Last week, AUFA’s membership engagement committee hosted a meeting with AUFA members in the Faculty of Science and Technology. This was another in a series of meetings for addressing topics of interest to various departments or sub-groups within AU and to allow for a looser, more open dialogue than is possible in more structured general membership meetings.
Although more than one topic was planned for discussion, most of the meeting was taken up with discussions of workload and a few related issues. The meeting was lively with good attendance and solid engagement from the faculty. In addition to the main topic of workload, questions on other matters emerged, such as gaps in support for faculty and staff when dealing with abuse from students as well as the role of our union in social causes.
AU’s massive growth over the past few years has impacted everyone, but the Faculty of Science and Technology has been particularly hard-hit. The impacts of this ongoing and extreme workload issue not only creates incredible personal stress with resulting health issues, but also has a negative impact on academic career performance. It is difficult to apply for promotion if your workload is so high you can do nothing but teach.
This stems from several key factors:
Covid-19
The closure of our physical exam centres has resulted in a huge increase in alternate assessments, potentially more than in other faculties. This creates an incredible amount of manual work for anyone teaching a course, not only from the actual creation and execution of the assessments, but also from managing student issues due to the scrambled response. With the permanent closures of the Edmonton and Calgary offices announced by the interim President, it is still unknown what AU intends to do about these issues.
Under-hiring
AU has been hiring extensively over the past two years. However, not all departments have benefitted equally. Notably absent is growth in positions in the Faculty of Science and Technology despite huge student growth in their courses and other factors that lead to increased workload. Some planned academic coordinator positions were even axed by Provost Matt Prineas for unknown reasons, leaving the increasing work to pile up on existing faculty and staff.
Unequal workload
As sciences are highly specialized, there is not much opportunity for crossover and coverage across disciplines. This means that while some areas have comparatively light student loads, others are completely overloaded and coordinating as many as seven courses with significant enrolment simultaneously. This causes an issue seen in many workplaces – the members whose work is the most responsible for AU’s incredibly profitable past few years are the least likely to benefit from it.
Open enrolment
An unexplored issue by AU administration is if there should be a limit on enrolment within courses. The highest-enrolment courses in FST have many thousands of students but, like any other course, have only a single coordinator. Capping enrolment was an idea brought up to prevent the complete collapse of the structures that keep these courses running. AU administration clearly have perpetual growth as a goal, but there are significant questions about the sustainability and scalability of our current structures.
Solutions
The faculty was eager to discuss potential solutions to workload issues. These included caps on the number of students, or number of courses, or a mix of both. The inability to do course revisions when overloaded was another issue, and one member asked about specialized release from teaching to focus solely on updating courses. With the bargaining team ready to discuss language over workload appeal, these ideas are relevant and can be considered in the light of general discussions.
Outcome
Engagement with all areas in the university is critical to our success as a union and ensuring we can get the best deal possible for all members in bargaining. We were delighted to have this meeting and to properly speak with so many members from a faculty we have not spoken much with in the past. AUFA will continue to schedule these departmental meetings, but going back to FST for a second meeting will be a priority as there is still much more to speak about.
David Powell
AUFA President