To accommodate for the increase in freshmen enrollment this fall, several academic departments increased class sizes, added more sections and hired new faculty. While that was a successful effort in the eyes of some faculty, others have expressed concern that the overload of students has put academic quality at risk.

Eastern administrators say steps have been made and are being made to accommodate the extra students, including hiring new annually contracted faculty as well as tenure-track faculty throughout the academic year.

“I have authorized more searches for tenure-track faculty than last year,” said Blair Lord, vice president for academic affairs. “This summer was only focused on annually contracted faculty.”

Hiring more instructors will better distribute faculty workloads and give professors more time to conduct external research, Lord said.

“I see (the additional freshmen) as an opportunity to add to the compliment of our faculty,” he said.

Although class sizes and available course sections have changed this year, it isn’t much different than any other year, Lord said.

“Each year, the schedule needs to be updated to accommodate classes,” he said.

Some departments believe it isn’t so simple, saying extra class sections have caused an overload in faculty work and may put a dent in academic quality.

The political science department, which houses a U.S. Constitution course commonly taken by freshmen because it’s a general education requirement, hired two extra annually-contracted faculty this fall to help accommodate extra course sections, said Richard Wandling, political science chair.

But the department lost one faculty member because of the budget cuts last year, he said.

For the U.S. Constitution class, the department added six additional sections to accommodate for about 250 extra overall seats for the course, Wandling said, but classes are still overcrowded, putting academic quality at risk. One of the sections now has 99 students, he said. Usually sections of the course contain around 45 students.

“It’s as crowded as it gets,” he said. “We are at record numbers.”

Wandling said the two additional faculty helped with the extra course sections, but permanent faculty still had to teach some of the sections, causing the department to drop some upper-level, or junior-senior, courses and all of its special-topics courses.

Luckily, the demand for upper-level courses is not as great as in previous years because the department doesn’t have as many junior and senior majors this year, but the demand will be greater next fall, Wandling said.

Because permanent teachers are instructing U.S. Constitution, they are losing research time, which is required by the university, Wandling said, explaining the department need for extra faculty to fulfill those needs.

“If the budget crunch makes it difficult to hire some extra faculty, we are in some major trouble,” he said.

Other departments with general education requirement classes bringing in many freshmen say the increase in freshmen has been handled well and won’t hurt the university.

Mark Borzi, speech communications chair, and Dana Ringuette, English chair, agreed administrators did a more than adequate job accommodating for extra freshmen and were very supportive in hiring the faculty to make up for the increases.

Both departments were forced to add sections and hire new faculty because their introductory courses, SPC 1310 and ENG 1001, are general education requirements often taken by freshmen.

The English department added 21 more sections of ENG 1001 this fall and hired six additional annually contracted faculty to help teach the extra courses.

The sections of that course are still at their normal size of 23 students, Ringuette said, and faculty are not put in situations they can’t handle or haven’t done before.

Upper-level English courses have increased in size, Ringuette said, but “nothing’s really been disadvantaged” by it.

“We’ve been able to handle it,” he said.

The speech communications department is providing 47 sections of SPC 1310, Borzi said. Normally, 30 to 35 sections are offered.

Class sizes are the same, he said.

He was unsure how many extra faculty were hired to accommodate the extra courses, but said everything was going smoothly.