6.2. Clinical Appointments

Clinical faculty appointments are distributed among SAR (28 professorial and 3 instructor), SED (15), LAW (8),  SSW (4), and CAS (3) (Appendices C11, 13, 16, 18, and 7). Clinical faculty typically have professional credentials and play an essential role in preparing students to enter a variety of professions including occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, nutrition, athletic training, law, social work, and education. At SAR, which has the largest number of clinical faculty, there are almost equal numbers of tenure-track and clinical faculty.

The responsibilities of clinical faculty emphasize teaching, student supervision, and advising, but also include service as well as scholarship and research to maintain professional qualifications. Teaching loads are typically higher than for T/TT faculty and research expectations tailored toward applied research.

Clinical faculty members participate in several different types of teaching activities: traditional classroom teaching, applied teaching, and other related administrative or clinical activities that support professional education and accreditation requirements. Applied teaching is particularly time-intensive. At SAR it often involves teaching clinical procedures and closely supervising student performance. At SED, clinical faculty conduct site visits at schools and community agencies as a part of a supervision seminar for which they are responsible. Clinical LAW faculty supervise law students in their representation of actual clients in real cases from initial interview to final courtroom summation. Because of the level of professional expertise and experience required, applied teaching must, as a rule, be delivered by clinical faculty and cannot be delegated to graduate students.

Clinical faculty are expected to participate and show leadership in service activities such as program coordination, department and college faculty meetings, advising students, and participating in the recruitment of students and new faculty members. Service activities may also involve roles in various professional bodies in the person’s area of clinical expertise, such as holding office in local, state, or national professional associations or serving on licensure boards, study sections, or government policy groups.

In order to perform applied teaching effectively, clinical faculty are expected to be knowledgeable about the most current literature in their area of professional expertise, changing practice patterns in the work setting, and changes in professional certification standards. Specification of faculty loads in terms of number of courses or number of credit hours alone may not adequately reflect these differences in actual time required across different courses.

Accreditation standards for several SAR professional programs require that all faculty (including clinical faculty) have annual goals related to scholarship; thus, these clinical faculty are expected to contribute to knowledge or clinical skill development beyond the immediate classroom. Expectations for clinical faculty at SSW also include involvement in scholarly work. Scholarly contributions are more broadly defined than those traditionally undertaken by tenure-track faculty. In addition to research, they may include clinical literature synthesis, policy analysis, or development of practice protocols, among others. SAR and SSW each have a Faculty Expectations document for clinical faculty that provides more details about the type and scope of scholarly work expected for promotion.

SED clinical faculty were not held to a research agenda in the past. This has now been reconsidered, and clinical faculty will be responsible for scholarship as a part of their responsibilities. The challenge is to formulate faculty expectations that balance the higher teaching load with research requirements.

Clinical faculty have the highest average years of service among BU faculty (Appendix C3). Delineation of responsibilities appears to vary across schools: both SAR and SSW have Faculty Expectations documents specifically for clinical faculty, whereas SED is currently reassessing responsibilities and developing an expectations document. As with most NTT faculty, the main challenge is finding the time for scholarly work and professional development while maintaining a high teaching load. The Faculty Development section of this report discusses these issues.

Recommendation:

• Schools and colleges should have clear and detailed descriptions of the responsibilities and expectations specific to clinical faculty.