Rebuilt HTML — PaddleOCR-VL (Baidu)

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

PROCEDURE TITLE:

KYSU Online Faculty Workload Procedures

VOLUME, SECTION & NUMBER:

1.3.15

ENTITIES AFFECTED:

Full-time Faculty Adjunct Faculty Administrators

ADMINISTRATIVE AUTHORITY: Academic Affairs

APPROVED BY:

Office of the Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs Office of Online Education

EFFECTIVE DATE:

7/1/2024

REVISED FROM:

Section 2.11 of the Faculty Handbook

PURPOSE:

The purpose of the KYSU Online Faculty Workload Procedures is to establish procedures for implementing the KYSU Online Faculty Workload Policy (1.3.10) and tracking the workload of various faculty types involved in the academic programs of KYSU Online. These procedures establish a standard unit of measurement, a “faculty workload unit” (WLU), for tracking faculty duties that are quantified in credit hours, work hours, workdays, administrative release, and stipends. The procedures also support faculty compensation and benefits processes.

PROCEDURES STATEMENT:

The online programs are supported by two faculty types: full-time faculty (i.e., full-time residential faculty) and adjunct faculty. To ensure that an adequate number of full-time faculty are available for the residential academic programs, administrative assignments, and committee service, full-time faculty may not use online course load (i.e., courses delivered in the online modality in the academic programs of KYSU Online) to fulfill their full-time teaching requirements. Full-time faculty must fulfill their

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

contractual teaching obligations with courses delivered in the traditional, hybrid, or virtual modalities. See the KYSU Online Course Modality Policy (1.3.14) for a description of each modality. The Provost must approve exceptions to this policy in advance.

Adjunct faculty may be recruited for specific work in the online programs. Unlike full-time faculty, the adjunct faculty do not hold a contracted teaching load in the residential programs. Each faculty type requires procedures for tracking faculty workload.

Faculty Workload Units (WLU) Values and System:

KYSU Online will measure faculty workload in faculty workload units (WLU). Faculty workload units are a single way to quantify various types of faculty workload. The table below shows how traditional elements of faculty workload in the credit hour systems of calculations are quantified in faculty workload units.

These crosswalks to WLUs accommodate faculty workload tracking regardless of the known values (credit hours, release from teaching credit hours, faculty work hours, and faculty workdays).

Compensation for Faculty Workload Units (WLU):

The Office of Online Education will determine whether faculty workload for KYSU Online triggers payment. This determination is based upon a review of the faculty type (whether full-time or adjunct), existing contracts and executed agreements (e.g., whether the workload is included in the scope of a full-time faculty contract or extended contract/PAF), and whether the Provost has preapproved any exceptions to the regular workload policies and procedures (e.g., in some circumstances the Provost could approve online load to count towards a full-time faculty contracted load). The standard rates for paid faculty workload are presented in the table below.

Faculty Workload and Adjunct Hours of Service (ahs):

In addition to tracking the faculty workload units of adjunct faculty, KYSU Online also tracks the adjunct hours of service (ahs) for benefits administration. As part-time employees, if adjunct faculty average 30 or more adjunct hours of service (ahs) over a lookback period (which generally comprises the fall and spring terms), they should be considered full-time for benefits administration.2 More details are

1 These are credit hours of contracted teaching from which a faculty member is released; the equivalent workload is directed towards other duties, such as administrative assignments, committee leadership, or special projects.

2 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(32)

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

explained in other sections of this document. The table below introduces the system and values used to track adjunct hours of service for KYSU Online.

Section Sizes and Faculty Workload Tracking:

The Office of Online Education works with the Registrar's Office to implement consistent section sizes for KYSU Online courses. Section sizes should support the effective delivery of online courses, which includes regular and substantive interaction.

Standard Section Sizes:

Unless otherwise specified, KYSU Online sections will plan for the number of targeted seats in the table below at each degree program level.

