Faculty Workload Planner
Stop balancing faculty loads on gut feel and a spreadsheet.
What changes when you build this
The gaps you're living with today,
and what this tool fixes.
Problems
- Teaching assignments are decided in meetings and tracked in a spreadsheet that the chair maintains alone
- Committee and service assignments are tracked separately — or not tracked at all
- No one has a cross-department view of total faculty workload including teaching, advising, and service
- Adjunct and overload assignments are handled informally, making budget impact invisible
- When faculty go on leave, redistributing their load is done by email and guesswork
Solutions
- Every faculty member's teaching hours, committee assignments, and advising load visible in one profile
- Department-level capacity view shows total assigned hours vs. available hours for the semester
- Workload equity dashboard highlights imbalances across faculty within and between departments
- Overload and adjunct assignments tracked with budget impact calculations
- Leave planning automatically flags courses and committees that need coverage
Mistakes to avoid
These are the failure patterns teams hit most often
when building this.
Teaching load tracked without service loadFix: Include committee assignments, advising, and administrative duties in the total workload calculation.
Teaching load tracked without service load
Fix:Include committee assignments, advising, and administrative duties in the total workload calculation.
Workload rebuilt from scratch each termFix: Roll forward the prior semester's assignments as a starting point and adjust rather than starting blank.
Workload rebuilt from scratch each term
Fix:Roll forward the prior semester's assignments as a starting point and adjust rather than starting blank.
No leave coverage planningFix: When a faculty member is marked on leave, auto-flag their courses and committees as needing reassignment.
No leave coverage planning
Fix:When a faculty member is marked on leave, auto-flag their courses and committees as needing reassignment.
Adjunct costs invisibleFix: Track overload and adjunct assignments with cost per credit hour so chairs see budget impact alongside workload.
Adjunct costs invisible
Fix:Track overload and adjunct assignments with cost per credit hour so chairs see budget impact alongside workload.
Cross-department imbalance ignoredFix: Build a provost-level view comparing average load and variance across departments.
Cross-department imbalance ignored
Fix:Build a provost-level view comparing average load and variance across departments.