Faculty and Professional Staff Resources

Faculty and Professional Staff Resources

Faculty Management Policies

As of the Spring 2023 semester, the COB/COF have totaled 175 faculties, including 111 male and 64 female. To promote gender equality, FCU requires university meeting committees need to have at least 1/3 of each gender in the committee.

Goal 6 of our institution is to optimize the teaching environment and equipment and to establish a sound allocation of teacher resources. To reach the goal, the College of Business and Finance follows a strict recruitment system. Selecting a new faculty member follows three stages of review: by the department, the college, and the university. When a program wishes to recruit a new faculty member, the program must report to the Human Resources Department regarding any potential candidates it wishes to hire. The faculty member can only be recruited after the Human Resources Committee discusses and confirms that the candidate matches FCU’s vision and mission. The candidate must then undergo an initial interview with the department’s Faculty Assessment Committee. In order to verify the candidate’s teaching, research, and service quality, after the interview the candidate’s information is sent for an external review to confirm the qualifications and research publications. After completing the external review, the candidate’s information is sent to the AACSB office of the College of Business and Finance. A certification with SA/SP/PA/IP/Additional status is issued if the candidate meets the teaching qualification requirements. The candidate must also be confirmed by the college’s Faculty Assessment Committee. Finally, candidates are hired only if their information is approved by the university’s Faculty Assessment Committee. Figure 2.10 shows the distribution of our faculty members. Among the faculty members, 33% are professors, 40% are associate professors and the rest is assistant professors.

Full-Time Faculty Structure

Faculty Sufficiency

(1) Criteria Guiding Identification of Faculty as Participating and Supporting

Participating faculty members are recognized as actively engage in the college administration—beyond their direct teaching responsibilities—regardless of whether their appointment is full-time or part-time. The College of Business and Finance has defined three areas of responsibilities including instructional activities, research activities, and service activities. Full-time and part-time faculty who fulfill 5 activities or above are classified as participating faculty; otherwise, they are classified as supporting faculty.

(2) Faculty Sufficiency Ratios of All Disciplines

According to data in 2022, the faculty sufficiency of each discipline is more than 60% which in line with AACSB standards. After gathering the faculty sufficiency of all programs, the participating bachelor’s degree faculty is 78.48% while participating master’s degree and doctoral degree faculty was 83.38% and 93.23%, respectively. All of these numbers comply with AACSB standards, which require that the percentage of participating faculty exceed 75%.

Our college aims to cultivate talents that meet industry needs. To this end, we hire professional and technical personnel or senior executives from companies as adjunct faculty to supplement the resources of our university faculty. To ensure the quality of teaching, we carefully examine the qualifications and experience of adjunct faculty members before appointing them. The requirements for teaching qualifications are explained in the following section.

Adjunct faculty members are mainly focused on teaching, with lower involvement in the college’s administrative and research affairs. Therefore, according to the regulations of our college’s Participating and Supporting Faculty, they are generally classified as supporting faculty, resulting in an overall faculty sufficiency ratio of only 78.48% for our undergraduate program.

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Faculty Sufficiency

To ensure the quality of teaching and research in our graduate programs, all instructors are full-time faculty members, with only a few adjunct faculty members. We value the involvement of full-time faculty members in college affairs, and teacher evaluations include research, teaching, and college administrative participation as evaluation items. As a result, the master’s program and doctoral program faculty sufficiency ratios are as high as 83.38% and 93.23%, respectively.

Faculty Qualification

(1) Criteria for SA, PA, SP, or IP status

Due to our college’s Goal 4 of promoting industry–academic cooperation and sustainable development, we not only focus on teaching and research, but also place great importance on faculty service and encourage their diverse development. When establishing the criteria for teacher qualifications, we include their involvement in professional service as part of the standards. For the certification of qualifications such as SA, PA, SP, and IP.

(2) Faculty Qualification of All Disciplines

Figure demonstrates the ratio of faculty qualifications for each discipline within the college. The figure indicates that the ratio of the SA category for all majors exceeds 40%, and the combined ratio of SA+SP+IP+PA is above 90%, which meets AACSB standards.

Our college places great emphasis on the quality of our faculty members’ teaching and, therefore, includes the examination of teacher qualifications as a necessary step in the appointment process. When first appointing a new teacher, the appointing unit submits the teacher’s resume, supporting documents of academic and professional experience, and recently published papers to our Office of AACSB International Accreditation and Business Education Innovation for preliminary review of the candidate’s qualifications for the SA, PA, SP, and IP credentials in accordance with our college’s teacher qualification standards. The office issues a Teacher Qualification Certificate to determine the candidate’s qualifications. If a candidate is found to be unqualified and is judged as “Additional,” our college will not proceed with the appointment. In order to achieve continuous improvement, the College of Business and Finance holds panels to review faculty qualifications every semester, with at least five professors serving as Faculty Qualifications Committee members and hosted by the dean, to determine the qualifications of the faculty and the appropriateness of classes. Part-time faculty members listed as “Additional” are required to discontinue employment. For full-time faculty members listed as “Additional,” the chair of each department is informed and a three-year improvement plan must be proposed by the faculty member.

