Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

Guidelines for Lecturer Hiring and Rehiring

Lecturers are appointed on a per-credit basis to teach high demand courses for which full time faculty are not available. Normally lecturers will be hired to teach only General Education or service courses at the lower division. In unusual cases where a lecturer has expertise not represented in the full time faculty and funds are available, a lecturer may be hired to teach a specialized course in the major.

Lecturers are frequently reappointed to serve large numbers of students in critical classes. Therefore, units must establish measures for evaluating lecturers' teaching effectiveness prior to offering letters of appointment each year1.

These measures shall include:

  • Department Chairs should ask lecturers who wish to be reappointed to provide their Department Chair with their Teaching Effectiveness forms for the preceding academic year

Departments may determine additional methods of evaluating teaching performance, including

  • A review of syllabi and other teaching materials
  • Classroom observations on the part of Chairs or other designated full time faculty

Review plans for each unit should be on file in the College office. Lecturers who are not willing to be evaluated should not be offered additional appointments. Lecturers who are evaluated negatively by a Department Chair may request a review by the Division Chair or Dean.

The UHPA contract Article XIII: Faculty Appointments Not Eligible for Tenure, C. Limited Term Contracts indicates:

Limited term contracts for a period of one (1) year up to three (3) years shall be offered to lecturers who have taught for at least eight (8) semesters over a seven (7) year period in the same unit.

Where a lecturer has fulfilled this requirement, s/he should receive an appointment letter indicating the length of the limited term appointment and the course assignments for the duration of the limited term contract. However, the letter should indicate that the appointment is contingent on continuing need and available funding. As in all lecturer appointments, there is no guarantee that the courses offered will in fact be taught until the end of the registration period for each semester. The limited term appointment requires that should the course(s) offered to the lecturer be needed and funded, no other lecturer will be hired during the period of the limited term contract. Lecturers including those on extended contracts may be displaced by full time faculty.


  1. Departments may decide to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of long term lecturers less frequently than every year ↩︎