On 22 September 2021, the members of the MU AAUP approved the following proposal as an alternative to the Provost’s proposal regarding faculty workload review:
Introduction:
Although only just publicized, the “Faculty Workload Review” process, outlined in a document provided by the Provost’s office to chairs on August 26, 2021, has generated much confusion and criticism. Indeed, at its Sept. 9 meeting, MU Faculty Council passed a motion that the workload review document was not endorsed by Faculty Council, in order to correct a false impression that the document bore its imprimatur. Faculty Council is currently gathering faculty feedback about the document and the workload policy to share with the Provost in preparation for the September 23 Faculty Council Meeting.
Proposal:
Concerned both with the procedure described in the document and, more broadly, with the ongoing pre-emption of shared governance at the University, the MU chapter of AAUP proposes an alternative approach to the review of faculty workloads, comprising three distinct parts:
- Use the existing post-tenure review policy, CRR 310.015, to address instances where individual faculty are not meeting reasonable expectations of performance. This CRR, which is never cited in the “Faculty Workload Review” document, involves a dialogue between faculty and chairs, opportunities for professional development, and the right to appeal decisions to a faculty committee.
- Rescind the tenured faculty salary reduction policy in CRR 320.030.F, returning all policies and procedures for performance review to the status quo ante of May 2020.
- Work with Faculty Council and other campus-wide stakeholders to redress workload inequities within units. In this effort, it will be useful to draw from the American Council on Education’s Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads report, which is cited in the “Faculty Workload Review” document. However, the specific inequities discussed in this report are literally elided in the “Faculty Workload Review” document, where the ellipsis in the first quotation (top of page 1) omits several key sentences, including: “Faculty from historically minoritized groups are disproportionately called upon to do diversity work and mentoring, while women faculty do more teaching and service.”
Rationale:
In the spirit of authentic shared governance, AAUP-MU rejects the non-collaborative, at times secretive approach to academic governance witnessed all too often in the last year and a half. We furthermore recognize that the vast majority of MU faculty are hard-working and competent, and that there are existing standards and procedures for evaluating faculty productivity—standards and procedures which departments are already, per CRR 310.015 (B.1.a), empowered to adjust or strengthen on the basis of discipline-specific, evidence-based deliberation by their tenured faculty. Accordingly, this proposal stresses the importance of approaching the task of faculty workload review, and any new or ongoing problems of inequitable task assignment, in the spirit of collaboration, deliberation, and transparency—and by means of well-established policies and procedures.