Faculty Workload
August 24, 2018
Objective: The committee is charged with implementing a mechanism that adequately accounts for the total professional effort of faculty, including research and clinical practice as well as instruction; to ensure fair and equitable treatment of faculty members; to enable chairs to optimize assignments of faculty to meet departmental goals; to maximize the long-term effectiveness of the university’s instructional resources; to facilitate effective shared governance by providing standardized information about the use of the university’s instructional resources; to provide resources for revenue sharing with faculty and academic units and for creating a teaching and research investment fund; and to establish pre-determined and transparent limits on administrative expenses. To provide an overview of the proposed concept for determining faculty workload requirements, a kickoff meeting for this initiative was held August 6.
Contacts: If you have ideas or suggestions, please email co-chairs Dr. Patricia McHatton, Dr. Parwinder Grewal, or Dr. John Krouse.
Updates
March 19, 2019
The Faculty Workload Committee worked to develop Faculty Workload Procedures to be used in tandem with the College/Department Faculty Workload Policy. The document provides recommendations to chairs on how to facilitate the creation of the workload effort plan. A Faculty Workload Rubric was also developed to support deans in evaluating department level policies. This document addresses purpose, definitions, and structure; transparency and shared governance; fairness and equity; and faculty assignment and resource allocation. Finally, the committee approved a revised Memorandum of Appointment (MOA) for Tenured/Tenure Track faculty. A similar document will be developed for lecturers.November 30, 2018
We are pleased to announce the finalization of the draft UTRGV faculty workload policy, which was voted on and approved by Faculty Senate on November 2 and subsequently submitted to President Guy Bailey for his review. Committee members were nominated by Faculty Senate and college deans. An important consideration in determining a new workload policy was the need to attend to discipline-specific needs (e.g., clinical supervision; accreditation required student-teacher ratios); thus, the draft institutional policy provides an overarching framework for determining workload, allowing for differentiation in teaching, research, and service. Once approved, colleges and/or departments will develop discipline-specific guidelines for review and approval at the EVP level. Dr. Patricia McHatton would like to thank the committee for its work on this very important endeavor as well as their commitment to continue to work together to develop guidelines to support chairs and faculty in implementing the proposed workload policy. Please connect with your college representatives from the committee should you have any questions. Stay tuned for updates on our progress.