Dental school administrators ought to make decisions concerning the assignment of faculty members to departments based upon actual teaching load for each department. This study offers a method to quantify an equitable teaching load among dental faculty, hence, among departments. Actual load in clock hours was computed for all four departments at King Saud University College of Dentistry. Results showed that while some departments are reasonably loaded, others have a teaching load that is heavier or lighter than the equitable work load figure.

While a College of Dentistry is commonly one of the smaller academic units in a University, adminis­ tering its activities is very challenging.1 The com­ plexity of administering a College of Dentistry is, by necessity, the result of its mission. A College of Dentistry trains its students in the theoretical, applied, clinical, and professional sciences.2-6 The role of the College is further complicated by its being a specialty training site,7,8 a specialist hospi­ tal where patients are referred for highly specialized treatment as well as a general dental hospital for standard dental treatment.
Such complexity of the scope of a Dental College lies behind the commonly heard complaints of Dental College administrators2,9 as well as the "burn-out" phenomenon1,10,11 among dental fac­ ulty. This article is an attempt to address only one of the challenges that meet the administrators of a Dental College, that is; the distribution of the work load equitably among departments of the College based on the number of their faculty members. To this end, the King Saud University College of Dentistry (KSUCD) will be used as an example. The suggestion proposed in the article can be applied to another College of Dentistry, of different adminis­ trative structure, with minor modification to accommodate structural difference.
Further, the concept in KSUCD is applicable to any University College provided that only aspects par­ ticular to the work scope of such a College are used.
Departmental Structure of KSUCD:
The College of Dentistry, King Saud University consists of two independent buildings separated by a distance of 23 kilometers. One building is exclu­ sively for the education and training of the male stu­ dents; the other building is for the female students. The College has one budget, one administration
and the same faculty members.
The College is divided into four departments; namely, Biomedical Dental Sciences (BDS), Pre­ ventive Dental Sciences (PDS), Restorative Dental Sciences (RDS) and Removable Prosthodontic Dental Sciences (SDS). Each department houses several dental specialties each of which is called a Division, as following:
Department of Biomedical Dental Sciences:
-     Divisions of Oral Medicine/Diagnosis, Oral Pathology/Biology, Oral Surgery and Oral Radiology.
Department of Preventive Dental Sciences:
-     Divisions of Periodontics, Orthodontics, Pedodontics and Preventive/Community Dentistry.
Department of Restorative Dental Sciences:
-     Divisions of Operative Dentistry, Endodontics and Fixed Prosthodontics.
Department of Prosthetic Dental Sciences:
-     Divisions of Complete Denture Prosthodon­ tics, Partial Denture Prosthodontics, Maxillo- facial/lmplant Prosthodontics and Dental Materials.
Thus, KSUCD houses fifteen educational spec­ ialties of Dentistry that could be equated to another College of Dentistry with fifteen departments.
Teaching Staff of KSUCD:
At King Saud University, some of the leading graduates of each class are selected, after comple­ tion of one year internship, as demonstrators. The duties of a demonstrator in KSUCD are those of a subfaculty member and is equivalent to an instruc­ tor in other colleges of the world. The demonstrator does not lecture or direct a course but teaches in the laboratory and clinical sessions and is assigned half the number of the students assigned to a faculty member during these sessions.
The faculty members of KSUCD are assistant professors, associate professors and professors. King Saud University officially considers a specialist holder of the degree M.Sc. in the specialty a subfa­ culty position, and is given the title of lecturer. Such a specialist is generally qualified to be appointed as an assistant professor in most U.S.A. schools of dentistry. For the purposes of this article, a KSUCD lecturer shall be computed as a faculty member.
Thus, the teaching staff of KSUCD are a combi­ nation of full time faculty members and demonstrators. No part time faculty members par­ ticipate in teaching activities of KSUCD. For col­leges where part time faculty participate in the teaching program, the full time equivalent (F.T.E.) method could be used for work load computation.
Another relatively unique feature of KSUCD is that it accepts students each semester. In this man­
ner, the teaching load which is already done twice, once for males and once for females, is doubled again by each course being offered twice a year in each of the two buildings. The quadrabling of the teaching load is accurate when it is applied to didactic components. The load may be more or less than a four-fofd for clinical/laboratory sessions due to variations in number of males from females and variations in the number of students accepted in the fall semester from those accepted in the winter semester. To illustrate the quadrabling phenomenon of teaching load in the didactic com­ ponents, one may take one course of the dental materials curriculum as an example, SDS 261 offered in the third semester of the curriculum. SDS 261 is presented in the fall semester of the year to students who attained their third semester level in the fall. The same course is offered again in the winter semester of the year to students who attained their third semester level in the winter. Thus, the course is offered twice for the males and twice for the females during the same academic year. In the same manner, the faculty are teaching each required dental course four times a year.
Materials for Computing Workload:
To arrive at equitable workload among college faculty, all the material needed is the teaching prog­ ram of the college and the number of its teaching staff. These requirements are, fortunately, readily available. There are, however, some justifiable considerations, that may make the availability of the required material less than straight forward. For example, what constitutes a full time faculty member, how would one deal with elective teach­ing load that is offered in certain semesters but not in others, how would one account for work load required from a faculty member in a given depart­ ment but of a nature other than teaching such a serving or chairing a committee; how would one account for faculty practice time, for research time and for teaching activity preparation time.
These complicating factors can be dealt with readily but will vary from a college to another. For KSUCD, these areas are dealt with as following:
Full time faculty member: is a faculty staff who is available five full days per week within the col­ lege and his expertise level permits him to carry normal teaching load. In KSUCD, since a demonstrator carries only half of the teaching load, in terms of number of students supervised, each two demonstrators will be considered equivalent to one full time faculty member. A department with twelve faculty members and four demonstrators will be considered as a department housing fourteen faculty members (12 + 4/2 = 14).
Elective courses: is given the same teaching cre­dit as required courses provided that the elective course has been active with an acceptable number of students enrolled over a period of three consecu­ tive semesters or two consecutive years.
Committee workload: Depending on the nature of the committee and the level of its activity, the Dean authorizes the appropriate work credit to the faculty involved. At KSUCD, the Dean, Vice-Deans, Department Chairperson, Director of Research Center, and Director of Dental Graduate Education, are expected to teach half of the maximum teaching load. Naturally, members of committees are also given work credit for their participation by assuring that such work load is evenly distributed among college faculty and all of them have adequate "uncommitted time" to meet the work needs. Committee work credit is regulated by the Dean.
Faculty practice time: Depending on the col­ lege structure, the practicing faculty are given work credit for patient treatment. At KSUCD, each fac­
ulty member treats patients one half day per week, few faculty do not treat patients and a few faculty treat patients more than one half day per week. The proposed system is flexible enough to allow for such variations and give appropriate work credit to the department concerned.
Research time: Research is a very important component for full time faculty members and full work credit must be given. The problem is that some faculty members are allowed research time but do not use it effectively so that they cannot sub­ stantiate that they used the time for research. This issue ought not be of major concern to the college administration since an academic appointment implies the privilege to do research and without doing research a faculty member has already been punished by not being promoted. Thus, most col­ leges allow time for each faculty member to do research. At KSUCD, each faculty member is per­ mitted one full day per week for research and pro­ fessional development activities.
Method for Computing Workload:
Tables 1 to 4 list the required curriculum for each of KSUCD departments. The credit hours for each course are identified as lecture, practical or clini- cal. At the bottom of each table, the total number of each type of credit hour is listed. Up to this point in computation, the matter is simple, but it is the com­ putation that follows that will truly determine the workload.
Each lecture credit hour is one clock hour, hence for BDS, the 18 lectures constitute 18 manclock hours since each of these clock hours require only one faculty member, the lecturer.
Each practical credit hour is 2.5 clock hours, hence for BDS, the 3 practical credit hours consti­ tute 7.5 clock hours; each of these clock hours require four faculty members (to maintain a ratio of one faculty to six students in a class of 24 students). Thus, the 3 practical credit hours of BDS require 30 man-clock hours.
Each clinical credit hour is 3 clock hours, hence, for BDS, the 9 clinical credit hours constitute 27 clock hours; again each of these clock hours require four faculty members (to maintain a ratio of one faculty to six students in a class of 24 students). Thus, the 9 clinical credit hours of BDS require 108 (9X3x4= 108) man-clock hours. Hours of work per week for BDS is: 18 + 30 + 108 = 156 man- clock hours. This number must be doubled since the same amount of activity is also done during the same week for the female students; hence, the teaching work per week for BDS is 312 man-clock hours.
The same computation is used to determine that the teaching work per week in terms of man-clock hours for the other three departments is 320 SDS, 342 PDS and 490 RDS. The total teaching work per week in terms of man-clock hours for KSUCD is: BDS 312 + PDS 342 + SDS 320 + RDS 490 = 1,464 man-clock hours per week. Table 5 shows the number of faculty members in each depart­ment, the total for the college is 80.5 faculty mem­ bers (one demonstrator is equal to 0.5 faculty member). An equitable teaching load per faculty is then readily calculable as:
1,464 Hrs. ¸ 80.5 Faculty = 18.18 hours per faculty per week. Thus, a faculty member at KSUCD who is engaged in teaching activities far removed from 18 hours per week is either over loaded or underloaded. This amount of teaching load is quite respectable since it is equivalent to delivering eighteen lectures per week by a faculty member of one of the theoretical colleges. The remaining of the work hours per week are then available for preparation, research and service activities.

