Alleviating Faculty Workload at San Jose State University
Report from the Academic
Innovation Model Task Force
to the Academic Senate of SJSU
The problem of faculty workload at SJSU
The
problem of faculty workload at San Jose State University can be explained best
in historical perspective. Faculty do very different work and fulfill vastly
different expectations in 2002 than they did in 1961 when the California State
College system was founded, and yet the University has been unable to change sufficiently
in the fiscal, policy, bureaucratic, and even cultural arenas to adequately
support the new realities of faculty workload. Faculty today are subject to a
resource allocation scheme that makes unrealistic assumptions of them.
Workload is currently allocated primarily on the basis of benchmarks that are
quantitative and institutional, rather than qualitative and individual. As a
result, the current scheme fails to promote several key values, such as the
quality of teaching, scholarship, and service; it also fails to establish
equity in workload distribution. The failure of the current workload system
places faculty at risk of providing diminished quality in all the areas in
which they work. Therefore, the AIM Task Force believes that workload should
be “reworked” on the two themes of quality and equity.
Problems with the “FTES
economy”
Until a few years
ago, faculty workload was allocated on the basis of a system of “Weighted
Teaching Units” (WTUs). Under the old model, tenure/tenure track (t/tt)
faculty were required to teach 12 WTUs, most commonly (though never
universally) in the form of 4 three-unit classes, and to do academic advising
and minor committee work for an additional 3 WTUs, since this work was thought
to be equivalent to one additional three-unit class. Altogether, the workload
of a faculty member was said to be equal to 15 WTUs. The WTU system was a
failure on numerous fronts, a fact recognized by most when it was officially
removed from the contract (MOU.) Devoting much attention to it might therefore
seem pointless–the proverbial beating of a dead horse. However, campuses still
receive their budget allocations from the system based upon assumptions
imbedded in the 15 WTU model even though they are free to depart from the model
in implementation. This has made possible the creation of an alternate economy
of workload distribution based upon Full Time Equivalent Students (FTES).
To simplify, campuses
are funded by the system based upon their student/faculty ratio (S/F R),
currently set at about 19:1. The “19” represents full time equivalent
students, and the “1” represents full time equivalent faculty. Thus, the
system runs on the assumption that each
faculty member must teach an
average of 95 students (5 x 19) each semester. However, the
1
formula makes no special
allowance for the fact that tenure/tenure track faculty (t/tt) traditionally
teach less than 15 units, or that any part of their workload is concerned with
anything other than teaching quantities of students. S/F R is the exclusive
source of funding, and yet it fails to account for workload associated with
research, service, or mode or level of instruction. This particular formula,
therefore, grants SJSU no additional funds for the quality of teaching we do,
no additional funds for graduate teaching as opposed to undergraduate teaching,
no additional funds for scholarly endeavors, no additional funds for community
or academic service, no additional funds for anything other than the sheer
numbers of students put through the system.
Under
the “FTES economy,” as it is becoming known, campuses are left on their own to
decide how to stretch their faculty to cover their unrealistic S/F Rs. All do
so by setting quotas (sometimes called “targets”) for how many students (FTES)
the various academic units must teach. Those academic units that consistently
teach more than their quota receive more faculty and those that consistently
teach less lose faculty. Academic units–departments, schools, and colleges–attempt
to meet their quotas though a variety of strategies, many of which contain
undesirable trade-offs for the quality of education as well as equity in
workload distribution. Libraries suffer a similar dilemma as they stretch the
library faculty to cover unrealistic librarian/student ratios. The FTES economy
is based upon only one part of faculty work and yet is expected to pay for
nearly all parts of faculty work, which produces significant workload
distortions.
The CSU has thus
turned the finance of teaching into a quota-driven machine, with very negative
consequences for faculty workload as well as for the quality of instruction.
Not everything about the shift to an FTES economy is negative, however. It has
created a certain degree of freedom for the academic units, which now have the
latitude to meet their quotas in ways that would not have been permitted under
the WTU system. For example, across the CSU and within SJSU, some units have
chosen to reduce the number of classes their faculty teach but increase, on
average, the number of students in each class. Without passing judgment on
the desirability of these strategies, we can note that they do represent
flexibility that was not present under the WTU system.
Problems with the WTU
system
The WTU system, like
the FTES economy, was seriously defective. First, it failed to achieve an
equitable distribution of workload across the faculty. Factors such as the
mode and level of instruction, for example, or the number of students in a
class, or the number of differing preparations by a faculty member, could make
a huge disparity in the real workload of two faculty members each fulfilling
the 15 WTU requirement. A faculty member teaching 4 different courses of 40
graduate students each is clearly more burdened than a faculty member teaching
4 identical sections of 20 undergraduates each, and yet the WTUs appear the
same. Therefore, it was necessary to weight the different modes
and levels of instruction differently.
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The task of assigning weights to
classes was accomplished though a mandated scheme commonly known as “C-factors”
(classroom factors), but no funds were ever made available to implement the
system. For a period of years C-factors fell into disuse, leaving programs
with no incentive to keep the classification of their courses current.
Recently the University has revived the use of C-factors for some purposes of
internal resource distribution, but it is probable that many of our existing
courses are no longer appropriately classified.
The WTU system’s
greatest failure, however, was the complete omission of scholarship from
faculty workload. It made zero allowance for scholarly endeavors because
scholarly endeavors were either a small or nonexistent part of the work of many
faculty when the ancestors to the WTU system were invented. Over the last 40
years an expectation that faculty should 
engage
in scholarly endeavors has grown and has become part of system and university
policy. Yet there was no corresponding change in the way that faculty workload
was allocated. Scholarship was simply “extra work” done on top of the WTU
model. If scholarship were primarily an optional activity, then the old WTU
model would be more defensible. But given that the university inflicts serious
professional consequences on faculty who fail at scholarship, it is simply
unfair that scholarship still has no identifiable place in the faculty
workload.
Almost as serious as
the complete omission of scholarship in the WTU system is that the system
failed to take account of the increase in workload associated with a more
complex student body. When the California State College system began in 1961,
our students were graduates of a public school system that consistently ranked
first among all the states, by many 
measures,
and provided students with consistent foundations on which college faculty
could build. Today’s SJSU students are far more diverse. They are graduates
of a neglected public school system that provides inconsistent preparation for
college. A high percentage speak English as a second language, and need help
across the curriculum in order to
improve their communication
skills. This great diversity presents faculty with much greater teaching
challenges than ever before. Faculty meet these challenges by working
harder—instruction is now much more individualized and labor intensive.
Faculty must spend great energy helping students with basic skills such as
writing, information competence, and providing background information that would
have been assumed in 1961. As just one example, our general education courses
today require extensive and labor-intensive writing components across the
curriculum. Furthermore, the workplace has become far more technical today
than it was forty years ago. This has forced many academic disciplines,
particularly in professional and applied fields, to struggle to keep current
with the constant changes in the workplace.
