Policies and Procedures for Faculty | Academic Calendar | Academic Honesty | Adjunct Faculty Appointments | Advising |Blackboard | Book Orders | Class Cancellations | Copying Policies | Electronic Study Groups | Evaluation of Teaching | Examinations | Grades | Grievance Procedures | Human Subjects Research | Promotion and Tenure | SOE By Laws | Students with Disabilities | Syllabus Requirements | University ID Card and Computer Account | University Ombudsman | Vehicle Registration and Parking | Your Classroom
The information below is for all instructional personnel in the school. Review the information carefully and contact the Dean's office or secretarial staff if you have questions.
The University Academic Calendar includes a schedule of classes, recesses and academic deadlines.
All members of the University community have the responsibility to maintain and foster a condition and an atmosphere of academic integrity. Specifically, this requires that all classroom, laboratory and written work for which a person claims credit is in fact that person's own work. The annual University Student Handbook publication has detailed information on academic integrity.
See further information on Academic Honesty and Dishonesty at SOE Academic Honesty Procedures and at http://gradschool.binghamton.edu/fs/honesty.asp.
Adjunct faculty will receive an offer letter from the dean's office prior to the beginning of each appointment. To indicate acceptance of the offer, one copy of the letter needs to be signed and returned to the dean's office. Additional forms must be completed for initial appointees and returned with the offer letter.
Adjunct faculty will receive salary checks every other Wednesday. Arrangements can be made for direct deposit with the Payroll Office or checks can be mailed to the faculty member’s home address or held in their mailbox. Indicate a preference to the secretaries. No one can be placed on the payroll without completing an I-9 form IN PERSON at the Payroll Office (Couper Administration Building, second floor).
The role of faculty with respect to advising students is to:
Faculty in SOE are encouraged to use Blackboard, a Web-based course management system that makes course materials and information available any time, anywhere, from any Web browser. Faculty can use Blackboard to build an online learning environment for any subject and any course.
To learn more about Blackboard and to sign up for Blackboard instruction, see Blackboard.
Book orders can be submitted online to the University Bookstore (with a copy sent to the School of Education office - AB230). See University Bookstore and Faculty Services for instructions.
If it is ever necessary to cancel a class meeting, notify the secretary so that a note can be posted on the classroom door.
Cancellation because of weather conditions is handled by the senior administration. Faculty should consider canceling class because of weather only if they cannot safely reach campus due to the weather conditions.
Campus weather announcements are available by calling 777-SNOW (777-7669).
Material to be duplicated should be left in the Dean's Office copy room, AB-133, at least three working days before class.
Use of the copy machines in the offices must be limited to no more than 10 copies. If you have a project that requires more than 10 pages, request copying via a work order in the Dean's Office.
SOE cannot accommodate student copying. If additional copies of student work are requested by faculty, it will be the students' responsibility to copy the material at their own expense. Public copy machines are available throughout the library. Students can also use the University Copy Center, LNG-22, for personal copying.
Faculty who wish to have articles photocopied for student purchase can use the University Copy Center which will copy material and make packets available for student purchase. Request Copy Center duplication via a work order placed with the secretaries.
Faculty should be familiar with the current copyright laws and all requests for duplicated material for classroom use should be within the bounds of the copyright law.
The University policy on the duplication of copyrighted material can be found in the Handbook for Faculty and Professional Staff.
All faculty need ongoing feedback to develop their competence and to derive a sense of satisfaction from their teaching experiences. Faculty are strongly encouraged to regularly gather input from students, both formally and informally. The Student Opinion of Teaching (SOOT) is a University-sponsored survey that asks questions about faculty teaching and classroom activities. Each semester, faculty will be invited to request SOOTs for their courses. Please request paper copies, have students complete them in class, and have a student collect them and deliver them to one of the School of Education offices. (Whether evaluations are paper or electronic, return rates are much higher when evaluations are completed in class.) Computing Services tabulates results and sends a summary report to the individual faculty member through Blackboard. Tenure track faculty members should retain survey results as evidence of their teaching effectiveness. Adjunct faculty members should share results with the program coordinator and submit a copy to the dean's office. In addition to the SOOT, faculty often find it useful to design their own evaluation that asks questions specific to their course. The SOOT and self-designed surveys can provide information that is useful to improve course design and methods of instruction.
