Overview

Based on enrollment and available instructors, the Program in Professional Writing (PPW) runs approximately 4-6 online sections of BTW 250 during the Summer II session. The course design is based on the 2021 BTW assignment sequence, the same sequence taught by new instructors during their first semester in the program. All summer BTW 250 sections are online and assigned class meeting times. The current funding model requires that the department submit for recertification by December 1. This deadline can change year-to-year. 

Timeline

This section may be of most use to program administrators as it details the complete process necessary for running a summer online course. Registration for these courses occurs at the same time as Fall registration, so the recommended steps include:

In early November, program staff should review the “rolled” schedule from the previous summer. This step is usually initiated by the Office Manager for the Undergraduate Office by them running an Excel report of the previous summer’s courses and emailing it to the PPW Director. The Director should respond to the Office Manager with (or initiate) any changes to the upcoming summer course schedule they wish to make, including rubric, number of courses, times, modalities, and blanking out the instructor names until that process can be completed. This information can always be updated, but should be done so before registration opens for summer, usually the first week of April.
Note: This step often coincides with a similar one for setting the upcoming Fall course schedule.
The department receives a request, usually by early November, from ATLAS that all summer courses be submitted via Excel spreadsheet to atlas-tlt@illinois.edu. This request usually includes that year’s deadline, an updated list of guidelines, and a blank copy of the Excel spreadsheet to be used.
Note: Special attention should be paid to meeting the guidelines requirements, especially the 20% student identity verification policy requirement. Other requirements of note include: accessibility, copyright, and FERPA. If these requirements are not met, we risk losing funding for these courses.
Once the request is forwarded to program administrators, the PPW Director can add a line item for each summer course they plan to run, including: modality, compliance check, credit hours, contact hours, projected enrollment, name and rank of instructor, annual salary, amount to paid for the course, and which summer session the course will be taught.
Note: Since the form requires an instructor be listed and department staffing procedures may not make it possible to know the instructor of record by the ATLAS deadline, the program can list the Director, or relevant appointee who works with the summer instructors, as the Instructor of Record.
The program administrator should then Reply All to the department administrators, attaching the updated Excel spreadsheet with the program summer courses. Once all programs in the department have updated the spreadsheet, department-level administrators will submit the complete spreadsheet to ATLAS.
Once enrollment opens in early April, the PPW Director should monitor enrollment, guaranteeing at least 10 students in each section. Sections may be added, combined, or dropped based on enrollment.
While 10 is the standard for getting courses approved, program staff may decide to set higher, internal enrollment requirements so that attrition and ideal learning experiences are taken into consideration. At least 15 students seems to be a safe standard, but PPW Director may still decide to run a course that has 10-14 students enrolled.
Staffing procedures for summer courses can take place before or after a course has met minimum enrollment (10). When asking for instructors (both SF and TA eligible to teach in the program) to express interest in summer courses, the procedure should be explained up front.
Option 1 – Staff courses as they fill. This ensures that instructors at the top of the list get first pick of courses that will not be cancelled for under-enrollment.
Option 2 – Staff all courses at the same time before May 1. This may result in a staffed course being cancelled, regardless of whether that instructor should have had first pick of courses, however it does give instructors more of a warning that they have received a course for summer.
Once instructors have been assigned to a course using the internal PPW procedures, the PPW Director should give instructor names to Suite #294 Office Manager to update instructors on Banner.
Once courses have assigned instructors and have at least met minimum enrollment, the PPW Director should email appointment information to Suite #208 Business Manager for filing appointment paperwork.
Information to include in this appointment email: Instructor name and rank, appointment dates, course rubric, note that the course has met minimum enrollment to pay for itself, reasoning for why the added appointment is necessary (and cannot be assigned as part of any current employment contracts).
It can also be useful to confirm the pay rate and dates in this email.
Once the Business Manager receives this appointment information, they will begin routing the appointment for signatures. As of SP23, this consists of an electronic form. Once the Business Manager submits the appointment information, it should trigger an automatic email to the instructor to sign and then each person whose signature is required next in line will receive an email requesting their signature.

Eligibility

To be eligible to teach the summer online class, an instructor must have taught BTW 250 for the program as part of the normal academic year.

Both Specialized Faculty (SF) and Teaching Assistants (TAs) are eligible for teaching these courses because it occurs during the summer and does not interfere with TA stipends. These courses are staffed as separate appointments for Specialized Faculty since most SF are employed with 9-month appointments and not as service-in-excess (unless that person already has a summer appointment). Graduate employees are eligible to teach summer courses as long as the appointment would not be concurrent with other appointments equaling a full 12 months. In other words, there must be at least 1 month between this and other appointments.

Staffing

In line with current practices, these are the current steps for staffing these courses:

First, an email is sent to all eligible SF and TAs, requesting they declare their interest in teaching a BTW250 course during Summer II. The Director might consider asking interested parties rank the section times in order of most interested to least and indicating any times they cannot teach.
Then, those interested are organized into a priority list based first on who taught the summer BTW250 course least recently, then by seniority (number of semesters with the department).
Finally, sections are offered to the first person on the priority list, so on until all sections are staffed.

Depending on the timing of staffing and registration, it is possible that sections are staffed before they’ve had the opportunity to meet a minimum enrollment necessary to run the course (at least 10 students). In such a case, the Director and instructor can attempt to advertise the course. If these efforts do not succeed, the section will have to be cancelled. The decision to cancel a course is always a last resort so the timing of such a decision will wait as long as possible while also giving students enough time to make other arrangements.

Pay

It is important to note that since summer courses are new appointments for both Specialized Faculty and Graduate Employees, they are compensated differently from service-in-excess.

For Specialized Faculty, a single 3-credit course like BTW 250 is compensated at 1/9 their normal 9-month salary. This pay is distributed in 2 separate installments, 1 in July and 1 in August, combined with their normal monthly paycheck. The pay for this appointment should appear as a separate line item in your monthly earning statement.

For Graduate Employees, a single 3-credit summer course is compensated at a 67% appointment level for two months. This pay is distributed in 2 separate installments, 1 in July and 1 in August, at the same time as your normal paycheck would be deposited. The pay for this appointment should appear as “Summer TA” in your monthly earning statement.

Employee earning statements come out before actual payments, so check your last earning statement of the semester as soon as possible. If the SIE lump sum is not reflected as a separate earnings item, then your options are to immediately contact the program Director, department HR representative or Business Manager, or the faculty union or graduate employee union for resolution.

Class Times

While the level of synchronous or asynchronous teaching is largely up to the instructor, all summer BTW 250 sections will list class times that meet Monday through Thursday for 1 hour and 15 minutes. When deciding on class meeting times, the program attempts to set course times based on a variety of time zones. While most students enrolled in these classes are located in the US, these classes still attract international students who may be in their countries of origin during the summer. Therefore, in the past, the program has tried to schedule 1-2 courses during times that would be reasonable for students operating in the US, New Delhi, Beijing, and Seoul such as early morning or evening.