Policy Search
EWU_401-02, Additional or Outside Compensated Work – First Read
- Comment period ends January 31, 2025.
- Policy Proponent: Vice President for Business and Finance
- Adds language indicating an EWU employee may not take on additional work at EWU if the combination of their regular job and additional work exceeds 134% FTE during any term of the academic year. For example, if the additional employment is teaching and the employee is already employed in another capacity by the university on a full-time basis, the teaching may not exceed 5 quarter credits or 3 semester credits. Exceptions may be approved by an employee’s regular direct supervisor and vice president. This addition is consistent with similar language regarding overload in the collective bargaining agreement for faculty.
This comment is specifically in regards to College in the High School adjunct faculty. For the 8 or so years I’ve been a Liaison, we’ve been able to count the 15 credits as an annual total and not a quarterly total. If, as is being discussed, we follow the exact wording of the CBA, 5 per quarter, then it creates problems.
Mentors work throughout the academic year, not just the term they do their site visit. The teachers they mentor contact them whenever they have time in their schedule to work on their CiHS courses asking for advice, etc. Additionally, Mentors guide new CiHS teachers through the process of creating their syllabi so they earn syllabus approval — this process happens for new CiHS teachers as they become accepted for the upcoming academic year (so at any time during the academic year), and for continuing CiHS teachers they also need to get their upcoming year’s syllabus approved prior to June 1st in CMST (so again this is happening anytime during the academic year).
And finally, Mentors create and deliver annual training (required for CiHS accreditation) and that training is now occurring in the first week of the summer quarter (it used to be in the week between spring and summer).
I mention these things because the CBA is written with a quarterly view of overload, but the CiHS program runs on an annual year basis, primarily the academic year.
So, if we follow the way the CBA is written with the 5 per quarter, it misrepresents when a Mentor is doing their work.
Additionally, and of importance to EWU as they are trying to watch the budget. This will cause an increase in spending on the CiHS physical site visits. A Mentor will be capped per quarter so 2 or more Mentors might have to be sent out to an area (like Yakima) paying the mileage/car rental and hotels, rather than 1 for that area because the cap of 5 says they can’t take anymore for that term. Whereas, when the cap is 15 for the year, if I have 7 in one area, we will pay one Mentor for that trip (hotel, per diem, mileage/car rental). And the Mentor is not overwhelmed simply because the totality of their work is not during that quarter (as recorded on the CiHS spreadsheet) but rather through the academic.
I hope you will let us continue treating this section of the CBA as 15 annual. I should note that when I created the CiHS CMST program, I did contact Michael (President UFE) and he told me that was how they treated it. I even talked with Jonathan, when he was our CSBS Dean and he was fine with it. But I am now hearing from Florian that it is being treating quarterly (like the CBA says) and it simply isn’t the best for EWU when examining what is happening with CiHS.
Thanks for your consideration!