Faculty Workload and Reporting Requirements - UTDPP1060

Policy Statement

The University of Texas at Dallas recognizes that teaching (including classroom and on-line delivery), creative productivity and professional achievement, service, administrative activities, and professional development are important elements of faculty workloads.

Reason for Policy

Regents' Rules and Regulations Rule 31006 requires that each academic institution establish a faculty workload policy.

Scope

This policy applies to all faculty members who hold a title defined in Regents' Rules and Regulations Rule 31001.

Contacts

Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost

Responsibilities and Procedures

Faculty members at The University of Texas at Dallas have workload responsibility in the following broad areas:

• Teaching: Through teaching that is imaginative, effective, innovative, and interactive, we seek to prepare students to take leading roles in scholarship, their future professions, public service, and the lives of their communities.
• Creative Productivity and Professional Achievement: We seek to engage in research, scholarship, and creative and professional activities that are significant, substantive, and impactful.
• Service: Service activities support our university of scholars and students and our wider professional communities. Service obligations are commitments to scholarship, education, and to the university and external communities.
• Professional Development: Faculty are encouraged to take advantage of opportunities to develop as scholars and educators. In some Schools and disciplines, professional development is a formal requirement of accreditation agencies.

Each School, and in some cases departments/programs, shall establish, publish, and monitor specific academic unit workload requirements that set forth equitable and fair guidelines that permit each academic unit to best deploy its faculty members, in accordance with this policy, to foster student success, and to advance the university, school, and department/program missions. All workload decisions should be made with educational mission and financial implications in mind.

A dean or department/program head may assign differential teaching loads in recognition of differing individual circumstances such as large class sizes, team-taught courses, research productivity, time bought out by external grants, significant administrative or service assignments, significant advising responsibilities, or other activities aligned with the institution's mission and/or critical to student success.

The workload requirements shall give appropriate weight to the teaching, creative productivity and professional achievement, service (including administrative service), and professional development responsibilities and expectations of:

• Tenured and tenure-track faculty who have active programs in creative productivity and professional achievement;
• Tenured faculty who are less active or no longer active in creative productivity and professional achievement; and
• Nontenure-system faculty.

Specific Academic Unit Workload Requirements

Teaching load shall be set by Schools and departments/programs to be aligned with their disciplines and peers, based on faculty members total contribution in teaching, creative productivity and professional achievement, and service. It is expected that tenured faculty members with marginal research and service contributions teach up to eight courses per academic year as a recognition that teaching is their primary contribution to the unit.

Specific academic unit workload requirements for tenured/tenure-track faculty:

• Faculty appointed in the tenure system have responsibilities for teaching, creative productivity and professional achievement, and service.
• Each specific academic unit must establish the following criteria:
  1. a minimum undergraduate class size;
  2. a minimum graduate class size;
  3. a maximum buyout of organized courses and of SCH; and
  4. principles that would justify an exception.
• Prior to the academic year, the dean, in consultation with the provost, shall set teaching workload standards or goals for the School's tenured and tenure-track faculty as a whole, including the number of classes they will teach and the semester credit hours (SCH) they will generate.
• Each specific academic unit shall establish a teaching workload for probationary tenure-track faculty that is nationally competitive. For tenured faculty, teaching workloads may be adjusted up or down for teaching productivity as measured in SCH (i.e., significantly smaller or larger class enrollments), for either high or marginal scholarly productivity, for either high or marginal productivity in the supervision of externally funded research measured in numbers of externally supported research assistants, and for significant service and administrative assignments.
• Adjustment to teaching workload may also arise from the buyout of courses from funds derived from external research grants or from income derived from endowed faculty appointments.

Specific academic unit workload requirements for full-time nontenure-system faculty:

• The primary responsibility of full-time nontenure-system faculty is organized course instruction, service, and professional development unless otherwise specified in their appointment letters. The standard teaching load of such faculty is equivalent to eight three semester credit hours of organized instruction per academic year.
• Prior to the academic year, the dean, in consultation with the provost, shall set teaching workload standards or goals for the School's nontenure-system faculty as a whole, including the number of classes they will teach and the SCH they will generate.
• Teaching workloads may be adjusted for high teaching productivity as measured in SCH (i.e., significantly larger class enrollments), for significant scholarly productivity, for significant service and administrative assignments, and for professional development as required by accreditation boards, such as AACSB and ABET.

Compliance and Reporting Requirements

Each dean is responsible for reviewing and approving the workload requirements in her/his School. Workload requirements are subject to approval by the provost and shall be filed with the Office of the Provost once every three years.

Each department/program head is responsible for ensuring that faculty members within their academic unit are in compliance with their stated workload requirements each year.

The President has designated the Provost as the University's officer responsible for monitoring workload, preparing and reviewing appropriate reports, and reporting faculty workload information to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and to the University of Texas System Administration that shows evidence of compliance with requirements established by this policy and the University of Texas System Board of Regents, Regents' Rules and Regulations Rule 31006.

Related Statutes, Policies, Requirements or Standards

Regents' Rules and Regulations Rule 31006 Faculty Workload and Reporting Requirements https://www.utsystem.edu/board-of-regents/rules/31006-faculty-workload-and-reporting-requirements

Regents' Rules and Regulations Rule 31001 Faculty Appointments and Titles https://www.utsystem.edu/board-of-regents/rules/31001-faculty-appointments-and-titles

Texas Education Code 51.402 Report of Institutional and Academic Duties https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/ED/htm/ED.51.htm#51.402