I. Background
The School of Social Work considers a full-time workload during the appointment period to consist of:
A. Teaching: includes preparation and delivery of courses, grading, and other administrative duties surrounding delivery of coursework.
B. Research: includes collection of data, analysis, and publication, writing grants, and other discipline appropriate scholarships.
C. Faculty Service and Development: includes learning new skills and/or updating old skills; student advising; university and community (professional and uncompensated) service.
The department recognizes the need to maintain a flexible agenda for teaching, research, and development/service.
II. Teaching Load
Balancing flexibility, department instructional planning requires an annual determination of faculty teaching load for the coming academic year. This determination is made during the annual faculty planning and evaluation process that occurs each spring semester. Three types of teaching loads are negotiable with the department chair, depending on the faculty member’s projected research and service commitments and satisfactory fulfillment of expectations in the previous year.
A. Standard teaching load:
The teaching load typical of tenure-track faculty is equivalent to 9 credit hours per semester. Faculty with a standard teaching load are expected to conduct research and publish. This teaching load accounts for approximately 60 % of the total workload. Research and service combine to account for the remaining 40% of effort.
B. Heightened teaching load:
The teaching load for a full-time Lecturer is equivalent to 12 credit hours per semester, which accounts for 90% of the total workload. Research and service combine to account for the remaining 10% of effort.
C. Reduced teaching load:
Faculty who serve as principal investigators on extramural funded projects and oversee the thesis work of graduate students, in addition to publishing at least one peer-reviewed manuscript per year, will be considered to have a ] 70 heightened research load subject to suitable funding. The teaching load of such faculty shall be reduced by one or two courses per year, accounting for approximately 40-50% of effort. Additional reductions in teaching load may be negotiated on a case by case basis, with approval from the Dean. Examples of such circumstances include, but are not limited to:
● Teaching buyout from grants.
● Administrative roles, such as department director and program coordinators.
● Mentorship of a significant number of graduate students in the research and write-up phase of a thesis or dissertation; such mentorships can be accumulated so that a course release can be scheduled strategically.
● Serving on graduate theses or doctoral committees.
● Large course sections: It is the practice of the School of Social Work to assign student assistants to faculty who teach large sections, especially for instructors whose large-enrollment courses require written assignments and assessment tasks. In the event that a student assistant is not assigned due to scheduling or other conflicts, one such section could count as 2 sections for the purpose of assigned teaching load.
● Heightened advising load
III. Performance Evaluation
Performance according to workload type is evaluated each spring by means of the annual Faculty Activity Plan and chair’s evaluation, and in the case of untenured faculty, the Annual Progress Toward Tenure evaluation provides additional feedback. Department policy on Performance Evaluation specifies these processes.
Details about expected output and benchmarks for evaluation of faculty performance according to the above-listed workload arrangements are specified in the department’s Performance Evaluation policy.
The effects of faculty performance review on the promotion and tenure processes is specified in the departments’ Promotion and Tenure policies.
This policy is in accordance with University Policy 4560 and College of SSPA Workload Policy.
Adopted by the School of Social Work