Academic Planning in the Physical Education Department of Polk Community College.

This study illustrates an attempt to quantitatively express justification for altering the workloads and compensation for members of the physical education department of Polk Community College (Florida). While equitable workloads can be det4rmined in most other fields because credit hours coincide with an instructor's time in class, the physical education staff often spends more than twice the number of hours in class than credit hours reflect, apart from athletic coaching hours. A review of other Florida community college workload systems was undertaken, and Miami-Dade Junior College's system was found most equitable. This system assigns points for teaching, preparation, and administrative time. Still, the heavy load of "activity" courses with low credit allowances penalizes physical education staff. One solution was to determine "productivity" by calculating the actual student semester hours produced by the department. This calculation revealed that departmental workload had increased 20 percent over the previous year, while the instructional staff had been cut from six to five. On this basis, recommendations were made to the Board of Trustees to hire part-time help, to pay coaches supplemental salary for coaching athletic teams, and to reduce workloads to bring them in line with those of other instructional staff. (MJK)