Due to the goal of cultivating leaders in the graduate and doctoral programs, higher standards are established for the teaching staff in these programs to maintain teaching and research quality. In addition, our college has established the Regulations for Qualification of Graduate School Instructors to ensure that instructors in graduate and doctoral programs must hold a master’s degree or above and possess the rank of assistant professor or higher or have outstanding research performance with at least three to five published papers.

Figure shows the suitability ratio of instructor qualifications according to discipline. On average, about 63.77% of teachers meet the SA qualification. If classified by discipline, the highest is in the field of finance and insurance, with approximately 75% of teachers meeting the SA qualification, while the lowest is in the field of business administration, with approximately 58.47% of teachers meeting the SA qualification.
The combined ratio of SA, PA, SP, and IP, on average, achieves 97.74%. If we divide it by discipline, the highest ratio is in the fields of accounting, economics, statistics, and actuarial science, reaching 100%, while the lowest is in the field of finance and insurance, reaching 96.15%.

Faculty Qualifications of the College of Business and Finance in 2023

Faculty Qualifications of the College of Business and Finance in 2023

Strategies to Ensures Faculty Maintain Currency and Relevancy in Teaching

(1) To recruit interdisciplinary talents

Since year 2020, our college has begun hiring teachers in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) field and business innovation field in response to the need to cultivate talents in smart business innovation and sustainable development.

(2) To invite our faculties to attend training courses regularly

In order to achieve Goal 6 of developing a sound teacher resource allocation and cultivating talents with intelligent innovation application ability, sustainable development, and social influence, our college regularly selects teachers to go to other domestic and foreign universities, research institutions, or professional organizations for short-term study to acquire new knowledge. The transportation, accommodation, and course registration fees during the training period are fully subsidized by our college. After the training, trained teachers are required to establish or join relevant learning communities to share results and experiences, provide teaching feedback, participate in research and industry–academia cooperation, and promote education.
Our college regularly recommends our faculty members to attain the following training: (a) the smart manufacturing course offered by the AI Taiwan Artificial Intelligence School in Taichung; (b) cross-college EMI teacher training series lectures between our college and the University of Adelaide in Australia, with teaching staff provided by the University of Adelaide, resulting in a training certificate issued by the University of Adelaide; and (c) the sustainable enterprise management certificate training courses offered by the Taiwan Sustainable Energy Research Foundation. Such efforts help strengthen the teacher resources in the fields of smart technology, sustainable development, and English-taught courses.

To date, 18 teachers have completed the AI training, 9 teachers have completed the EMI training, and 5 teachers have completed the SDGs training and obtained a sustainable management certificate. These teachers will gradually develop related courses and participate in relevant research fields.

(3) Professional Staff Sufficiency

The professional staffs of our college comprise of full-time, contract-based(short-term), and project-based staffs(long-term). All of them have the similar employee benefits and approximatly 1/2 have the master’s degree or above. After being hired, the years of previous work experience outside of the school can be counted towards the total years of service for our staff. In addition, we also offer promotion opportunities for our staff members. Overall, the salary for our staff members will not be lower than that of teachers and is consistent with that of national universities. To better provide needed assistance to faculty members and students, our university regularly offers various workshops to help them being more familiar with their jobs.

(4) Teaching Support System

Teaching support:

As shown in Figure we integrate internal and external resources to provide teachers with opportunities for self-training, learning, and discussion and encourage them to grow and improve their teaching. After the appointment of new faculty members, FCU holds a three-day orientation workshop, during which the president, provost, director of the Office of Industry–Academia Cooperation, director of the Human Resources Department, and senior faculty members meet new faculty members. They provide new faculty members with advice, teach them how to operate the university software, and help them adapt to the workplace. The College of Business and Finance also organizes new faculty gatherings such as teaching workshops, seminars, and forums to share teaching experiences with young talents. Newly promoted faculty members share their promotion experiences at these meetings.

We integrate internal and external resources to provide teachers with opportunities for self-training, learning, and discussion and encourage them to grow and improve their teaching. After the appointment of new faculty members, FCU holds a three-day orientation workshop, during which the president, provost, director of the Office of Industry–Academia Cooperation, director of the Human Resources Department, and senior faculty members meet new faculty members. They provide new faculty members with advice, teach them how to operate the university software, and help them adapt to the workplace. The College of Business and Finance also organizes new faculty gatherings such as teaching workshops, seminars, and forums to share teaching experiences with young talents. Newly promoted faculty members share their promotion experiences at these meetings.

FCU also offers several training workshops to enhance faculty members’ teaching skills and professional knowledge. Either CTLR or the college plans a series of short-term courses, holds teaching seminars or conferences on a regular or non-regular basis, and invites teachers with excellent teaching awards—as well as those with a well-earned reputation for quality teaching—to help faculty members with curriculum design and management through interactions and opportunities to share experiences. Figures shows that 89 workshops were held on average during this accreditation cycle, and the number of attendees increases yearly.

