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On this page, we report on discussions about workload for non-tenure-eligible (NTE) faculty. AAUP-WSU and the administration agreed to separate these discussions from negotiations toward a first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the NTE faculty. AAUP-WSU used a single team for workload discussions and CBA negotiations. All members of AAUP-WSU, and especially those among the NTE Bargaining Unit, are most welcome to contact team members about any issue pertaining to workload. See also the list of Executive Committee members on our Officers page.
These discussions concluded successfully and have produced a Memorandum of Understanding that our NTE "Regular Chapter Members" ratified, along with the companion CBA for NTE faculty, by an overwhelming majority in voting that concluded on September 17, 2013.
The parties reached tentative agreement on workload, and they initialed the TA'd agreement on August 19, 2013. It is anticipated that the TA'd agreement will be incorporated into a memorandum of understanding between the administration and AAUP-WSU.
The outlines of a workload agreement have now become reasonably clear. Here is the essence of the anticipated agreement:
The teaching load for visiting faculty will be specified in the offer letter each receives.
Instructors in their first four years of service will teach one course per year more than the college-specific loads shown in the bulleted list below.
For Instructors in their fifth or sixth year of service, all Lecturers and Senior Lecturers, and all Clinical Instructors and Clinical Assistant Professors, the teaching load will be college-specific as shown below:
Importantly, the college-specific teaching loads shown above will apply to BUFMs who engage in "significant service", expected to occupy about four to five hours of work in an average week over and above the "routine service" expected of all NTE faculty. Those who wish may opt out of "significant service" and teach one additional course each year.
The parties engaged in a long off-the-record discussion which seemed to indicate that a settlement on workload could be reached.
Our team gave the counterproposal below to the administration.
As you will see, our counterproposal differs from the administration's May 17 proposal in teaching loads for instructors after their second year of service as NTE faculty. Above, see items 2 and 3 under "Standard Teaching". We also indicate our wish to include the meaning of "Significant Service" -- without which an individual would teach one additional course per year -- in this agreement; see "E. Significant Service" and the reference to it in item 3.
The administration noted that the parties are in agreement regarding teaching loads for visiting faculty. Regarding instructors, it gave a verbal counteroffer that would give instructors a higher teaching load through their first five years of service. The parties discussed this issue at length. At what point should an individual bear the responsibility for significant service but accordingly have a lowered teaching load? Two Senior Lecturers on our team described their experiences while they were Instructors; they explained at length that they were expected to engage in substantial service, and that in fact they had to do so to have any chance of distinguishing themselves enough to have a chance of receiving an appointment as a Lecturers. That is, Instructors who wish to have a career at Wright State learn that significant service is de facto required and work accordingly.
The administration will consider our proposal and reply.
Regarding the standard teaching table for the Lake Campus, the administration asked if we would be willing to un-delete "The college will develop reasonable accommodations for faculty whose teaching responsibilities are a mixture of courses with and without labs.", and we said yes.
The administration began this session by presenting the following proposal to our team, describing the proposed workload in CoNH as "guessed."
Semester Workload For NTE Faculty
University Proposal (given to AAUP-WSU on May 17, 2013)
A. Responsibilities
NTE faculty, including Senior Lecturers, Lecturers, Instructors, Clinical Faculty, and Visiting Faculty, are primarily responsible for teaching and service, although some have special administrative assignments, and some may have research expectations.
B. Standard Workload for NTE Faculty
At a minimum, NTE faculty at all ranks are responsible for teaching and routine service. Standard teaching is defined below. Service refers to basic faculty engagement in shared governance, and includes working within programs and departments, attending department meetings, serving on committees, assisting in developing and coordinating the curriculum, participating in program assessment, and other activities. These regular duties may vary across the University. However, unless the appointment letter specifically states otherwise, an Instructor or a Visiting Faculty member is expected to perform only service at a basic level.
Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, and Clinical Faculty members have potentially a longer-term relationship with the University. Consequently, they are expected to perform "significant service," which can include the activities above and other activities, including service to the community and the profession. Such service should support and further the mission, goals and strategic plans of the department or college. Whatever the number of activities, however, "significant service" is characterized more by quality than by quantity. Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, and Clinical Faculty should make a significant contribution to the governance of the department or college. Active and engaged involvement in appropriate committees, participation in appropriate faculty searches, participation in important college and university governance structures, leadership in aspects of department, college, or university life, and work in professional organizations, among other things, are all examples of "significant service." Since in relation to total workload, significant service will be the approximate equivalent of teaching a class over the course of a year, it should normally involve 4-5 hours of work in an average week.
"Significant service" will be reported at the end of each calendar year in the NTE Faculty member's Activity Report. It will be evaluated by the chair.
Standard Teaching
1. Visiting Faculty
Teaching loads will typically be defined in the offer letter.
2. Instructors and other faculty on limited-term contracts:
Approximately 24 credit hours (eight 3-hour courses or six 4-hour courses) or the equivalent.
3. Senior Lecturers and Lecturers, Clinical Instructors and Clinical Assistant Professors with continuing appointments:
The standard teaching assignments below assume the faculty member is engaged in "significant service." Specifics:
RSCOB 7 courses per year (at least 3 credit hours each) or the equivalent. CECS 6-7 courses per year (3-4 credit hours each). Where an NTE faculty member teaches solely or primarily three-hour courses, the load will be 7 courses per year. Where an NTE faculty member teaches solely or primarily four-hour courses, typically with a laboratory component, the load will be 6 courses per year. The college will develop reasonable accommodations for faculty whose teaching responsibilities are a mixture of courses with and without labs. CEHS 7 courses per year (at least 3 credit hours each) or the equivalent. LAKE 8 courses (approximately 3 credit hours each) per year. 7 courses per year for lab-based courses. The college will develop reasonable accommodations for faculty whose teaching responsibilities are a mixture of courses with and without labs. COLA 7 courses per year; the equivalent in Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures and in Music (42 units per year in Music). Faculty in performing arts are expected to prepare for and in some cases participate in performances. If these hours are not counted as teaching, they will count as service. CONH 30 units per year (maximum of 4 courses per semester). COSM 6-7 courses per year (3-4 credit hours each). Where an NTE faculty member teaches solely or primarily three-hour courses, the load will be 7 courses per year. Where an NTE faculty member teaches solely or primarily four-hour courses, typically with a laboratory component, the load will be 6 courses per year. The college will develop reasonable accommodations for faculty whose teaching responsibilities are a mixture of courses with and without labs. NTE faculty will ordinarily teach no more than 24 semester hours on-load per year, and in no case will teach more than 72 hours on-load in any three-year period.
A teaching assignment differing from the standard teaching loads described above may be regarded as equivalent to those standard teaching loads if the different assignment:
- is due to curricular or scheduling decisions with which the affected faculty members in a department or program have collectively agreed, or
- entails class sizes significantly smaller or larger than those of other faculty in the faculty member's department, or
- is due to significant variations from the normal additional duties in a department or college.
C. Alternative Workloads for NTE Faculty
An alternative workload consists of a combination of teaching and service (and/or scholarship) that is equivalent to the "standard workload." For example,
- Faculty members who accept substantial service assignments (including administrative responsibilities) from the University may receive teaching load reductions, as agreed to by the faculty member and the University.
- Lecturers and other continuing faculty whose service is clearly below expectations for "significant service" will be assigned additional teaching.
Our team noted that the administration had proposed higher teaching loads for Instructors than for all other non-visiting NTE faculty and that the Lake Campus NTE faculty were treated worse that other NTEs. Despite these two unsatisfactory features, we stated that the administration's proposal was a useful starting point.
Our team reminded the administration that it has stated all along that its primary objective is revenue neutrality: i.e., preserving the steam of income generated by the teaching done by NTE faculty. We believe that this objective would have already been realized, even if NTE teaching had been limited to at most seven courses per year, as we explained in the April 29 session. We likewise explained that our April 29 estimate of class size increases, based upon 13.5% increase in section size limits, were confirmed by end-of-term enrollment figures for fall quarter 2011 vs. fall semester 2012. Thus we asked why the administration wants to get more teaching from the NTE faculty if, in fact, its true objective was revenue neutrality.
