Faculty Workload Guidelines

Brief History of CHSS Workload Guidelines

In AY20-21, the Faculty Assembly Senior Leadership Committee (SLC) and the Resources and Long-Term Planning Committee (RLTP) reviewed proposals by the CHSS Faculty Assembly’s Term Faculty Affairs Committee (TFAC) and by previous members of the RLTP Committee that addressed uncompensated work for CHSS faculty. SLC and the current RLTP Committees presented a memo to the Faculty Assembly during the spring of 2021. After consultation with Faculty Assembly and other College constituents, the Dean’s Office announced (April 2021 all-College meeting; September 2021 Faculty Assembly meeting) the need to develop new CHSS workload guidelines that:

  1. pertain to instructional term faculty, tenure-track and tenured faculty;
  2. include the nuances of workload assignments recognized in the AY20-21 CHSS Term Faculty Affairs Committee draft workload guidelines;
  3. address visible, as well as less-visible, aspects of faculty workload; and,
  4. provide an opportunity for local academic units (LAUs) to engage their faculty in crafting LAU-specific workload guidelines leading to proposals for specific solutions to faculty workload issues that are appropriately informed by their national professional organizations’ recommendations and incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusions (DEI) objectives.

Dean’s Office personnel, in the summer of 2021, reviewed national/international professional guidelines, researched other faculty workload policies, and created a workload guidelines draft document that was intended to serve as a starting point for the newly formed Faculty Assembly’s “Faculty Workload Working Group.” The Faculty Workload Working Group consisted of two members from standing Faculty Assembly Committees including the Senior Leadership Committee, Resources and Long-Term Planning Committee, Term Faculty Affairs Committee, and Chairs and Directors, and one member of the Dean’s Office, equally representing the interests of term faculty, tenure-track and tenured faculty. The following CHSS Workload Guidelines are a product of the work of the “Faculty Workload Working Group” and were created during the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022.

In creating these workload guidelines, the Faculty Workload Working Group were acutely aware of factors outside of the control of individual faculty members that impact the scope and pace of changes to faculty workload. The revision of workload policies should be a continual process involving frank, good-faith, conversations between faculty and administration and it is the goal of this document to provide the framework through which individual LAUs and the Dean’s Office can collectively and continually ensure faculty workload equity and accountability.