Specifically, current policies and procedures effectively or explicitly:

1. establish a twelve-hour equivalency assignment as the "standard load"
2. allow for the fulfillment of this responsibility through a twelve-hour teaching load along with research/creative and service assignments or a different, approved combination of teaching, specific research/creative activity, service and administrative assignments
3. provide for the review of requests for non-standard teaching assignment through routine reporting procedures (i.e., course scheduling process, Faculty Assignment Report, Faculty Service Report)
4. establish faculty assignment patterns within each academic unit as central to consideration of requests for additional staffing and non-standard assignment patterns

In the absence of a university policy regulating the relationship between teaching loads and released time for research, the college will continue to consider the merits of each proposed assignment whether requested through routine reporting procedures or separately.

The outcome of Program Review, needs of students, available resources and the unit's staffing profile will continue to be of paramount importance in making decisions regarding requests for differentiated assignments. Other pertinent considerations include the following:

1. Faculty on full-time teaching appointments are also expected to carry appropriate research/creative and service assignments. Faculty relieved of some or all teaching responsibilities for a given semester are nevertheless expected to fulfill scholarship and service obligations, a condition which presumably will require the faculty member's presence on campus.
2. Paid leaves of absence from all faculty responsibilities at BGSU are permissible only through the Faculty Improvement Leave Program, the Faculty Exchange Program, and as otherwise outlined in the Academic Charter (B-II.2).
3. "Payback" arrangements are assumed to be contrary to the state's practice of not allowing payment in advance of services rendered, and have not been allowed.
4. The systematic availability of differentiated assignments in a given unit will require the collective, cooperative efforts of the faculty so that consequences in terms of course offerings and costs are neutralized or minimized.
5. The college and its constituent units must at all times be prepared to offer a reasonable, wholly defensible response to questions about faculty workload.

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