Faculty Alliance of Miami: FAM

On Workload Changes at Miami

Faculty Working Conditions are Student Learning Conditions

COVID-19 has stretched higher education in ways that we could not have imagined. Faculty and staff at Miami have spent the last year working under extraordinary conditions to continue to provide a high-quality education, serve our community, and produce top research. Throughout, we have heard from senior Miami administrators how critical it is for us to work together and live by the Miami Code of Love and Honor. 

In fall, faculty workloads increased, not only because we were still adjusting to online teaching, but because we were teaching more. In the wake of the non-renewal this spring of approximately 200 non-tenure-track faculty originally assigned to teach fall courses, most faculty taught additional sections and/or higher per-course enrollments. While struggling to adjust to a workload that is reducing our capacity for Miami-quality engagement with students, we have been further disappointed by the Provost’s recent decision to impose—with little time for faculty consultation—permanent changes to workload governance that will alter the nature of education at Miami.

Most importantly, changes in faculty workload expectations threaten Miami’s teacher-scholar model and directly affect our students.

Workload policy at Miami does need clarification. We must ensure that work is distributed equitably and fruitfully. But the short timeline on workload governance revision—just two weeks per the APEIP timeline—is not permitting adequate feedback and discussion within colleges and departments. Departments have been given just weeks to make permanent changes to workload governance. In many cases, these changes (alongside increases in class sizes) are increasing teaching expectations with little consideration of pedagogical outcomes and without specifications about corollary reductions in expectations for research or service.

As course releases offered in exchange for service or research disappear, increases in workload expectations are forcing faculty to make difficult choices between the necessary service we do to maintain the university, the research we do for the public good, and our calling as teachers. In the long run, all three will be degraded. In combination with the “sweep” that stripped away most faculty research funding last year, workload uptick is likely to have a significant impact on faculty prospects for promotion and career success. What’s more, increasing teaching expectations without adjustments to research or service expectations will disproportionately impact on faculty of color and women already overburdened with service. This last point is especially discordant given Miami’s explicit commitment to sustaining a diverse faculty and staff. 

We note that Ohio law supports careful consideration of workload balance:  “Litigation over the constitutionality of the Ohio statute [3345.45] has resulted in judicial guidance that supports the mandatory reduction of other workload duties when instructional workload is increased, and any increase in instructional workload must result in a corresponding decrease in research or other faculty duties.” 

Most importantly, changes in faculty workload expectations threaten Miami’s teacher-scholar model and directly affect our students.

Overburdening faculty may seem efficient, but it is not a road to excellence; it is a road to attrition and a decline in educational quality. It’s time for a pause in the relentless pile-on of extra work for faculty and administrators alike. Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions. Our students know this as well as we do. As a recent Miami Student editorial says, “Professors need more help, Miami.” 

We ask two things.

First, that there be a pause on demanding projects such as APEIP, Miami Plan, and workload revision until August. This year, faculty have juggled unusually high workloads which included extra teaching and larger classes while adjusting to online teaching, taking care of relatives or children at home, and trying to sustain research projects. It’s the wrong time to be grinding forward with projects that require significant service time such as APEIP, Miami Plan revision, and workload governance revision. When major efforts toward efficiency and economizing are piled on top of existing overloads, they result in the ultimate inefficiency: worker burnout and apathy. It’s our students who will suffer most.

Second, in any discussion of workload changes and APEIP-related changes to departments and programs, our educational mission must be the first priority. Our prized ranking for commitment to undergraduate learning is slipping, and it’s not because faculty don’t want to serve our students — it’s because overstuffed classes, extra sections, and unmanageable service obligations mean we cannot serve our students as effectively. Efficiencies that harm educational quality are false economies that damage our reputation and, ultimately, our bottom line.

We urge the university to pause the various revisions under consideration to allow all of us to reflect on how we can best support the teaching and research mission that has made Miami’s reputation.

