American Association of University Professors
As we have reported previously, Ohio House Bill 59, the state budget bill, contains a provision that would allow colleges and universities to modify or create a workload policy; but if they do either of those, they must increase the teaching load of full-time faculty by one additional class from what the faculty taught in the previous academic year.
This language is being billed as something to save money and increase faculty productivity. Legislators must hear from us that this provision is ill-conceived and short-sighted.
Please contact members of the Ohio House Higher Education Subcommittee to tell them you oppose the faculty workload provision.
Click on the links below to be taken to the contact forms for each representative. Beneath the links is a sample letter to use.
[We apologize that we do not have an easier way for our members to contact legislators, but hope to invest in a system in the future.]Sample Letter: Subject: Remove Faculty Workload Provision from Budget Bill Body: Dear Representative, My name is [insert name] and I am a full-time faculty member at [insert name of your institution]. I am writing to you to ask respectfully that you amend HB 59, the state budget bill, to exclude the provision that would allow colleges and universities to increase the teaching load for full-time faculty by one additional class from the previous academic year. While this provision is being touted as a cost-savings measure that will increase faculty productivity, it will actually do more harm than good.
Faculty have a myriad of responsibilities outside of the classroom, including: advising and mentoring students; participating in university committees; serving on hiring committees and mentoring junior faculty; designing and improving curriculum; and much more.
Allowing universities to implement this one-size-fits-all policy will impair the ability of faculty to carry out our distinctive missions and make it difficult to retain our most productive faculty and attract high-quality faculty to come to Ohio.
In addition, faculty at our state institutions of higher education bring in millions of research dollars into the Ohio economy every year through grants. In fact, as state support for higher education has dramatically decreased over the past two decades, faculty research money has helped to replace the lost revenue.
However, placing this kind of arbitrary mandate on our workloads will jeopardize that revenue source and distract from our research and innovation.Thank you for your consideration on this matter. Sincerely, [insert name]