Table of Contents

• Adding new instructors to SIS
• Qualified instructors and instructional roles
• Job codes loaded as instructors in SIS

Adding new instructors to SIS

New instructors must be entered into the campus HR system with an instructional appointment before their names can be added to a course in the Student Information System (SIS). An employee with a non-instructional job title must also hold an instructional appointment to be assigned to teach a class. Individuals with instructional appointments (see list below) are automatically loaded from the HR system into SIS and made available in SIS to be assigned to classes as instructors.

Contact the human resource person in your department to initiate the process of adding an instructor into the campus HR system. 

Per the Policy on Minimum Qualifications for Instructional Staff, to serve as a course instructor, UW employees must:

1. As a default standard, have earned a terminal degree, or a degree at least one level higher than the degree for which the course to be taught can be counted;

2. Hold an instructional title to be eligible to be a course instructor, and;

3. Have their highest degree information (or alternative qualification justification) entered into HRS.

Note: Teaching Assistants and Lecturer-SAs hold positions that are by definition supervised by a qualified instructor. For this reason, data entry of the highest degree information for individuals teaching with these titles is not required.

In exceptional circumstances, departments can file a “Pending Instructor Petition” to have an employee added as an eligible course instructor while the addition of their instructional appointment is being processed. Petitions can only be made within four weeks of the start of instruction and, if approved, the required appointment in an instructional title must exist in the campus HR system by the fourth week of instruction (or equivalent for a summer or modular session) or the instructor will be removed from the Instructor/Advisor table in SIS and any courses to which the instructor is assigned for the term.  

Qualified Instructors and Instructional Roles

Only faculty and staff responsible for instruction in a class may be entered as an instructor in SIS. When departments and programs assign instructors to courses, they will also determine what role that instructor has in the course. It’s helpful to be familiar with the Policy on Minimum Qualifications for Instructional Staff to understand the specific definition of a “qualified” instructor.

Principal

Every section of a course must have a principal instructor. This is the instructor who regularly interacts with students in that section, typically holds office hours, and is the first line of contact for students with questions or problems. Some sections might have more than one principal instructor. Principal instructors could be professors, lecturers, teaching assistants, etc.

Example: GENETICS 467 has two principal instructors (a professor and an associate professor) who share teaching duties.

Supervisory

A supervisory instructor will be a “qualified” instructor associated with the section when the principal instructor is not qualified or needs supervision (such as a teaching assistant supervised by a professor). Only one supervisory instructor can be assigned to a course.

Example: SPANISH 102 is usually taught by teaching assistants, who are the principal instructors. A faculty member serves as the course coordinator for all SPANISH 102 offerings. This is the supervisory instructor and isn’t usually known to the students enrolled in this course.

Auxiliary

An auxiliary instructor provides a small portion of instruction in the section but does not have substantial responsibility for the curriculum or its delivery. A section may have no instructors in this type of role, or one, or several.

Example: PSYCH 202 has a principal instructor (a faculty associate) who is recognized by the students as their teacher. There is also a teaching assistant who provides some additional instruction. This TA is an auxiliary instructor.

For sections numbered 001 to 299 (most lectures, seminars, and independent-study sections), the principal instructor must be qualified or have a supervisory instructor also listed for that section.

For sections 300 to 999 (most discussions and labs), the principal instructor doesn’t need to be qualified. These kinds of sections are associated with a lecture or seminar (a section numbered 001 to 299), which requires a qualified principal or supervisory instructor. 

View a PDF flowchart of the instructor role relationships.

Note: Support staff who are not responsible for teaching a section (e.g., graders, course coordinators, instructional designers) may not be assigned as an instructor in SIS. If such staff need access to the course in downstream systems like Canvas, they should be granted access in that system with a role that is appropriate to their responsibilities. Assigning staff without teaching responsibilities as instructors in SIS is never permissible because it can cause serious problems with campus budgeting, workload calculations, and official reporting to accreditors and the Universities of Wisconsin.

Job Codes Loaded as Instructors in SIS

UW–Madison job titles and codes are determined by the Office of Human Resources. The following are instructional job titles and codes. Individuals with these appointments are automatically loaded from the campus HR system into SIS and made available in SIS to be assigned to classes as an instructor.  

Note: Some faculty and staff may be granted emerit status upon retirement from UW–Madison. Emerit/emerita/emeritus status is not an instructional job title. As such, individuals with emerit/emerita/emeritus status but no instructional HR appointment may not teach or be assigned as an instructor. This applies to both independent study and group-instruction classes.