 
Table 6 shows the actual teaching work load per faculty member in each department of KSUCD as compared to the computed equitable teaching load per faculty member in the college (1988/ 1989). The table indicates that while the faculty of RDS, BDS, and SDS are overloaded with their teaching activities, the faculty of PDS are under­loaded. The RDS faculty teaching load is 6.2% heavier than the equitable load, the BDS faculty teaching load is 7.3% heavier than the equitable teaching load, and the SDS faculty teaching load is 10% heavier than the equitable teaching load. On the other hand, the faculty of the PDS Department are enjoying a teaching load 18% lighter than the equitable teaching load. The total of shortage of RDS + BDS + SDS can be computed based on man hours to be 79 hours [(RDS 25.5 X 1.13) + (BDS 16 x 1.32) + (SDS 16 X 1.82} = 79.05 hours]. In other words, one can state that these three departments are short 4.4 faculty members (79/18.18 = 4.4). The surplus in faculty in the PDS Department can be computed as 76 man-hours or 4.2 faculty members - clearly the shortage in the former three departments is the surplus in the latter department when equitable distribution of work load is considered.
An important concept is for college adminis­ trators to assign each department a number of fac­ ulty members who, on the average, will be equita­ bly loaded. Given its fair share of faculty members, a department will then be held responsible for equitable productivity in teaching, research and services. Variations in these activities from an indi­ vidual faculty member to another within the department, based on their specific areas of strength, are natural and acceptable.

The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Romer Ocanto of the University of Florida, U.S.A. for his assistance with the references.