Chico State’s Faculty Personnel Policies and Procedures (FPPP) have been revised resulting in the reduction of the required office hours for professors from five to four hours minimum of availability per week.

This is due to the inequity between full-time faculty and lecturers. Previously, full-time faculty were required five hours per week for each unit of weighted teaching, with one required hour dedicated to research or committee duties.

Lecturers, however, do not have service responsibilities, so a full load for lecturers is 4 hours because they don’t need to fulfill the service requirement.

Most of the time, students rarely utilize office hours and rely on emailing professors to get a quick answer at the last minute.

“There’s a sense that there’s all this online outreach that goes on and counts as part of the work,” said Timothy Sistrunk, Chair of Faculty and Student Policies Committee. “Physical availability— most students aren’t interested in going and meeting someone in their office.”

The issue with students is they aren’t interested in the amount of hours professors have, it is a matter of if students can match their schedules with the ones their professors provide in order to get the help they need.

If professors only have their hours on one day, it limits the students’ access to receive advising from them. However, making appointments outside the listed office hours with professors is always an option.

Carly Plemons can be reached at [email protected] or @plemnz on Twitter.