Finally, the WTU system
neglected to account for many service activities. It is true that it allowed 3
of the 15 WTUs to cover advising and service, so this neglect was not as
profound as the neglect of scholarship. However, both community service and
institutional service have dramatically grown in importance within faculty
workload over the last two generations. The increasing demands for faculty
service are in direct response to broad social changes as well as to the
increasing bureaucratization of the CSU. In terms of institutional service,
the CSU has placed a growing emphasis upon “accountability.” From the
standpoint of faculty, accountability means more work. Over the last ten years
faculty merit evaluations have been added, additional 
assessment
of curriculum has been added, post-tenure review has been added, and all of these
developments demand that individual faculty prepare documents and that faculty
serve on new committees to judge them. When these new requirements were added,
nothing was subtracted–the old assessment paradigm of providing students with
individualized evaluations and grades did not simply go away when a new
assessment paradigm was added on top of it. This is work created for faculty
by the system, and yet the 12+3 WTU system does not provide for this extra
work.
How could we establish
whether our existing workload is reasonable?
Most efforts to
determine an appropriate workload are based upon comparisons, which can be
longitudinal (across time) or latitudinal (across space.) Comparisons can
never address the ultimate issues, since they can only speak to relative
conditions and not to clear standards of quality. Nevertheless, faculty
themselves make comparisons between their own work and the work that colleagues
in the same disciplines do at other universities, and between their own work
and the work that colleagues did in previous generations at SJSU. These
comparisons may give us some inspiration in conceptualizing alternative models
of workload distribution.
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Historical
perspective. Both the old WTU system and the newer FTES economy are seriously
defective. The FTES paradigm, however, is an institutional approach based upon
the allocation of budget, and therefore bears little relation to what
individual faculty do. The old WTU system, by contrast, does establish a
traditional and historical baseline for workload. Leaving aside, for the time
being, all of the equity issues and idiosyncrasies of the WTU paradigm, one can
still describe the work of a faculty member using its vocabulary.
Scholarship
greatly increased its importance in the professional development of faculty at
SJSU during the Bunzel Presidency (1970-1978.) The growing importance of
scholarship in this era can be seen in the evolution of the SJSU RTP policy,
which has become increasingly elaborate in its discussion of scholarship. The
1964 RTP policy, for example, lists scholarship as but one of four criteria,
and the criteria which merits the second smallest description at just a few
sentences.
SJSU’s current RTP policy, by contrast has but two general criteria and devotes
many paragraphs to the category of “Scholarly or Artistic or Professional
Achievement,” noting that these contributions “are normally expected for
continuation and advancement in the university.”
But while the role of scholarship at SJSU has increased since the 1960s, the
same era has seen no appreciable decrease in teaching load—in fact, the ratios
of students to faculty have continually edged higher throughout the system -- a
situation that has persisted to this day.
The system
underwent a similar evolution in the importance of scholarship. It was not
until the 1980s that scholarship acquired an official role in the CSU. “The
Master Plan left ambiguous the state’s commitment to support research at CSU”
and the California Education Code was not amended until the late 1980s to
guarantee an explicit role for research in the CSU:
…research,
scholarship, and creative activity in support of its undergraduate and graduate
instructional mission is authorized in the California State University and shall be supported by the state.
In the
pre-Bunzel era the distribution of work would (for the most typical colleges)
be something like this:
1. Four three-unit courses of
about 30 students each. Typically, two of these would be identical
preparations of an introductory lower-division course that was repeated by the
faculty member every semester. The other two would be upper-division courses
in the major or a graduate seminar.
2. Advising and limited committee service on department
and school committees. Later in one’s career, one might engage in more
university-wide service, or chair a department, etc.
3. Limited scholarly
expectations, with some variance depending upon local department norms.
The AIM Task Force cites
this classic workload distribution not to endorse its particulars—in fact, we
do not wish to return to this model—but to point out what a reasonable total
amount of work would be. We acknowledge that the classic model is in need of
modification to account for all the factors already listed above—the lack of a
place for scholarship, the lack of accounting for new teaching and service
demands, the lack of establishment of equity in workload allocation. But as
far as determining what a reasonable amount of work would be, this seems to us
to be an appropriate baseline grounded in history.
When
our modern workload is compared with the historical model cited above, we
cannot help but realize that current expectations are unrealistic. Faculty
currently fulfill everything that was required of them in 1961 and many new
responsibilities that have been added over the years. It is unrealistic to
suggest we can solve our problems simply by working more--we need
to work differently today than previous generations. Faculty time is not
infinitely elastic–it cannot stretch to continually absorb new and higher
expectations without eventually endangering the quality of work. Faculty
generally hold extremely high standards for themselves, and so when
unreasonable quantities of work endangers the quality of what they do, they
experience frustration and loss of morale that can compound the problem.
Workload Surveys. In February the
results of a major CSU system study on faculty workload were released.
In the view of the AIM Task Force it is unfortunate that the data do not go
much further back, since it is likely that by 1990 the currently unreasonable
patterns were already firmly ensconced. However, according to the study,
faculty in the CSU have added to their workload since a similar study was
conducted in 1990. The greatest increase in workload has been in the growth of
time devoted to research, which grew from 6.63 weekly hours on average in 1990
to 10.21 weekly hours on average in 2001. As increasing numbers of faculty
retire and are replaced by junior faculty on the tenure track, that number can
be expected to grow even higher. During the same time the number of hours
devoted to teaching has remained constant or even increased slightly, from
25.11 to 25.87. Faculty also report devoting more time to administrative
duties, increasing from 1.41 to 2.46 hours. Perhaps in response to workload
pressures elsewhere in their schedules, such as rising commute times, faculty
have cut back on university and community service activities, which fell from
5.56 hours to 5.18 hours, and on student advising which fell from 5.19 to
4.43. These cuts may have negative consequences of their own, but they still
leave faculty working an average of 50.23 hours a week, up from 48.51 in 1990.
One
of the most troubling findings of the report, however, was that SJSU lags far
behind comparable campuses in the CSU in providing faculty with assigned time.
Assigned time is the administrative term for tracking when faculty are assigned
to a task other than teaching 12 units of courses. In the CSU, 53% of t/tt
faculty report receiving at least some assigned time, with SJSU reporting 55%.
Unfortunately, SJSU compares unfavorably with campuses of similar size:
Northridge reports 59%, Long Beach 60%, Fullerton 63%, San Francisco 68%, and San Diego 77%. For SJSU to grant assigned time at the average level of these comparable
CSU campuses (65.4%) it would have to increase its current pool of assigned
time by at least 19%. While this survey data needs to be treated with caution
for two reasons (a low N for campus-based results, and faculty self-reporting
rather than hard data on assigned time), it is a pattern that has held constant
over 10 years--SJSU lagged behind these institutions in 1990 as well as more
recently. However, the strategies used by high assigned-time campuses are
varied and may not always be strategies that SJSU would wish to emulate.
Several of the campuses have high S/F Rs, which they may achieve by carrying
fewer graduate and professional programs. San Diego has a comparable S/F R (San Diego: 17.75, SJSU: 17.61)
and achieves the highest rate of assigned time in the system by reducing the
number of classes and inflating class sizes. The AIM Task Force finds these
strategies, at best, to be insufficient to achieve workload alleviation.
