Job expectations for faculty living far, far away

[history_grrrl]

With the shift to teaching remotely during the pandemic, and then back to in-person, it seems there are more faculty living very far from campus who want to keep teaching online to avoid a commute. To be clear, I'm not talking about being an hour away but rather living 4-5 hours away or even in a different country and resisting in-person teaching, office hours, meetings, service duties, etc.

It seems to me that this has the potential to create a host of problems: lack of presence in the department, complaints from students who experience the department as a ghost town, inequitable distribution of responsibilities in turn generating resentment from locals, even possible liability for the university if someone is spending most of their time in another state or province or country.

I remember years ago a friend at a uni in the Midwest told me his director lived in the South and "commuted" but somehow kept it a secret from admin. This seemed ridiculously entitled and unethical. But now I'm seeing this where I work, with people expecting accommodation. Do some unis have residency requirements? Should departments be more accommodating given that there are things we can do virtually? If not, how to deal with it?

My initial reaction is that we're very privileged to have our cushy jobs and should, well, suck it up and do them. But maybe I'm just an old (though grrrlish) fogey and need to get with the program.

[waterboy]

We don't allow anyone to teach remotely that isn't living in country. That's the only restriction I'm aware of.

[Ruralguy]

We don't have a strict residency requirement, but  its a residential college with normally in person instruction. That being said, most faculty who live an hour away or more only come in about 3 days a week (but so do some professors who live on campus!).  We have hired some  non-front office  staff who work some distance away (hrs) and only come to campus if its absolutely needed.  I suppose we might hire remote faculty in certain areas if they become too difficult to hire in person. For us, I give it about a year before we hire some faculty to teach CS remotely.

[clean]

one requirement I believe we have is that you must reside in the state.  Im sure that there are a lot of state specific laws and taxes and our HR responded to a similar question taht you must be a state resident.
second, no one is guaranteed an online teaching load, so the moment the administration decided you were to deliver a face to face class, you would be moving home or resigning. 
We do have a few that live in a not near city (about 125 miles away) and historically some have lived in far away large city 250 miles away. 
in the first instance, the faculty I know come in for 3 days a week and  stay at a hotel or have a condo or something.  For the second case, that faculty member definitely had a condo in town and a house with spouse in Big City. 

[sinenomine]

A number of faculty at my school relocated while everything was remote and had to decide what to do as the campus reopened. One got the okay to stay remote for another year and when that had elapsed argued with HR and wound up resigning. Another applied for a remote IT-related position at the school, got it, and left the faculty role. And another opted to keep living two states away, but comes to campus weekly and stays with friends.

Frankly, the ongoing hassle is getting certain stubborn folks who live nearby to come to campus on a regular basis.

[darkstarrynight]

We have people in my college who live in other cities, some two or more hours away. Before COVID, we had hybrid meetings; during COVID, they were fully online. Now in the past academic year, they are only in-person. I think hybrid is reasonable (e.g., I can join meeting while at a conference) but no one is budging. It is expected that we live in town and attend meetings, but exceptions are made for various people, regardless of rank. This is definitely odd to me as we have some departments who teach all online and faculty are expected to live here, but people who teach in person do not. There is definitely nothing in writing that I have found in bylaws about this.

[Hegemony]

I think there's a lot of stuff that can be done remotely — meetings especially — and making people show up in person just to make a point is counter-productive and bad for morale. Frankly, there's so many ways I go above and beyond for this job that I get grouchy when the administration tries to insist on extra effort, like showing up for unnecessary in-person meetings, just to "keep us from feeling entitled."

We have been made to have in-person office hours again for a while now. So students have a choice of coming in person or meeting by Zoom. One hundred percent of the students I've met with have chosen Zoom. So it does make me grouchy to have to sit in my office and Zoom with them, when I could be Zooming from my study at home.

Our place has also instituted draconian rules about how long you can be away from campus, even if you are teaching 100% remotely. Like, spending more than three days out of town has to be approved through a long and cumbersome process that put you in the spotlight of suspicious deans. As far as I can tell, a lot of faculty are keeping quiet about where they are; and I say, good for them.