(5) Research Support System

Research support

To improve faculty members’ intellectual contributions, the College of Business and Finance provides many resources for faculty research, such as funds to subsidize faculty members’ participation in domestic and foreign seminars. In addition, each full-time faculty member has their own dedicated research room. The library subscribes to a wide variety of journal databases to assist faculty with research. In addition to local and Mainland China databases, there are 184 related databases, including international data, journal, and news databases.

The College of Business and Finance also invites many outstanding external and international research scholars to join the department as visiting professors to strengthen interactions with faculty and increase research power. For example, professors with outstanding performance in the research field include Professor Ching-Long Lin, former Auditor General of the Republic of China; Professor Kuei-Tuan Chen, executive director of the CPA Associations R.O.C (Taiwan); Professor Chi-Chur Chao; ProfessorTsangyao Chang, who was ranked as the top economist by the IDEAS ranking in the UK; and Chairman Jih-Hsin Sher of the Corporate Synergy Development Center. Other professors include Professor Cathy W. S. Chen, Professor Lo, F.Y., Professor Shih-Chun Hsu, Professor Sheng-Syan Chen, and Professor Tso-Kwei Peng.

Industry-academia support

FCU established the Office of Industry–Academic Cooperation to provide faculty with research support. Faculty can apply to the Office of Industry–Academic Cooperation for Feng Chia University research project plans to assist them in research funding. The following table shows the number of industry–academia collaboration projects and their contract amounts led by the faculty of COB/COF.

(6) Faculty and Professional Staff Development

In terms of employee development, our university’s Human Resources Department provides online education and training courses for new employees to teach them how to use the university’s information software and become familiar with related administrative work. Every semester, regular training courses are also held to promote interaction among employees and familiarize them with various business operations. In addition, our university attaches great importance to the physical condition of employees and provides health check-up subsidies, free use of sports facilities, maternity subsidies, and psychological counseling services every year. Other benefits include scholarships for employees whose children study at our university, bonuses for outstanding job performance, and an employee welfare savings trust fund to improve the welfare of faculty and staff and guarantee their retirement life.

Teaching rewards:

The university has several annual teaching awards to acknowledge and reward superior performance in the classroom. Full-time faculty members are eligible for the Outstanding Teaching Award at the college level, and about $1,666 in grants will be given as encouragement. Faculty members with extraordinary teaching performance are selected from the outstanding teaching faculty and are eligible for the Excellent Teaching Award at the university level. Grants worth $5,000 are given as encouragement. Prize-winning faculty members receive their awards onstage during the university’s anniversary celebrations.

The following full-time faculty members in the College of Business and Finance received the Excellent Teaching Award during 2018 and 2023.

Research rewards

The College of Business and Finance provides incentives for faculty research achievements. According to the Feng Chia University Key Items for Academic Research Awards, the university has set up reward standards for research projects, published papers, and other achievements. Teachers who meet these standards can receive award points, which can be converted into cash rewards or be used to reduce their teaching hours.

(7) Multi-Promotion System

The paths for faculty promotion in the college are aligned with the spirit of diversity. The paths of promotion include the academic research track, applied research track, and teaching research track. Applicants for applied research track promotion are dependent upon patents, technology, case study, and industry–academia cooperation. Meanwhile, academic research track promotion depends on academic publications and scholarly journals. Teaching research track promotion depends on research outcomes related to teaching practice or learning effectiveness. Faculty can determine their path to promotion according to their characteristics. A full-time faculty member applying for a promotion review must have served the college for at least one full year. Promotions should be reviewed by faculty evaluation committees at the department, college, and university levels and appointed by president. After the approval of the promotion, the result is submitted to the Ministry of Education for certificate issuance.

The university aims to encourage professors to enhance their academic research and teaching standards by rewarding outstanding research or teaching performance and seeking higher honors. Outstanding teachers in research or teaching performance may apply to be appointed as a Distinguished Professor by the university. After review by the Distinguished Professor Review Committee, the appointment is submitted to the president for approval. Please refer to the attachment for relevant qualifications. A Distinguished Professor is awarded a bonus of $8,000 per year for a term of three years. After the term expires, the professor may be reappointed for up to three terms. Upon completion of the third term, the professor is appointed a Lifetime Distinguished Professor and will no longer receive the bonus. Currently, our college has 5 Distinguished Professors and 2 Lifetime Distinguished Professors. Following Table shows the list of these professors’ names.

(8) Instructional Teaching Models

The College of Business and Finance has established the teaching assistant (TA) system, which appoints part-time teaching assistants for key subjects in various departments. TAs assist course instructors in designing curricula, enhancing course depth, improving teaching quality, promoting interactions between teachers and students, and helping students who fall behind in their coursework. All part-time TAs are outstanding graduate students. In addition, to ensure the quality of TA teaching, the college regularly holds workshops and training camps for TAs every semester to help them understand their responsibilities and enhance their teaching competence. At the end of the semester, TAs receive a teaching assistant certificate and a bonus in recognition of their contribution.

Full-time teaching assistants are recruited for fundamental courses in the Department of Economics, Department of Accounting, and Department of Statistics. The full-time teaching assistants can help students in curriculum coordination and assist them in implementing course projects.