Instructor Workload
June 16, 2023
Our Know Your Rights segments highlight different aspects that impact your employment at Carleton University, including highlights from the Collective Agreement in small, easy to understand bits.
In previous segments, we covered Tenure, Confirmation, and Promotion; Academic Freedom; Intellectual Property; and outlined what the union can do for you. The Collective Agreement has a number of provisions regarding the workload of CUASA members: faculty, librarians, and instructors alike (Articles 13.2, 13.3, and 13.4 respectively). While it would be difficult to go over each particular detail here, we’re sharing some of the main highlights to keep in mind. We’ll be breaking it up by category: our last update focused on faculty workload; this week, we’ll outline workload information for instructors; and our next update will be for our librarians. Each member is encouraged to read the workload articles that pertain to them thoroughly.
Instructors:
In accordance with Article 13.4(a)(iv), Instructors shall devote about three-quarters (3/4) of their time to teaching, directly related activities, and/or, where appropriate, duties specified in the employee’s job description. Instructor employees shall have most of the remaining time available for professional and related development, with a small amount of time for duties arising from Article 15.3(b)(xii), (xiii) and (xiv).
The duties mentioned in Article 15.3(b) refer to assisting in the training of teaching assistants, serving on departmental committees, or carrying out other duties as requested by their Chair/Director or Dean. Note, that each of these should be to an extent reasonably consistent with devoting themselves primarily to their assigned teaching responsibilities;
An Instructor’s workload should be assigned in consultation with the employee concerned. The provisions of Article 13.2(f), which we listed in our previous update on faculty workload, applies to Instructors as well.
Per the terms of Article 13.4(b), Instructors without individual job descriptions “shall not teach more than three and one half (3.5) credits or the equivalent of one-and-one half (1.5) times the normal full teaching load of faculty employees in the same unit or sub-unit, whichever is less, averaged over each consecutive twenty-four (24) month period”.
Some Instructors have individual written job descriptions, which would have been assigned to an employee when they signed their initial contract. Even for Instructors with a job description, the expectation remains that their duties can be reasonably carried out in a thirty-five (35) hour week averaged over the year, including the one-quarter (1/4) of time for professional development and assigned duties from article 15.3(b), as mentioned above.
Similar to faculty members, Instructor workload allocation should be done through a series of open conversations with your Chair/Director, and that you have a voice in decisions that impact your workload.
Please write to [email protected] if you have further questions or would like to request a topic for an upcoming segment.
