Banking

LAHC Banking Policy

Banking is when a FT professor “saves” LEH from one semester and applies that LEH to the subsequent semester. The basis for these banking rules is AR 4.03.004, Full-time Teaching Faculty, 6.A).

In general, banking should be used as a mechanism for making loading work out smoothly. (In other words, banking isn’t intended simply to allow faculty to reduce their teaching load.)

One can bank a maximum of 3 LEH or less from the fall to the spring semester or from the spring to the summer. Banked LEH cannot carry over from one academic year to the next. In particular, no LEH can be banked from the summer forward.

Banked LEH counts toward the maximum load in the semester in which is it applied, not the semester in which it is earned. This means that banking is all math, as the example below shows.

The fact that this is all math implies that release time and banking coexist. Release time is counted as loading in the semester in which it is awarded, as is the case with banked LEH.

An Example

The full-time load for a professor on a 10.5-month contract is 36 LEH:

15 LEH in the Fall semester
15 LEH in the Spring semester
6 LEH in the summer semester

You can bank up to 3 LEH beyond the required full-time load from fall or spring and apply this banked LEH to the next semester, as long as it is within the same academic year. The following example assumes a 10.5 month contract.

Suppose you teach in a department in which courses are 4 LEH rather than 3 LEH. To get your required minimum load in the fall, you will have to teach 4 sections, but 4 sections * 4 LEH = 16 LEH for the semester. You only have to teach 15 LEH, so you can bank the excess 1 LEH and apply it in the spring. (Of course, you could also take the 1 LEH above your required load as an overload.) Let’s say you bank 1 LEH.

Now suppose you also teach 4 sections at 4 LEH in the Spring. That makes 16 LEH of actual teaching, plus the 1 banked LEH, which makes your total spring load 17 LEH. In this spring, you now have 2 LEH above the required minimum of 15. The 2 LEH above the required minimum of 15 can be banked to the summer or paid out as overload. Suppose you decide to  bank these 2 LEH to the summer.

In the summer, you are required to teach 6 LEH to make your full-time load, but instead of teaching two 4 LEH sections, you can teach one for 4 LEH, and apply the banked 2 LEH to make your full-time load of 6 LEH.

In other words, by banking LEH from the Fall to the Spring, and the Spring to the summer, you are able to teach one 4-LEH  section in the summer and use the 2 banked hours to complete your full-time obligation for the summer.