The pandemic didn't change how many hours Iowa State faculty work in a week, but it did tweak how they spent that time. In the biennial faculty activities survey conducted last spring for the state Board of Regents, tenured and tenure-track faculty members reported working 54.1 hours per week, term faculty 50.1 hours, clinical faculty 50.5 hours and department chairs or executive officers 55.8 hours. All are similar to 2019 survey numbers. Associate provosts from Iowa's three regent universities presented the results to the board's academic affairs committee at its Nov. 3 meeting.
The survey asked participants to assign their time worked during one week among six categories: instruction, scholarship/research, clinical work, community outreach/engagement, administration/service and professional development.
The most notable changes were in instruction. Faculty time spent on classroom teaching and preparation dropped by half to two-thirds, to be replaced by time spent in online teaching and preparation -- a subcategory that existed previously -- and hybrid teaching and preparation, a subcategory that did not.
The board's chief academic officer, Rachel Boon, said that changes made to the survey that acknowledge the pandemic will remain in place. In some cases, that was a detail as small as changing a verb: "Participating" at a conference or workshop rather than "attending."
On average, Iowa State's tenured and tenure-track faculty reported spending about an hour more in the week on instruction-related activities than two years ago, and a little less time in professional development and administrative or service activities. ISU term faculty reported, on average, nearly an hour more per week in research or creative work last spring than spring 2019 and nearly the same amount of time on all other areas, including nearly 37 hours on instruction-related activities.
What the faculty activities report makes clear, said associate provost for faculty Dawn Bratsch-Prince, is the breadth of the work faculty do, but also how that work varies widely, depending on university mission, appointment and academic field, among other factors.
"The diversity of our faculty -- their disciplines, appointment types, work responsibilities and the expectations we have for them -- really enriches the campus learning environment for students and, we believe, benefits the communities across our state," she said.
Iowa State faculty: Average weekly hours worked, Spring 2021
|
Activity |
Tenured and tenure-track (884) |
Term (230) |
Clinical (20) |
Chair/DEO (44) |
|
Student instruction |
23.40 |
36.75 |
15.92 |
9.67 |
|
Scholarship, research, creative work |
21.00 |
6.63 |
6.61 |
9.41 |
|
Clinical work |
0.66 |
0.14 |
16.80 |
0.62 |
|
Community outreach, extension |
1.64 |
1.37 |
4.17 |
2.26 |
|
Administration, service |
6.61 |
4.21 |
5.24 |
32.99 |
|
Professional development |
0.80 |
1.01 |
1.78 |
0.80 |
|
Total average hours/week |
54.11 |
50.11 |
50.52 |
55.75 |
Numeral in parentheses=Number of respondents
The faculty activity survey is administered in odd-numbered years to all fulltime faculty. Iowa State's data is based on responses from 1,178 faculty members. Of the 1,452 full-time faculty who received a survey, 87% returned it, but 86 responses had to be pulled because they were incomplete in some way.