We then offered an on-the-spot counterproposal, one feature of which is to allow higher teaching loads for Instructors only in their first two years of service at that rank. We explained our rationale as follows:
The administration has stated that Instructors are temporary employees, hired only on one-year appointments, and we acknowledged that a short term of appointment does indeed occur when, for example, an Instructor is hired when a professorial rank faculty member is on Professional Development Leave (sabbatical) or has retired but has not yet been replaced. However, virtually all Lecturers at WSU were initially appointed as Instructors -- the administration agreed with this statement -- and therefore, when an Instructor's service extends to, say, three years or more, the temporary character of the appointment is less clear. We further stated that a lowered teaching load should be paired with an increased responsibility for service.
In the ensuing discussion, the administration stated that it did not want to put the burden of the quarters-to-semesters transition on WSU students -- our team rejected that statement as disingenuous -- and that already, some department chairs are attempting to adjust NTE teaching loads and thus to "do the right thing." Responding to the latter point, our team stated that if we could depend on [chairs and other administrators] to do the right thing, we would not need a union!
We explained that our counterproposal would entail no change for visiting faculty. We further explained that non-visiting faculty (e.g., Instructors beyond year two, Lecturers, etc.) would be expected to contribute more in service in order to qualify for the lower teaching load. The parties then discussed various ramifications of that latter point. We wanted an NTE faculty member to have some warning before receiving a higher teaching load if the department chair (say) thought the member was not doing enough service to merit the lower teaching load. We wanted some guidelines as to how much service is enough, and some flexibility (e.g., a very high service load in one year, due for example to accreditation activities, might be followed with a lesser service load the next year). Who is responsible for seeing to it that a NTE BUFM has enough service? The parties seemed to agree that a BUFM cannot simply sit back and wait for service opportunities to come knocking, but that chairs have an obligation to help BUFMs be successful, e.g., by bringing opportunities for service to BUFMs' attention.
To close the session, our team stated that it would provide a written counterproposal along the lines of what we had discussed.
Our team opened the session by presenting data showing, first, that a 12% class size increase would have been needed to preserve the administration's revenue from NTE teaching and keep NTE teaching loads to no more than seven courses per year, even with the three-hour courses that now predominate the curriculum, and second, that the administration has actually raised maximum class sizes by 13.5% from the previous academic year to the current one. These figures are based on data provided by the administration regarding sections taught by NTE faculty during the current and previous academic years.
The rest of this session was off the record.
The parties agreed that the main issues have now been aired, and that the administration will give us a written proposal at the next workload session, expected to be on Friday, May 17.
The administration opened this session by stating that the NTE workload agreement should be revenue-neutral to the administration; that is, the teaching done by NTE faculty should provide the same stream of revenue to the administration as it did before (before, say, the conversion to semesters, we presume the intent was). The administration also acknowledged that the workload issue was in effect responsible for the NTE faculty voting to unionize.
Our team stated that a starting place for these discussions should be the NTE workload policy that was passed by the Faculty Senate but rejected by the administration.
Our team stated that we would need to see data on whether the Senate-backed policy would have been revenue neutral. We believe that there is some chance that the Senate policy would indeed have been revenue-neutral, because
Thus we look forward to hard data regarding class sizes from the administration, expecting that it will enable the parties to reach an informed agreement.
This first workload session began with the administration suggesting that the parties discuss the issues.
Our team obliged, making the following points.
In response, the administration noted that some of the issues we mentioned would be covered in other bargaining (e.g., compensation, and criteria for promotion to Senior Lecturer). It also stated that the premise of the TET workload discussions was revenue neutrality (preserving the stream of income to the university generated by the teaching done by TET faculty) and workload neutrality; it then stated that NTE faculty had been teaching nine four-quarter-hour courses (three per quarter) under the quarter system, totaling 36 quarter hours, and they are now teaching eight three-semester-hour courses (four per semester) under the semester system, totaling 24 semester hours -- with the apparent conclusion that the conversion to semesters was workload neutral.
Our team replied that AAUP-WSU and the administration had been through this matter before.
