Unit Policy
Title
Hussman School of Journalism and Media: Policy on Faculty Workload
Introduction
Purpose
This document explains the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ("UNC-Chapel Hill" or "University") Hussman School of Journalism and Media ("School") faculty workload policy requirements and reflects our current standards as expressed in the School’s Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure (APT) Guidelines and Faculty Handbook. This policy is intended to comply with the UNC-Chapel Hill Policy on Faculty Workload, UNC System Policy 400.3.4, and UNC System Regulation 400.3.4[R]. The UNC System policy and regulation require each UNC System School to create, publish, and monitor academic unit workload requirements. These policies must include criteria and approval processes for adjusting faculty workloads relative to other faculty responsibilities.
More specifically, this policy:
- Defines the standard distribution of teaching, scholarly or professional/creative activity, and service effort for each 1.0 FTE appointment type;
- Defines the standard workload categories for each appointment type;
- Establishes a process for creating and reviewing annual faculty workload plans; and
- Establishes an annual evaluation process that assesses the faculty member’s activities, contributions, and accomplishments for the academic year based on that faculty member’s established work plan.
The purpose of this policy is threefold:
- To help the School continue to meet the needs of our students and other stakeholders;
- To facilitate transparency about the activities of our School’s faculty to the public; and
- To establish clear and equitable expectations and guidelines about the distribution of work among faculty members.
Scope
This policy applies to all faculty within the School, including tenured, tenure-track, and fixed-term faculty, who are full-time (1.0 FTE) and appointed for one year or longer. It also applies to faculty in administrative roles.
This policy does not apply to fixed-term faculty with less than 1.0 FTE appointments or to temporary adjunct faculty.
Policy
Descriptions of Types of Faculty Workload Effort
Each faculty member is expected to contribute to the School and the discipline significantly and appropriately throughout their career. Faculty workload includes teaching, scholarly or professional/creative activity, and service. The following sections describe the activities that constitute teaching, scholarly or professional/creative activity, and service effort that will comprise the faculty workload expectations based on faculty appointment type.
Teaching
Teaching and instruction are the central responsibilities of the UNC System and form a critical base of workload expectations for faculty. UNC-Chapel Hill has established teaching workload criteria based on the standard annual faculty teaching load defined in UNC System Policy 400.3.4. This standard teaching load for research universities consists of 24 credit hours (or equivalent contact hours) per academic year, along with routinely expected faculty duties.
In addition to organized courses, the faculty member’s teaching workload might also include other instructional efforts such as:
- Developing materials for a new course;
- Updating materials for an existing course;
- Participating in pedagogy or teaching-related training;
- Weekly course preparation;
- Meeting one-on-one with students outside of class/office hours;
- Supervising teaching assistants;
- Chairing undergraduate research theses, traditional and non-traditional master’s theses, and doctoral dissertations;
- Serving on undergraduate research theses, traditional and non-traditional master’s theses, and doctoral dissertation committees;
- Supervising independent studies;
- Advising student media and organizations;
- Academic advising;
- Student mentoring; and
- Other activities that support student instruction and success.
Workload Reductions
The School’s dean may approve reductions in the standard annual faculty teaching load. The dean may approve such reductions for the following reasons:
- Administrative responsibilities,
- Scholarly or professional/creative activities,
- Course buyouts, and
- Additional institutional and departmental service obligations.
Course releases are provided to faculty who serve in an administrative position in the School.
Course buyouts are available to tenure-track faculty only. The funding received from a course buyout offsets a faculty member’s salary, and the School is prohibited from using it to supplement a faculty member’s salary.
When a faculty member has a reduced course load due to a course release (e.g., an administrative position) or course buyout (e.g., a grant-funded project), modifications in workload are expected. Each reduced course load (about 10% of workload allocation) is expected to be devoted to the respective administrative position or funded scholarly or professional/creative activity.