Accreditation
Reports. In WASC’s analysis of the SJSU “overload” problem, it called
special attention to the effect overload had on attracting and retaining young
faculty, especially faculty from under-represented populations. Since 1994
this challenge has become even more acute, as skyrocketing housing costs and
rising commute times have created even greater challenges for our recruitment
efforts. This year (AY 2001-2) more than 100 searches are underway, and
swelling enrollments and anticipated retirements will require that recruitment
and mentoring of junior faculty continues to be one of the most significant
items on the SJSU agenda. WASC noted the frustration of young SJSU faculty who
were told to “do everything” and asked “[w]ithin CSU guidelines, can the
teaching load of probationary faculty be reduced?”
The 1994 WASC report is critical of the (then) existing overload and prophetic
of what was to come if no substantial reform were initiated. We urge that
every SJSU citizen read the excerpt placed in the beginning of this report.
The AIM Task Force emphatically agrees with WASC that the best way to attract
and retain an excellent faculty is through a “systematic” plan for workload
alleviation, so that prospective faculty can look forward to realistic work
loads throughout the duration of their careers.
Other factors influencing the faculty workload problem
The AIM Task
Force has not chosen to propose a recommendation on the campus’s sometimes
difficult working conditions, although we recognize that they contribute to
workload in numerous ways. We believe that this should be the focus of another
major campus effort because the Task Force lacks the expertise or time to
properly give this subject its due. The Task Force received complaints about
working conditions, however, that seem reasonable and serious. To the extent
to which some measures are being taken to address specific problems, such as
current efforts to build more faculty offices, we applaud them. Opportunities
may also arise after the new library opens to utilize portions of a renovated Clark building for faculty. We also hope that the general alleviation of workload proposed
in our own report will help faculty cope with the daily miseries inflicted by their
working environment. We would encourage the Senate to consider initiating a
comprehensive review of faculty and staff working conditions.
Another major
contributor to faculty workload is the extremely high cost of housing in the
area. When combined with inadequate pay, faculty find themselves unable to
afford to buy or in some cases rent housing near campus, and live further and
further away—Livermore, Pleasanton, Davis, Oakland, Roseville, Gilroy, Hollister, Santa Cruz, etc. The state workload survey failed to account for the
time faculty consume in their commute, which is likely one of the most
significant additional drains on faculty time in recent years. As faculty live
further and further away from campus, they are increasingly less available for
daily service activities and student advising, putting a larger burden on those
who remain. Fewer and fewer young faculty, for example, are willing to serve
as department chairs since this activity demands constant presence on campus.
Committees cannot always manage quorums when the faculty is bifurcated into
Monday-Wednesday and Tuesday-Thursday halves. As with working conditions, the
AIM Task Force was overwhelmed at the prospect of taking on this gigantic but
significant problem for faculty workload. We suspect that it will not be
solved without statewide reform that allows for regional housing allowances.
Nevertheless, the gap between pay and housing may constitute the biggest threat
to the future of the faculty at SJSU.
The AIM Task
Force also heard from several sources about the unusual service burden
experienced by small and shrinking departments. Small departments, for
example, are among the most heavily vested in the General Education program,
and it is on them that much of the burden of GE Assessment has fallen. While
more hands make for lighter work, fewer hands make for heavy burdens, sometimes
dreadfully heavy burdens. Furthermore, small departments have inadequate
assigned time for full-time Chairs, leaving part time Chairs to manage
bureaucratic mandates that fall as heavily on them as they do on much larger
units. The AIM Task Force acknowledges this very real problem but declines to
suggest organizational changes to fix it. As serious as workload problems are
for small departments, their autonomy is valuable, and so the University should
not seek to alleviate small departments by extinguishing them. However, we
would encourage small departments to collaborate with the University and other
departments to create mechanisms by which service burdens could be shared.
Perhaps, for example, college and university committees should not always be
staffed on the basis of “federalism,” with every department or every college
represented on every committee. Overall, we hope that the reforms we suggest
in Recommendation 6 will be especially helpful to Chairs and small
departments.
The AIM Task Force also received suggestions that
academic support staff need to be adequate to support faculty work. Too low a
level of academic support forces faculty to work inefficiently at tasks that
others could do better. The Task Force declines to produce a specific
recommendation regarding support staff, but does believe that adequate support
is important. If our suggestions regarding enrollment growth funds are
implemented, support staff would receive a fair increase to accommodate
increasing enrollments. At the same time, the Task Force applauds the current
administration of SJSU for containing its management costs relative to other
campuses in the CSU, and urges that it continue to show great restraint in
hiring MPP positions.
9
Such
restraint in “high level” hiring is important to be able to conserve resources
for staff support of faculty at the department level.
Although the recommendations by the AIM Task Force
focus primarily on providing t/tt faculty with greater resources for workload
innovation, we acknowledge the need to improve the situation of our non t/tt
faculty as well. So-called “temporary” faculty, some with greater seniority
than “permanent” faculty, teach a large portion of the classes offered on
campus. We must all be concerned about the workload burdens faced by these
colleagues and its relation to the quality of instruction. The Task Force is
hopeful that our recommendations concerning the provision of student assistants
and the establishment of equity guidelines will prove helpful to all faculty on
campus, regardless of status, but at the same time acknowledge that longer
term, post-AIM reforms will be needed to achieve a reasonable workload for all
of our faculty.
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AIM Task Force Recommendations:
Recommendation 1. The
Equitable Nine-Unit Model.
By AY 2007-2008, SJSU should
provide sufficient resources to the Colleges to enable them to reduce teaching
workload for t/tt faculty to an average of nine units or fewer per semester, by
funding a reduction in the student/faculty ratios within the colleges.
Non-traditional academic units should receive equivalent workload relief.
This adjustment is necessary in
response to the ever increasing research and service expectations that the
university has of faculty, and the greater complexity in delivering instruction
to our challenging and diverse student population. Two thirds of CSU faculty
believe that insufficient resources are provided for “success” and for
“professional development,” sixty percent believes that current research
expectations are unrealistic, a majority believes teaching expectations are
unrealistic, and a majority also believes that current service expectations are
unrealistic.
Faculty perceptions simply reflect the reality that faculty are expected to do
more research and service with no appreciable decrease in teaching. We believe
that academic innovation can be sustained at SJSU only if faculty are freed
from some of their existing responsibilities so that they can devote time and
energy to research, academic reform, improvement of teaching, governance, etc.
The nine-unit model is designed to move SJSU in that direction.
TheTask Force recognizes that a
nine-unit model is not appropriate for every program and every faculty member
(for example, studio instructors, library faculty, and programs that have
already achieved nine-unit loads by expanding class sizes) and that some
colleges, schools, departments, and programs will have to determine what
constitutes equivalent workload reduction for them. The strategy proposed here
of gradually reducing the S/F R while leaving FTES targets constant will make
it possible for these units to achieve workload alleviation equivalent to the
nine-unit model in their own way. Recommendations 3 and 4, later in this
report, also support this goal. Nevertheless, the norm for the vast majority of
faculty should be understood to be 3 courses or nine units. This is not an
unrealistic goal given that the University already provides approximately 75
FTEF worth of assigned time – the equivalent of 375 sections per semester – for
a regular faculty of approximately 675.
