Objectives and Rationale
The College Effort Allocation Guidelines outline effort allocation percentages across faculty ranks in the College and provides procedures that College units shall follow to set individual faculty members’ effort allocation assignments when they differ from IUB defaults. It also provides standards of procedures that College units shall follow when changing an individual faculty members’ effort allocation assignment.
As stated in BOT-24, unless otherwise specified by the job description or an approved differential allocation of effort, the default allocation of productivity areas for tenure track faculty at the IU R1 campuses is 40% teaching, 40% scholarship, and 20% service. The default allocation of productivity for tenured librarians is 80% library services, 10% scholarship, and 10% service. The default policy for NTT faculty is variable and is based on the type of appointment. For Instructional Faculty (Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Teaching Professors) the default allocation policy is 80% teaching and 20% service. For Clinical Faculty the default allocation is 60% teaching and 40% service. For Research ranks (Research Scientist) the default effort allocation is 100% research. For Academic Specialists and Professors of Practice the default effort allocation is based on departmental and unit criteria in consultation with College Leadership. Departments can propose a different default for the various ranks, with reasonable justification, for review and approval by the Executive Dean.
There are many reasons why a faculty member’s effort allocation may differ from the campus or department default. These may be temporary in nature or long lasting and shall be determined between the faculty member and their unit leadership.
- Effort Allocation should reflect faculty activities across three categories: Research/Creative Activity, Teaching, and Service. Research/Creative Activity includes all stages of academic work—from project development and funding (whether successful or not), to data collection, analysis, tool-building, and final outputs. While the default teaching allocation is approximately 10% of effort per 3-credit course, it is not limited to classroom instruction. It includes advising undergraduate and graduate students, supervising capstone, thesis, and Ph.D. projects, serving on committees, and participating in public-facing educational events. Service encompasses administrative responsibilities that support scholarly work at the unit, university, or professional level. Departments may propose variations, provided they include written justification. These allocations are an attempt to acknowledge that tenure probationary, tenured faculty, clinical faculty, lecturers, and research faculty face different expectations for how their time is allocated, with a reduced emphasis on service for both tenure and NTT probationary faculty.
- Given the considerable differences in standards for research and creative activity across the many fields represented in the College, there are no College-level set expectations for research output and creative activity products. Detailed descriptions of what might be included in Research and Creative Activity can be found in the annual review, tenure, and promotion criteria of individual departments, based on disciplinary standards. An appropriate volume and/or pace of research activity very likely varies across the full span of a career, and departments should provide additional guidance on the volume and pace of research activity expected to meet research productivity expectations in the post-tenure period.
- It is standard for units to reduce the service expectations for probationary (tenure-track, i.e., pre-tenure) and NTT faculty. This custom exists to help junior faculty establish their research and teaching trajectories and is reflective of the R1 status of IUB. Departments are encouraged to develop a standard effort allocation distribution for pre-tenure and promotion faculty that may differ from the IUB default. Service requests for pre-tenure and pre-promotion faculty should be discussed with the department chair to ensure that junior faculty are not unduly burdened by service expectations.
- Teaching encompasses a variety of efforts including but not limited to the following: regular class instruction based on the appropriate course load; supervision and mentoring of students; new course proposals; teaching and learning-related research; instructional grant proposal development; preparation; teaching of labs and studios; and other instructional adjacent pedagogical activities. While the University has set guidance that each 3-credit hour course is approximately 10% of effort, faculty engage in a variety of teaching tasks and activities outside the confines of the credit-bearing courses they are designated to teach. The full range of a faculty member’s teaching activities should be taken into consideration for their allocation of effort.
- Faculty with split FTE shall have their effort allocation assignment determined proportional to the expectations in each of their FTE homes. Tenure track faculty and tenured faculty with split FTE shall have their research productivity assessed according to the standards of their tenure and/or promotion home.
- Temporary Changes to Baseline Expectations due to Major Administrative Assignment: Faculty with major administrative assignments shall have their effort reallocated during the length of their service to reflect their increased service and its effect on the time they can allocate to teaching and research. This temporary reallocation shall be clearly stated in their administrative appointment letter. Faculty shall return to their previous effort allocation assignment when they complete/vacate their major administrative position.
- Other Temporary Changes to Baseline Expectations: For a variety of reasons, a faculty member’s effort allocation may temporarily change. For example, a faculty member may take sabbatical or have a course release. Additionally, a faculty member may temporarily take on additional service or teaching to temporarily replace another faculty member who needed to take professional leave unexpectedly. These kinds of temporary changes in teaching activity are a normal part of a research university and do not require a formal modification of effort assignment. However, temporary deviations from baseline expectations should be explained in the annual statements faculty submit as part of their annual review process.
- Faculty-Initiated Temporary and/or Long-term Modification of Baseline Expectations: If a faculty member wishes to change their allocation of time, they should discuss this issue with the unit head. Any modifications to these baseline percents should be agreed to by the unit head(s), the Dean, and the faculty member in writing. After having established a new effort allocation, faculty retain the right to request a new effort reallocation if their circumstances change.
- Unit-Initiated Temporary and/or Long-term Modification of Baseline Expectations: Faculty performance per effort allocation assignment is routinely assessed at annual reviews, tenure and promotion, and/or post-tenure reviews. If, on the basis of such reviews, the unit head(s), in consultation with the executive dean, determines that faculty underperformance in one or more effort categories warrants a change in the faculty member’s effort allocation assignment, the procedures outlined in relevant regular review policy shall govern reassignment. Any reassignment process shall require that the faculty member receive, in writing, the proposed effort reallocation along with evidence of repeated failure to adequately perform to the existing effort allocation assignment, evidence that an improvement plan was developed, and that the faculty member did not improve performance to the level of adequacy after a reasonable time period for improvement. The faculty member shall have an opportunity to respond to these documents. If the faculty member agrees to the reassignment of effort, it goes forward; if the faculty member does not agree to the reassignment of effort, then the proposal will be reviewed by the executive dean.
- Appeals: Any faculty member subject to effort allocation reassignment has the right to file a grievance through BL-ACA-D22 (Grievance and Review Procedures of Bloomington Academic Appointee).