Research and study assignments (RSAs) are one-semester leaves covering two-course releases and relief from other service and teaching obligations for that semester. The School gives each untenured assistant professor who has gone through a successful third review a pre-tenure RSA. Pending financial availability or other considerations, one competitive RSA may be available each academic year to tenured faculty.
Teaching in the UNC-Chapel Hill Summer School outside the nine-month academic year is optional and for extra compensation. The Variable Teaching Loads section below presents specific policies on altering teaching loads via course buyouts, course overloads and banking, research and study assignments (RSA), and course releases.
Scholarly or Professional/Creative Activity
Tenured and tenure-track research track faculty are expected to engage in scholarly activity. Tenured and tenure-track professional track faculty are expected to engage in professional/creative activity. Activity descriptions are excerpted from Hussman Promotion and Tenure Guidelines.
Scholarly activity includes conducting research and producing scholarly output, which includes scholarly books, textbooks, edited books, book chapters, monographs, articles in refereed journals, published law reviews, refereed conference papers, invited academic papers, encyclopedia entries, and engaged scholarship works. Research activity also includes seeking grants, developing technological advancements that enable scholarly work (e.g., software, databases), and directing research centers and institutes.
Professional/creative activity includes but is not limited to: traditional scholarly research , short or full-length documentary films, feature films, television programming, multi-media projects, podcasts, information graphics, data visualizations, apps and websites, emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, news articles, audio, visual and multimedia works, textbooks or books targeting particular professional audiences or the general public, edited books, book chapters, white papers, research and campaign reports, government or corporate policy documents, research that is presented to industry groups, projects or products with media and professional organizations that help to advance the industry/academic dialogue, print or online publications such as magazines and blogs, articles in refereed publications, articles in non-refereed publications, refereed and invited conference papers and presentations, invited book reviews in reputable professional venues, other juried and non-juried creative works, and processes including social impact design and innovation to address social issues.
Professional track faculty members might publish their work in print or online, including educational publications, trade publications, news and other general circulation publications, and/or traditional scholarly journals. Further, productivity can be demonstrated through specific entries in incremental works, such as individual podcasts comprising a podcast series or articles comprising an ongoing investigative project. Pre-planning and pre-production efforts, the production of the creative/professional project itself, and post-production promotion of creative/professional projects and products are all considered productivity since they are all necessary parts of the creative/professional process.
Engaged scholarship and activities are also recognized (see the Hussman Faculty Handbook). Public engagement refers to scholarly, professional, pedagogical, or service activities for the public good directed toward persons and groups outside the University. Engaged creative/professional work activities can include collaborative interactions that respond to short- and long-term professional or societal needs and should be reciprocal and inclusive of the communities involved (see the Hussman Faculty Handbook). To satisfy the criterion for scholarly research, "engaged scholarship" must meet a rigorous standard such as external funding, peer-reviewed publications, and evaluations.
Service
All full-time faculty members are expected to share in the service functions of the School, with increased service responsibilities expected for faculty after tenure. Faculty may also be asked to perform service for the University.
Additional service to the academy and profession may include international and national offices and work in appropriate scholarly, professional, and academic organizations, including but not limited to:
- Manuscript reviewing, editorial board memberships, or editorships;
- University and School positions and committee work; and/or
- Workshops or speeches.
Invisible Labor
We recognize that administrators, students, and others call on some faculty to engage in important and necessary service that School administration does not formally assign, compensate, or document. We invite faculty to:
- Include this labor in their effort distributions,
- Describe this labor in their annual report, and
- Discuss how this labor impacts their effort distribution in their annual review meeting with the dean.
Faculty Workload Expectations Based On Distribution Of Effort
Distribution of Effort
Faculty appointment types are defined by the type of work they are expected to produce and how they distribute their time and effort. A faculty member’s distribution of effort across the year, the semester, or the week can vary widely depending on the faculty member’s work obligations and requirements for managing their time. Flexibility in applying these expectations to each faculty member is therefore needed. Faculty members are expected to accurately describe their efforts in scholarly or professional/ creative activity, teaching, and service annually, considering these ‘typical’ percentages. Faculty can share justifications for percentage adjustments from the nine-month plan based on work undertaken and/or mitigating circumstances.
