Teaching, including preparing for class and grading, remains the most prevalent duty in the average week of an Iowa State faculty member, according to a new report submitted to the state Board of Regents this week.
That's how tenured and tenure-track faculty spend 13.3 hours per week on average, not including another 8.8 hours per week of other student instruction, such as mentoring student research, advising and developing courses. The average work week of 54.8 hours also includes 21.6 hours of scholarship, research and creative work along with the 22.1 hours of instruction. A term faculty member's average 36.9 hours of student instruction is three-quarters of their 49.1-hour week.
Across all faculty types, the average weekly hours worked fell to 53.9 in 2018, from 54.9 in 2016, 55.69 in 2014 and 58 in 2012.
The data in the faculty activities report comes from a self-reported survey conducted at regent institutions once every two years. It was collected throughout fall 2018, with faculty tracking their hours during different weeks throughout the semester to account for the ebb and flow of the academic year. Eighty-two percent of ISU faculty responded to the survey.
The report breaks down faculty activity by type of work and faculty role, providing regents a broad look at what faculty work on.
How ISU faculty spend their work week
|
Tenured/track |
Term |
Clinician |
Chair |
|
|
Student instruction/advising |
40.4% |
75.0% |
38.3% |
18.1% |
|
Scholarship, research, creative work |
39.4% |
11.6% |
6.9% |
19.6% |
|
Community outreach, extension |
3.7% |
2.7% |
4.5% |
4.1% |
|
Clinical work |
1.5% |
0.2% |
41.2% |
0.1% |
|
Professional development |
1.9% |
1.4% |
3.0% |
1.8% |
|
Administration/service |
13.0% |
9.1% |
6.0% |
56.3% |
In a presentation to the regents' academic affairs committee Nov. 13, associate provost for faculty Dawn Bratsch-Prince personalized the statistics by briefly touching on a diverse variety of work by several faculty members: Elizabeth Stegemöller in kinesiology, Michael Young in mathematics, Michael Goebel in women’s and gender studies and sociology, Dr. Joyce Carnevale in veterinary clinical sciences, Guowen Song in apparel, events and hospitality management, Alison Robertson in plant pathology and microbiology, and Amy Andreotti and Dipali Sashital in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology.
"We know that faculty are the distinguishing strength of any university," she said.
Teaching load balance
The report also tracks how the universities' teaching loads are shared by tenured and tenure-track faculty, term faculty and graduate assistants. The portion of Iowa State's 450,314 credit hours taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty in fall 2018 fell slightly from the 2016 survey, from 50.3% to 49.2%. That reflects the changing nature of faculty appointments across the U.S. and ISU undergraduate enrollment growth between 2014 and 2016, which required additional hiring of term faculty focused on instruction.
Who teaches Iowa State students
|
|
Undergraduate |
Graduate |
Professional |
All students |
|
Tenured/tenure-track |
44.8% |
93.1% |
74.3% |
49.2% |
|
Term faculty |
42.6% |
6.9% |
25.7% |
39.4% |
|
Graduate assistant |
12.7% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
11.4% |
