Past Events
The Post-Pandemic Professoriate
Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads by Design
The unequal distribution of faculty workload is one of the most important, yet least talked about, inequities that shape the experiences of faculty members within colleges and universities. In particular, women and BIPOC faculty face unusually high service, teaching, and mentoring workloads. Inclusion and equity require departments and institutions to identify and dismantle systems that maintain unequal workloads.
In this talk, KerryAnn O’Meara, P.I. of the NSF, Faculty Workload and Rewards Project and co-author of a new report and set of resources published by ACE shares what she learned during a five-year, action research project aimed at promoting equity in how faculty labor is taken up, assigned, and rewarded. She considers how workload inequities emerge in "discretionary spaces" and the evidence-based policies and practices departments have used to identify inequalities, assess faculty and university needs, and re-design workload with equity in mind.
Dr. KerryAnn O'Meara
KerryAnn O’Meara (she/her/hers) is a professor of higher education at the University of Maryland. Her equity-minded and engaged scholarship seeks to advance the full participation of a diverse faculty who learn, teach, and inform practice across a range of epistemologies. She has studied academic careers and reward systems for over twenty years, including how to counteract the effects of documented biases in evaluation practice. KerryAnn has designed, implemented and studied evidence-based interventions to improve equity in faculty hiring, workloads, and retention. Her work is widely published and funded. KerryAnn’s research, mentoring of graduate students, teaching and leadership are highly integrated. She spent 10 years as director of the University of Maryland ADVANCE program, leading hiring, retention, and advancement efforts, and 3 years as associate dean of faculty & graduate affairs in her College of Education. KerryAnn consults with colleges and universities seeking to make equity-minded reform to their hiring, promotion and tenure, faculty development programs, and workload systems. KerryAnn teaches and learns with students about issues of organizational change and behavior, women in higher education, the academic workforce, and ranking systems. She is a sought-after partner, speaker, and consultant on reforms to make academe equitable and inclusive.
