Invisible Hours Planning Meeting
Friday, October 9, 10:30 a.m. to 12 noon
Montague House (814 Oakland Drive)

As part of our year-long centennial celebration, Dr. Gwen Tarbox (English) has agreed to head up a project designed to highlight the “invisible hours” spent on the job by WMU faculty members from across disciplines and colleges.

In an environment in which many politicians, educational consultants, and university administrators hold inaccurate assumptions about faculty workloads, the results of the Invisible Hours project can be communicated to a broad constituency, including campus administrators, students, parents, and the public, and provide a useful counterargument.

The project will involve both a quantitative component, as faculty volunteers chart their work hours over a period between January 12 and March 8, 2016, and a qualitative component, as colleagues will be invited to provide short written reflections on the invisible work that they conduct as faculty members.

Faculty members are invited to participate in a planning session for the Invisible Hours project to be held on Friday, October 9, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, at Montague House. At this planning session, participants will set up methodologies, develop a call for project participants, and discuss data collection procedures.

A light brunch (bagels, donuts, fruit, coffee, and juice) will be served at the meeting. There is onsite parking available for attendees in the WMU-AAUP lot behind Montague House.

Click here to RSVP for the Oct. 9 planning meeting.

Thanks in advance to all who plan to participate in this exciting initiative. To learn more about the issues the Invisible Hours project is intended to address, please refer to the links below.

“What Do Professors Do All Day?” by Philip Nel, Kansas State University

“What Do Faculty Do?” National AAUP

“So Much to Do, So Little Time,” by Colleen Flaherty (Inside Higher Education)

“And the Livin’ Is Easy?” by Kaustuv Basu (Inside Higher Education)

“The Math Doesn’t Work,” by Nate Kreuter, Western Carolina University (Inside Higher Education)

“The Hidden Work Life Of University Faculty,” by David Skorton and Glenn Altschuler (Forbes)

“The Long, Lonely Job of Homo academicus,” by John Ziker, Boise State University (The Blue Review)

“Academe as Slacker Heaven,” by Gene C. Vant, Jr. (Chronicle of Higher Education)