University Stint Obligation

including guidance on stint fulfilment and the annual teaching return

(a) Teaching Stint

The contractual University teaching obligations of Faculty post holders are counted in stint units, as follows:

1. Associate Professor (Tutorial Fellow - College) (formerly CUF)

University obligation: 48 units per year (= 16 lectures)

2. Associate Professor (Tutorial Fellow - University) (formerly UL)

University obligation: 108 units per year (= 36 lectures or seminars)

3. Associate Professor (Non-Tutorial Fellow) (formerly ULNTF, admitted)

University obligation: 204 units per year (=  36 lectures or seminars plus 4 hours a week of tutorial teaching or equivalent faculty duties)

4. Departmental Lecturer

University obligation: normally 144 units per year (= 48 lectures or seminars for the Faculty)

5. Statutory Professor

(i) For those Statutory Professors whose teaching obligation is not unitised

University obligation: 36 lectures or seminars per year.  In this context, three graduate tutorials (i.e. BCL/MJur tutorials) may count as one lecturing hour.

(ii) For those Statutory Professors whose teaching obligation is unitised

University obligation: 108 stint points per year (= 36 lectures or seminars). 

(b) Including research supervision

Should an academic post holder wish to include research supervision in their overall stint calculation (for example, so that their DPhil supervision may offset their lecturing obligation), they must add the following number of units to their stint obligation:

1. Associate Professor (TF-College) (formerly CUF)

Stint obligation if supervision is included: add 48 units per year (total obligation becomes 96 units)

2. Associate Professor (TF-University) (formerly UL)

Stint obligation if supervision is included: add 84 units per year (total obligation becomes 192 units)

3. Associate Professor (Non-TF) (formerly ULNTF, admitted)

Stint obligation if supervision is included: add 84 units per year (total obligation becomes 288 units)

4. Departmental Lecturer - n/a

5. Statutory Professor whose stint is unitised

Stint obligation if supervision is included: add 120 units per year (which is the points equivalent to the supervision of five doctoral students) (total obligation becomes 228 stint units).

For information about how to count teaching against stint, please see the section on stint fulfilment.

For information about what counts as 'teaching', please see the section on Defining Faculty teaching to calculate stint (SSO required).  

For information about college buyouts for BCL/MJur tutorials, please see section 4. on BCL/MJur Tutorials, in the page on additional teaching. 

(c) Supervisory norms

The quantity of research supervision is not specified in the University contract, although Law Faculty seeks to implement the following (DPhil) supervisory norms:

(d) Reporting on University Teaching: the annual teaching return

Postholders are required to report to the Law Faculty their lecture, seminar, and BCL/MJur tutorial teaching for the University.  Towards the end of Trinity Term each year, an e-mail is sent to all faculty members asking them to complete the Faculty’s Annual Teaching Return survey, providing links and details of how to report on line.

The following forms of teaching do not go on this return: 

1. College teaching: this does not need to be reported to the Faculty as the information is already requested by, and only used by, your college.

2. Supervision of graduate research students: this should have already been entered on GSS, so if you have not yet completed this, then please do so. If you have any problems with GSS, Geraldine Malloy can help.  You can access reports here by logging in using your Oxford single sign-on user name.

(e) Teaching norms

The following is provided as a guide:

BCL/MJur options are normally delivered through 12-16 two-hour seminars and 4-6 BCL/MJur tutorials.

FHS options are normally delivered through 12-16 two-hour Faculty seminars or lectures and 6 college tutorials.  

The Jurisprudence mini-option is three two-hour classes of up to 30 students; and the FHS dissertation is four hours of supervision.