Graduate Course Banking Guidelines
From MWSU Graduate School Policy Portal
Faculty members who teach a combination of graduate and undergraduate courses may bank or accumulate hours that will count toward their teaching load in a future semester. The faculty member and department chair should plan appropriate scheduling for the reduced load semester.
As noted above in the section on Graduate Faculty Workload, the faculty member who teaches a graduate level course is assigned an additional 0.33 workload credits for each teaching load hour. Faculty members may bank these hours until enough hours are available to affect the teaching load. Graduate courses taught in the summer do not count for banking. Likewise, a reduced load resulting from banked courses may not be applied in a summer session.
Implementation of the banking system will require careful planning and record keeping by the faculty member, the department chair and the Academic and Student Affairs Office. The Faculty Load Report, prepared each fall semester by the department chair, should document banked hours. Requests and approval for use of banked hours must be done in collaboration with the department chair and college dean. The timing of the requests should respect the department chair’s practical needs for such information when building the official class schedule. As a general guideline, faculty members should make the request 7-8 months prior to the semester in question, absolutely no later than 30 days prior to the department chair’s first deadline for submitting the official class schedule. No hours can be applied to a faculty member’s semester teaching load until the request is approved by the department chair and the college dean.
