Equity and Transparency in Workload

Numerous faculty groups began initiating conversations around the equity and transparency of workload procedures in 2020, including the Black Unity Forum, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, Faculty Senate, Deans, and the Provost’s Office. These initial conversations led to a Provost’s Office request for each school, department, and unit to operationalize the previously established university-wide policy on workload (Faculty Workload and Compensation Policy 2.7) into clear and transparent guidelines that were contextualized within each area. The assumptions underlying this request included an understanding that teaching expectations, research and creative activity, and service loads will likely differ by discipline and should be grounded in local norms, values, and discussions. The launch of this work in 2020 began a five-year effort to create sustainable, transparent, and equitable procedures for faculty and academic leadership to use in balancing contributions across teaching, scholarship/creative activity, and service.

Our Mission

The mission of the Equity and Transparency in Workload is to create sustainable, transparent, and equitable procedures for faculty and academic leadership to use in balancing contributions across teaching, scholarship/creative activity, and service.

Faculty at conference table holding a meeting

Equity & Transparency in Workload Timeline

A multi-year project, SMU seeks to increase equity and transparency of faculty workload procedures. Below, is a timeline of the university-wide efforts:

Initial conversations began around the equity and transparency of workload procedures across campus, including the Black Unity Forum, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, Faculty Senate, Deans, and the Provost’s Office. The Provost’s Office requested all schools, departments, and units to develop workload procedures in collaboration with their leadership and faculty and in alignment with the Faculty Workload and Compensation Policy 2.7. Each unit developed discipline-specific procedures.

All discipline-specific workload procedures were reviewed and adopted. Some units began to use the procedures in their annual activity reporting cycle. The President’s Council for the Status of Women collaborated with the Provost's Office of Faculty Success to develop a survey of all faculty requesting their feedback on their level of involvement with the development and implementation of the procedures and on their ideas about university-level service demands. A report from the survey results was shared with all faculty, which can be found in the resources links below.

Based on survey results, Provost Elizabeth Loboa asked the deans to appoint an academic leader from their schools to participate in the Equity and Transparency in Workload Group with the Provost’s Office of Faculty Success and University Decision Support. This group met monthly to develop a standard form for reporting faculty in-load. The form was used in the Faculty Activity Reporting cycle. A second survey was administered in early April to gather faculty feedback.

Each school and college worked on responding to the faculty feedback that had been gathered during the Year Three Survey. They revised areas of the workload policies in which faculty requested more clarity, specificity, and transparency. Departments were asked to conduct an inventory of how workload is being differentiated, as recommended by the American Council on Education (ACE), to ensure an equitable distribution of effort across research/creative activity, teaching, and service. Schools developed a report of these two efforts to the Provost and again submitted the standardized faculty in-load report.

Anticipated goals for the final project year will include a request for all units to revisit their workload procedures and make constructive revisions based on the iterative cycles of faculty feedback gathered over the previous years of implementation. A final Year Five Survey will gather faculty feedback on ways in which this overarching effort impacted greater transparency and equity in distributing service load and in differentiating workload to support research/creative activity and balanced teaching loads.

Group Membership List

Bill Dillon (bdillon@smu.edu), Senior Associate Dean and Herman W. Lay Professor of Marketing; Cox School of Business
Tom Carr (tcarr@smu.edu), Associate Professor of Mathematics; Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences
Molly Ellis (mkellis@smu.edu), Director of Strategic Faculty Initiatives; Office of the Provost
Francesca Go (fgo@smu.edu), Assistant Dean of Assessment and Accreditation; Simmons School of Education and Human Development
Derek Kompare (dkompare@smu.edu), Associate Dean for Faculty; Meadows School of the Arts
Hugo Magallanes (hugo@smu.edu), Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Perkins School of Theology
Tom Mayo (tmayo@smu.edu), Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Dedman School of Law
Dinesh Rajan (rajand@smu.edu), Senior Associate Dean; Lyle School of Engineering
Sarah Sage (ssage@smu.edu), Director for Strategy & Operations; Office of the Provost
Michael Tumeo (mtumeo@smu.edu), Director for University Decision Support; Office of the Provost
Paige Ware (pware@smu.edu), Associate Provost for Faculty Success; Office of the Provost