UWM Workload Policy Discussed by University Committee in April 22 Meeting

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s workload policy was discussed by a top university committee during its April 22 meeting, with each department asked to update its current policies by the end of the semester, some of which have been in place since the 1970s and 1980s, according to the chair of the committee. 

UWM Provost Andrew Daire has suggested that each department review their workload polices. Also, each department is tasked with ensuring their policies are up to date and in line with current practices, according to Dr. Kathleen Dolan, the chair of the UWM University Committee.  

“Each department’s Executive Committee, which is the tenured faculty in a department, is responsible for coming up with a new policy or updating existing policies as needed,” said Dolan.  

The academic departments will be in charge of addressing policy that they need for the staff they have, whether it is academic faculty and/or staff, according to Dolan.  

“There are units that have workload policies from the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Dolan. “If you read the policy, there is no requirement that once a unit says it has one, they ever look at it again.”   

During the April 22 meeting, the committee discussed a potential work group or task force that would focus on making a university-level policy. The work group could set general standards for each department, according to Dolan. 

“A work group could decide that every unit would need to review their workload policy every five years and that kind of general policies could apply to all units, regardless of what any individual policy looked like,” said Dolan. “That is the sort of general policy that a work group could consider.” 

Although UWM Chancellor Mark Mone and Provost Daire had hoped to assemble a workload group and issuing campus-wide polices by the end of the semester, with only two weeks until finals, that no longer seems “fruitful,” according to Dolan. The committee decided that next year’s University Committee could consider forming a work group. 

With the end of the semester approaching, some departments are rushing to put together updated policies, while others have already completed theirs. 

“The majority of the faculty and program representatives were still, in many ways, in the initial stages of developing policies,” said Dr. Richard Leson, an associate professor of Medieval Art and Architecture in the Department of College of Letters and Science and a member of the University Committee. “They had many more questions than answers at this point.”   

Dr. Gillian Rodger is the chair of the Department of Music at UWM, a professor of Musicology & Ethnomusicology and a member of the University Committee. She says that the Department of Music is going to make the deadline. 

“We [the department of music] have been working on it for two years,” said Rodger. “We’re at the end of the two-year process and we’re going to make it because we spent all of last year talking about what counts.” 

Media Milwaukee reached out to UWM’s Division of Marketing, Communications and University Relations for comment regarding the workload policy but did not receive a response.

In 2015, then-Gov. Scott Walker said UW system faculty and staff should teach more after announcing his 2015-17 budget would cut $300 million from the UW System, which sparked frustration among educators, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. However, the intention behind the updated versions of the UWM department’s workload policies does not directly suggest that faculty and staff should teach more or less.   

“The intention of a workload policy is to make sure that faculty are carrying an equitable workload,” said Dolan. “As long as people are carrying their weight, they can do different things than others. A workload policy is designed to value all the kinds of things that faculty do – teaching, research, service work, mentoring students, running programs, advising students, etc.” 

Although the current policy changes revolve around departmental-level policies, there is a university-wide policy in place; however, it is dated.  

The most recent “UW-Milwaukee Faculty Workload Policy” was published 26 years ago in 1996; however, the policy was amended in 2007 with wording changes relating to the word “classroom” and a “wordiness” start to the second sentence of the third paragraph.  

A “UWM Instructional Academic Staff (IAS) Workload Policy” was created in 2008. However, the IAS workload policy differs from the faculty workload policy.  

“The Instructional Academic Staff (ISA) are members of the Academic Staff who usually hold advanced degrees (MA, MS, or PhD) and provide instruction to undergraduate, graduate or continuing education students through the university,” said the UWM Instructional Academic Staff Workload Policy. “IAS differ from faculty in that they are not in tenure-track faculty positions.” 

The next University Committee meeting is scheduled for May 6, after the April 29 meeting was cancelled.