Pro-rated Pay for Low Enrollment:

Although every effort will be made to ensure that online faculty are assigned course sections with adequate enrollment to justify full compensation at the standard rate, pro-rated pay for low-enrollment courses will be made according to the schedule in the table below. The minimum and maximum seats for undergraduate courses are on the left side of the table; the right side presents the minimum and maximum seats at the graduate level.

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

Additional Pay for High Enrollment Sections:

The targeted seats and the maximum seat values in the tables above can be exceeded occasionally to avoid opening another section. Additional compensation for the over-enrolled seats will be made according to the rates in the table below.

BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE:

The details presented in this document’s “Procedures Statement” section are sufficient to understand how faculty workload is calculated and the basic method for calculating adjunct hours of service. This section, “Background and Rationale,” presents the underlying assumptions, the usefulness of faculty workload units (WLU), and the guidelines established for adjunct hours of service (ahs).

Assumptions Carried Over from the Credit Hour System:

Kentucky State University historically has tracked faculty workload using credit hours and time-based units of measurement to track overload and distribution of effort. The system of faculty workload units (WLU) presented above incorporates several assumptions of the historical approaches to measuring faculty workload and overload in the credit hour system. It is helpful to state the historical assumptions here. The only new addition is related to the number of weeks in a sub-term.

Assumption Qty 1 Metric 1 Qty 2 Metric 2

A semester (sem) is the equivalent of 15 semester weeks (semwk). 1 sem = 15 semwk

A sub-term (sub) is the equivalent of 7.5 sub-term weeks (subwk). 1 sub = 7.5 acwk

A credit hour (cr) is the equivalent of 2 faculty work hours (fwh) per academic week for a semester course. 1 cr = 30 fwh

A faculty workday (fwd) is the equivalent of 10 faculty work hours (fwh). 1 fwd = 10 fwh

Adjuncts are paid at $900 per credit hour, up to $2700 per course. 1 cr = $900 $

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

A credit hour (cr) is the equivalent of 3 normal faculty workdays (fwd) for the purpose of tracking overload. 1 cr = 3 fwd

The Usefulness of Faculty Workload Units (WLU):

The full-time faculty workload at Kentucky State University has traditionally been measured in credit hours for course instruction or administrative release and in workdays for various aspects of faculty service and overload. Both credit hours and workdays relate to approximations of faculty time spent working in a semester or contract period. These approximations of time (whether hours or workdays) are predicated on the relationship between course credit hours and time spent in academic engagement with students during a semester, which is a minimum of 15 weeks of academic engagement in a semester.

Relating faculty workload to time spent working is unavoidable to an extent because of the credit hour system. However, one weakness of this relationship is the potential to convey an association between faculty work hours and compensation inadvertently. This is undesirable since neither full-time nor part-time adjunct faculty are classified as non-exempt, hourly employees. So, it is helpful to disjoin workload from working time by implementing an atemporal metric to quantify faculty workload. Additionally, the older methods of tracking faculty workload do not readily lend themselves to various conversions, such as determining the workload represented by non-credit-bearing work or projects paid at a flat rate.

Building upon the traditional approaches to faculty workload at Kentucky State University, KYSU Online will use a new model to track faculty workload based on faculty workload units (abbreviated as WLU). Faculty workload units (WLU) facilitate compensation; they are not directly tied to course instruction (as are credit hours), and they disjoin compensation from time-based approximations of faculty work (such as workdays and work hours). Faculty workload units (WLU) meet the needs of KYSU Online by accommodating different faculty types (full-time and part-time), different types of work (e.g., instructional, non-instructional, special assignments), different units of quantifying the work (e.g., credit hours, workdays, flat rate stipends), different timeframes in which the work is completed (e.g., semester, subterm), and different purposes for tracking the work (e.g., monitoring overload caps, additional pay, adjunct benefits thresholds).

