[COSEAfaculty] CoSea overload policy

[Charles Dorsett]

As usual for me, on Wednesday morning, I checked my email to see if
there was anything requiring my attention for the day. There wasn't. At
approximately 4:20 p.m., after my day slowed down, I checked my email
again. An important College meeting that I would have made time to
attend had been announced and had already ended without me even knowing
there was a meeting. I checked and I was not the only faculty member not
to know about the called meeting prior to the meeting. The first meeting
was scheduled for a time I had a class to teach.

As I stated earlier, I have taught many overloads in the past. I never
complained, but the Department Head that assigned me the overloads
recognized the unfairness of the repeated overload assignments and
repeatedly promised me reduced teaching loads in the future in return
for the many overloads taught by me. There were others like me. I never
asked, but my Department Heads told me there was no money to pay for the
overload teaching and that I would have to receive credit for my extra
work with reduced workloads in the future. However, I am now told by a
reliable source that there is at least one high ranking administrator at
this University that is being paid extremely well for teaching one or
more classes outside his assigned administrative duties during the time
the class or classes are taught. If my source is correct, there has been
a dual workload policy at our University; one for administrators that
are paid handsomely when they teach and one for faculty with only
promises of future consideration which is still to come, but now vetoed
by the College overload policy. Will the University continue to have a
dual workload policy? If not, an administrator, who has no teaching
within his or her job description, will receive no pay for teaching a
class, and, at the same time, without a teaching requirement, accumulate
no overload credits. If the dual system is ended, do you think there
will be an administrator on campus without required teaching duties that
will continue to teach classes?

Is there fairness in the workload procedures in the different Colleges?
With the Administration waiting to the 13th hour to involve the faculty,
there are many important questions left unanswered. The workload policy
for the College has been identified as a product of the Faculty Senate,
but the proposed overload procedure for our College, which is now
reality, is so different from the proposed Faculty Senate overload
procedure that the Faculty Senate should not in any way be included. Why
did the Administration wait until the 13th hour when many of the faculty
members are not even here and those that were here are busy trying to
squeeze 16 weeks of work into less than five weeks to finally involve
the faculty?

As of now Mathematics is down three positions for the Fall. I suspect
Mathematics is not unique in this matter. If a faculty member was to
accumulate three overload credits during the Fall, would the
Administration cancel a full class to allow the faculty member to use
the earned overload credits or would the faculty member be required to
continue teaching 12 or more hours? Overload credits earned by a faculty
member, but not used during the Spring, together with overload credits
earned by the faculty member during the Spring would have to be used the
next Fall or be lost by the faculty member. Would the Administration
cancel full classes and send students home or to another university to
allow the faculty member use of earned overload credits or would the
administration take away the earned overload credits, as it has done in
the past, and require the faculty member to continue to teach 12 to 14
hours? 

Under the now College overload policy faculty members will be robbed of
compensation for their work. Is robbing employees of earned
compensation, either past or future, ever a good thing or does it only
destroy all that is good? Once trust is destroyed, how do you restore
it?

I have witnessed an incredibly productive, hard-working faculty here at
Texas A&M University-Commerce and have been proud to be a part of it. As
things stand now, I worry about their future and the future of this
University.

 

Charles Dorsett

 

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