Academics

UMass Faculty Workload Equity Project

The recently agreed upon Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) contract requires all departments to develop equitable workload plans during the 2022-23 academic year. The plans are required to focus on racial and gender equity and recognize individuals who have high levels of service and mentoring. One of the ways departments can develop an equitable workload plan will be engaging with the Zuckerberg Faculty Workload Equity Project which is funded by the Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair as well as the National Science Foundation-funded, UMass Amherst ADVANCE program.

For the 2022-23 year, Joya Misra will provide support and workshops for departments that are working to create more equitable workloads at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This work builds on a large-scale experimental project on workload equity, that has identified effective strategies to create more equitable workloads.

The phases of this work follow below:

Phase	Activity
September-October, 2022	Department assembles team of faculty at different ranks (ideally, at least one NTT faculty member, one untenured faculty member, and one tenure faculty member) to work on faculty workload equity for 2022-23.
September- October, 2022	Department requests survey to workloadequity@umass.edu, to be fielded for its members, and provides a list of all email addresses of faculty members, including NTT faculty members.
October 7, 2022 10am-12 pm	Chair/Head of department and members of faculty workload equity team attend Equity Minded Workload Reform Part 1: Assessing Workload Challenges.
October-November, 2022	Team receives summary of survey findings, and meets to discuss key findings; team presents findings to department. Team may also build dashboard that collects data on the workload elements that they wish to target (e.g., service, mentoring, teaching loads).
November 2022	Teams continue to identify the key workload challenges they want to focus on in departments. Those that have questions can set up 30-minute consultations with Misra.
December 2022	Teams present findings to departments, developing buy-in for addressing the key workload challenge they plan to target in 2022-23.
February 24, 2023 10am-12pm	Chair/Head of department and members of faculty workload equity team attend Equity Minded Workload Reform Part 2: Policies.
February-March, 2023	Team meets to identify key policy interventions to target, in order to create workload equity plans focusing on racial and gender equity, and recognizing those with high levels of service and mentoring. They share those plans with workloadequity@umass.edu.
March-April, 2023	Teams receive feedback on their workload equity plan and present to their departments. Those that have questions can set up 30-minute consultations with Misra.
May 2023	Teams present workload equity plan to MSP/administration.
September 2023	Chairs/Heads meet for session to discuss workload equity plan implementation. After implementation, the survey will be fielded once more, to explore whether the policy change has made a difference and identify additional concerns that the department can target.