TeachingLoad

=Changing Teaching Load at UMass Boston: A Systematic Proposal=

The overall idea of this proposal is that a UMassBoston-wide formula is established for calculating the teaching load of all departments. Departments can develop their own internal systems of credit for awarding course load reductions (e.g., “6 points earns you a CLR”) as long as these CLRs do not bring the department below the average teaching load across the university.

1. 	Any change involves a transition problem: How to get change if some lose out? Proposal: No department loses its current Teaching-related Resource Equivalents (TREs) for 3 years. After that, any losses happen only when benefited faculty leave or through reduced hiring of non-benefited part-timers. 2. 	Establish a formula for Teaching-related Resource Equivalents, e.g., full-time faculty (±cross-department assignments) + weighting1 * benefited part-timers + weighting2 * part-timers + weighting3 * professional staff serving students + weighting4 * clerical staff serving students (& serving faculty serving students). 3. 	Establish a formula for Weighted Student Credits (WSC), e.g., credits registered in non-CCDE courses for the year * weighting, where there may be different weightings for undergraduates, coursework graduate students, thesis Masters students, doctoral students, etc. 4. 	Calculate the Teaching Load (TL) for any unit as WSC/TRE. Refer to the Teaching Load for UMassBoston as a unit as the UTL and set the benchmark UTL at a specified time, e.g., 2006-7. 5.	If the 3-year average TL for a department is below the benchmark UTL, then no replacements will be authorized when benefited faculty leave and the part-time budget will be progressively reduced until the department rises to the benchmark. Departments can also increase course capacities, shift courses back from CCDE to state-funded sections, shift from 2& 2 to 3&2 to 3&3 in graduate programs that have 2& 2 loads, or adjust their internal credit system for CLRs. 6.	If the 3-year average TL for a department is above the benchmark UTL, the department has priority when a faculty or other budget line opens up. Meanwhile, the department can award CLRs based on their internal credit system, reduce course capacities, and employ part-timers—as long as this does not bring the department below the benchmark. 7.	The internally designed credit systems can be customized to the particular needs of each department. Constraints on these systems to ensure fairness may be set by collective bargaining. In the meantime, it is expected that every department’s system will award faculty members credit for: independent studies and thesis/dissertation advising that is not part of the course load; chairing departments and directing/coordinating graduate programs; and pre-tenured years (so tenure-track faculty get CLRs or a semester off teaching before tenure review). 8.	As UMassBoston pushes enrollment up, the average UTL should not increase above the benchmark. Increases in enrollment may lead temporarily to increased TLs for departments, but, if the department’s TL rises above the benchmark, the TL can be reduced by new hires or the other TL-reduction measures listed in #6. 9.	University budget allocations to Colleges cover the salary expenses for teaching faculty and teaching-related support staff that arise under this system. That is, no unit gets squeezed because it happens to have more regular faculty teaching than part-timers, more senior faculty, and so on.