A Senate proposal regarding increased workloads for UNC System faculty members has been heavily criticized by system faculty since it was proposed last week, especially here at NC State.
The bill calls the UNC-System Board of Governors to adopt a policy requiring all faculty members to teach a minimum of eight courses during the course of each academic year. Any faculty member who teaches fewer classes would have his or her salary deducted as appropriate.
Sen. Tom McInnis, a freshman Republican from Richmond County, who sponsored the bill said he wants more professors in the classroom, rather than graduate teaching assistants.
“If that professor is going to be doing research, only that research grant needs to go toward paying his or her salary and we need to take that money that they would be making otherwise if they were in a classroom and put it in the classroom with another professor,” McInnis said.
The bill, “An act to improve the quality of instruction at constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina,” hasn’t found many fans among faculty members, both at NC State and across the system.
Jim Martin, a professor of chemistry at NC State, said most research professors teach two courses a semester. When he isn’t teaching he spends his time working with undergraduate and graduate students conducting intensive mentoring in laboratory research.
Martin said the bill would be destructive for NC State’s mission as a research university.
“You cannot have a research university where you are teaching basically at the level that a high school teacher teaches,” Martin said. “You don’t see your high school teachers doing a lot of research do you, you don’t see your high school teachers running a graduate program.”
If the bill leaves committee, where it currently sits, and becomes law, David Zonderman, a professor of history and Chair of the NC State Faculty Senate, said the university system would see an exodus of faculty members, particularly from NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill, but also other system schools such as East Carolina University and UNC-Charlotte.
“Any faculty member serious about his or her research would try to find another job somewhere else and within a year or two you would see hundreds of faculty members leave this university,” Zonderman said. “It would devastate us. The second thing is that people would cut way back on research. We would lay off hundreds of people that contribute to research on this campus and less research would get done, so there would be less economic impact for the state.”
A recent report released by the UNC-System General Administration found that UNC system research spending generates $1.5 billion annually in added income for the state and employs more than 22,000 North Carolinians.
“The other thing that would probably happen is people would find a way to do this ‘efficiently,’ Zonderman said. “In other words, it would all become bubble tests and online and to me that’s the antithesis of college level teaching. When I think that we need to be more engaging with our students, particularly in the upper level courses. Seminars would disappear. It’s a very pernicious bill.”
