Effective Faculty Assignment Practices and Considerations

Assigning Faculty Activities Larry Abele, October 2024 1

Your Right as Department Chair The University [Chair] has the right to assign the types of duties and responsibilities that comprise the professional obligation. If the employee disputes the assignment, the employee shall perform the assignment pending final resolution of the dispute. 2

Considerations for Assignments Transparency: Transparency: All data should be available to all faculty. Clarity Clarity: Policies should be written out and approved by the faculty. Norms Norms: What are the assignment norms for the discipline? Accountability Accountability: There should be a mechanism to assess assignment completions. 3

Assignment Priority A major bottleneck to graduation is lack of needed courses or seats and graduating on time is the easiest way to reduce the cost of college. Your first priority should be to offer all courses, with enough seats, needed by students to stay on track to graduate in four years. 4

College is Expensive Median family income in 2023 FL is $72,200 (US is $80,610). Average COA (Cost of Attendance) at FL public universities is about $24,000/yr. or about a third of family income. $147,000 is the estimated cost of staying in college for an extra year (Complete College America). 5

Assignment Options Assignments may be based on historical or past practice activities. Assignments may be made based on a comparison of peers. Or more commonly, whatever your colleagues request so long as required courses are offered. 6

Some Assignment Areas Courses Academic advising Research Supervising graduate/undergraduate student thesis/dissertation Administration Committee appointments Public service 7

Teaching Norms (per term) Class Size Class Size UG SCH G SCH Chemistry Research Doctoral Comprehensive 1.0 1.7 2.7 276 263 261 92 51 32 0.5 0.6 0.4 34 22 7 22 12 6 Economics Research Doctoral Comprehensive 1.3 2.0 3.2 213 226 252 56 37 26 0.7 0.6 0.4 36 16 16 17 9 13 Humanities Research Doctoral Comprehensive 1.9 1.8 4.3 212 158 278 37 29 22 0.5 0.4 0.3 16 17 8 11 14 9 8

Teaching Assignments: Transparency NAME MARIA ANDERSON THOMAS BENNETT BARRY CLARK JOHN CARTER VIVIAN DELGADO GREGORY EDWARDS MICHAEL EUBANKS CHEMIKA GOODSON WILLIAM GOODY MALCOM HILL RICHARD JACKSON EDWARD JONES EUGENE JOHNSON ROBERT LAWSON JULIA NICHOLSON n=15 EXPECTED TOTAL Term I Term 2 Term 3 Term 4 30/37

Some Service assignment considerations New colleagues should be introduced to service slowly. Be attentive to hidden service work, especially among women and underrepresented colleagues. Most literature focuses on the individual which is necessary but not sufficient as student and/or institutional needs are important. 10

Some Service Assignments Considerations Remember that a 10% assignment equates to four hours per week. Very few committees require that much time over the course of a term. Consider developing an accountability protocol for committee work, e.g. a questionnaire sent to the committee chair that asks if the person showed up on time and was prepared. How much did they contribute, etc.? 11

Research Assignment Departmental research Sponsored research- pay close attention to any time commitments or cost sharing that must be documented. 12

Research Benchmarks: Interestingly, there has not been much variation over time Publications/ % Active Year/Fac PhD % Publishing Grants Students/Fac Chemistry Quartile I Quartile 2 Quartile 3 Quartile 4 88 85 81 77 3.10 2.38 1.61 1.26 73 57 45 33 5.29 3.34 2.77 2.13 Economics Quartile I Quartile 2 Quartile 3 Quartile 4 73 72 70 58 0.61 0.56 0.59 0.33 23 12 5 3 3.03 2.52 1.84 2.43 Humanities Quartile I Quartile 2 Quartile 3 Quartile 4 (Awards) 1.05 0.76 0.19 0.14 N/A N/A N/A N/A 2 0 0 0 1.01 1.37 1.71 1.98 13

Research Benchmarks (Economics- Second Quartile) For faculty in this category, ~70% publish regularly, averaging ~ 0.5 papers per year in refereed journals. Only 12% have active grants which means that about 36% of the faculty should be submitting proposals each year. On average, each faculty member advises ~2.5 doctoral students. 14

Research Benchmarks Refeered publications Active grants Submitted grants NAME MARIA ANDERSON THOMAS BENNETT BARRY CLARK JOHN CARTER VIVIAN DELGADO GREGORY EDWARDS MICHAEL EUBANKS CHEMIKA GOODSON WILLIAM GOODY MALCOM HILL RICHARD JACKSON EDWARD JONES EUGENE JOHNSON ROBERT LAWSON JULIA NICHOLSON n=15 EXPECTED TOTAL five to seven two to four six to 12 15

Advantages of this Approach The data are comparative and national. Most of the data are assembled by independent agencies. Most of the data are not self-reported. The evaluation and assignment involves all members of the unit. 16

Challenges It is often difficult to find comparative data for all disciplines. Humanities data are often insufficient or lacking. Data are skewed toward sciences and journal articles. Some colleagues will be unhappy, no matter what approach is adopted but at least everyone will have had input. 17

The Faculty Workload and Rewards Project Funded by NSF ADVANCE-IHE program Examined 51 Departments Twenty universities Primarily STEM and Social Sciences; with a few humanities Examined how assignments are generated: basically haphazard Conducted audits of assignments to evaluate fairness and equity in teaching, research and service 18

An Interesting Reference for Assignments https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Equity-Minded-Faculty-Workloads.pdf 19

20