Periodic examinations are given at the discretion of each instructor.
University policy specifies that no examinations, including unit or chapter exams, are to be administered during the final week of classes. Faculty who wish to give a final examination in their course during the final examination period should submit a request to the Registrar. The Registrar assigns the day, time, and location of final exams, which may differ from the usual class meeting. The School of Education assigns use of AB-124 and AB-234.
Graded exams, papers and other projects that were not returned to students in class may be left in the School of Education office (AB-230) for student pickup. Student work should be kept for one semester following the end of the course.
The Handbook for Faculty and Professional Staff addresses policies related to grading, including incomplete grades, missing grades, changing grades, and complaints concerning grades.
All students should be familiar with the University policy on Academic Honesty, which prohibits submitting the same work for more than one course, as well as presenting someone else's work as their own. The Binghamton University Writing Center also provides guidance about The Use and Acknowledgement of Sources in order to avoid plagiarism.
The School of Education strongly supports a range of efforts at mediating grievances before they are channeled formally.
SOE has a standing Grievance Committee that has membership from among the faculty, administrative, and graduate student constituencies. It is this committee that acts as a hearing board for student-initiated grievances involving SOE faculty, administrators or students. This committee meets on a grievance or complaint only after attempts to remedy the grievance have been undertaken, first with the party who is the subject of the grievance, and then, if necessary, with the student's faculty adviser who will attempt to mediate the situation.
If the student has consulted with the party and the faculty adviser and has been unable to obtain consideration of and/or an acceptable remedy to the grievance, the student may next request in writing that the Grievance Committee be convened.
The Human Subjects Research Review Committee must approve all research projects that involve human subjects. The Committee meets monthly during the academic year and reviews protocols that involve research presenting some risk or threat to human subjects. An expedited review process provides a quick review for research projects that do not involve significant risk to subjects. The guidelines for Human Subject Review at Binghamton University, conforming to the requirements of such agencies as National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health and the Department of Education, are available in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. Some Federal agencies require assurance of approval of the research protocol by the institution's human subjects review board before the proposal will be considered for funding. Questions regarding the review of protocols should be directed to the Chair of the Human Subjects Research Review Committee.
For more information see Human Subjects Research.
Faculty can also have course listservs or electronic study groups (ESG) established for courses. An electronic study group or listserv makes easy communication to all class members possible with a single message. Faculty may communicate from existing e-mail accounts or have special course accounts created for each course. For more information on listservs, ESGs, or faculty computing accounts, see Computing Services.
Tenure-track faculty members in the School of Education undergo periodic review for tenure and promotion. (Currently there is a formal review in year three and the promotion/tenure review in year six.) The policies and procedures for these reviews are outlined in the Binghamton University Handbook for Faculty and Professional Staff, section IV. Faculty Personnel Policies and Procedures. The Provost also outlines Faculty Personnel Information including guidance for preparation of Personnel Cases. The Provost's Faculty Personnel Action Summary provides the organizational framework for materials prepared by the Initiating Personnel Committee and sent forward to the Provost's office.
The Initiating Personnel Committee (IPC) of the School of Education has outlined the steps SOE follows to implement the policies and procedures listed above. In addition, SOE has developed Guidelines for Renewal, Promotion, and Tenure (.doc, 55kb) to provide examples of how faculty might address the three criteria established for promotion and tenure: teaching, scholarship and service.
Faculty being considered for promotion and tenure must provide a curriculum vitae that provides information corresponding to the promotion and tenure criteria. To assist faculty in meeting these expectations, the IPC has prepared a model vita (.pdf, 112kb). The candidate's vita must follow this format. Each year, there is an information meeting hosted by the IPC that covers the procedures, explains which materials should be included and answers questions faculty members may have about the process.
