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I'm a second-year assistant professor in STEM at a mid-sized public university. My current load is a 2–2 with one new prep each semester, ~70 students per course, three graduate advisees, and a couple of grants in preparation. Committee work and advising add several hours per week.

Where I struggle:

  • Course prep and grading spill into the only blocks of uninterrupted time I have for writing or analysis.
  • During midterm/late-semester crunches, research momentum collapses for 1–2 weeks at a time.
  • Student email and drop-in questions fragment the day even when I set posted office hours.

What I’ve tried so far (with mixed results):

  • Time blocking two 3-hour "research only" mornings each week; these often get eaten by urgent teaching tasks.
  • Batching grading and using detailed rubrics; helped some, but large classes still consume entire days.
  • Flipping part of one course and using low-stakes auto-graded quizzes; saved time, but initial setup was heavy.
  • Aligning some assignments with my research topics so I can reuse readings and examples; useful but limited.

What I’m looking for:

  • Concrete scheduling patterns that work under a 2–2 (or 3–3) load to protect contiguous research time.
  • Tactics to reduce teaching overhead without sacrificing quality (e.g., rubric design, TA workflows, office-hour policies, email norms).
  • Ways to align teaching with research in a non-gimmicky way (project structures, reading selections).
  • Guidance on negotiating service reductions/course releases or setting expectations with a chair.
  • Examples of weekly calendars from faculty who feel they’ve found a sustainable balance.

Constraints:

  • Limited TA support (shared grader ~5 hrs/week).
  • Courses of 60–80 students, assignments that require feedback.
  • Research requires both writing and occasional lab/data work.

I’m not asking for generic productivity tips; I’d really appreciate field-tested approaches and examples that have worked for you or your department. If it helps to calibrate, what would be a reasonable annual research output target under these conditions?

Thanks!

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    Related: The time management of teaching v research Commented Aug 22, 2025 at 19:08
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    How can email fragment your day? Commented Aug 23, 2025 at 8:15
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    Being in a quite similar situation, but a comment since it's more towards general productivity: Why do the assignments you're grading require individual feedback? I'd fight like hell to get out from under that except for a very small number of assignments in any way possible at those class sizes. Commented Aug 23, 2025 at 15:26
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    Also related: Excel in both teaching and research as a junior faculty member Commented Aug 23, 2025 at 16:57
  • “research momentum collapses for 1–2 weeks at a time”: while it makes total sense for you to seek to avoid this (and I hope you find a way to!), I want to reassure you that this happens to virtually everyone who teaches and does research at the same time. Commented Aug 25, 2025 at 23:41

3 Answers 3

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I run a course with no TA support whatsoever and student numbers in the triple digits. Efficiency is key, otherwise I get nothing else done. This is only a partial answer, but: student email needs not fragment your day. Here's how it works for me in Europe, with a European working day:

  • 09.00-10.00: burn through all the emails that arrived before the start of the working day. Subsequently, close the email app.
  • 10.00-13.00: time for class prep, research, or other things, and don't forget to have lunch.
  • 13.00-14.00: burn through all the emails that arrived during the morning. Subsequently, close the email app.
  • 14.00-17.00: time for class prep, research, or other things.

When you notice that this does not suffice for your research needs, cut the afternoon email round, and only handle email in the morning hour. No matter what you do, do not allow incoming email to throw notifications on your laptop or your phone. You will never get anything substantial done otherwise.

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    Exactly. Being "interrupt driven" is not a way to effectively do serious stuff. :) Commented Aug 22, 2025 at 21:43
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    No in-class time? Commented Aug 25, 2025 at 2:46
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Unfortunately, I don't think there is a catch all approach. It's more of a game of shifting priorities and deciding where you can sacrifice. This is especially true in the early years. Sacrifice can mean one less grant, one less paper, less sleep, less free time, or accepting that you taught something below your ideal capabilities. I do not recall a single time during my early years that I did not have to make some sacrifice in some aspect of my personal or professional life.

The good news is, after a few years, all your invested time in course prep means it gets much easier. The students you advise become more self-sufficient and they take on the primary role of training new students, then you can move beyond day-to-day supervision to being an advisor; I find it much more beneficial to the students when I am advising rather than supervising anyway.

My advice for what works is keep doing what you are doing (because it seems you are trying to do the right things), and be ready to de-prioritize things periodically, and do not beat yourself up over it. Give yourself some time and patience to get through this really tough period.

With time and more experience you are likely to get funding. Once you have funding you are in a better position to ask for lower or more favorable teaching loads. Learn to say no in general to service assignments that do not benefit you.

As for research output, that is entirely dependent on your field, your resources, the projects you have chosen, and how quick you are to disseminate.... too many questions/variables to answer. Try looking at similar scholars at sister institutions to see what they are doing. You likely have a reasonable understanding of who your peers are.

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It's dangerous to look at your teaching schedule and calibrate your research output accordingly. Instead, figure out how much research output you'll likely need to get tenure, devote enough time to research in order to accomplish that, and streamline teaching until it fits into the remaining time.

Grading is one area where I think you can streamline. With the teaching and research load you describe, I don't think it's reasonable for you to grade all your students' assignments in detail. Your idea of using auto-grading is good, and you can lean harder on this sort of solution. Initial setup time isn't the end of the world, if it will save you time the next time you teach the same course.

There are also the usual non-technological tricks: select some sub-part of the assignments to grade for correctness and give feedback on, and grade the rest only for completeness. Or don't grade or collect homework at all, but give brief quizzes that consist of one or two problems similar to the homework.

These aren't perfect solutions. From a pedagogical standpoint, the ideal would be for students to get detailed feedback from a human on all their work. But your employer has not given you the necessary resources (time or manpower) to do that, so don't do it. I suspect it will be easier to set expectations about this, than about a decrease in your research output.

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    I will add, grade without individual feedback, perhaps using check boxes on a rubric would suffice. Give full course feedback - here are the top 5 errors and how you would correct them. Commented Aug 29, 2025 at 15:13

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