Background Information for Applicants for Associate Professorships with Tutorial Fellowships

Competitive salary 

Associate Professors with Tutorial Fellowships are employed jointly by the university and the college. The salary has two separate components, one paid by the college and the other by the university. 

The initial scale point is determined according to qualifications and experience at the time of appointment. The Department may also recommend the award of an off-scale salary supplement at the start of the appointment and within-scale additional increments to Associate Professors at any time during their appointment. 

In addition, Associate Professors normally receive a housing allowance, which is pensionable, unless they take up an offer of accommodation from the college. The housing allowance will be specified in the Further Particulars for the post. 

More experienced appointees may be awarded the title of Professor, either at the time of appointment, or subsequently. They then receive an additional salary payment and are eligible to apply for further pay increments in the form of Professorial Merit Pay. 

Teaching Requirement 

The Associate Professor has separate teaching duties for the department and the college. Broadly, college teaching consists of tutorials and classes for undergraduates, and department teaching consists of lectures for graduates and undergraduates, and supervision of graduate students. 

The college teaching duties are normally specified in terms of average hours per week of tutorial teaching over the 24 teaching weeks of the academic year (3 terms of 8 weeks each). A typical college stint is an average of 6 weighted hours per week, or equivalently 144 weighted hours per year. The weighting system allows for the size of the tutorial group: a one-hour tutorial with a single student is one weighted hour; with two students it counts as 1.25 weighted hours, and with three students 1.5 weighted hours. 

To quantify the overall teaching requirement, the Social Sciences Division uses Teaching Units. Academic contracts issued in recent years, at all levels, generally specify that the total amount of teaching should not normally exceed 288 Teaching Units. One unit is defined as a one-hour tutorial for two students. The tariff currently used for departmental teaching is specified in the table below. 

For the department, you are expected to provide at least 36 hours of lectures per year (reduced to 18 hours per year for the first two years of the appointment, early-career candidates will have reduced stint until the review of the appointment is completed (normally in the fifth year). 

The remainder of the departmental stint may be made up of additional hours of lecturing, or class teaching, and/or supervision of graduate students. 

For example, an Associate Professor’s overall teaching load for a year might be: 

An average of 6 hours per week of college tutorial teaching: 115 units 

36 hours of lectures: 108 units 

Supervision of 2 MPhil dissertations: 16 units 

Supervision of 1 doctoral student: 24 units 

Total 263 units