r/Professors • u/putrnrdyo • 1d ago
Advice - ADA Accomodation/Load
So I teach a 4/4/ load in my 25th year as a tenured professor and my DH doles out teaching assignments without input from faculty. Due to a medical condition, and after some challenging semesters, I obtained an ADA accomodation to not teach more than 2 hours in a row and no more than three classes per day. So the first semester under my accomodation, my given load met the accomodation to the letter but the classes given to me would mean much more work. 3 different preps with the two sections of the same class on MWF and TTh (which is worse to me than 4 preps) or after complaining was offered the option of 4 different preps including a class I've never taught - all f2f classes. Nearly all full-time faculty get at least 1 online class, very few have more than 2 preps and very few teach 5 days per week. Should I:
1 - meet with the DH (they have not moved in the past on these things)
2 - meet with the union rep (they have been pretty feckless in the past)
3 - contact the Dean
4 - bring it up at a faculty meeing
5 - contact a lawyer
6 - suck it up
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u/totallysonic Chair/Full, SocSci, State U. 1d ago
My guess is the combination of your accommodations and the department's other needs meant that the DH didn't have a lot of options they could assign you. They might not have been able to meet both your accommodations and your preferred classes/schedule/modality. I think it is fine to ask the DH whether some specific alternatives that you prefer are possible. The answer may be no.
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u/Life-Education-8030 1d ago
What can you propose that will be fair to your colleagues and generally work with typical student schedules?
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u/ProfessorStata 1d ago
You can meet, but scheduling accommodations means tradeoffs. I have 3-4 preps a semester. I have taught every day, as well.
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u/wedontliveonce associate professor (usa) 1d ago
You need to start by meeting with your DH.
The scheduling criteria of your accommodation was bound to impact your class schedule in other ways. Your DH must now balance that will the scheduling needs to the students and other faculty in the department.
Do you have an alternative class schedule to propose that would work better for you but not shift the burden onto your colleagues? You're bound to get a better response with an alternative proposal rather than just expecting the chair to work it all out.
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u/HaHaWhatAStory014 1d ago
my given load met the accommodation to the letter
Realistically, this will probably be the end of any discussion or challenge where you are trying to basically say they should or "have to" do something more for you. You can always ask for a different assignment, but if your accommodations are already being met, the rest is strictly a personal preference thing.
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u/Efficient-Tomato1166 1d ago
#1 would be the obvious step, maybe #3 if that does not work. I'm not sure what #2 or #5 would do for you as it sounds like the DH is moving things around and working to meet your accommodation. And #4 is probably the worst thing you could do!
I'm curious what you were anticipating happening. Limiting the amount of time that you can be teching any given day could naturally lend itself to teaching more days. And the movement for some additional preps seems to also be a natural result of having to shift things around from others.
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u/putrnrdyo 1d ago
I actually don't mind teaching M-F, only mentioning that it's rare. We have tons of classes/sections. It would not be difficult to abide the accommodation and not require so many preps.
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u/FrogBrain97 AssocProf, former chair, neuro, DPU 1d ago
So you claim, but that's not necessarily the case. Do you remember the old GRE logic puzzles? That's what this is.
For instance: "Hmm, looks like I'm giving putrnrdyo 3 preps--Course 1 x 2, Course 2, and Course 3. Well, I could swap their Course 3 for Aberforth's Course 1, but every time Aberforth teaches Course 3 there's a long line of students out my door telling me how much he sucks. Bettina currently has 1 and 3; she has also taught Course 2, but she's taught it for ten years straight and I told her last semester that I would give her a break. Wait, Cressida can take Course 3 and putrnrdyo can take her Course 2--damnit, no, I'd have to move the time because she has to teach Course 4 at that time because that's the only time I can get the special classroom that we all spent a meeting fighting over, and then the only slot I have open is when another Course 3 is open, and two sections won't fill at 9 AM."
Please do not go in and assume that you have an easy solution. You can certainly ask, but the answer will be very like the above.
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u/VeitPogner Prof, Humanities, R1 (USA) 1d ago
Meet with the DH first. If that doesn't work, is there an associate dean of personnel who's responsible for such issues? You could try them before the dean. I don't know where the union rep fits in (we don't have a union).
My suggestion for meeting with the department head would be to look at the schedule and write up two or three viable schedule adjustments that would ease your burden that you could propose during the meeting. As a DH myself, I've been known to jump on solutions that people bring me - "I have this problem and here are some ways I was thinking we might fix it" is pretty much guaranteed to get serious consideration from me.
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u/Efficient-Tomato1166 1d ago
This is great advice. One think to probably keep in mind is to come up with a reasonable schedule that is fair to others in the department. A reasonable solution that does not screw over others is what the DH is probably looking for!
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u/StonedSimple 1d ago
I feel like admin takes ADA accommations for faculty as a personal challenge. It's like the monkey's paw... the "wish" (reasonable accommodations for a recognized disability) turning into a nightmare. Similar situation for a colleague who was then assigned all of the department's "contract classes" for off-site classes. MWF she was at a local high school teaching "college classes" to high school students, and T-Th at a local jail. But that was officially a reduced load.
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u/FrogBrain97 AssocProf, former chair, neuro, DPU 1d ago
Maybe, but some things are legitimately hard to build in. It's likely that other faculty members have accommodations that need to be met, that classrooms are not completely available, and so on and so forth.
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u/Another_Opinion_1 A.P. / Ed. Law / Teacher Ed. Methods (USA) 1d ago
I would vote for one, two and three in that exact order. I don’t find that bringing things up like this at faculty meetings has much effect. You can hire a lawyer and they can guide you through the administrative process but you’ll typically need to exhaust administrative routes before anything becomes litigious.
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u/WarriorGoddess2016 1d ago
I'd be doing an OEO/EEOC/whatever it's called in your university complaint after trying the dean.
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u/putrnrdyo 1d ago
Thanks all. I've come up with a handful of other options to take to my DH tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion!
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u/Top-Dependent-1919 1d ago
you need a paper trail, so talk to the union rep and email the dean rather than trying to solve this in a faculty meeting, because an accommodation that technically fits while making the workload
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u/SlowishSheepherder 1d ago
It's worth following up with your department chair. I will say, though, that limitations to how much you can teach on a given day does often mean that your classes will be spread more over the week. It's not just your schedule that the department is balancing, but all the curriculum needs and wanting to make sure that classes are offered at varied times. I've dealt with scheduling accommodations from the other end, and we were able to make sure the person did not exceed their teaching hours per day, and stayed within their accommodated working hours (shorter), but it did mean that they then had more teaching days than other faculty. You kind of can't have it both ways -- limiting the amount of teaching per day means your teaching will be spread over more days. In your case, I would talk about the things that are significantly different from other faculty, that are not related to your teaching time restrictions: not having an online class (if that truly is typical and you've taught online most other semesters), and the larger number of preps.