The following sections establish nine-month workload distributions by faculty appointment type for teaching, scholarly or professional/creative activity, and service.
Research Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty
Research track faculty are assigned a 2:2 teaching load per academic year. This load does not include independent studies, undergraduate honors theses, traditional or non-traditional master’s theses, dissertations, or non-credit courses (though those efforts should be included in teaching credit/contact hours).
Table 1 presents the School’s standard distribution of effort for Research Tenured/Tenure-Track faculty, including those who receive course load reductions for an administrative appointment such as a graduate program director or associate dean.
Table 1: Distribution of Effort for Research Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty
| Research Tenured/Tenure-Track Course Load |
Scholarly Activity |
Teaching |
Service |
| Standard (2/2) |
40-55% |
40-50% |
5-20% |
| Administrative appointment with one-course release |
30-50% |
30-40% |
15-35% |
| Administrative appointment with two-course releases |
30-40% |
20-30% |
25-50% |
| Adjustment for the one-course buyout for scholarly activity (2/1 or 1/2) |
50-65% |
30-40% |
5-20% |
| Adjustment for the two-course buyout for scholarly activity (2/0, 0/2, or 1/1) |
60-75% |
20-30% |
5-20% |
The School expects Tenure-Track Research faculty to devote a significant amount of time to research to fulfill the expectations for tenure and promotion, meaning their research effort is likely to be above 40%.
Tenured Faculty may choose a distribution of effort that contributes to the School and University through greater teaching and/or service. However, all Tenured Research Faculty must meet minimal expectations for scholarly activity to pass their post-tenure review.
Table 2: Distribution of Effort for Professional Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty
| Professional Tenured/Tenure-Track Course Load |
Professional/Creative
Activity |
Teaching |
Service |
| Standard (3/2 or 2/3) |
20-40% |
50-70% |
5-20% |
| Administrative appointment with one-course release |
15-35% |
40-60% |
15-35% |
| Administrative appointment with two-course releases |
10-30% |
30-50% |
25-50% |
| Adjustment for the one-course buyout for professional/creative activity (3/1, 1/3, or 2/2) |
30-50% |
40-60% |
5-20% |
| Adjustment for the two-course buyout for professional/creative activity (3/0, 0/3, 1/2, or 2/1) |
40-60% |
30-50% |
5-20% |
The School expects Professional Tenure-Track faculty to devote a significant amount of time to professional/creative activity to fulfill the expectations for tenure and promotion, meaning their effort in this area is likely to be above 20%.
Tenured Professional Faculty may choose a distribution of effort that contributes to the School and University through greater teaching and/or service. However, all Tenured Professional Faculty must meet minimal expectations for creative activity to pass their post-tenure review.
Full-time, Fixed-Term Faculty
Full-time, fixed-term track faculty are assigned a 3:3 teaching load per academic year. This load does not include independent studies, thesis or dissertation credits, or non-credit courses (though those efforts should be included in teaching credit/contact hours).
Table 3 presents the School’s standard distribution of effort for full-time fixed-term faculty, including those who receive course load reductions for an administrative appointment such as a graduate program director or associate dean.
Table 3: Distribution of Effort for Full-Time Fixed-Term Faculty
| Full-Time Fixed-Term Course Load |
Scholarly or
Professional/Creative
Activity |
Teaching |
Service |
| Standard (3/3) |
N/A |
60-80% |
20-40% |
Administrative appointment with
one-course release |
N/A |
50-70% |
30-50% |
Administrative appointment with
two-course releases |
N/A |
40-60% |
40-60% |
Faculty Workload Plans
By April 15 of each year, each faculty member must create and submit a work plan for the upcoming academic year in consultation with the dean or a designee, e.g., assigned mentors or associate dean(s). The dean and associate deans will review each faculty work plan and approve it in writing by June 1. New faculty whose appointments begin July 1 must submit the work plan by September 1, which will be approved by September 15.
