Wilkes University AAUP Newsletter Volume 2, Issue 1 November 2014
Faculty Screwed By Dr. Fred Sullivan, Math & Computer Science For the last two years, our administration has given raises of 3%, but only for the part of the academic year following December 1. So how does that work? In fact, it works differently for 12 month faculty, staff, and administrators than it does for 9 month faculty and staff. 12 month employees get an additional 3% of all salary earned after December 1. That is 9 months, or 3/4 of the contract year. So they are in effect getting 3/4 of 3%, or 2 1/4%. However, 9 month employees who do not earn salary in the summer are treated differently. Although we get paychecks during the summer, that part
of our salary is deemed to have been earned during the 6 months following December 1. So it is the wisdom of the administration that the 3% increase should not be applied to the deferred part of our salary. What this means is that we get 3% on 2/3 of our salary, which is in effect 2%.
$65,000 would make $1862.88 more than a 9 month employee whose salary also started at $65,000 over that 10 year period.
Now, it is true that everyone’s base salary is increased by a full 3% at the start of the next contract. Otherwise, there would be an outrageous disparity between the raises for 12 and 9 month employees. However, the difference is nontrivial even so. For example, assuming that this scheme is continued for a period of 10 years (3% raises beginning in December), a 12 month employee whose salary started at
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Meet the Faculty: Craig Wiernik Sociology & Anthropology 1. What’s your favorite part of the working environment? My new colleagues have been incredibly supportive with their time and advice as I integrate into the Wilkes community. I have been pleasantly surprised at the willingness of Wilkes students to work together on small group projects, both in and outside of class. I also like how
quickly I am getting to know members of the university community outside of my own department, and sharing our collective goal of trying to get the best out of our students in all situations. These are some of the reasons I wanted to come to Wilkes.
Basically what happens is that every year 9 month employees get a half percent less, but this amount is compounded at 3%. If you want to see how this
Inside this Issue: Meet the Faculty: Craig Wiernik Final Survey Report
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Wilkes University AAUP Newsletter Meet the Faculty, Continued 2. Tell us a little about the research you have conducted. My research is developing along two lines. The first is the work I started in my dissertation, examining how my latent measure of religiosity predicts a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors, starting with social trust. The more activist line of my research examines the impacts of incarceration on the families and children of those we are locking away in jail and prison. I will be looking to start support groups here in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area in an effort to provide these individuals with social support; something sorely lacking in their lives right now that makes the burdens they face all the more difficult.
too many intro students), the Sociology of Family, and Theory. On the criminology side, I’m most interested in getting our students to understand how the various interdependent systems actually work compared to how we believe they work. I want our students to see that the system itself helps shape the application of our “criminal” laws, and that there are many “social harms” not covered by said laws. I also want our students to learn that we do know “what works” in various parts of criminal justice as the result of highquality social science and public policy analysis, and that sometimes politicians tend to ignore our advice and we have to keep pushing for social change.
3. What are you most interested in teaching? Why? My teaching interests reflect my research interests -- bifurcated between ideas and policy. On the sociological side of the house, I’m most interested in teaching Intro (from a Social Problems perspective -- though that will change slightly as a result of depressing
4. How will you best serve the university community? At the end of the day, my goal is not to just teach sociology and criminology, but to help create citizens who will look at the world and maybe be inspired to take an active role in it. My (sometimes unbridled) enthusiasm for sociology and
“making our world a better place” can be infectious when folks are exposed to it. And while my research is important (and hopefully useful!), I see myself first and foremost as a teacher and mentor to young Americans as they continue their journey toward adulthood. I believe that my focus on continuously trying to figure out “what works” in the 21st century classroom, including the growing use to technology, will prove to be an asset to my students and the university community at large over time as we strive to educate the future leaders of our world. 5. How has your first semester been so far? My first semester has been great! From the various orientation sessions set up for us as new faculty (it’s great having them spread out over the semester!), to getting to know my new students, I have been very much enjoying my time here. I only expect things to get better as I continue becoming an active member of the Wilkes community, both among our students and alongside my peers.
