Workload Management and T&P: A Guest Essay

Workload Management and T&P: A Guest Essay

Despite having to manage the instruction for one of the Turner College's biggest academic programs, the Turner College has only two tenure-track marketing faculty, both of whom are tenured. Three or so years ago, when the marketing faculty roster shrank to this number, the Turner College's request to hire more was denied on the cryptic basis of the Turner College already having "too many" tenure-track and tenured faculty. (Today, the word is that the Turner College even has "too many full professors.") Although one can't really know the meaning of that denial from a distance, perhaps the most charitable interpretation of it would be that the Turner College (CSU) should strive to maintain a program of employing faculty who are capable of ascending the institutional food chain of America's system of higher education. If successful, such a program would lead to healthy turnover of faculty, as veteran faculty members move up in the world and are replaced by new PhDs who will one day do the same. Admittedly, such a program would enhance the reputation of the Turner College (CSU). So, what's preventing it from happening? The answer likely lies in CSU's workload policy. Most negative tenure and/or promotion decisions in American academia occur in response to faculty difficulties in achieving success in the realm of scholarship. CSU's standard workload policy sets aside only 10% for that particular activity, with 80% consisting of teaching and another 10% attributed to service activities. Thus, 90% of CSU's workload policy is geared toward something other than research, the one activity that usually prevents success in tenure and/or promotion and yet still the main activity that moving up the academic food chain requires. The result is that it's easier to get tenure and promoted within CSU than it is at most other places, and a very healthy portion of CSU faculty are consequently tenured, hold ranks of associate and full professor and will remain affiliated into the future. Now, it seems, and strangely so, that successful application of CSU's workload policy to one's professional endeavors is being frowned upon by the institution that adopted the policy. Finally, CSU's workload approach does witness rare instances of upward mobility, such as occurred years ago now when finance's Alan Tidwell moved to the University of Alabama. To accomplish that feat, Tidwell did what was required - he ignored the specifics of CSU's workload policy and published a good number of articles in the top real estate finance and economics journals.