Intent

These guidelines are developed to:

• clarify faculty distribution of effort,
• achieve consistency across different administrative units within the College,
• provide a framework for decisions that advance faculty and program excellence in teaching and scholarship.

The College of Health of Human Sciences values both teaching and scholarship. As a College, HHS is currently characterized by a strong commitment to serving a large number of students with quality educational programs. To strengthen our future, these guidelines seek to retain our quality in teaching while elevating our capacity to achieve excellence in scholarship. These guidelines support these results by increasing faculty time available for scholarship and increasing our financial support.

Faculty expectations and evaluation involves measures of both quality and quantity of teaching and scholarship. For example, devoting more time to scholarship increases the responsibility to be productive in a manner that can be evaluated objectively by one’s peers. This document primarily addresses issues relating to quantity; the relationship between teaching FTE and course credits, and the distribution of faculty effort across teaching, advising, and other assignments, scholarship, and service. The quality of one’s work will be objectively evaluated in accordance with department and College review and University Promotion and Tenure Guidelines.

"FTE" and HHS Faculty Expectations

In this document the level of effort and relative distribution between different functions are described in terms of full-time equivalents (FTE). Faculty appointments are professional positions with quality standards that are established independent of the amount of time it takes to complete a task. FTE estimates are interpreted as guidelines for the relative distribution of effort, not a mechanism for determining the number of hours dedicated to a given task.

At the time of adoption, these guidelines are part of a new “vision” for the College. As such, they do not necessarily reflect current faculty positions, but a goal we will work to achieve. When successfully implemented, the “standard” resident tenured or tenure-track faculty position within the College of Health and Human Sciences will reflect a load of .45 FTE teaching, .45 FTE scholarship, and .10 FTE service. Extension faculty and faculty on annual appointments will have assignments that will vary from the “standard” distribution of effort.

Extension Assignments

The workload of tenured and tenure-track faculty who are supported through funds originating in OSU Extension can be similarly profiled. These positions are typically 12 month. Typical expectations relating to the allocation of effort between the three missions of the University for full-time Extension faculty vary depending on whether the position is located on-, or off- campus;

Off-campus positions typically have assignments that are 80% teaching, 15% scholarship, and 5% service, while

On-campus positions typically have assignments that are 60% teaching, 30% scholarship, and 10% service.

County-based faculty members play an important part linking University expertise and research with needs within the community. Their "teaching" role is to identify the needs of the community, develop and deliver an education program impacting those needs, grow support for needed programs, and evaluate and report outcomes. Scholarship expectations include meaningful participation in and growing financial support for applied research to increase understanding of important issues relating to their communities, and sharing their innovative work with peers in a manner that can be validated as significant.

On-Campus Extension faculty members are a critical bridge between on-campus faculty and students and community education through Extension off-campus faculty and other community collaborators. A College goal is to increase flexibility, funding stability, and program strength through on-campus resident and Extension faculty whose appointments can be interchanged for short and longer periods of time depending on needs and opportunities. An important role of these positions is to help assure that Extension community education programs take advantage of and reflect the best available research findings on a given topic. A second important role is to develop and lead applied research and education programs to help resolve important issues within Oregon's communities.

Multiple Factors will influence Individual Faculty Expectations

Each faculty position is unique; therefore defining a rigid set of expectations for all faculty members in the College is neither possible nor appropriate.

Department chairs work to maximize the effectiveness of their faculty to meet the department and College goals related to teaching, scholarship, and service. They do so by individualizing faculty assignments to meet the different responsibilities needed to fulfill the mission and goals of the unit, recognizing the talents, interests, and expertise of the faculty. The following are some of the factors that may result in differences between individual faculty assignments.

• External funding sufficient to warrant reduced teaching expectations.
• Increased teaching expectations to meet departmental needs and improved efficiency
• Major administrative appointments (such as major program leadership or Department Chair responsibilities)
• Specific position expectations such as for Extension programming
• Location on and off-campus or at OSU-Cascades campus
• Differential emphasis in graduate advising based on the degree program and research emphases
• Allocation of Ph.D. advisees
• Class size and distribution of GTA support
• Departmental differences in accredited professional training programs and related constraints of these programs
• Involvement in important outreach efforts and their contribution to scholarship and/or teaching
• Distance education and priority academic program development
• Faculty experience

Documentation of Individual Faculty Assignments

General roles and responsibilities associated with a specific assignment are described in a position description. This document should be reviewed annually, but should be general enough that it only needs to be revised when there are significant changes in the overall role and responsibilities associated with a specific position. Such revisions, when needed, are made by the department chair in conjunction with the faculty member. Specific expectations for a faculty in a given year or time period may be defined in a plan of work. The plan of work describes the specific courses, scholarship, and other major tasks that a faculty member is expected to complete over the specified period of time. This plan will be developed by the faculty member and chair in conjunction with the annual review of faculty (PROF).

