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 AIM’s philosophy
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 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. 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 massive increase in workload
associated with a more complex changing student body. Simply put, teaching in 1962 was far
simpler and less time consuming than teaching in 2002. In 1962 the student body was far more
homogenous. Students tended to come
from a higher social and economic strata of society than presently and had the
economic luxury of focusing upon the college experience. When the California State College system
began in 1961, our students They 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
include many from lower social and economic status who must work long hours at
low-paying jobs to be able to afford to be in college. 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. Students
require far more advising today, given the complexity of their lives, than in
1962. Many students are the first from
their families to ever attend college, and need to receive from faculty
advisors much of the encouragement, mentoring, and simple background
information about college that would have been provided by family members in a
previous generation. To compound this
further, 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.
In sum, teaching 12 WTUs today is significantly more work than was
teaching 12 WTUs in a previous generation.
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.
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.[1] 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.”[2] 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.[3]
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”[4]
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.[5]
In the pre-Bunzel era the classic distribution of work decades
ago, under the earliest WTU system (and its predecessors) 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 (more recently) 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 or
no 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. of
a previous generation and then have
added to it in numerous ways. It is
unrealistic to suggest we can solve our problems simply by working 
more--we need to work differently
today than previous generations. of faculty. 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.[6] In the view of the AIM Task Force AIM’s
view 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.[7] Faculty have had to cut back on
university and community service activities and on student advising to
accommodate the increased work in other areas, but still find themselves
working an extra hour and a half a week
AIM
suspects that trends at SJSU are ahead of the trends in the system as a whole,
given that our faculty are considerably
younger than faculty in the remainder of the system. As senior faculty who were hired in an era of quite different
research expectations are replaced by junior faculty who face the pressures of
the RTP process, time devoted to
research can be expected to accelerate even more. Certainly AIM members can cite numerous anecdotes of faculty who
spend 70 hours or more a week at work..
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 The CSU average
is 53%, SJSU is at 55%, but it compares unfavorably with campuses of
similar size: Northridge reports
is 59%, Long Beach is 60%, Fullerton 63%, San Francisco 68%, and
San Diego 77%. For SJSU to grant assigned time at the average level of these
comparable For SJSU to bring
itself to the average of these other large 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)[8]
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 suggested
that “[w]ithin CSU guidelines, can the teaching load of probationary
faculty be reduced?”[9] 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. 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.
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.[10] Faculty perceptions simply reflect the
reality that faculty are expected to do more research and service with no
appreciable decrease in teaching. We AIM
believes 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.
Although The AIM Task
Force recognizes that the a nine-unit model may 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
release 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[11],
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 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.
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, AIM we recommends
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. AIM We believes 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 1bc. 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-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 1cd. 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,
University Curriculum and Research 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.
Funding all approved sabbaticals would
especially benefit younger 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.[12] 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, whether presently or under a reduced 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, AIM
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.[13]
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”.[14] The AIM Task Force believes
that our proposal recommendation 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 AIM recommendation would result in fewer faculty
who are subjected to multiple committee assignments. AIM The Task Force does not propose to reduce the importance on 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. not a single candidate for any of them.
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.”[15] 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. Reduction or 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.”[16] 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.[17] 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 AIM 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 AIM 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. AIM
We expects 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 1b. Funding the Nine-Unit
Model.
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 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. To begin this
process, the AIM Task Force suggests several measures:
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. As a
necessary but insufficient prerequisite to other funding, nearly all new revenues derived from enrollment growth,
including General Fund support and fee support, should be directed to faculty
hiring in order to prevent S/F R from escalating further, and thus putting the
nine-unit model out of reach.
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. nearly all enrollment growth funds are
used for faculty hires. The state
funding formula provides the CSU, and then each campus, with a certain amount
of funds for each additional student we educate. That amount is based upon the “marginal cost” of the student
to the campus, or the amount it would cost to educate a student with the
cheapest faculty possible no overhead.
The State has failed to deliver even this paltry amount on a consistent
basis, as in AY 2001-2002 when the CSU enrolled 10,800 more students than the
Legislature funded. Since the nine-unit
model depends upon lowering S/FR, but enrollment growth funds come with an
increase in the number of students and an insufficient number of new faculty
positions, these funds by themselves will always be insufficient to achieve the
nine-unit model.
Every time
enrollment growth dollars are diverted for use in other parts of the
University, it means that more students have entered SJSU than the faculty who
would be necessary to keep up with their needs, which worsens the workload
situation and makes it less likely that the nine-unit model can be
achieved. Therefore, full use of
enrollment growth funds for faculty hires is merely the prerequisite for
achieving meaningful progress toward the nine-unit model.
II.
