Availability for teaching

Faculty policy - August 2009

Full-time academic staff members are expected to be available for teaching Monday-Friday, except as noted below.
Where possible, teaching will be contained within an 8-hour day. Those with evening classes will not normally begin teaching that day before noon or the next day before 9 am, unless it is their preference. (Note: At Monash, classes are generally scheduled on the hour, beginning at 8 am with evening classes extending until 8 pm.)
Staff may indicate a preference for not teaching or attending required meetings on more than one campus on the same day and this preference will be accommodated where possible. Where staff members must attend two campuses in a day, only one between campus trip will be required for teaching purposes and traveling time will be allowed for in timetabling.
Where possible, full-time staff will not be asked to teach on more than four days per week.
Academic staff with fractional contracts may elect to teach whole days (that is, a person on a 0.6 contract may elect to be ‘on duty’ for three week days). Alternatively they may wish to teach over more days but prefer to avoid certain time periods (for example, those with children may ask to avoid early mornings). In either case, they should negotiate the unavailable times with their Campus Associate Dean (AD Clayton, AD Gippsland or AD Peninsula) and come to an arrangement to be approved in writing by the Faculty.
From time to time, staff may have personal or family circumstances that mean they wish to nominate as unavailable a particular non-teaching day/time. They should discuss this with their Campus AD who may approve (in writing) the restriction for up to one calendar year.
Staff may nominate as unavailable a particular non-teaching day/period if they have unavoidable professional commitments for the Faculty on that day or time, such as a regular research, consultancy, teaching or committee commitment. They should discuss this with their Campus AD who may approve (in writing) the restriction for up to one calendar year.
Staff may nominate a preferred non-teaching day that will be taken into account but not guaranteed. That is, preferences will be factored into scheduling but, to optimize timetables and space use, non-teaching days will be spread across the week. Generally, not all staff can have their first preference accommodated and so staff may be asked to nominate a second preference. It is not the responsibility of professional staff managing the timetable to decide which staff may be free on which days. For a particular unavailable day or time to be guaranteed, written approval from the Campus AD is required (see points 5 - 7).
Staff are expected to be available for teaching throughout the teaching calendar period and should not normally arrange conferences and other absences from campus when they have teaching commitments or in ways that restrict their availability for teaching without prior approval. Where conflict with teaching is unavoidable, they should take responsibility for making arrangements to cover their own teaching that are acceptable to, and approved by, the Campus AD. These arrangements should be made and agreed prior to committing to the conference or other function.
Meeting times: Where possible, Wednesday morning (until 1 pm) will be kept free of scheduled classes in order to enable Faculty-wide meetings to be scheduled without clashing with teaching. Given the number of committees that need to be scheduled into this period, other Course and Research group meetings will not be scheduled on Wednesday mornings.