Financially, the fairest and most
workable way for the University to support this proposal is by gradually
reducing the S/F R,
while leaving FTES targets the same. (Thus, as an example, if the FTES target
is 100, a SFR of 20 generates 5 FTEF while a S/F R of 15 generates about 6.5
FTEF.) Any reduction in the S/F R increases the teaching resources that
colleges and departments have at their disposal, giving them the ability to
move toward the three-course load. A major step toward reducing the SFR would
be to fund colleges and departments at the appropriate SFR for the “mode and
level” of the courses they are already teaching. For
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example, funding the College of Humanities and the Arts at only 90% of the mode and level SFR for the courses it
is now teaching would increase the College’s FTEF allocation by almost 13 FTEF.
This is equivalent to providing 65 sections of course relief to a regular
faculty of 135. For other colleges, the figures are more dramatic.
The
AIM Task Force recognizes that full implementation of the nine-unit model will
require more faculty, cost money, and face various logistical and institutional
difficulties. Still, without compromising the quality of instruction, there is
no other way to improve the workload situation at SJSU on a large scale. This
is not a radical or an unprecedented innovation, but a measure already
implemented at most of the California Postsecondary Education Commission
“comparison institutions” for the CSU. In fact, failure to implement the
nine-unit model will increasingly isolate SJSU and relegate it to a position
outside the mainstream of similar institutions, and negatively affect our
ability to recruit and retain high-quality faculty.
Recommendation 1a. Phasing
in the Equitable Nine-Unit Model.
Beginning AY 2002-2003 SJSU
should increase resources to the Colleges, by funding a progressive reduction
in the student/faculty ratios within the Colleges, so that by AY 2007-2008 they
will have succeeded in reducing teaching workload for t/tt faculty to an
average of no more than nine units per semester, holding average class size
constant, and allowing for equivalent workload alleviation for non-traditional
academic units.
Benchmarks for each academic
year, by the percentage of the total S/F R reduction that will be required to
reach a fully implemented nine-unit model (and equivalent). The Budget
Advisory Committee of the Academic Senate shall make any interpretations
required to monitor the progress of implementation:
·
AY 2007-2008, full implementation
·
AY 2006-2007, 75% implementation
·
AY 2005-2006, 55% implementation
·
AY 2004-2005, 35% implementation
·
AY 2003-2004, 20% implementation.
·
AY 2002-2003, 10% implementation.
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Since achieving the nine-unit
model will be difficult and will take time, the AIM Task Force is concerned
that interim measures be taken to alleviate workload as much as the budget will
permit. As resources become available for the workload reduction effort, we
recommend that the nine-unit model be gradually implemented, with increasing
resources flowing to the colleges to hire faculty to reduce their S/F Rs. This
transition to the nine-unit model will provide an opportunity to correct
problems that may arise prior to full implementation. While the AIM Task Force
believes that the assigned time provided during the transition should be given
to all faculty in rotation, it recognizes that each department will need to
confront and solve its own unique implementation issues. We believe that even
modest relief during the transition will enhance morale and encourage academic
innovation, scholarly activity, and service activity, if the university’s
commitment to more substantial long-term relief is unwavering and credible.
The AIM Task Force was
specifically charged to provide benchmarks for the implementation of workload
reforms. We believe that progress toward the nine-unit model should begin
immediately, and given that $750,000 exists in base budget for the effort it is
reasonable to expect, despite the current budget climate, that AY 2002-2003
could see 10% implementation of the model. The listed benchmarks require
modest progress toward the goal early in the implementation period and more
rapid progress toward the end. This reflects the current budget climate which
we expect will improve in time, and also the need for time to be able to
prepare to gear up for the financing of the reform. The Task Force believes
that these benchmarks are achievable under the current budget climate, but
acknowledges that a markedly worsening fiscal climate could delay implementation.
As noted before, the AIM Task Force is also aware that
non-traditional academic units, such as the Library, will need to develop
equivalencies to the nine-unit model. All t/tt faculty should receive
comparable workload alleviation, even in those cases where the nine-unit model
is not an appropriate model for their situation.
Recommendation 1b. Supporting
interim progress toward the nine-unit model.
The University and colleges
should support and encourage any academic program that endeavors to move toward
or sustain a three-course or nine-unit load within existing financial and FTES
parameters.
In principle, colleges and
departments are now free to organize their workloads however they wish as long
as their FTES targets are met, and, in fact, some departments and at least one
college already have a standard teaching load of 3 courses, as do a number of
departments and colleges at other campuses of the CSU. Generally, they do so by
having larger class enrollments or by having a relatively high ratio of
temporary to permanent faculty, or by extensive use of teaching assistants and
teaching associates. In addition, some departments may find it both
advantageous and possible to move from a teaching load of four 3-unit courses
to one of three 4-
13
unit courses. Although these or
other techniques may not be feasible or appropriate for all
departments, the university
should support any department or college that endeavors to move toward or
sustain a three-course load within existing financial and FTES parameters.
Part of that encouragement will
come by universal implementation of a reduction of S/FRs in all academic units
as the primary funding mechanism for teaching workload reduction. In this way,
academic units may feel free to find ways to achieve a nine-unit load under
existing parameters without fearing that they will lose resources to those
other units who have not. A commitment to lowering S/FRs will therefore
stimulate academic units to experiment in workload alleviation.
Recommendation 1c. Tracking
progress toward the nine-unit model.
The Budget Advisory Committee
of the Academic Senate should review the University’s progress toward
implementing these recommendations and issue a progress report each semester
until their final implementation. These progress reports should monitor the
proportion of t/tt faculty reaching the nine-teaching-unit goal by department,
college, and as a whole, average class sizes, and other useful workload
information, and should be distributed to the Provost, Senate, and faculty more
generally.
The
campus as a whole needs to be regularly apprised of the progress being made
toward achievement of the nine-unit model. Institutional Planning and Research
should annually prepare the “SJSU Workload Report” for submission to all
interested parties. This report should summarize, department by department,
the numbers of t/tt currently teaching nine units or less and those teaching
more than nine units. The report should also indicate class sizes, number of
preparations, overall department S/F R, and any other workload related data
that may be available. IPAR shall determine, with the aide of the Budget
Advisory Committee, appropriate S/F R targets for AY 2007-8, which will enable
all colleges to meet the nine-unit model without increasing class sizes. The
annual workload report shall track progress, department by department, toward
meeting their 2007-8 S/F R goals.
Recommendation 2.
Sabbaticals.
All meritorious sabbaticals
(sabbaticals that have been judged meritorious under the university policies
regulating sabbaticals) should be funded.
The AIM Task Force believes that
this would be a very useful interim step that might be feasible long before and
in addition to the achievement of the nine-unit model. In some years, in some
colleges, this is already achieved.