Adjunct Faculty Hours of Service (ahs):

Adjunct faculty are considered part-time employees of the University.3 The Office of Online Education assigns online course load to adjunct faculty as needed. As much as possible, course load assignments consider the requests and preferences of each adjunct faculty member. In some circumstances, an adjunct faculty member might be asked to complete additional duties beyond the scope of their part-time teaching load, such as administrative support of the online programs, service as an SME, or curricular assessment. The Office of Online Education tracks other assigned duties.

Adjunct faculty are not hourly employees of the University. They are paid a flat rate per course and other duties. However, to comply with regulations relevant to the part-time status of adjunct faculty members and benefits administration, the university will use adjunct faculty workload information to track adjunct hours of service.

3 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(32)

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

The term adjunct hours of service refers to the average calculated time per week a part-time adjunct faculty employee works. Since adjunct faculty are part-time employees, adjunct hours of service must be tracked to confirm that their workloads remain below a calculated average of 30 hours per week, which is the threshold for full-time employment under the Affordable Care Act.4

The method of calculating adjunct hours of service must fit the definition of a “reasonable method.”5 One reasonable method is described in the Federal Register:

[T]he Treasury Department and the IRS have determined that, until further guidance is issued, one (but not the only) method that is reasonable for this purpose would credit an adjunct faculty member of an institution of higher education with (a) 2 1/4 hours of service (representing a combination of teaching or classroom time and time performing related tasks such as class preparation and grading of examinations or papers) per week for each hour of teaching or classroom time (in other words, in addition to crediting an hour of service for each hour teaching in the classroom, this method would credit an additional 1 1/4 hours for activities such as class preparation and grading) and, separately, (b) an hour of service per week for each additional hour outside of the classroom the faculty member spends performing duties they are required to perform (such as required office hours or required attendance at faculty meetings).6

Three timeframes are involved in tracking adjunct hours of service: the stability period, the administrative period, and the measurement period.

• The current academic year corresponds to the stability period. In the stability period, the employee's benefit status, which had been previously established for their position, remains stable, regardless of fluctuations in their hours worked. The stability period is generally 10 or 11 months.
• Following the stability period is an administrative period of 1 or 2 months. During the administrative period, the past workload of each adjunct faculty member is measured to determine a benefit status for the subsequent stability period, which follows the administrative period.
• The measurement period is the most recently completed stability period used during the administrative period to calculate the average weekly adjunct hours of service.

Once per year in the administrative period, the average weekly hours of service in the measurement period are calculated for each adjunct using a “reasonable method.” The university will use the “lookback measurement method.” Per the Federal Register,

The proposed regulations provide a method, referred to as the look-back measurement method, under which employers may determine the status of an employee as a full-time

4 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(3)

5 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2014-03082/p-72

6 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2014-03082/p-77

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

employee during a future period (referred to as the stability period) based upon the hours of service of the employee in a prior period (referred to as the measurement period).7

In the administrative period, the Office of Human Resources will evaluate adjunct hours of service during the measurement period to determine the appropriate actions to take for benefits administration in the stability period. Any part-time faculty employee (i.e., adjunct faculty member) averaging 30 or more hours of service per week during the measurement period will be contacted by Human Resources to review health insurance coverage options for the subsequent stability period.

Since KYSU Online offers courses in sub-terms, workload calculations must factor in the compression of a semester-length course into a sub-term. This has an amplifying effect on calculations of adjunct hours of service. In other words, if an adjunct delivers the WLU in half the number of semester weeks, there is a corollary doubling of the adjunct hours of service in each delivery week. This is important because the average adjunct hours of service per week, which is calculated during the look-back period, only considers active weeks. So, the same workload can lead to different ahs calculations depending on how it is distributed across terms and sub-terms.

DEFINITIONS:

Academic weeks (acwk): A semester-length course must be at least 15 weeks of academic engagement.

Semester (sem): A semester includes at least 15 weeks of academic engagement.

Semester week (semwk): One actual week of a semester-length course, during which a commensurate portion of 15 academic weeks are delivered. So, 1 semester week is approximately 1 academic week of engagement.