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One response to “On Workload Changes at Miami”

  1. Davis Avatar
    Davis

    Added to the increased workload, which is having a detrimental impact on the quality of teaching and learning at Miami, we have been forced to reduce the breadth of our offerings. Students have fewer choices when it comes to both MPF and courses within their majors. This harms efforts to recruit majors and retain current students. Fewer choices/time-blocks particularly damages the retention of students who have to work or have family and community obligations beyond the university, but it also makes advising more difficult, leads to student frustration and apathy, and hinders graduation. Preventing faculty from teaching their areas of research by placing restrictions on their teaching options makes it even harder for faculty to maintain strong research agendas—we all thrive when we can discuss our research specializations in the classroom. In addition, restricting offerings means that many faculty are teaching 3 or 4 preps a semester. The amount of work that goes into teaching this many preps is not being acknowledged by upper administration. The pedagogical impact of reduced offerings is, of course, dismissed outright by the same. The reductions in opportunities, which comes at a time when our leadership feels so empowered to dismiss and minimalist faculty concerns, exacerbates low morale, despondence, the sense that faculty are undervalued, and burnout. Given that the university recently chose to change faculty and staff health insurance to a corporation that is known—comparatively speaking—to be the most inadequate insurance company when it comes to coverage of mental health services, the university illustrates once again that their concerns about faculty—particularly faculty of color and women, who often tend to bare the largest service burdens in and beyond the workplace—are simply lip service. Faculty are considered a burden—we make it harder for upper administrators to impose their will because we push back and demand faculty governance. Students are considered a cash cow—the university claims that teaching excellence is a priority, but will not provide the appropriate resources for students to excel. Only when our national ranking fall—rankings that no doubt impact our bottom line—does upper administration pay attention to issues that we faculty have been trying to make visible for a long time.

    I appreciate the AAUP’s request that we halt new initiatives that increase our service loads in ways we cannot even anticipate. Many of my colleagues have expressed concern about the new MPF, in particular, that are similar to my own concerns. Not only are we being asked to review and give feedback to a new plan—when many of us have already presented feedback that has been summarily dismissed—but the new plan will create an inordinate amount of (invisible) service and advising work while perhaps also having, yet again, a detrimental impact upon the curriculum (which is supposed to be controlled by faculty). Under this new convolution plan, we must present arguments and fill out endless forms simply to persuade upper admin and leaders in LEC, not only that we have the expertise to teach in the areas that they define as valid, but also that our courses are the appropriate places to learn about, the themes and issues LEC have deemed important. As a tenured faculty member who has a strong research background in inclusive interdisciplinarity—and has decades of teaching experience in issues that LEC acknowledge as significant, namely diversity, identity, and sustainability,—I am particularly concerned that both the value of my courses in these areas and my expertise will be determined by a bureaucrat with no knowledge of my field of study or it’s value. I am very fearful that, not only will I spent a lot of time, perhaps unsuccessfully, trying to persuade others of my value to the university, but that decisions about which courses should count in the new Miami plan will be based either on flawed notions of efficiencies, on simplified and uncritical notions of concepts such as diversity and sustainability (highly contested terms), or upon long held prejudices of LEC and/or upper leadership against certain disciplines, areas of study, departments, or faculty. I already feel extremely undervalued and dismissed at Miami. All my energy is devoted to not letting this seem evident to my students while trying to teach effectively despite my burnout. I have no more to give. The way that the new Miami plan has been rolled out and administered promises not only to increase the workload of an already overstretched faculty—many of whom are still expected to perform the majority of advising to their majors despite the move within wealthier divisions and departments toward hiring professional advisors—but to also perpetuate the devaluation and subsequent burnout of many faculty members who now have to prove, yet again (on top of APEIP, but despite their individual evaluations or standing in their field of expertise), that they have something worthwhile to offer Miami. How does this aid student learning, increase retention, or promote graduation? It doesn’t. It’s yet another example of another pet plan being rolled out by people favored/ well liked by upper administrators.

    I’d like to see initiatives rolled out, not because the person who thought of them is a favorite of this-or-that administrator, but because they enhance teaching and learning. I’d like to see initiative being led, not by people who have some sort of cache with upper admin, but by people who have either a record or have shown the capacity to effectively and efficiently take a project from conception to implementation without ignoring the input of those of us who have to perform excellence under and implement the new initiative. I’d also like to see resources being put back into the classroom instead of being used to fund administrative bloat. If we care about students as much as we claim to care, then perhaps it is time to put them first. That involves respecting and supporting (beyond lip service) those of us who spend the most time working with students.

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