14
Funding
all approved sabbaticals would especially benefit faculty in the early to
middle stages of their careers. Currently, many senior faculty prefer to take
difference-in-pay leaves for financial reasons, once the difference between
their pay and the pay of their replacement rises to a high enough level.
Sabbaticals, however, are preferred by newly tenured faculty, and should form a
backbone of support for their professional development.
By a two to one majority, faculty in
the CSU indicate that there are insufficient resources for faculty development.
Regular sabbaticals for faculty who produce worthy proposals would be a
significant step toward addressing this challenge.
Recommendation 3. Workload
Equity.
The Professional Standards
Committee of the Academic Senate should prepare a workload equity policy for
the Senate and, ultimately, the University to adopt. The policy should
provide guidelines to the academic units on how to achieve equity in the
distribution of faculty workload, in the context of alleviating workload.
The AIM Task Force is concerned that, in the process of reducing workload, we
should also reduce those inequities in workload that have become entrenched
under the old systems. One useful step to remedying these inequities would be
for the university to construct guidelines that could be used by department
chairs, deans, and others in allocating work among the faculty. These
guidelines should embrace a pluralistic and flexible model of faculty
workload. Faculty should, so far as possible, be able to construct
the work alternatives appropriate for them, provided that their total
contribution is equivalent to that of others. The guidelines should
provide a means for helping deans/chairs to see that workload is distributed
fairly and relatively equally, while at the same time protecting the ability of
faculty to make individualized choices in shaping their own professional
development. Not all faculty under the nine-unit model should
necessarily teach nine units--this should be an average mix that reflects a
diversity of choices made by faculty within the rubric of department needs.
In constructing the policy,
Professional Standards should take into consideration the multiple dimensions
of workload that the AIM Task Force has defined: increasing research
expectations, increasing service requirements, and the multiple considerations
of teaching workload (numbers of students, mode and level of instruction, numbers
of preparations, hours in the classroom, supervisions of theses and other
individualized projects, etc.) Professional Standards should work
closely with the Curriculum and Research Committee in making use of mode and
level standards for helping to determine teaching workload (see recommendation
4.) Of particular importance is the necessity for seeing that graduate thesis
supervision is fully rewarded in the workload system.
A set of workload profiles should
be developed to demonstrate how faculty may, under the nine-unit model, engage
in comparable work. Profiles should reflect all of the traditional
profiles developed by Boyer as well as disciplinary differences on our campus:
i.e., the differences between programs with quite different modes and levels of
instruction. Not only will Scholar-Teachers, Teacher-Scholars, and
Service-Teachers have different profiles from each other, but their
profiles may also differ depending upon college and discipline.
Recommendation 4. Mode and
Level of Instruction.
The Curriculum and Research
Committee of the Academic Senate should prepare policy for the regular review
and implementation of CSU guidelines on appropriate modes and levels of
instruction. The University’s curriculum should be reviewed and classifications
updated, where appropriate. The policy should also specify how the updated
modes and levels of instruction shall be used to help assure workload equity
between faculty.
Already, different colleges are
allocated different S/F Rs reflecting (in theory) the type of teaching they
do. The basis for allocating those S/F Rs was once something called the “mode
and level of instruction” as delineated in CSU guidelines that assigned
different “C factors” to different kinds of classes (see earlier discussion:
“Problems with the WTU system.”) The AIM Task Force suspects that many of our
courses are no longer appropriately classified, since this classification
scheme was moribund for years until being recently revived for some purposes at
SJSU. Nevertheless, we believes that workload is related to the
appropriate pedagogy for each class. A class of twenty graduate students may
be significantly more work than a class of 20 undergraduates, and these
differences should be reflected in the workload assignments of individual
faculty.
The CSU workload study confirms that CSU faculty report many
hours of work each week in the arena of individualized student instruction.
This includes graduate and undergraduate thesis supervision, directed reading,
and much more. An appropriate mode and level classification system should be
capable of incorporating this important aspect of teaching when determining a
faculty member’s overall work assignment.
By
reviewing and updating the classification of the SJSU curriculum under the
“mode and level” document we make it possible to compare teaching workload in
ways that go beyond the sheer numbers of classes and students. A rational
classification system for the curriculum is a crucial step toward achieving
workload equity.
Recommendation 5. Committee
reductions and support.
The University should move to
a system of far fewer committees that meet more intensively and that are far
better supported with assigned time.
·
The Organization and Government Committee of the Academic
Senate should prepare policy to dramatically consolidate university
committees. Such a reduction must be accompanied with assigned time for all
committee members who serve on the new, more intensive committees.
·
As colleges and departments receive funds to implement the
nine-unit model, they should similarly pare committees and better reward,
through assigned time, those who serve.
The 1994 WASC accreditation report
specifically “recommends that SJSU…streamline the committee structure so that
faculty spend less time, but more directly impact, governance”.
The AIM Task Force believes that our proposal will fulfill this important WASC
recommendation. While some faculty may spend more of their time working on
committees, they would be compensated with a reduction in their teaching
workload. On a whole, the recommendation would result in fewer faculty who are
subjected to multiple committee assignments. The Task Force does not propose
to reduce the importance of service and governance activities, but to
streamline them, better compensate them and, in effect, make them more
professional and successful.
The current system of committees at
SJSU does not do justice to faculty workload nor to academic governance. While
all faculty are expected to do some service, the general rule is that they
discharge their normal service duties (as anticipated in the 3/15 WTU formula)
in their departments and colleges, by advising students, serving on local
curriculum committees, job searches, etc. Service at the University level,
however, is customarily seen as a function beyond the call of duty, despite the
Senate’s best efforts to place a university-level service requirement in the
RTP policy.
Because faculty are reluctant to
increase their workload by engaging in university-level service, the current
system has been constructed with an eye toward preventing service from being
too onerous—it has become the University’s equivalent of uncompensated
volunteer work. A vast array of committees has been constructed, each of
which has a narrow charge. Nonetheless, university service is commonly
shunned by the average faculty member. In Spring 2002, for example, most of
the Senate seats up for election are unfilled or uncontested. One college,
Social Science, has all four of its seats open and only one candidate.
By consolidating committees and
better supporting them with assigned time, workload will be substantially
improved in two ways. First, many committee positions would be eliminated and
faculty returned to their colleges and departments for their other duties.
Second, those faculty who remained would receive some compensation for their
increased workload.
As an important additional benefit,
it is quite likely that governance would be dramatically improved. In the CSU
Workload study, a clear majority of respondents disagreed with the statement
that “Faculty Governance Participation was rewarded,” and an equally clear
majority disagreed with the statement that “Committee Participation is
rewarded.”
By placing genuine resources behind faculty governance and committee work, this
measure might help to correct this problem at SJSU. Interest in the Senate and
other forms of university service would grow if faculty realize that
participation in service does not result in an uncompensated increase in
workload.
Organization and Government should
consider ways in which a handful of policy committees could, through the use of
multiple subcommittees, more regular meetings, etc., take on the functions of
the current operating committees. The goal should be to increase committee
effectiveness by rewarding a smaller (overall) number of committee members for
their more intensive work.
