Faculty Responsibilities to Students

I. REFERENCE

AAUP Statement of Professional Ethics (1966)

II. POLICY

A. Ethical Canons

As teachers, faculty encourage the free pursuit of learning in students. Faculty hold before themselves the best scholarly standards of their disciplines. They demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to their proper role as intellectual guides and counselors. Faculty make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to assure that the evaluations of their students reflect their true merits. Faculty respect the confidential nature of the relationship between faculty or student. They avoid any exploitation of students for private advantage and acknowledge significant assistance from them. Faculty protect their students' academic freedom (based upon the AAUP Statement of Professional Ethics, 1966).

B. Standards of Behavior

1. The central responsibility of the faculty to students is to attempt to impart to them the knowledge and understanding of the faculty member's field of study and to encourage them to develop within themselves appropriate and relevant skills, particularly the ability to reason with and use this knowledge and to do so in accordance with the best standards of scholarship and pedagogy in the discipline.

2. The faculty at large has the right to determine course content. However, once approval for course offerings has been granted, the individual faculty member is obligated to teach the course in reasonable conformity with the course description, content and method announced in advance. The faculty member has the right to determine the manner of presentation. The academic freedom of the student as well as of the faculty member must be observed. While teachers are free to interrelate subject matter of their courses to contemporary issues which they find usefully relevant, they are primarily responsible for providing instruction in the announced subject matter and techniques of the course.

3. Faculty members have a responsibility to their students to entertain all relevant questions and to discuss controversial questions objectively and freely. Where faculty members find it pedagogically useful to advocate a position on controversial matters, they should exercise care to assure that opportunities exist for students to consider other views. Faculty members shall not reward agreement or penalize disagreement with their views on controversial topics, but they can reasonably expect their students to learn the rationale behind certain positions.

4. Prompt and regular meeting of classes, faithful keeping of appointments and, when assigned, academic, curricular and/or vocational advising are duties resting upon each faculty member. Alteration of schedules and cancellation or rescheduling of classes should be done only for valid reasons. The faculty and the administration are obliged to fill commitments to students in terms of class offerings. Faculty members should make available a reasonable number of hours for student consultation or otherwise assure their accessibility to students. Faculty members at Weber State University should keep regular office hours for student consultation. They should conscientiously try to be in their offices during those hours.

a. The hours should be scheduled at convenient times for students

b. The office hours should be posted on the office door of each faculty member at all times and should be honored at all times.

5. At the beginning of each course, faculty members, by means of the syllabi, should will inform students of the general content, what is required and of the criteria with which performance will be evaluated. The general content of the course and the criteria for evaluating student performance  should    will relate clearly to the legitimate academic purpose of the course. The faculty member shall hold all students responsible for meeting the requirements. (See PPM 4-9a)