Policy for allocating, managing approval of, and compensation for faculty course overloads.
Human Resources
Developing Equitable and Effective Faculty Teaching, Advising, Service, and Research Workload Policy and Practices
The largest single expense at a university is faculty salaries. It is the responsibility of the administration to ensure that faculty human resources are managed well from fiscal, resource optimization, and faculty morale perspectives. To achieve this requires a clear definition, communication, and implementation of workload policies and management practices in teaching, advising, research and scholarship. By studying this article and its linked resources, and by using the associated shared files, you will be able to:
• Describe the different components of faculty workload, workload effort distributions, and how they are used in the faculty evaluation processes.
• Describe how faculty workload varies with appointment type, rank and may evolve with seniority.
• Create a concise table that communicates clearly to the faculty, expected teaching, research, and scholarly workload by appointment type, rank, and administrative appointment.
• Explain the advantages and disadvantages of faculty overloads and create an appropriate policy to manage it.
• Explain how courses vary in type and the impact student enrollments and course caps have on workload.
• Explain the impact of new course development, development for a new form of delivery, team teaching, and the number of unique course sections taught per semester have on faculty workload.
• Develop an equitable policy to ensure faculty receive credit for all appropriate aspects of their teaching effort and ensures individual faculty workload is evenly distributed across different departments and colleges.
• Explain the relative advantages and disadvantages of staff vs. faculty advisors, and good practices for placement and workload for professional staff.
• Develop a policy for faculty advising workload and how it might be interchangeable with teaching workload.
• Explain the various components and relative demands of faculty service, the impact of career stage on faculty participation, and how service expectations at the department, college, and university levels can be balanced.
• Explain the role of scholarship within higher education, how productivity is measured, and how expectations can be clearly communicated.
• Develop a policy that enables chairs to flexibly manage faculty workload so that assignments cater to the strengths of individual faculty but overall departmental productivity is maintained.
• Develop a plan and implement a process to have faculty workload reviewed at an institution.
Faculty Position Allocation Analysis
This Excel spreadsheet is used to support the decision process for allocation of faculty lines across departments and colleges within a university. Department data on efficient use of current human resources, program growth rate, distribution of current appointment types and ranks,
Another New Provost?
An interesting faculty perspective on the impact of rapid turnover of the Provost at a university.
Building a World-Class Faculty
Building a World-class faculty requires that the institution hire the best faculty that it can, grow the knowledge, skills and effectiveness of existing faculty, retain the best and eliminate poor performers who are unwilling to grow. By studying this article and its linked resources, and by using the associated shared files, you will be able to:
• Implement a process to build consensus on campus about the role faculty should play at the institution.
• Design a rubric to aid faculty search committees in selecting the best candidate for the institution’s needs.
• Develop a set of interview questions to elucidate a faculty candidate’s overall and research fit.
• Develop a set of questions that yields useful feedback from candidate’s references.
• Design a process to keep track of existing faculty lines across departments and colleges.
• Develop a process for predicting open lines 18 months in advance of hiring so that departments can start the recruiting cycle early.
• Develop policy which encourages retiring and resigning faculty to provide many months’ notice of their planned departure.
• Evaluate and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the faculty search process so that offers can be made ahead of the competition.
• Modify the recruiting process to increase applications in general and minority candidates in particular.
• Appraise the appropriate rank(s) at which to hire new faculty.
• Construct hiring guidelines that define credential requirements, teaching expectations, workload distribution, tenure considerations, etc.
• Formulate policy and appropriate strategies for spousal hires.
• Formulate policy that enables the institution to offer a tenured position but ensure the faculty member is first a good fit for the department.
• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of publishing salary expectations.
• Develop an effective process for setting salary so the institution is competitive within its marketplace.
• Develop a process to ensure that all hiring conditions are clearly communicated to Human Resources and documented in the hiring contract.
• Develop a plan to help new faculty succeed at grant writing.
• Implement an effective mentor matching process for new faculty.
• Develop a plan to retain faculty by providing growth and leadership opportunities.
• Evaluate the tenure and promotion workflow process.
• Implement an effective annual faculty review process within departments.
• Describe the potential use of a faculty merit raises to support strategic plans, even when merit raises are not available every year.
• Implement a campus climate survey to identify and address issues that could affect faculty retention.
• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of countering job offers received by current faculty.