As the nine-unit model comes into
being, increasing numbers of t/tt faculty will receive assigned time. The AIM
Task Force believes that colleges and departments should direct some of these
resources to rewarding those faculty who take on the most demanding service
loads at the department and college levels. This should be accompanied by a
review of committee work similar to the university-level review mentioned
above, with an eye toward shrinking the numbers of committees but providing
much better support to those that remain.
Recommendation 6. Elimination
of “unfunded mandates” and reduction of “underfunded mandates.”
The Executive Committee of the
Academic Senate should prepare policies suspending the implementation of
programs driven by “unfunded” or “underfunded mandates,” and create policy that
will prevent any similar measures in the future that result in a net increase
in faculty workload. The Executive Committee should review all policies
created or promulgated since 1990 that have had the effect of increasing
faculty workload and eliminate, reduce, or reform as many as possible.
By unfunded mandates, we mean those
programs that require additional work of faculty without providing concomitant
support to faculty, chiefly in the form of assigned time. The most obvious
such mandate in recent years has been the implementation of report-generating
assessment measures in our general education program and more recently within
the majors. However, the creation of faculty activity reports, post-tenure
review, program planning, and a whole host of similar activities also fall into
the pattern of requiring faculty work without providing concomitant faculty
compensation.
The
committee discussed assessment work extensively. While the 1994 WASC
accreditation report identified assessment as an area which SJSU needed to
improve, the same report also discussed the real problem of faculty “overload.”
Unfortunately, our efforts to improve assessment have also contributed to the
overload experienced by faculty. If the newest assessment activities are of
genuine importance to the university, then they should be funded appropriately
so that they do not compound the overload problem also identified by WASC.
Besides assessment work, SJSU should
not create self-inflicted workload wounds by being over zealous in
implementation of bureaucratic and system mandates. On the contrary, a
minimalist approach should be taken with compliance measures. Recently, Vice
Chancellor David Spence proposed reducing program planning, indicating that the
system administration did not make use of the reports it generates.
Post-tenure review also seems ripe for revision. In general, SJSU policies
that have been created to fulfill external mandates should be examined
carefully to determine if they require more work than is absolutely required,
and they should be reduced in complexity and extent whenever possible.
Recommendation 7. Lottery
funds for student assistance in workload alleviation.
The Budget Advisory Committee
of the Academic Senate should review the assessment data generated by the Spring
2002 AIM workload alleviation program, and design a lottery category to fund
the use of student assistants who can contribute to workload alleviation.
The spring workload alleviation program generated
about $380,000 of proposed expenditures on student assistants, out of total
available funds of $750,000. In reviewing the applications, the AIM Task Force
was impressed with the many thoughtful and creative ways in which students
could be used to help faculty cope with their work. Students, and not only
faculty, stood to benefit from the program as they acquired positive work
experiences in the university. We realizes that the short notice for
fall applications may have made the use of student assistants more popular than
they otherwise would have been, but nonetheless believe that this component of
the program is well worth continuing, provided that it is understood that such
expenditures are strictly supplementary to the other AIM recommendations.
The
AIM Task Force envisions a lottery category of approximately $400,000 for
student assistance in workload alleviation. Applications for this category
should be drawn from departments or programs and vetted through the colleges
and Library. Using the criteria we developed for the spring program categories
2 and 3, the B.A.C. should award grants with a pro rata cap on the size
of the award for any department. The general rule should be that each
department that produces a meritorious proposal should receive a fair share of
the funds to hire student assistants.
The
AIM Task Force believes that this program fits the two most important Lottery
restrictions in much the same way as faculty development grants fit. First,
these expenditures support innovation by freeing faculty to focus their
attention on a host of pursuits that influence the instructional mission.
Second, just as faculty development grants are annual expenditures and not
ongoing line items, the student assistance grants would also be annual
expenditures based upon a similar process of review each year. We expect that
the program will become sufficiently popular that the university will wish to
continue it, alongside faculty development grants, long after the nine-unit
model is achieved.
Recommendation 8: Funding AIM
Fiscal Principle One: Funding
the nine-unit model should be the University’s highest budgetary priority.
Initiatives unrelated to workload alleviation should be limited or delayed
until after AIM recommendations are achieved.
Fiscal principle one reflects the reality that AIM
recommendations are not achievable unless they are pursued by the whole campus,
with a single-minded devotion, for a period of years. There will be many
legitimate needs on campus that will have to go unmet if the AIM
recommendations are to be achieved. There is no point in embarking on this
serious undertaking unless the Senate, administration, and campus are willing
to commit to achieving the Aim recommendations as their highest fiscal
priority.
Fiscal Principle Two: Since existing funding sources will prove to be
insufficient for full funding of AIM recommendations, SJSU budget leaders
should see that AIM
20
recommendations receive a
significant portion of every new
revenue stream coming to the university that can legally be used for this effort,
until such time as full implementation is reached.
Fiscal principle two discusses the general funding
strategy. AIM recommendations must be funded primarily with revenues that the
University does not currently possess. As the current fiscal crisis recedes
and better times prevail, a portion of all new revenue streams should be
directed toward the fulfillment of AIM objectives. In this way, SJSU may be
able to grow itself into workload alleviation, by calling on the wide range of
different sources of revenue that will eventually become available.
Fiscal Principle Three: The
leadership of SJSU, including the Senate and its Budget Advisory Committee, and
the President and his administration, should seek creative, entrepreneurial,
responsible, and effective suggestions for raising the funds required for full
implementation of AIM recommendations.
Fiscal principle three points out that discovering ways to
fund AIM initiatives should be a shared responsibility. The AIM Task Force
considers it beyond its charge and its capacity to offer an elaborate and
detailed fiscal plan. It will take creativity, openness to new ideas, and
considerable leadership to successfully implement AIM, especially in its fiscal
dimensions. We offer a list of suggestions in that spirit. The Task Force
believes that all of these alternatives, not just one or two, must be
aggressively pursued in order to provide the fiscal base for workload reform.
I.
Whenever enrollment growth dollars are available, the first use should
be to prevent the current faculty/student ratio and the permanent/temporary
ratios of faculty from deteriorating, and to improve these ratios if possible,
taking into consideration the other enrollment dependent needs of the
university.
One of the primary sources of new revenues that SJSU
receives comes in the form of the additional state support for the additional
students that we accept, as well as the fees that these students pay. The
nine-unit model cannot ultimately be achieved solely with the use of these enrollment
growth funds, but its achievement can be made impossible unless a sufficient
portion of these funds are used to, at a minimum, maintain the existing S/F
R.
II.
The university should make the solicitation of endowed
funds for faculty support a high priority.
The AIM Task Force believes that
launching a major campaign, with the objective of raising endowment to support
faculty as the core of the campaign, is an essential element toward achieving
the objectives of AIM.
21
III.