We were alluding to workload discussions for TET faculty (summer 2009 through fall 2010) in which the administration initially insisted, in effect, that workload neutrality could be gauged by counting quarter hours taught per academic year and multiplying that by two-thirds to convert to an equivalent number of semester hours. AAUP-WSU understood well that the administration's position would yield revenue neutrality. But, we took the position that for most faculty, the primary measure of workload is not the number of hours per week in the classroom (which typically equals the number of credit hours taught), but the number of sections taught each term; and, with standard four quarter hour courses being replaced by standard three semester hour courses, the administration's position would yield more classes taught per term and thus an actual increase in faculty workload.
Importantly, the grand bargain on workload for TET faculty the parties eventually reached (1) largely maintained the number of classes taught by TET faculty per term. However, AAUP-WSU understood that (2) class sizes would have to increase, and we accepted (3) the change in pay for summer teaching noted above. One might say that (1), (2), and (3) were key provisions of the grand bargain.
We stated that the administration knows full well that there is a significant difference between teaching three courses at a time vs. four. We stated that from the perspective of NTE faculty, there is a problem (an assertion that met with a nod from the administration's side of the negotiating table).
The administration then sketched a rough calculation and concluded (apparently) that preserving the number of courses taught would cost the administration about $1.5 million per year, using the term "huge dollars" (approximate quote) to describe this figure. Our team agreed that $1.5 million is "real money" but that it amounts to only about 0.3% (roughly) of the university's annual budget [indeed 0.375%, or less than four-tenths of one percent, of the university's nominal $400 million annual budget]; and for comparison we noted the annual expense for intercollegiate athletics of $10 million.
Online, one may view the relevant budgetary figures for 2012 (see for example page 81 of 83 for the athletics figures) and for previous years by visiting the Ohio Auditor of State audit search page and typing "Wright State University" in the "Entity Name or Report Title" box.
We reiterated our basic point that in agreeing to the TET workload deal, the administration had in effect acknowledged that teaching loads are measured by the number of courses taught per term.
We asked the rhetorical question, "What do TET faculty do that NTE faculty do not?" and gave the answer research, and the administrated stated that by and large it agreed. We stated that NTE faculty are expected to offer teaching and service to the university, and that they can be promoted by doing those things (and those alone). We reminded that administration that TET faculty who do no research are assigned two extra classes per year under the grand bargain on workload that applies to them, concluding that a reasonable workload agreement for NTE faculty would entail the standard workload for TET faculty (that is, those engaging in research to a satisfactory extent) and adding two courses per year.
On the issue of class size, we asked the administration how long it would take for it to give us actual class size data. We stated that we understand that the new classroom building now being planned will support larger class sizes than those now typically feasible. (The evident conclusion is that the administration plans on even greater class sizes.)
We stated that though enrollments surged at Wright State for several years leading up to the calendar conversion, the administration did not exactly hire masses of new full-time faculty according;y. We stated that enrollments dropped with the conversion to semesters, though not dramatically more than one might have expected; and, that we have not heard any prediction that the enrollment drop is expected to persist. Alluding to forthcoming changes in STRS, we reminded the administration that it can expect many faculty retirements in the next few years. We concluded that the administration will have considerable flexibility. We stated that we too can be flexible, if the administration is willing to address our concerns in a real way.
We noted that the administration's rough calculation of $1.5 million failed to account for increased class sizes and decreased summer pay.
We reminded the administration that the workload agreement for TET faculty, with its explicit tie between research productivity and teaching load, might well induce TET faculty to be less willing to engage in service; and, we stated that NTE faculty might well evaluate what they do in the way of service.
We stated that the summer pay arrangement gives the administration an opportunity to do better than revenue neutrality if it only manages to market well WSU's summer course offerings. In this regard we noted that some deans are reportedly trying to force faculty to make recruitment calls (!) and that it would not be our fault if the administration fails to avail itself of an opportunity to increase revenues.
Finally, the parties agreed that the administration would come forward at the next workload discussions session (set for April 15, since two key members of our team will be unavailable on April 8) with some sort of NTE workload proposal.
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This page was last modified on Monday, September 23, 2013. Corrections, comments, and suggestions are most welcome. Contact the webmaster for this page (Jim Vance) at jimvance.wsu@gmail.com, telephone 937-775-2206. To contact the chapter, please see our Staff, Officers, and Committees page.