32

Our university expects non-tenured TT faculty to have a 20% teaching workload. At my university, this translates to one course per semester, which means eight hours of weekly allotment to teaching.

I am a new faculty member in an engineering discipline (small R1, US), and I am really struggling with this. I teach a graduate course, and the lectures alone are approx 3 hours. Other things, such as clarification of student questions, assignment setup, etc, take 3 hours, and I am left with approx 2-3 hours a week to actually make any teaching material. Obviously, I can't finish that during that period, and it spills over -- some weeks, I spend 20-25 hours extra just on teaching (this is not a very trivial course). This is causing a drop in research productivity.

How do people usually handle this? I hear other people have more demanding requirements (more than one course per semester) than mine, and I can't seem to make myself more efficient. The department seniors have not been very helpful other than saying, "be a better time manager" or "put more effort into research."

I am looking for seniors' experiences, particularly people who have gone through this. Also, I understand this question is not very objective, so feel free to close if inappropriate.

Improve this question
7
  • 28
    The first time you teach a course it takes way more than 20% of your time, as you are finding out. The second time it becomes more reasonable. When I did teach, it was about 1 day of prep per lecture the first time. The second time the prep was 90% done (things always could use some tweaking). Commented Mar 17, 2025 at 19:13
  • Related to the first-time prep comments, do you know if you will be teaching the same course every year? Commented Mar 18, 2025 at 3:28
  • 1
    Do you have grad students yet? Postdocs? Research staff? Being a PI entails different tasks and responsibilities compared to what's done by these group members. Commented Mar 18, 2025 at 3:45
  • 3
    Admittedly I am in a different country (UK), but your university's expectations do not sound reasonable to me. In my experience one course per semester would correspond to a 40% teaching workload (which is standard here). Commented Mar 18, 2025 at 10:08
  • 2
    My university has the same formula -- one course = 20% full time workload = 8 hours per week -- except that we teach 3 courses per semester (this is an R2). It took me a long time to realize that the formula is pure fiction, particularly given the expectations in my department as to teaching quality, and the wide range of new and different courses I was assigned. That didn't solve the problem of how to manage time, but at least I stopped feeling inadequate that I couldn't complete all my teaching duties within the "allotted" time. Commented Mar 20, 2025 at 17:40

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
39

A slightly different thought process to augment the other very useful answers:

This job can take up as much time as you let it. If working 60 hours at your salary satisfies you, go nuts. But the salaries aren't high enough to retire early, so you're probably going to be doing this a long time.

Otherwise, you want to protect your time not only by being efficient, but also by prioritizing those work tasks which are most important to your continued employment/promotion. As a TT prof at an R1, that's likely research. Papers, grants, etc. Teaching quality, when you come up for promotion, is often a pass/fail scale where "fail" is "consistently abysmal with no apparent improvement".

An option, then, is to be strategic in your course design to find a reasonable optimum trading off quality and time commitment. For example:

  • Can you grade fewer assignments? Grade them using a method that's less time consuming? Give less student-by-student feedback and centralize by producing answer keys?
  • Make slides that are decent without bells and whistles? Or if it's possible, teach more of your lectures as board or tablet written talks?
  • Be more mercenary about your office hours? Write shorter emails?
  • Follow a book more closely the first time you teach a course than you'd otherwise like?
  • Optimize when you do longer grading more for when it is convenient in your schedule, even if that means delaying somewhat when students get assignments back?

My key advice here is mental: All other things being equal, you could almost always put more time into teaching materials, assignments, etc. and your courses would, as a product, improve. But one hits marginal returns. You might be able to produce an "85/100" quality course that teaches students what they need to know with much less time commitment than 95/100. I think for many of us, especially recently out of school, it's hard to let a work product be 80-85%. If your boss is asking for 60 hours a week of work and only paying for 40, though, something has to give.

Improve this answer
2
  • 20
    Yes! My other practical tip - instead of trying to make the course amazing the first time, get the structure and basics set up. Then start a notes file called “future ideas” for all the stuff you might do in the future but don’t fit into your time allocation for the first year . Commented Mar 17, 2025 at 22:09
  • I like your practical tips, much appreciated. Commented Mar 18, 2025 at 2:21
21

Being a tenure-track or tenured professor isn't like working the assembly line at Ford Motors. Academia doesn't have the same characteristics that enable strict scheduling. I don't think I knew many people in academia that could make do with a 40 hour workweek, all things considered. And, for early career folks, poor work-life balance is pretty common. Once you have taught a course a few times and have most of the materials on file and ready to reuse, it gets easier at that end. I hate to tell you that 60 hours may be required (or even more), but at an R1 it might well be the case. You aren't paid or otherwise rewarded for your hours, but for your production.

Two things you might do, one for each major part of the job. For the course you teach see if a colleague who has taught it before will share their materials. Even if you don't use them explicitly, it can give you a head start of preparation.

For research, make sure that there are no "lost moments" and that as the mind works away while waiting for things to happen, that you have a way to capture quick thoughts that might help. This is easier, I'd guess, for people in theoretical fields and likely hardest for those who need to do their research in a lab. But always carry something to write on as thoughts occur while waiting for the barista to finish your order (or whatever...sitting on a bus...). I found note cards to be especially useful and could be arranged into decks and carried for review, etc.

A third general suggestion is to get enough sleep and enough (aerobic) exercise. Lacking either will make the brain less effective and less efficient. Note cards/pads next to the bed can be useful for some.

One additional hint for the teaching side. Don't forget that it is much more important what the students do in a course than what the professor says in lecture. The first forces active learning, but making things depend too much on lecture may lead to a passive state which is less effective for learning. If you can get a grader, all the better. Load the students up with tasks.

Improve this answer
0

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.