Karen Jean Meech -- Service

Old Service

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The governor thinks that faculty at UH shouldn't get raises because we don't do enough "work". This impression is because we are not in the classroom 40 hrs weekly (but are legislators in session 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year??). At the Insitute for Astronomy, a reasearch institute of the University, our primary mission is research. Those who teach have a 25% teaching appointment and 75% research appointment.

When I teach 1 class during a semester, for 3 hours of contact with the students there are 10 hrs of preparation time (even for courses taught before), and a few more hrs for consultation & grading. This is about 27% of my work effort. I ought to be spending 75% on research. However, one needs to write grants for this research and write reports on those grants (5-10% work effort), and one needs to mentor and interact with postdocs and gradstudents (I have 3 in total, say 3-5 hours per week - another 12% of my time). Then there are "service" activities - which range from outreach (which for me is over 500 hours per year - another 30% work effort), IfA and UH committees, national and international committees - probably another 25-30% of effort. I am forgetting a couple important categories - UH administration (paperwork - at least 15%) and interruptions (10%). This translates to nearly a 210% work effort - or an 85 hr week, averaged over the year. This is about right - except that I get nowhere near 75% of a week (30 hours) time on research! I must have underestimated my service.

At any rate, I can see the governor's point, clearly the faculty are not working hard enough..... Below are current service activites.

Institute for Astronomy

University of Hawaii

Professional - External

Community / Outreach