The School of Education By Laws (.pdf, 833kb) outline the policies and procedures by which the School of Education operates. Interested faculty, staff, and students may obtain a hard copy version through the Dean's office (AB133).
The School of Education is committed to serving all students. All syllabi should contain a statement regarding accommodations for students with disabilities. For information on accommodating students with disabilities, see Office of Services for Students with Disabilities.
A syllabus for each course taught in the School of Education should be submitted electronically to the dean's secretary no later than two weeks prior to the beginning of the semester. Syllabi should be submitted as a Word attachment or as a rich text format attachment. Syllabi will be posted on the Web site and be linked from the semester schedule pages. Students should print their own copy of the syllabus.
Faculty are encouraged to use Blackboard to post their syllabus, class assignments, etc. For more information, see Computing Services' page for Blackboard.
A syllabus may vary from one or two pages to many. The intent is to give the student as accurate a representation of the course as possible. Thus, the greater degree of specificity, the better the indication the student has of the requirements. A note of caution: once the requirements are set, many students take them literally. Faculty may wish to discuss the syllabus at their first class and formally modify it, if necessary.
A syllabus should contain the following:If you are a student with a disability and wish to request accommodations, notify me by the second week of class. You are also encouraged to contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at 777-2868. Their office is at LH-B51. The SSD office makes formal recommendations regarding necessary and appropriate accommodations based on your specifically diagnosed disability. Information regarding your disability will be treated in a confidential manner.
“All members of the University community have the responsibility to maintain and foster a condition and an atmosphere of academic integrity. Specifically, this requires that all classroom, laboratory, and written work for which a person claims credit is in fact that person’s own work.” The annual University Student Handbook publication has detailed information on academic integrity.
Binghamton University has obtained a license with Turnitin.com to facilitate faculty review of papers and projects in their courses for potential plagiarism. All faculty are encouraged to use this tool.
“Students assume responsibility of the content and integrity of the academic work they submit. Students are in violation of academic honesty if they incorporate into their written or oral reports any unacknowledged published or unpublished or oral material from the work of another (plagiarism); or if they use, request, or give unauthorized assistance in any academic work (cheating).”
Neither plagiarism nor cheating will be tolerated in any class. Incidents of either will result in a failing grade for the assignment in question, which will most likely have a negative effect on the final grade. If you have any questions about what constitutes plagiarism or cheating, please ask me.
See further information on Academic Honesty and Dishonesty at SOE Academic Honesty Procedures
For more information on plagiarism, see What is Plagiarism? A Short Concept Lesson by Ted Frick, Indiana University. This site includes 10 self-test practice items.
After confirmation of appointments, adjunct faculty should obtain a Binghamton University ID card in order to access the many services available on campus (i.e. library access and multimedia/audiovisual reservation through the Educational Communications Center) and to identify themselves as affiliated with the University should they be requested to do so. Adjunct faculty will also need to obtain a BU e-mail account in order to use Blackboard to facilitate instruction (please visit the Human Resources office, 2nd floor Couper Admin. Bldg.) .The Dean's Office will assist with any issues related to obtaining necessary ID cards and e-mail accounts.
The University Ombudsman provides impartial, objective and confidential assistance with informal complaint resolution, problem solving and communication. The ombudsman advocates, not for any particular individual, organization or position in a dispute, but for the fair, equitable and humane treatment of all parties. The ombudsman approaches each case without prejudice, and as neither advocate nor critic of any cause, but with a commitment to fairness, equity and the missions of the University. For more information, see University Ombudsman.
All faculty, staff and students are required to register their vehicles driven on campus. Anyone parking on campus must display a valid University parking permit 24 hours a day.
Classrooms are scheduled by the Office of the University Registrar. If faculty have a problem with their classroom, contact the secretaries. They will assist in requesting a change in classroom as necessary. For information on equipment in classrooms, see the Educational Communication Center Web site.
