BARRIERS TO RESEARCH

• 88% of respondents perceive teaching loads to be a barrier to research;
• 86% of respondents perceive service requirements to be a barrier to research; and,
• 97.6% of respondents noted that it was important to receive release time to do research. 

These findings are so fundamental, they form the primary impetus for the recommendations put forth from the UNF Faculty Enhancement and Research Committees herein.

• Untenured faculty should be discouraged from taking on excessive service loads and mentored to say "NO.”  New, untenured faculty often feel vulnerable about their positions, and may take on overloads of service at both the University and College levels. 
• New faculty should be encouraged to limit their service activities and focus on building their research agenda for their first two or three years at UNF.  This will give them time to focus on building their research agenda.
• Faculty with minority status, through gender, race, disability, etc., should not be overused to meet affirmative action criteria for faculty searches or to create gender and ethnic balance on any committee. 
  We are a University seeking to enhance our diversity, yet in the interim, those faculty members with minority status should not have to pay an extra price because of said status.
• There should be a quantifiable maximum level of service that untenured faculty are allowed to do.   Department Chairs should monitor faculty service loads and prevent faculty from becoming overburdened with service.  Chairs should be accountable to their evaluators for abuses of service assignments.
• Program coordination should be recognized as a form of service, and it should reduce faculty’s other service requirements.  If they are coordinating a program without a course release, this should be weighted heavily in the service category.
• Search Committees.   If a faculty person is chairing a search committee or any committee, this should also be given significantly greater weight than merely serving on the search committee (or subcommittee).
• Student Club Faculty Advising and Student Competitions also require an inordinate amount of time and these generally fall to younger, untenured faculty.  The very nature of student clubs include continued renewal as the officers and members graduate.  Faculty advisors are constantly coaching and developing the club leaders.   This should be heavily weighted in the evaluation process.
• Voluntarily limit departmental and college meetings.  Conduct meetings by email when possible.

2.    TEACHING

• Course releases for program coordination should be a given across all departments and colleges.
• Departments/Colleges should strongly discourage the generation of more than one completely NEW class preparation per academic year for untenured faculty.  If more are needed, tenured professors should help.
• Banking classes.  Faculty should be allowed to carry a strategic overload for one or more semesters to bank course time which can be used to free time blocks for research in later semesters.  However, the number of preparations and days of teaching should still be considered.
• The use of Technology in the classroom is being strongly encouraged.  However, it requires huge amounts of time to modify courses into alternative delivery methods to incorporate blended learning, or state of the art technology into the teaching methods.  The departments and colleges should reward those faculty taking what is now uncompensated course development time to revamp existing courses or stop encouraging the use of technology. 
• Summer Teaching Scheduling.  Faculty should be encouraged to schedule their summer courses into 6, 10, or 12 week sessions to fit their summer research needs.  Those who are locked into teaching all summer miss valuable time to focus on research.  Many colleges or departments do not schedule in the shorter time blocks even though comparable institutions offer the same classes in shorter time blocks.
• Contract Negotiations.  Given the increased emphasis on conducting research at UNF, increases in salaries and reductions in teaching loads to foster the creation of research time should be addressed through UFF contract negotiations.  Specifically, a 26-week pay schedule for the faculty would ensure regular consistent paychecks from a 9-month appointment.  This is turn should encourage more faculty to pursue research in the summer time frame as opposed to maintenance of incoming pay. 

3.    RESEARCH AND EXTERNAL FUNDING

• Actions should be taken on the University, College, and Departmental levels to PROTECT the time of faculty.  This will help them create time for research and foster a sense that faculty research is important.  For example:
  a.       Chairs should work with individual faculty members to construct and schedule "protected" blocks of time each week for research.
  b.      These blocks of time must be sacred, no-conflict times for that individual faculty member in his/her individual schedule.
• Summer Research Grants should be monetarily equivalent to that of a summer class.   Many faculty cannot afford the pay reduction, and opt for a class instead of being paid to focus on research. 
• Related to external funding, the University policy/formula for distribution of indirect cost should be modified to provide some significant distribution to faculty in every case. This would be an improvement over the current allocation of these funds, which go primarily to the Colleges, with distribution to faculty only in exceptionally large funding cases. Faculty need to feel a greater sense of incentive to pursue external funding.
• It is imperative that the University systematically identify and rectify bureaucratic and operational impediments to the conduct of research by faculty.  UNF needs to review its existing procedures for purchasing supplies, mailings for surveys, etc.
• Seeking external funding should be looked at on an individualized basis, depending on the discipline, and on whether or not this use of time, which may or may not produce funds in the short term, is the best use of untenured faculty’s time related to the pressure they face to publish in a timely and consistent way in order to be successful for promotion and tenure.  There is great variation in how external funding is weighted in different collegiate disciplines. 
• UNF Administration should put heavy emphasis on pursuing Research Endowments to help faculty with larger seed money contributions and to fund competitive research projects.

• There should be increased emphasis on mentoring, not only across campus but also within colleges.  Mentoring activities should exist for all faculty, not just untenured faculty. 
• Mentoring should come not just from the Department Chairs, but also from those who are prolific and successful researchers, and those who are successful at obtaining external funding.
• Faculty with a successful grant track record should seek out new faculty and faculty seeking external funding instead of waiting to be sought out.  Many untenured faculty feel they are imposing by approaching successful grants recipients.  Extending an invitation is an important part of the mentoring process.
• A System of rewards for mentoring should be developed. 
• Part of the mentoring process should involve collaborative research and grant preparation.

5.    FACULTY RETENTION

• As faculty leave UNF, exit interviews and surveys should be conducted, anonymously if possible in the case of surveys, to gain better information about why individuals leave, and what, if anything, about the UNF environment, contributed to their leaving.