The RSP office has created a policy concerning workload certification that extends control over faculty activities beyond the scope of most grants or external funding agencies.
The policy can be found here: https://rsp.uni.edu/effort-certification
The policy directly relates to how much time a faculty member must spend on a given project without regards to the particulars of a given funding agency or acknowledging the possibility that said faculty member has any right to determine appropriate work levels.
In particular, the policy states:
"What is Effort?
Effort for non-hourly staff at UNI is reported in percentage. Effort is the time a faculty or staff spends on any given task that he/she has been hired to perform for the university. At UNI this set of professional duties generally includes instruction, research, administration, committee work, service work, and many duties not listed here. Whether a faculty/staff spends 40 hours or 60 hours a week completing the duties, the sum of time spent completing the duties is 100% effort. When UNI receives external funding the addition of effort from the sponsored project does not change the total percent effort (100%) available to work; the sponsored project effort should fit into the person’s 100% workload by having the faculty/staff be relieved of some of their existing duties or by increasing the Project Staff’s workload. A sponsored program will not result in a temporary increase of compensation specifically to complete the work of the sponsored program."
This statement inhibits faculty members from efficient work process. For example: A faculty member at 100% effort could work on a project for 40 hours in a given week and then be finished. However, a faculty member at 100% effort would be prohibited by this policy to work on ANY job related business (grant writing, class preparation, etc..) even after spending 60+hours on the funded project for that week. This is an infringement upon the academic freedom of faculty, and goes well beyond the restrictions placed by most if not all grants and external funding agencies.
This policy was written by the RSP office without open consultation with the faculty senate or other areas of the university.
Therefore, be it resolved that the Faculty senate will ask that this policy undergo a full review by the standard policy process given that it has a large impact on the work and academic freedom of faculty members of the university.
1. Regents Universities follow the Federal requirement mandated by the Office of Management and Budget when we certify effort. As this is a federal reporting requirement, the penalties for failure to comply are steep (see the last page of the attached PDF). Relevant sections are highlighted in yellow.
2. UNI Compensated Effort Audit
