[Note: The table presented here has been updated. See this post for updated numbers]
Clerk’s Committee has recently been looking into our committees and other service roles filled by faculty. See this post for an analysis of our current committee and service picture.
We’ve put together the table below from information from the Dean’s office and from other sources. It covers known course release and stipend payments for faculty work. As we continue discussing potential revisions to the committee structure to balance both workload and benefits for faculty service, this kind of information will help us understand what kinds of work we have been supporting and what we have not.
Some information is here is incomplete, and some is likely incorrect. If you have better information or numbers, please let me know. Click to make it bigger, or download the PDF version below.
Here’s the PDF version: Position Compensation List
Are those the course releases they are *supposed* to get, or the course releases they *actually* get? To wit: I am honors director right now, so in principle I am supposed to get a course release, but in practice there is no course I could not teach (and in fact I’m doing an overload, too), because there’s no one else to pick it up. For how many of these positions does that sort of thing happen?
These are all hypothetical releases, not what has actually been taken. Many folks (like you) have told me that they have not taken releases when offered or earned due to competing departmental needs. Part of Clerks’ plan will be to normalize this process and try to ensure that this problem can be resolved through better scheduling and budgeting for hiring of replacements.
We’re also considering a model that would merge course releases and stipends into more of a fungible currency, so that you could choose to take earned service credits (which would apply to all types of service, not just certain positions) either as stipends or releases.
I also know that personally, I’ve taken less than half the ENVS coordinator course releases I’ve earned, in most cases without overload payments.
I’m glad to see faculty governance tackling this issue and ensuring that it is as equitable and transparent as possible. Those are both worthy goals. In benchmarking these positions against one another in compensation though, it seems equally important to look also to the responsibilities associated with each of these positions and to offer a similar benchmarking activity there as well. One could start with trying to secure position descriptions for each of these positions in a way that promotes equity and transparency. Moreover the conversation could also be pushed even closer to a better fundamental understanding of what work needs faculty leadership, whether we are matching positions to that leadership and then attaching appropriate and equitable levels of compensation to those positions. It seems as though this table speaks to the last of those three. I hope we get to the first two as well.
Hi, Kyle – Thanks for your comments and insight. The position descriptions would definitely be helpful (although not all of these positions have readily available descriptions), and we’re going to be putting out a survey on the workload for each of these in the next few days to try to see how effort and compensation match up.
The broader question you raise about which functions need faculty leadership is a good one as well, and folds into our other questions about which committees we need and what we need them to do.
I am not sure if the course releases as listed are accurate for some positions (regardless of whether they are taken or not). Currently (and for the last decade) the Faculty Development Director is considered a half time position. If you are in the sciences, that means 2 course release (1 each semester) but most faculty teach 6 courses a year so half time is 3 courses (which obviously means a heavier load one semester). The same was true for the Early College Liaison in the past but I don’t know what the agreement is now.
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