Professional Responsibility

Professional Responsibility (3)

This term specifically outlines the outlines the expectations of faculty and is a subtopic of Office Hours. It generally relates to the amount of time a faculty member is expected to be on campus. Professional Responsibility, as expressed in these terms, is easily included under the mandatory negotiating topic of “terms and conditions of employment”, language included in all statutes covered in this study.

Examples

Observations. For faculty, one of the great advantages of teaching distance education courses is the flexibility. One can work from anywhere at any time. When only a few full time faculty take advantage of this flexibility, regular absence from campus can go relatively unnoticed. However, as more and more faculty opt to teach remotely, questions arise as to who will carry the burden on campus, advising students, attending meetings and the like. This researcher has seen the two extremes – one college where full time faculty were required to be on campus every contract day regardless of whether they were teaching distance education courses or not. At another college, full time distance education faculty members were rarely seen on campus, did not participate in shared governance and were available only to students enrolled in their own classes. As distance education expands to include more full time faculty, colleges will seek to find a middle ground on this topic and clarify what the professional expectations are of distance education faculty.