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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>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?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Is there fairness in the workload procedures in the
different Colleges? With the Administration waiting to the 13<sup>th</sup> 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 13<sup>th</sup> 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?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>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? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>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?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>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.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Charles Dorsett<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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