 "Photo: Anthony Salinas/ The Pan American")
The university will soon conclude what has at times been a heated policy discussion on the faculty workload criteria, with the final verdict on this controversial and widely discussed issue due within a week.
Talks have been occurring over criteria that will determine whether faculty who received tenure before 2005 will teach three or four courses per semester; the terminology concerning workload is referred to as 3/3 and 4/4, denoting the number of courses taught per semester.
The university switched pre-2005 tenured faculty from a 4/4 over to a 3/3 workload in 2005 under the direction of former president Blandina “Bambi” Cardenas, who oversaw the university’s mission switch from “learner centered” to “learner-centered research” institution. Essentially, the university planned to pivot from being primarily a teaching university to one that performs more academic research and less teaching per faculty member.
The idea behind it was to give tenure-track faculty more time to do research by requiring one less class, therefore allowing UTPA to become research friendly. A research-friendly institution tends to provide a higher caliber of academic quality and collect additional funding from the writing of grants.
The long-range plans of the university seem to have changed, however, possibly due to the economic crisis gripping schools across the nation.
With some of the affected faculty wanting to focus on teaching but others looking to be able to do more research, the university needs to identify the criteria for qualifying for the 3/3 load.
Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Paul Sale, who’s leading these discussions, has said that this portion of the transition process will be completed by March 8. The criteria are set to be approved by Sale on Monday, March 1, with faculty getting their 3/3 or 4/4 assignments from March 1-8.
March 8 is the date that final planning for the fall schedule commences. Sale said the colleges need to know what their faculty teaching qualifications and capacities are so they can accurately schedule classes.
“Unfortunately, we have this pragmatism of getting the schedules done,” Sale said.
TALK OF THE CAMPUS
Yesterday, the Faculty Senate, meeting in a special session, passed a resolution that declared that departments should be responsible for setting the guidelines for 3/3 eligibility.
“The resolution was to recommend we use the criteria developed by each department,” said Rajiv Nambiar, chair of the Faculty Senate. “This could help us decide how many of the faculty will teach four classes, versus doing more research and doing three classes.”
Tension arose early in the discussion process when Sale had proposed several models, with many faculty saying he suggested one overarching model they didn’t agree with. The Senate has pushed for the right to establish criteria tailored to its constituents’ various fields.
Nambiar said the Staff Senate and college councils will continue to meet with Sale through the end of the process.
“The provost suggested one criteria that would apply to the whole university,” Nambiar said. “He quickly found out that that’s not what you should expect, because different disciplines have different requirements. He was quite willing to accept what the departments had come up with.”
Sale, in agreement with faculty, has emphasized that faculty perform a wide range of types of research. But he also noted that originally, representatives of the six colleges came back with wide discrepancies in criterion. Those guideline suggestions were then provided, of which Sale pointed out there was more than one suggestion.
Though Sale hinted that there may have been some miscommunication at first, the Faculty Senate and provost now appear to be on the same page.
“What the faculty should be comfortable with is the fact that the criteria we’ll be going forward with at this point will be one that they themselves came up with,” Nambiar said. This apparent meeting of the minds is an example of what the long-time Senate goal of “shared governance” was designed to facilitate.
Even though there may be more agreement now, there has also been widespread dissatisfaction with Sale over his handling of the process, with faculty in an uproar over the speed of the process.
It was initiated in late November when the first committees were set up. Some faculty, upset at the quick pace at which the policy changes were progressing, suggested Sale should be chastised for miscommunication and mishandling of the process of establishing criteria for the 3/3 workload eligibility. As of late Wednesday, a draft resolution toward just such a remonstrance is said to be circulating through the colleges.
Sale admitted that he’s embarrassed that he did not get to the situation sooner, explaining that at first he was new to the university and just getting acquainted, and then president Cardenas had serious health issues, which eventually led to her retirement in January 2009. He added that it would have been inappropriate to work on such significant policy while the president was ill.
ORIGINS OF THE PROCESS
Questions have also been raised, given the seemingly sudden nature of this change of direction, regarding who may be behind the mandate for the workload adjustment.
In December former interim president Charles Sorber said faculty workload needed to be looked at because of efficiency issues, in effect signaling that with reduced funds expected from the next several Legislative sessions, a regression back to wide-scale 4/4 loads was a possibility. Several months earlier, Gov. Rick Perry had issued an executive order telling higher education institutions to “undertake a broad and comprehensive review of system-wide opportunities for achieving cost efficiencies.”
The order listed several areas, explicitly naming “faculty workload” as one.
The process for formulating criteria started a few weeks after President Robert Nelsen was appointed Nov. 11. When asked recently if he and Sale had talked about the issue at that time, Nelsen remarked, “not to my knowledge.”
“I talked once with him [Sale] about tenure standards at a Coordinating Board meeting,” Nelsen said. “One of the first things I was going to look at was tenure.”
Nelsen pointed out he was then preparing to look at tenure and promotion documents. Doing so is a yearly task for the president, who sits at the end of an achievement-judgment food chain that runs from department level to college dean and then the college level before reaching the university leader.
With regard to Sale’s performance, Nelsen said he did not want to give a “personnel evaluation.”
He did not want to comment further on the process, but emphasized the university is a living, breathing animal.
“The provost is gathering input from the faculty and colleges, and I don’t want to interfere with that process by commenting at this time,” Nelsen wrote via e-mail. “I am waiting for his recommendations, and I plan to talk with the faculty about those recommendations as soon as I get them. What I can say with certainty is that this administration values the opinion of the faculty on all academic matters and will listen to what they have to say.”
Sale also emphasized that the process is not over; it will continue to evolve “as it always should.”
In yesterday’s Faculty Senate meeting Sale responded to speculative comments that this revisiting of the workload may have been caused by the state’s budget problems. But he added that his personal preference is against such linkage.
“Budgets go up and down,” Sale said. “I don’t think workload should go up and down with budgets.”
Sale made it clear that the university mission and faculty workload should never be affected by budget issues. He also reiterated that UTPA’s mission has not changed, though that has been debated.
Sale expressed pride in the university’s faculty with regard to the increased number of research documents, which he called “absolutely tremendous.” He said overall research at UTPA has gone up about 35 to 38 percent over the past three years, which he called a firm achievement.
He emphasized to the Faculty Senate yesterday that both faculty facets, teaching and research, are important to the university.
“Whether you’re on a 3/3 or a 4/4 workload, you’re equally valued,” the provost concluded.
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