Stretched thin

It's not unusual that in a small department that a faculty member is the sole representation of that particular subdiscipline. This is a bit of a problem when that faculty member is responsible for all of the courses in that area, which proportionally speaking is greater than that faculty member's representation in the department.

I represent X% of the department. All the courses that I'm theoretically responsible for represent X + 15% of the curricular offerings. Our department desperately needs to hire another faculty member, preferably in my area or at least in the subdiscipline that's closely related to my area, but we're in a hiring freeze. And the next faculty search that we're going to have when we do finally get to have it has already been slated to hire another faculty member in subdiscipline Y, which is already overrepresented in our department. But they need the hire too because they're getting more students into that area, so it's not a vanity hire. The department is just too small for the number of majors that we have.