SJSU should utilize grants, contracts, CE Revenue Trust, Lottery and all
other discretionary funds available to support strategies that alleviate
faculty workload. As the University finishes implementation of CMS, it should
redirect one-time CMS expenditures toward strategies to alleviate faculty
workload. These sources of funds may be particularly suitable for funding year
to year annual expenses such as the sabbatical program and the provision of
assigned time.
SJSU is an “early follower” in
the implementation of the CMS system, meaning that we are currently
experiencing huge costs associated with conversion to this software package.
As implementation of this conversion is attained and expenditures decrease, the
AIM Task Force recommends that equivalent expenditures be directed toward
funding assigned time and the expanded sabbatical program. The one-time
expenditures on CMS, which were presented to the Senate in November as
$1,512,000 for 2001-2002, have been funded through grants from the Foundation,
donations from Spartan Shops, one-time 'charges' to revenue funds, and annual
allocations from any university roll-forward balances. These same sources
should be used, wherever legally they can, for the one-time recurring cost of
sabbaticals and assigned time. This should lessen the shock of implementation
as one major effort (CMS) is replaced with another major effort (expanded
sabbaticals and assigned time).
IV.
The base budget of the University should be scrutinized to determine if
there are portions that can be legally and responsibly shifted to year to year
recurring costs, so as to free permanent funds for faculty hiring.
A central difficulty in supporting progress toward the
nine-unit model is that many available funds are not permanent and thus cannot
be used for the permanent hiring of faculty. For example, grants, contracts,
CE Revenue Trust, Lottery and contributions from Spartan Shops, and other
discretionary funds fall into this category. However, these funds can
sometimes can be used to replace base funds that can be shifted to faculty
hiring. For example, the current 47 sabbaticals (not the proposed expanded
program) appear to be funded from the base, but since they are one-time
recurring expenditures they could be funded with a wide range of one-time
funds. If they were entirely funded from such sources, the existing base
dollars might be transferred to hire some of the faculty needed to attain the
nine-unit model.
V.
SJSU should take a lead role in coordinating campus activism throughout
the state to influence the state legislative process, by contacting regional
legislators in their home offices. The Academic Senate should craft a Sense of
the Senate Resolution endorsing specific changes in the California Department
of Finance marginal cost funding formula, support for graduate education on the
“12 units = full time model”, and fee policy, and should use this resolution as
a foundation for a campaign to reform legislative funding of the CSU.
22
Finally, the Academic Senate should craft a Sense of
the Senate Resolution urging that the Legislature change the funding mechanisms
for the CSU in specific ways, based upon the analysis developed in ASCSU’s
September 2001 report Meeting the Needs of the People of California. The
Academic Senate should solicit the cooperation of the ASCSU, CSU, CFA, and all
local campuses in a coordinated effort to approach legislators in their home
offices. Each campus should send a delegation, to consist of the President of
the University, President of the local chapter of CFA, and Chair of the
Academic Senate, to jointly and cooperatively approach members of the
Legislature who represent their service regions, in their local offices.
VI.
SJSU students should consider campus fee increases to support the
academic mission of the university, if fees can be shown to significantly
enhance the quality of their education.
Students at some other campuses in the CSU have approved
additional fees to help improve the quality of their education. Before
crafting a fee proposal, students should investigate the success of similar
programs at San Luis Obispo, San Diego, and other CSU campuses and choose the
model that will work best for SJSU. Faculty workload is an area of interest to
students, since it is directly related to the quality of teaching and advising,
student retention, and the reputation of their university and the degrees they
earn.
23
Appendix A
Summary of Fall 2001 Process
and Outcomes
During Summer 2001, the Provost’s
Executive Council, comprised of the Council of Deans and the Council of AVPs,
met in a two-day off-site retreat to discuss and establish campus academic
investment priorities for the short and long-term. The top investment priority
identified during the retreat was “Faculty Workload/Morale/Sabbaticals.”
As a result, early in the Fall
2001 semester, Provost Goodman worked with the Academic Senate to form and
charge the AIM Task Force (official charge and membership memo attached).
Provost Goodman allocated $1,000,000 to the Task Force for use in Spring 2002
to alleviate faculty workload; that allocation was subsequently reduced to
$750,000 due to unforeseen system-wide budget difficulties.
Task Force Chairs Peter and Nance
convened the initial meeting of the Task Force, during which it was established
that the Task Force would meet weekly throughout the semester. Two primary
tasks were identified: develop and implement a short-term process for
expending the 2001-02 allocation during the Spring 2002 semester, and produce a
report describing a model for long-term faculty workload alleviation.
The short-term first task
absorbed the vast majority of the Task Force’s time during the Fall 2001
semester. The first discussion and debate focused on whether the funds should
be spent in a quick flurry of activity in the spring or rolled over to Fall
2002 when they could be used for more structured and planned purposes.
Finally, it was recommended that departments be encouraged to use the money in
the spring, but could choose to roll it over if they wish.
Once the recommendation was
completed to encourage use of the funds in Spring 2002, the discussion then
turned to what types of workload alleviation activities would be feasible on
short notice. The Task Force agreed that a “one size fits all” model would not
be appropriate, as departments would have different needs and capabilities for
use of the funds. Therefore, after several rounds of discussion and revision,
it was agreed that four categories of activities should be funded:
1. Reassignment of faculty
time. (Reassignment of faculty time is not an option in the Summer.)
24
2. Hiring graduate
assistants, teaching assistants, or student assistants to help individual unit
3 faculty with their teaching assignment. Such hires should be above the historic
norms for the department and represent new faculty support opportunities that
would not be available or funded otherwise.
3. Hiring graduate
assistants or student assistants to help individual tenured or tenure-track
faculty with their scholarly assignment. Such hires should be above the
historic norms for the department and represent new faculty support
opportunities that would not be available or funded otherwise.
4.
Other Uses. Departments may submit proposals for other activities in Spring or
Summer 2002 not listed in 1-3 above. Proposals in this category will be
reviewed by the AIM Task Force to determine eligibility for funding based on
the activity’s direct contribution to alleviating faculty workload.
A set of guidelines and timelines
for departmental proposals to use AIM funds was distributed in November 2001,
with a deadline of December 10, 2001 for submission to the AIM Task Force (copy
attached). The Task Force then met on December 13, 2001 to review and approve
department proposals as appropriate within the Task Force guidelines.
Proposals considered within Categories 1, 2 and 3 were accepted with cursory
review, and the majority of the review then focused on the Category 4
proposals.
Uses of Funds by Departments
With only a few exceptions,
departments submitted reasonable and acceptable proposals. Details of the
submissions within the four categories are as follows:
Category 1. Reassignment of
faculty time.
Number of Proposals: 22
Total Dollars: $258,151
Total FTEF reassigned:
10.35
Category 2. Student Assistants
to help with teaching assignment.
Number of
Proposals: 41
Total Dollars:
$342,732
Category 3. Student Assistants
to help with scholarly assignment.
Number of
Proposals: 6
Total Dollars:
$37,251
Category 4. Other Uses.