Final Report Survey: How much time do professors spend working? By Dr. Michael Garr Sociology & Anthropology
The local chapter of the AAUP requested a survey that would be conducted on faculty workload at Wilkes University. An online survey was constructed that asked faculty members to estimate the time they spent on various activities for the past month. These activities were grouped into types of activity: Instruction, Scholarship, Communications, Meetings, Service, Family and Miscellaneous. Since work varies within a semester, the Wilkes faculty was randomly divided into 3 roughly even groups to be given a
survey at different times throughout the semester in order to provide an overall picture of work during a semester. The first group (n = 56) received notification to complete the survey in early October to ascertain the level of work during the early part of the semester. The second group (n = 56) received its notification to complete the survey in early November to ascertain work levels during the middle of the semester. Finally the third group (n = 55) received notification to complete the survey in early December to get an idea of
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Volume 2, Issue 1 Final Report Survey, Continued workloads during the latter part of the semester. Of the 157 faculty members who received a request, 132 opened the survey and 121 completed the survey yielding a response rate of 77%. For each question, response categories rated the amount of time spent on an activity: 1 = no time, 2 = less than one hour, 3 = 1 -5 hours, 4 = 6 – 10 hours, 5 = 11 – 20 hours, and 6 = more than 20 hours. In addition, faculty were asked about their rank (1 = Assistant Professor (n = 31); 2 = Associate Professor (n = 56); 3 = Full Professor (n = 22); 4 = Professor Emeritus (n = 0); 5 = full-time, non-tenure track (n = 10); and 6 = part-time faculty (n = 2). There was also a question regarding gender: 1 = male (n = 59), 2 = female (n = 55), and 3 = prefer not to answer (n = 7). The statistical analysis comparing different ranks and different genders excluded full-time, non-tenure track faculty and part-time faculty, as well as those who preferred not to answer the gender question, because of low subsample sizes. Estimating the time a typical faculty member spends per week is difficult to establish. The difficulty is due to the fact that ranges of time were used as response categories to the questions on the survey. Midpoints of those ranges were used to calculate the mean time. So means that fell between 1.00 (no time) and 1.99 (less than an hour) were assigned the time .33 hours (or about 20 minutes). Means that fell between 2.00 and 2.99 were assigned the time .67 hours (or about 40 minutes). Means that fell between 3.00 and 3.99 were assigned the time of 3 hours (the midpoint of response category 3). Those means that were between 4.00 and 4.99 were assigned 8 hours (the midpoint of response category
4). A mean time was then calculated across all the mean scores for all the activities. The resulting mean was 42.72, indicating that the typical faculty member worked approximately 43 hours per week. Not surprisingly, most time is spent on instruction. Instruction had a mean score of 3.31, followed by communication (mean score of 2.68), meetings (mean score of 2.34), scholarship (mean score of 2.20), family (mean score of 1.97), service (mean score of 1.88) and miscellaneous (mean score of 1.73). Each activity is examined in terms of rank and gender. Overall, there were few statistically significant rank or gender differences. One activity where a rank difference is found is “preparing for teaching” (F = 6.531, p. = .002). Assistant professors (mean score of 4.52) spend significantly more time preparing to teach than associate professors (mean score of 3.98) or full professors (mean score of 3.55). Another rank difference is found in “preparing for committee work” (F = 5.403, p. = .006). Associate professors (mean score of 2.70) spend significantly more time preparing for committee work than either assistant professors (mean score of 2.23) or full professors (mean score of 2.14). Rank differences are found for various DPC activities. Just in DPC work such as attending classes, reviewing materials and writing reports, significant rank differences were found (F = 9.382, p. < .001). Again, associate professors (mean score of 2.31) spend significantly more time on these activities than assistant professors (mean score of 1.37) or full professors (mean score of 1.82). Not
surprisingly, significant differences are found for compiling dossiers for third-year reviews (F = 12.594, p. < .001) and compiling dossiers for tenure or promotion (F = 5.301, p. = .006). Assistant professors (mean score of 1.97) spend significantly more time spent compiling dossiers for thirdyear review than associate professors (mean score of 1.02) or full professors (mean score of 1.23). Similarly, assistant professors (mean score of 1.74) spend compiling tenure and promotion dossiers than do associate professors (mean score of 1.23) or full professors (mean score of 1.14). Significant differences are found for two other activities. A small but significant rank difference is found in planning or hosting community events on campus (F = 3.457, p. = .035). Associate professors (mean score 1.92) are more likely to spend time on planning or hosting events than are assistant professors (mean score of 1.53) or full professors (mean score of 1.36). Finally a difference (F = 4.351, p. = .015) is found among ranks in how much time is spent on emotional or spiritual fitness. Assistant professors (mean score of 2.45) are more likely to spend time taking care of themselves through emotional or spiritual fitness than are associate professors (mean score of 1.98) or full professors (mean score of 1.68). There are even fewer gender differences in faculty activities. Females (mean score of 2.96) are found to spend more time than males (mean score of 2.54) in preparing to teach a course in a future term (t = -2.222, p. = .029). Females (mean score of 3.58) spend more time than males (mean score of
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Wilkes University AAUP Newsletter Final Report Survey, Continued 3.12) corresponding with students (t = -3.055, p. = .003). Females (mean score of 2.91) spend more time than males (mean score of 2.60) attending faculty meetings (t = -2.278, p. = .025). University faculty are professionals and hence their work activity is not directly supervised. While some faculty work
more some weeks and less other weeks, it is encouraging to know that faculty on average work at least 40 hours a week. Given the opportunity to do less, faculty, at least at Wilkes, seem to do more. A final note: Other methods of estimation of faculty workload can
be used. The final response category, “20 hours or more,” makes estimation difficult because it becomes rather arbitrary to define a specific number of hours. The method used here is probably a more conservative method of estimation than those that attempt to flesh out the number of hours over 20 hours.
Faculty Screwed, Continued affects you, there is a calculator at http://sullivan.mathcs.wilkes.edu/ faculty-screwed.html that tells how much more a 12 month employee with a given salary will make than a 9 month
employee with the same salary over a period of years. The bottom line is that in terms of raises, the 9 month faculty who deliver
the mission of this university are valued less than everyone else (except, of course, for adjunct faculty, where the situation is obviously much worse).
Wilkes University AAUP Chapter Wilkes University 84 West South Street Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766 Phone: 570-408-4529 Email: mischelle.anthony@wilkes.edu
Wilkes University AAUP Officers: • President: Mischelle Annthony (English) • Vice-President: Kyle L. Kreider (Political Science) • Treasurer: Brian Whitman (Earth and Environmental Science) • Secretary: Morgan Clevenger (Business) • Members at Large: Linda Paul (Philosophy), Diane Polachek (Education) • Faculty Editor: Patrician Heaman (English, emeritus) Newsletter Production-Students: • Copy-Editor: James Jaskolka, Communication Studies, ‘16 • Layout and Design: Nicole Kutos, Integrative Media and English Literature, ‘17
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