ADVANCE Adaptation: Innovating Faculty Workloads through an Equity Lens

CCalifornia State University Long Beach (CSULB) intends to adapt and implement The Faculty Workload and Rewards Project from the University of Maryland (NSF ADVANCE 1463898). The University of Maryland project was designed to understand how inequities arise in workload at the department level and how to utilize data on these work practices to improve existing workload practices and develop policies that lead to greater equity.

By addressing workload equity for non-tenure and tenure track faculty at CSULB, the project will address a significant national challenge shared by many other institutions of higher education. Within CSULB, non-tenure track faculty (full-time and part-time) have grown in numbers and collectively provide more than half of all instruction, while the number of tenure track faculty has been mostly static or declining.

This work is designed to address issues related to work satisfaction and retention, tenure, and promotion raised by STEM faculty.

This adaptation project aims to advance the understanding of both the sources of inequity in workload among STEM faculty and the policies and practices that can increase equity and to provide tools that can be used to identify "invisible labor" and quantify "identity taxation." CSULB's unionized environment presents an opportunity to demonstrate that it is possible to bring about positive and practical changes on a topic subject to collective bargaining when local representatives of labor and management work collaboratively and in good faith. Depending on the success of the CSULB ADVANCE Adaptation project, it may become a model that could be used at any of the 22 other California State University (CSU) campuses.

The CSU is the largest 4-year public university system in the United States, boasting 23 campuses in California and employing approximately 28,000 faculty. Results of the project will be distributed to two unique and important audiences. These are: (1)the CSU systemwide faculty and administrators via the CSU systemwide affinity groups and (2) the CSU statewide union, the California Faculty Association (CFA), which represents all faculty across the CSU.

The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate.

ADVANCE "Adaptation" awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic, non-profit institutions of higher education as well as non-academic, non-profit organizations.

This project was supported with co-funding from the HSI Program, which aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.