The university should make the solicitation
creation of endowed funds for faculty support a very 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. the
creation of an endowment must play an increasing role in funding and supporting
faculty. To the greatest extent
possible, our advancement efforts should be directed toward providing support for the core academic
mission of the university. This should
include assistance in attaining the nine-unit model.
In future
years, the University should redirect the part of the AY 2001/2002 budget that was used to defray the 1%“give-back” towards faculty hiring to reduce
S/F R.
The University has been forced
give back to the state 1% of its AY 2001-2002 budget to assist with the state
fiscal crisis. AIM recommends that the
sources of funds used to pay for this “give back” be redirected, in future
years, to the colleges to support their progress toward implementation of the
nine-unit model.
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. replace temporary CMS expenditures with permanent
expenditures for faculty hiring to reduce S/FR.
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.
attainment of the nine-unit model. 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 AIM).
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 exemplifying
campus activism throughout the state to influence within the
state legislative process, by contacting our 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.
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 University
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
SJSU’s service regions, in their local offices. Our delegation should urge that the
Legislature reform marginal cost funding for the CSU and replace it with a more
realistic formula for providing higher education to the people of California,
and urge that the state should fund full time equivalent graduate students at
the rate of 12 units = 1 FTES rather than the 15 units = 1 FTES that is used
for undergraduates. These efforts
should be coordinated with the CSU and CFA, however, SJSU should take a lead
role in exemplifying campus activism within the state legislative process. Hopefully, all campuses in the CSU will
take a similar role with their legislators and help to bring about this
desperately needed funding change.
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.
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.)
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Categories of Potential Workload
Solutions
AIM considered many different
proposals to deal with faculty workload in a constructive way, some of which
were suggested by our focus groups, some by Deans, others by members of AIM,
who collectively represent all the colleges and ranks of faculty. Most of these consistently fall into a
handful of different categories. It may
be useful to review these categories:
1. Those
proposals which spend University funds to lower teaching workload across the
board. For example, the expenditure of
funds to hire sufficient additional faculty to lower the teaching load for all
t/tt faculty from 12 WTU to 9 WTU, while keeping S/F R constant.
2. Those proposals which spend University
funds to periodically lower teaching workload for faculty. For example, a proposal to fully fund all
approved sabbaticals, or to grant sabbaticals every 3 years, or to release all
junior faculty in their 2nd or 3rd year from a portion of
their teaching load.
3. Those proposals which alter teaching
workload without the expenditure of University funds. For example, achieving a 9 WTU teaching load by mandating larger
class sizes, or converting the curriculum from a largely 3 unit base to a 4
unit base. Under this category might
also fit certain “workload equity” proposals designed to create greater equity
in workload between faculty without, necessarily, an overall reduction for the
campus.
4. Those proposals to reduce or to
compensate other sources of faculty workload besides teaching. For example, reducing paperwork requirements
or compensating faculty for it with assigned time, reducing committee work or
compensating it with assigned time.
5. Those proposals to spend University
funds to better support faculty in the course of their workload
assignments. For example, providing
various forms of student assistants to help faculty in their teaching and
research.
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.
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.
Explanation: This amount is to purchase assigned time for members of the Senate policy committees. Currently the Senate receives 2.0 assigned time, the University RTP committee receives .80, the Library Board receives .2, and BOGS receives 1.40. Current expenditures on assigned time for University service are about $200,000.
$85,000 would pay for a course of assigned time (one per year) for each Senator over and above the current appropriation for Senate officers. $220,000 would pay for two courses of assigned time (one per semester) for each Senator over and above the current appropriation for Senate officers.
Recommendation 6. Reduction or elimination of “unfunded mandates” and “underfunded
mandates.”
Amount: $150,000 - $300,000.
Explanation: $150,000 would provide one course of assigned time for each of approximately 15 GE courses in review and one course of assigned time for each of 15 program majors in review. Note that this would not cover ongoing assessment but could provide some extra help for those coordinators who must supervise data collection and generate reports, which occurs less frequently. $300,000 would provide two courses of assigned time for the same efforts, or broader coverage. For example, it could provide one course of assigned time for each of 45 GE courses and 15 program majors.
Recommendation 7. Lottery funds for student assistance in workload alleviation.
Amount: $400,000 of lottery funds.
Explanation: The recommendation is fairly self-explanatory. AIM allocated $380,000 for similar purposes in Spring 2002, so a total annual budget of $400,000 would be a substantial reduction below Spring 2002 levels. However, as a supplement to the nine-unit model this seems like a reasonable amount—large enough to constitute a substantial program worth the time of the Budget Advisory Committee to administer, and small enough to leave plenty of lottery funds left to run the more traditional Faculty Development Grants and other programs. This, and not faculty assigned time, seems like the most appropriate portion of the AIM spring program to be transferred to Lottery funding.