Number of
Proposals: 12
Total Dollars:
$62,374
25
Roll-Forward Requests:
Number of
Proposals: 8
Total Dollars:
$65,426
In reviewing the Category 4
proposals, the Task Force found that most were clearly acceptable towards the
goal of alleviating faculty workload and were quickly approved. Examples
included hiring part-time faculty or Graduate Assistants to do advising, hiring
student assistants to do relevant technology (i.e., web/database) development,
providing summer stipends to alleviate Fall workload, etc. A few proposals
that were unclear were referred back to the department to clarify and/or
revise, and were eventually approved. By the start of the Spring 2002
semester, essentially all department proposals for use or roll-forward of their
AIM funds were approved.
26
Appendix B
Senate Construction of AIM
SM-F01-1 (As amended by SM-F01-3)
At its meeting of September 10, 2001, the 2001-2002
Executive Committee, acting as the Academic Senate (By-Law 3.3b), passed the
following Senate Management Resolution presented by Kenneth Peter.
SENATE MANAGEMENT RESOLUTION
Establishment of an Academic Innovation Model (AIM) Task
Force
Whereas, The mission of SJSU would be enhanced if
its faculty were more substantially empowered to innovate in research,
teaching, and service; and
Whereas, Innovation is currently limited for many
faculty both by the inflexibility of the so-called "4/4" teaching
schedule and by a lack of sufficient resources, support structure, and time;
and
Whereas, Greater flexibility in scheduling and the
provision of additional resources would make it possible for faculty to develop
new curricula, improve the quality of teaching, engage (with students and
others) in leading research programs, advise, orient, and retain students,
participate in the life and improvement of the university through service
functions, and improve the morale and climate of the university; and
Whereas, The Provost has identified and will
commit substantial resources to support a more innovative workload distribution
as early as Spring 2002, and has expressed his desire for advice regarding the
most effective way of allocating those resources both for Spring 2002 and the
longer term; now, therefore, be it
Resolved,
That an ad hoc university committee be formed to create an academic
innovation model (the AIM Task Force), with the structure, charge, tasks and
membership shown on the attached document; the members of the committee shall
be appointed by the Provost after close consultation with the Executive
Committee; be it further
Resolved, That the AIM Task Force promptly
recommend to the Provost how best to distribute currently available resources
in order to foster academic innovation during the Spring 2002 semester; be it
further
27
Resolved, That the AIM Task Force submit its
long-term recommendations to the Provost and the Academic Senate by March 2002,
at which time the Academic Senate shall discuss the long-term recommendations
provided by the AIM Task Force and shall, by Sense-of-the-Senate resolution,
provide its evaluation of the report and offer any additional advice it deems
necessary; and be it
Resolved, Long-term recommendations provided by
the AIM Task Force will be forwarded to the appropriate campus bodies for
implementation, such as Senate Policy Committees on matters concerning policy
changes, Academic Affairs on matters concerning administrative implementation
issues, etc. The AIM Task Force will cease to exist as soon as it transmits
its recommendations to the Senate and the Provost.
The Ad Hoc University Committee to construct an Academic
Innovation Model
(AIM Task Force)
***Structure***
Co Chairs:
1. Kenneth Peter (Executive Committee, Academic
Senate)
2. Bill Nance (Office of the Provost)
Membership:
3. Dean
4. Dean
5. Associate Dean
6. Representative for Department Chairs (faculty)
7. Representative for Department Chairs (faculty)
8. Representative of Executive Committee, Academic
Senate (faculty)
9. Faculty member at large
10. Faculty member at large
11. Faculty member at large
12. Faculty member at large
13. Faculty member from General Unit
14. Lecturer
15. CFA representative as non-voting technical advisor
on contract issues.
16. AVP/IPAR as non-voting technical advisor on budget
and resource issues.
17. AVP/FA as non-voting technical advisor on contract
and faculty development issues.
28
All members to be selected are to
represent campus diversity including representation of all colleges, differing
stages of faculty career development, differing kinds of administrative
experience, and membership in differing campus/community constituencies.
***Charge***
The AIM Task Force is charged to promote the highest-quality
academic environment possible in all disciplines throughout San José State
University by fostering academic innovation among faculty and the work in which
they are involved. After wide consultation with campus communities, including
students, and working within the framework of Senate documents on
appointment, rank and tenure, and the MOU, and based on
established principles of faculty development, including but not limited to
Boyer's model, the task force will strive to nurture an appropriate mix of the
various types of faculty work that result (e.g., the Teacher-Scholar, the
Scholar-Teacher, the Service-Teacher, etc.)
The task force should begin with the premise that successful
academic innovation depends in large measure upon investment of resources in
faculty so that faculty can direct a portion of their time and energy toward
innovations in teaching, scholarship, and service. To this end, the AIM Task
Force is more specifically charged to undertake the following tasks:
- Create an open, clear and fair means to allocate resources
identified by the Provost that serves to foster academic innovation in
Spring 2002, and which may serve as a model for a more permanent policy
for distributing resources to foster academic innovation in subsequent
years.
- Identify additional resources, from both existing and
potential new sources, that can be used to support and enhance academic
innovation in the short term and into the future.
- Develop a model depicting what faculty workload should
look like in 2007, create a plan for achieving this model over time, and
develop benchmarks for identifying progress towards this model.
29
Appendix C
Cost Estimates for
Recommendations
Recommendation 1. The
Nine-Unit Model.
Amount: $8.3 million minimum.
Explanation: This amount would
enable SJSU to approach the nine-unit model, while holding class sizes constant
and maintaining a ratio of permanent to temporary faculty of 70:30. It
includes salaries, benefits, and allowances for OE&E support and office
support for new positions. The AIM Task Force notes that the stimulation of
academic innovation would require an even more substantial investment of
resources above this bare minimum.
Recommendation 2. Sabbaticals.
Amount: $1.5 million maximum.
Explanation: This is the additional
amount that would be required to fund every eligible faculty member for a
sabbatical every seven years (current number of sabbaticals: 47; total
required: 102.) However, many faculty may choose to opt for a Difference in
Pay leave instead of a sabbatical, as they presently do, which would lower the
cost substantially, and other factors might prevent every eligible faculty
member from taking a sabbatical. Thus, this amount is a maximum.
Recommendation 3. Equity.
Amount: no cost.
Explanation: this recommendation is
designed to produce guidelines to help distribute workload more equitably
between faculty. The implementation of the Recommendation 1 (nine-unit model)
will create opportunities to make the system of work more equitable, and
contains any costs that may be associated with Recommendation 3.
Recommendation 4. Mode and
Level of Instruction.
Amount: no cost.
30
Explanation: this recommendation is
designed to help with Recommendation 3, and contains no costs of its own.
Obviously, better funding for thesis supervision, graduate seminars etc. would
be costly, but this cost is subsumed in Recommendation 1 (nine-unit model.) A
transition to a nine-unit model would create the flexibility required to
distribute workload in an equitable way, with more attention paid to the mode
and level of instruction, and according to equity guidelines developed by the
Senate.
Recommendation 5. Committee
Reductions and Support.
Amount: $85,000 - $220,000.
