Most community and technical colleges employ academic employees under contracts expressed in terms of a certain number of contact hours, which are usually limited to actual time spent in the classroom. Most academic positions require more time to be spent providing services to the college than are reflected in the contact hours. However, actual hours worked are not submitted by the academic employees nor recorded by the college. This subsection adopts a method for estimating hours of work in order to determine membership eligibility and service credit in plan I and plan II. This estimate is to be used solely for that purpose. The estimate is not a representation by the department of actual hours worked and is not to be used as a basis for calculating other benefits or salary for technical college and community college academic employees.

1. (1) Plan I. In order to estimate the number of days worked by a TRS I technical college or community college faculty academic employee for a particular month, the college will:

   1. (a) Determine the number of working days in the month as defined by the college's adopted academic calendar;
   2. (b) Determine the part-time workload for the employee. The part-time workload is the percentage of the part-time employees' weekly in-class teaching hours to the weekly in-class teaching hours required of a full-time instructor in that employee's discipline at the college; and

   3. (c) Multiply the number of working days in the month by the academic employee's part-time workload.

      The resulting number is an estimate of days worked by the academic employee during the month. The college will report this estimate to the department for the sole purpose of determining plan I service credit and/or membership eligibility.

2. (2) Plan II. Determining service credit for plan II requires the college to estimate hours worked rather than days worked. To estimate hours worked, the college uses the steps described in subsection (1) of this section and takes two additional steps:

   1. (a) Determine the number of hours in a full-time work day. In the absence of a definition of the number of hours in a full-time work day in the collective bargaining agreement or elsewhere, the college will use seven hours;

   2. (b) Multiply the estimated days worked as determined in subsection (1) of this section by the number of hours in a full-time work day.

      The resulting number is an estimate of hours worked by the academic employee during the month. The college will report this estimate to the department for the sole purpose of determining plan II service credit and/or membership eligibility.

3. (3) Definitions. "In-class teaching hours" means contact classroom and lab hours in which full-time or part-time academic employees are performing contractually assigned teaching duties. The in-class teaching hours shall not include any duties performed in support of, or in addition to, those contractually assigned in-class teaching hours.

[Statutory Authority: RCW 41.50.050. WSR 97-09-037, § 415-112-335, filed 4/14/97, effective 5/15/97.]