Faculty position descriptions assign FTE in three areas: 1) teaching, advising and other assignments; 2) scholarship and creative activity; and 3) service. The following sections describe College guidelines for faculty expectations in each of these areas.

Teaching, Advising and Other Assignments

For resident instruction, the College will strive to achieve workloads in which teaching a standard 3-credit course (undergraduate or graduate course) will be considered a .25 FTE per term or .083 FTE per 9-month academic year. The goal for tenure and tenure-track faculty assignments is to have no more than 45% of the available FTE assigned to teaching. This FTE represents five 3-credit, four 4-credit, or three 5-credit classes per academic year. Achieving this goal will require increasing the efficiency in our course offerings by increasing the number of credits per course and offering fewer courses. On average, accomplishing this goal will increase faculty time for and expectations relating to scholarship.

Quality teaching is essential, and is at the heart of the university mission. It is imperative that all tenure and tenure-track faculty contribute to the teaching mission, with priority given to teaching the core courses within one’s department. Therefore, it is expected that all tenure-track and tenured resident faculty, regardless of their graduate student advising and ability to fund “release time”, will have a minimum of .17 FTE assigned to teaching activities (e.g. 2 core classes per academic year).

Professional advising and related work are recognized as part of teaching assignments.

The majority of undergraduate academic advising is handled by the College's Academic Advising and Student Support office.

Scholarship and Creative Activity

All tenured and tenure-track faculty members are expected to conduct rigorous, high-quality research and scholarship. According to university guidelines at least .15 FTE must be allocated to scholarship. Based upon the administrative prioritization of increasing scholarship in our College, our goal is to increase faculty FTE assigned to scholarship for on-campus academic tenure and tenure-track faculty to a minimum of .45. The purpose of such a shift is congruent with the College's initiative to raise the visibility of our research programs and to increase externally funded research projects in the College.

External Funding and Release Time

External funding can change teaching and scholarship assignments when the funding provides sufficient faculty salary and benefits to justify the adjustment and when the faculty member and department chair agree. The basic formula for reducing teaching load is as follows:

Reduce teaching load by one 3-credit course for every 8.3% of faculty salary and OPE secured through external sources (i.e. one 3-credit course reduction per term is 25% salary and OPE or 8.3% for the 9-month academic year).

Unless justified by unusual circumstances, tenure and tenure-track resident faculty will not be approved to reduce teaching loads below a minimum of .17 FTE (e.g. 2 core courses or minimum of 6 credits per academic year).

Funds "released" through this process (because a portion of the faculty salary is now being paid through external funds) will be available to the appropriate Department Chair to cover the cost of teaching the course or courses from which the faculty member has been released, associated administrative costs and other investments.

AES Supported Research

One funding source for research within the College of Health and Human Sciences is through federal support for the Agricultural Experiment Station (AES). The College is moving towards a model in which AES support is competitively allocated in a manner that aligns AES investments with AES priorities, and when appropriate will help generate additional extramural funds. As this is implemented, AES support will be treated the same as other competitive grant support in determining faculty workload expectations. High research-related FTE commitments, when funded from AES or other internal or external research funds, can justify reductions in teaching load, consistent with the College policy on release time.

Service and Administrative Duties

All tenured and tenure-track faculty members are to provide service to their department, college, university, and profession. The recommended "standard" resident faculty position within the College of Health and Human Sciences will reflect a standard load of 0.10 FTE for service.

Faculty members are often assigned administrative duties as part of their responsibilities to their department, college, or university. If these appointments involve extensive time commitments that consume significant FTE over a significant period of time, faculty members may discuss a change in work load to reflect these responsibilities. Typically, chairing departmental or college committees or providing leadership for a faculty search is within the normal realm of service to the department and college, and do not warrant re-negotiation of work expectations. Allocation of FTE for departmental administrative duties (e.g. graduate coordinator, program leader) is negotiable between the department chair and faculty member. When such duties are sufficient to justify a change in pre-existing expectations, and are expected to last for a significant period of time, they should be documented in a revised position description. Other assignments, when significant, should be documented in a person's position description, with FTE allocated (e.g. extended education, international programs, and academic affairs).