Faculty Responsibilities and Professional Development 

Natalie Alexander, Erwin Chemerinsky, and Sarah Pratt

In this "White Paper," we seek to identify important issues concerning faculty responsibilities and development that should be considered by the Academic Senate and its committees. Additionally, we suggest basic positions on these issues so as to facilitate discussion at the Academic Senate retreat. Four topics are addressed: 1) Revising the statement of faculty responsibilities in the Faculty Handbook; 2) Developing standards for professional ethics for faculty members; 3) Improving faculty development; 4) Devising fair standards for handling faculty royalty and outside income.

I. Revising the statement of faculty responsibilities.

The statement of faculty responsibilities in the Faculty Handbook is old, brief, and not very detailed. If possible, it would be useful to revise this statement to reflect changed expectations and to be more specific. We are mindful, however, that expectations vary across departments and schools and that any statement inevitably will be somewhat abstract.

We believe that the Faculty Handbook should make clear that a tenure-track faculty position is a full-time position and that the faculty member may engage in other activities only if they do not interfere with University responsibilities. Currently, the statement of faculty responsibilities states that faculty members are expected to work four days a week at University related tasks. We suggest that this formulation be replaced because it conveys the wrong message about the greater amount of time that most faculty members spend working and because any requirement framed in terms of specific time obligations is unenforceable.

Faculty members, of course, are expected to engage in teaching, including, meeting all class sessions; having regular and frequent office hours; and grading written work in a timely fashion. Additionally, faculty members are expected to engage in high quality on-going scholarship of a type appropriate for their field or discipline. Also, faculty members are expected to participate in committees, both at the University level and within their school or unit. For example, it is essential that the faculty councils play a central role in faculty governance. Administrators of schools and units should be encouraged to rely heavily on the faculty councils in formulating and implementing policies.

All evaluations of tenure-track faculty members -- including promotion, tenure, and merit salary increases -- should consider teaching, scholarship, and service activities. Although these endeavors are not deserving of equal weight in evaluations, it is important that all be considered.

We emphasize this because all too often service activities are unrecognized, even though they can require large amounts of time and effort. Committee work by faculty members, at the department, unit, school, and university level, is essential and should be recognized and rewarded. Of course, expectations of such service should vary over the course of an individual's career. For example, junior faculty members generally should have minimal committee responsibilities, which will then increase over time. Likewise, care should be taken so that junior faculty members are not shouldered with the least desirable and most onerous service related tasks within their departments and units.

Throughout the country, as well as at U.S.C., there are efforts to develop standards for professional ethics for faculty members. Most professions have such standards and it is appropriate that they be developed for educators.

As is the case for other professionals, educators should avoid even the appearance of impropriety in their professional conduct. We can identify several areas where ethical standards should be developed.

1. Maintaining intellectual integrity and honesty. Faculty members, of course, should meet the highest standards for intellectual integrity and honesty in their work.

2. Avoiding conflicts of interest. We understand that the Provost's office is working on guidelines concerning appropriate standards regulating conflicts of interest by faculty members. The Research Committee, a joint committee of the Academic Senate and the University, should be involved in developing these guidelines and the final version should be submitted to the Academic Senate for its approval.

3. Protecting confidential information. Faculty members regularly possess confidential information, such as in admissions files, student disciplinary matters, tenure and promotion cases, and faculty grievance procedures. Faculty members are expected to protect such confidential information. Care should be taken to alert faculty members as to what information is confidential.

4. Accounting and use of university funds. Faculty members should carefully account for all university funds in their control and should not commingle university and personal funds.

5. Maintaining appropriate standards of personal and professional conduct. Faculty members must deal professionally with students, staff, and colleagues and must refrain from expressing bias and from behavior that might be construed as harassment based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or socio-economic status.

We recognize that these are only a few of the areas to be considered in developing standards of professional ethics and that each needs much more development.

III. Improving Faculty Development

Nothing is more important in the University than encouraging on-going faculty productivity in teaching and scholarship. There should be careful consideration of whether current efforts at faculty development are succeeding and how to improve them. We offer the following suggestions:

1. Evaluation of the merit salary system. In theory, salary raises are supposed to be on merit. Yet, we know of no systematic survey of the faculty to determine whether faculty members perceive that salaries are actually based on merit and whether faculty members are satisfied with the procedures used for appraising merit. Therefore, we propose that a survey be devised to evaluate the merit salary system.

2. Disclosure of salary information. Although a particular person's salary should be private, faculty members should know the range of salaries, by rank, for their school or unit. Such disclosure helps to prevent inequities and aids in communicating information about merit evaluations. A system of disclosure should be devised that balances privacy concerns with the great benefits of shared information.

3. In those departments and schools where faculty members depend on external revenue sources, there should be more instruction, including workshops, as to how faculty members can best apply for such funding.

4. The University has developed funding to encourage innovative teaching efforts. The results of such funding should be investigated. For example, are such innovations implemented or do they fail for lack of continued funding? Also, is there sufficient funding for improvements in more standard or traditional teaching approaches?

5. Schools and departments should be encouraged to evaluate and improve their programs for assisting junior faculty members with teaching responsibilities. All too often, it seems, junior faculty members are given little guidance as to pedagogy. For example, schools and departments might consider implementing formal mentoring programs. 

IV. Devising fair standards for handling faculty royalty and outside income

Major inconsistencies exist in the way the University treats royalty and outside income earned by faculty members. For example, the University is entitled to a portion of patent royalties, but not copyright royalties. Another illustration is that in some units of the University, but not in others, the University "taxes" a percentage of outside income earned by faculty members.

There needs to be a careful reconsideration of these policies. Such a reconsideration should be based on the principle that outside income earned by a faculty member should be treated as the property of the faculty member and not the University. Faculty members