Sub-term (sub): A sub-term is half the length of a semester-length course. It delivers the equivalent of 15 weeks of academic engagement in half the time.

Sub-term week (subwk): One actual week of a sub-term-length course, during which a commensurate portion of 15 academic weeks are delivered. So, 1 sub-term week is approximately 2 academic weeks of engagement.

Credit hour (cr): The standard unit for measuring instructional faculty workload.

Release from credit hours (rcr): The equivalent number of credit hours of teaching from which a faculty member has been released to perform administrative duties.

Faculty workdays (fwd): A day of faculty workload, which is approximately 10 faculty work hours. This was previously used to calculate full-time faculty overload caps. It assumes that 1 credit hour equated to 3 faculty workdays.

Faculty work hours (fwh): An hour of faculty workload, which is approximately 1/10 of a faculty workday.

7 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2014-03082/p-99

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

Faculty workload unit (WLU): A unit of measurement used to quantify the faculty workload represented by credit hours, workdays, and work hours.

Adjunct hours of service (ahs): An hour of adjunct faculty work used for part-time faculty benefit administration during the administrative period of the year. Any adjunct faculty member who averages 30 or more adjunct hours of service (ahs) per week worked during the lookback period will be considered full-time for benefits administration under the Affordable Care Act (26 CFR 54.4980H-1(a)(24)).8

Stability period: The current academic year corresponds to the stability period. In the stability period, the employee's benefit status, which had been previously established for their position, remains stable, regardless of fluctuations in their hours worked. The stability period is generally 10 or 11 months (26 CFR 54.4980H-1(a)(45)).9

Administrative period: Following the stability period is an administrative period of 1 or 2 months. During the administrative period, the past workload of each adjunct faculty member is measured to determine a benefit status for the subsequent stability period, which follows the administrative period (26 CFR 54.4980H-1(a)(1)).10

Measurement period: The measurement period is the most recently completed stability period used during the administrative period to calculate the average weekly adjunct hours of service (26 CFR 54.4980H-1(a)(46)).11

Look-back measurement method: Once per year in the administrative period, the average weekly hours of service in the measurement period are calculated for each adjunct using a “reasonable method.” The university will use the “look-back measurement method” (26 CFR 54.4980H-3(d)).12 Per the Federal Register,

The proposed regulations provide a method, referred to as the look-back measurement method, under which employers may determine the status of an employee as a full-time employee during a future period (referred to as the stability period) based upon the hours of service of the employee in a prior period (referred to as the measurement period).13

In the administrative period, the Office of Human Resources will evaluate adjunct hours of service during the measurement period to determine the appropriate actions to take for benefits administration in the stability period. Any part-time faculty employee (i.e., adjunct faculty member) averaging 30 or more hours of service per week during the measurement period will be contacted by Human Resources to review health insurance coverage options for the subsequent stability period.

8 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(24)

9 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(45)

10 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(1)

11 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-1(a)(46)

12 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-54#p-54.4980H-3(d)

13 https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2014-03082/p-99

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT

KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

RELATED POLICIES/DOCUMENTS:

1.1.2 Academic Load

1.1.1 Academic Calendar Policy

1.1.7 Credit Hour Policies

1.1.12 Outside Activities

5.2.6 Faculty Benefits

5.2.16 Outside Employment and Activities Policy

1.3.14 KYSU Online Course Modality Policy

STATUTORY OR REGULATORY REFERENCES:

26 CFR 54.4980H (https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/section-54.4980H-0)

79 FR 8577 (https://www.govinfo.gov/link/fr/79/8577)

POLICY OWNER/INTERPRETING AUTHORITY:

Office of the Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs

DOCUMENT DATE AND VERSION:

5/25/2024 – 2024.05.25_KYSU_Online Faculty Workload Procedures_v4.docx

ALL POLICIES ARE SUBJECT TO AMMENDMENT