-time instructor’s teaching load must stay under .82, so they could teach only four three-credit lecture classes, which total .816 FTE.

The load factors for the most common types of classes taught at PCC are as follows:

  • Lecture = .068 per weekly contact hour
  • Lecture/Lab = .054 per weekly contact hour
  • Lab = .046 per weekly contact hour

The basic formula for calculating an instructor’s workload for a course is:

Number of Contact Hours x Load Factor = Class Load

You can find the type and number of contact hours for individual courses in the Course Content Outcome Guides (CCOG). Divide the contact hours in the CCOG by 10 to find weekly hours, then plug the weekly totals into the worksheet, multiply by the appropriate load factors and add the results to find total instructional loads for the different courses that an instructor is scheduled to teach. Remember, a part-time instructor’s total instructional load must be less than .82 for all credit courses taught during a term at PCC.

Note that some courses mix different types of contact hours. For example, one type of three-credit lecture/lab course meets five hours a week – two hours of lecture and three hours of lab.  If you calculate the lecture part of the course load on the first line of the worksheet, you will multiply 2 contact hours by the lecture load factor of .068, which yields .136. You can calculate the lab part of the course load on the second line of the worksheet:  3 contact hours times the lab load factor of .046 = .138.  Adding the lecture and lab load factors together produces the total course load of .274.

After the instructor has been entered into Banner, you or an administrative assistant can check the instructor’s total teaching load using SIAASGN. If the total does not match your Worksheet, look for mistakes or for teaching assignments that you do not know about. Even if the total workload is what you expect, you or the administrative assistant might want to scroll through SIAASGN to confirm that the load is being generated by the courses you have assigned. You need to make sure that you have the instructor’s teaching assignments throughout the college, and you may need to adjust cross-listed class sections.