The workload plan requires each faculty member to include:
- Assignment type;
- Role and rank;
- Goals for teaching, scholarly or professional/creative activity, and service (i.e., performance goals); and
- Estimated allocation of percentage time for each area, totaling 100%.
Please see the School’s Faculty Workload Plan template for more information.
Faculty Annual Evaluation Process
The School’s annual evaluation process for faculty involves assessing the faculty members’ contributions and accomplishments for the academic year based on that faculty member’s established work plan.
This process does not replace or require the level of detail and rigor required during the seminal APT reviews:
- Fixed-term reappointment,
- Pre-tenure third-year review,
- Promotion and tenure,
- Promotion to full professor, and
- Post-tenure review.
For annual evaluations, faculty members will be rated as "meeting" or "not meeting" expectations for each applicable category based on the following criteria:
- Teaching
- Teaching the required number of courses for appointment type;
- Achieving 24 or more student credit/contact hours and falling within the percentage effort range (or outside of that range with explanation); and
- Making progress toward any teaching goal in the approved workload plan.
- Scholarly or Professional/Creative Activity (not applicable for fixed-term faculty)
- Falling within the percentage effort range (or outside of that range with explanation); and
- Making progress toward any scholarly or professional/creative activity goal in the approved workload plan.
- Service
- Falling within the percentage effort range (or outside of that range with explanation); and
- Making progress toward any service goal in the approved workload plan.
By April 15 of each year, each faculty member must submit an annual report that includes the following information:
- Their actual nine-month distribution of effort for teaching, service, and, if applicable, scholarly or professional/creative activity;
- Student contact hours; and
- Key accomplishments in scholarly or professional/creative activity and service rendered per their goals for the academic year.
The dean’s office will independently compile the following information for each faculty member:
- Organized course sections taught;
- Relevant student credit hours produced; and
- Number of sections of independent studies, undergraduate and master’s theses, and dissertations.
Completed annual reports will be distributed among the dean and associate deans. The dean and associate deans will:
- Independently review the assigned reports in relation to approved work plans,
- Independently complete an evaluation form for each faculty member, and
- Meet to discuss and finalize faculty evaluations.
The dean will send the signed evaluation forms to faculty members by June 1. Faculty members should review, sign, and return the evaluation form via email. The faculty member or the dean may request a meeting to discuss the evaluation.
However, a faculty member receiving one or more ratings of "not meeting expectations" on any goals must meet with the following School administrators:
- Dean;
- Associate dean for academic and faculty affairs; and
- At the faculty member’s discretion, a mentor or other administrative leader familiar with the faculty member’s work.
This meeting should occur as soon as possible but must happen by September 15. The dean must provide any faculty member rated as "not meeting expectations" in teaching, service, or research/creative activity with a "Faculty Success Plan" to help them get them back on track.
Please see the School’s Faculty Annual Report template for more information.
Faculty Success Plans
Faculty Success Plans are intended to be a supportive and personalized approach to help individual faculty members improve their performance and excel in their role. The faculty member, dean, and associate dean for academic and faculty affairs should jointly create a Faculty Success Plan that results from the annual evaluation process.
Faculty Success Plans should include the following information:
- Specific actions and a timeline to define measures of progress for the upcoming year, and
- Check-ins and possibly also targeted resources the faculty member can use to help them improve.
The faculty member, dean, and associate dean for academic and faculty affairs should also discuss the consequences of not meeting the progress measures.
Related Requirements
External Regulations
Unit Policies, Standards, and Procedures
Contact Information
Primary Contact
Name: Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs
Telephone:
Email: