College of Liberal Arts NTTF Advisory Committee – Group A

Meeting Minutes
September 26, 2022

Present were: Thomas Conway, Debbie Swann, Jamie Switzer, Gina Robinson, Jonathan Carlyon, Annie Krieg, Ashlee Allen, Aaunterria Bollinger, Sadie Kinney-McGrath, Ellie Light.

AGENDA:

A. CoNTTF Update: Tom Conway
CoNTFF is working with the CCAF Contract Task Force out of Faculty Council. The Taskforce is tasked with evaluating the success of current CCAF appointment types. One focus is job security – are the contracts helping with job security or are there other systems? A second focus is language and consistency of appointment types, as in the difference in the language of contract versus continuing appointments. In other news from CoNTFF, Campus Equity Week is coming up the week of October 24, and CoNTFF is considering hosting a Q&A session on contracts and a social gathering.

B. Discussion of Service: Annie Krieg
The goal of this subcommittee is to have something for service by the end of the semester. We will collect recommendations for what constitutes service and how we (CLA, departments) evaluate service. Prior to this meeting, Annie had shared with the group the Service Subcommittee report from last spring. What resonates, and what would we like to see in these recommendations? Members of this committee shared that they would like to see service focus on quality over quantity, and room for variability and flexibility between apartments.

Tom shared a PDF of “Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads” by the American Council on Education. Central themes of the research were discussed:

Transparency – Transparency is central to service allocation and evaluation. Equitable departments have widely visible information about faculty work activities available for department members to see. Departments need to be clear about the expectations for service and how much is enough, as there is potential for over-doing service.

Clarity – Departments should have clearly identified and well-understood benchmarks for faculty work activities.

Credit – Departments should recognize and reward faculty members who are expending more effort in certain areas.

Accountability – Equitable departments have mechanisms in place to ensure that faculty members fulfill their work obligations and receive credit for their labor.

Norms – Good departments have a commitment to ensuring faculty workload is fair and have systems in place that reinforce these norms.

Context – Departments acknowledge that different faculty members have different strengths, interests and demands that shape their workloads and offer workload flexibility to recognize this context.

Regarding the definition of service, not only should it be meaningful and take in strengths and skills, but service for CCAF can be defined differently than it is for TTF. For one, intensive teaching loads necessitate defining service differently. Regarding college-level versus department-level service: Can we or should we measure these differently? Furthermore, should we evaluate service simply with a “meets” expectations to avoid some faculty overdoing service or fear-based service?

Jonathan explained that in LLC, they have two main guiding questions / categories:

• First, how did this service help the department keep the lights on? Letters of recommendation, for example, helping with annual reviews, etcetera, these keep the lights on.
• Second, how did this service expand or develop our influence? Like, for example, serving on a CLA-level committee. These often take more initiative or commitment.

Annie: We should come up with a template (perhaps using the ACE research Tom shared as a guide), with a rubric with multiple options (numerical/qualitative), with some general best practices with clarity, depending upon what that looks like in a department.

Ellie: CCA don’t always have 100 FTE, so does their percentage of service shift over a semester or academic year? Service commitment should be taken into account, like the 2-year commitment of some committees. CCA are in a different situation than TT when we are thinking about service. We need to acknowledge both sides.

Annie: We have to acknowledge that the teaching load is greater, with larger enrollment classes, and this can impact service, too.

Ellie asked the committee if they thought we needed to clarify that CCA have service now, whereas we did not previously? To which some responded that yes, not everyone is getting this information from their departments.

Tom brought up service credit swaps – If departments are transparent on how much service is enough, then if/when CCA go over 10% in a semester there should be ways to account for that the following semester.

Gina has a clear service plan, the template for which she will share with Annie.

C. Continuing vs Contract Appts, Code Changes: Ellie Light
here is language that will change in the college code regarding contracts. The point of the code change is to clarify that you do not need to be on professorial track or have a PhD to be on a contract appointment. It was already like that but the language change is to make this more clear.

D. Wrap up and Adjourn: Annie
Our next meeting will be Monday, October 24 10-11 on MS Teams. This meeting will be open to all CLA CCAF – please share with your departments.

Minutes respectfully submitted by Ashlee Allen