Address to University of Houston System Board of Regents

December 16, 2008

Dan Wells, UH Faculty Senate President-elect

I welcome this chance to address the Board in lieu of Faculty Senate president, Wynne Chin who is out of town.

 Over the past year the FS has played leadership, or at least active, roles in many UH initiatives:

• Enrollment Management Task Force,
• The UScholars Task Force,
• The Achieving the Dream Committee,
• The Learning Through Discovery group,
• The Emergency Management Review Commission,
• The Strategic Action Group,
• And many others.

Also, following on the Strategic goals set by the BOR, the Faculty Senate will be involved sponsoring two conferences next year.

• UFEC conference on Student Access and Success that will be held March 27 at UH Downtown
• UH FS conference on Community Engagement is also being planned for the fall.

We have also recently, set up a Faculty Senate Endowment with one of the primary goals of the endowment being to engage the community with the UH faculty

In the last couple of minutes I have, I want to address a PR problem that faculty often face.  That is if we only teach 9 hours per week … what do we do for the other 31 hours.

• For every 1 hr of formal lecture, faculty typically spend an additional 3-4 hour preparing the lecture, grading, meeting with students outside of class, etc.
• Although teaching loads vary, for a 9 hr lecture load, we typically spend another 31 hrs outside of class.
• That 40 hours devoted just to formal teaching.
• If you sponsor undergraduate and graduate students in your research, most faculty typically devote 3 hrs per week per student in informal teaching (much more for senior students).  If a typical faculty member has 5 students, that’s another 15 hours per week minimum.
• As faculty members we are also expected to do committee and service work, at minimum that’s another 5 hours per week and often 10 or more. (If you are FS president it may be 30-40 hours per week).
• In addition, we are expected to do research and scholarship above and beyond that. In the humanities that often involved researching and writing books (a very time consuming process).  In the sciences, which I am most familiar with, that involves running a research lab: reading the latest literature, writing grants, hiring staff planning and managing budgets, buying equipment and supplies, maintaining equipment, working at the lab bench, analyzing data, writing manuscripts, etc.  This generally requires at least another 30-40 hours per week.
• I don’t know a single faculty member in my Department that works less that 60 hour a week.

We are not complaining … we love what we do …. and are committed to what we are doing.