Addressing Workload Equity: Seven Strategies for Chairs

In this article, we describe the work of the Faculty Workload and Rewards Project (FWRP), a National Science Foundation–funded research project aimed at enhancing fairness in the way faculty workloads are taken up, assigned, and rewarded. Our project worked with fifty-three departments in twenty different universities to analyze unit-level workload data, identify equity issues, and develop policies and practices to address them. We engaged directly with department members and department chairs to self-identify workload equity issues and develop new workload practices that succeeded within their local context(s) and cultures. Based on these experiences, we offer advice to chairs about ways to engage their departments in the process of strategic, equity-minded reform. We identify seven strategies chairs should consider as they address workload reform.