Institutional Policy Requirements
Minimum Teaching Workload Requirements
Institutional policies must reflect the minimum teaching requirements in section 5.B.I. This includes allowances for exceptions, equivalencies, and adjustments under section 5.B. Teaching loads may exceed the minimum requirements.
Department Chairs
Academic Department chairs’ teaching responsibilities may be reduced commensurate with their duties as chairperson. An academic department includes a functional equivalent designated by a UW institution which could include but is not limited to schools, colleges, divisions, department-like bodies, centers, clinics, institutes, programs, or other academic units that have been formally recognized by a UW institution through its established processes for such recognition.
Credit Hour Equivalencies
Institutional policies must establish credit hour equivalencies for activities included in teaching workload, which include, but are not limited to graduate instruction, high-enrollment courses, writing-intensive courses, laboratory, studio and discussion sessions, individual instruction, field work/experience, clinical instruction and supervision, and dissertation and thesis supervision.
Adjustments to Teaching Workload Minimums
Academic department chairs’ teaching workload reduction, if any, is not included in the ten percent allowances for administrative duties or additional adjustments under section 5.B.VI.1& 3. Assistant or associate deans are included only in proportion to any active faculty appointment.
Administrative Duties
UW institutions may designate up to 10 percent of their instructional employees for administrative duties, which are responsibilities designated by a UW institution involving the operation and strategic development of an institution and do not include academic department chairperson duties. This includes shared governance responsibilities as defined by institutional policy. This is calculated on an aggregate, full-time equivalent basis.
Employees with a concurrent (backup) instructional position in active non-instructional appointments are not counted in this total.
Employees with a part-time non-instructional appointment are only counted in this total to the extent they are granted a release from their part-time instructional role in addition to their non-instructional appointment.
Additional Adjustments
UW institutions may designate up to 10 percent of their instructional employees for other duties and considerations, including but not limited to market considerations, faculty readaptation or post-tenure review remediation, and accreditation requirements. This is calculated on an aggregate, full-time equivalent basis.
Market Considerations
This refers to delivering instructional experiences across wide-ranging scholarly fields. Doing so requires respecting the norms of these fields and acknowledging the various learners they serve and the extensive teaching methods they employ. The Universities of Wisconsin must recruit and retain faculty and instructional staff within the academic ecosystems of these fields while competing with hundreds of public and private institutions. Each institutional teaching workload policy shall define the specific market considerations that may permit such adjustments based on the needs of their students and the recruiting and retention circumstances at their institutions and the institutional approval process for recognizing market considerations.
Instructional Employee Development
Faculty Readaptation
This refers to institutional obligations under Wis. Stat. § 36.22(12) in the case of layoff, as well as programmatic and curricular changes that respond to student demand and may help avoid faculty layoffs.
Post-Tenure Review Remediation
This refers to post-tenure review remediation based on a post-tenure review remediation plan under RPD 20-9, Periodic Post-Tenure Review in Support of Tenured Faculty Development (section 12(c)), which may require a reduction in teaching workload to provide additional time to accomplish research goals, where research is an identified area of deficiently in post-tenure review.
Implementation of best practices in teaching, learning, and development of disciplinary expertise
This refers to the professional development of instructional employees as necessary to remain current with teaching methods, teaching modality, and subject-matter expertise to ensure student learning and outcomes.
Development and improvement of select courses
This refers to developing new courses and improving existing courses to ensure currency of course and program curriculums.
New and early career instructional employees’ assignments
This includes but is not limited to developing or teaching new courses, beginning or establishing a research program, establishing extension programs or other factors to become established in their roles.
Accreditation Requirements
Some accreditors may require teaching ratios and other teaching requirements that result in adjustments to faculty teaching assignments.