I'm not sure how faculty not being on campus makes it feel like a ghost town. Do students wander around campus hoping to bump into their professors by chance? I never did that as an undergrad.

As you can tell, my own view is that most faculty do so much extra labor — and most faculty are not paid extra well — that letting them be remote when warranted is only just. Of course faculty should be on campus for their share of in-person teaching and other things that truly can't be done remotely. But as for the rest, let us decide where to be.

[Caracal]

I think there's a lot of stuff that can be done remotely — meetings especially — and making people show up in person just to make a point is counter-productive and bad for morale. Frankly, there's so many ways I go above and beyond for this job that I get grouchy when the administration tries to insist on extra effort, like showing up for unnecessary in-person meetings, just to "keep us from feeling entitled."

We have been made to have in-person office hours again for a while now. So students have a choice of coming in person or meeting by Zoom. One hundred percent of the students I've met with have chosen Zoom. So it does make me grouchy to have to sit in my office and Zoom with them, when I could be Zooming from my study at home.

Our place has also instituted draconian rules about how long you can be away from campus, even if you are teaching 100% remotely. Like, spending more than three days out of town has to be approved through a long and cumbersome process that put you in the spotlight of suspicious deans. As far as I can tell, a lot of faculty are keeping quiet about where they are; and I say, good for them.

I'm not sure how faculty not being on campus makes it feel like a ghost town. Do students wander around campus hoping to bump into their professors by chance? I never did that as an undergrad.

As you can tell, my own view is that most faculty do so much extra labor — and most faculty are not paid extra well — that letting them be remote when warranted is only just. Of course faculty should be on campus for their share of in-person teaching and other things that truly can't be done remotely. But as for the rest, let us decide where to be.

Yeah, I think  the question should really be about whether someone is doing their job. At lots of liberal arts college that definitely includes an expectation that faculty are around to meet with students much of the time. Zoom adds some flexibility, but you're still expected to be around a lot. I didn't wander around campus trying to bump into my professors, but most professors had their doors open when they were around, and I would sometimes stick my head in their door if I had a quick question. Where I teach doesn't really have that kind of culture, but I do occasionally get buttonholed by students who run into me and take the opportunity to ask some clarifying question about an assignment. For quick questions, I'd always sooner have that kind of interaction than get another email I have to deal with.

That said, you usually know if you're at the kind of place where you're supposed to be around a lot. I'm an adjunct, so I'm only around on my teaching days anyway, but most of the full timers at my place do the same thing unless they have meetings to go to. I could hold office hours all day every day and I'd probably have fewer than 5 students actually show up unannounced all semester.

[marshwiggle]

I seem to recall on here from pre-pandemic times that there were people who taught in-person at one institution in one part of the country and also remotely at a different institution in a different part of the country. If my memory is correct, then those situations didn't have any residency requirement for the online courses.

[arty_]

Due to differences in state laws regarding employment, our university doesn't allow people (that is, won't pay people) who work from states that have better employment protections than ours. Because as a public university, we can't match protections, and must comply with our own (shitty) laws.

[Ruralguy]

I actually hate dealing with things when a student bumps into me, because, especially at the beginning of the semester, when I get more questions and various odd declarations of "I just wanted you to know I am not a math person..", I don't always recall names. If I get an email, I have a name. 

[apl68]

I'm not sure whether I mentioned this here before, but a couple of years ago a colleague of mine got permission to perform her library director duties remotely.  She had health issues, and the pandemic was lingering, and she planned to retire before too much longer, and her library was large enough that the director could delegate pretty much everything that had to be truly hands-on.  So the arrangement seemed fair enough.

Then word got out that she had moved three states over, and therefore could not be brought in to face the public in the event of an emergency.  It created such a stink that members of the Board of Trustees who gave her that sweetheart remote work deal were forced out, and the library director was forced to move back to the city for the remainder of her term.  She was still allowed to work remotely most of the time.

I suppose some of you are rolling your eyes over this, but I see the detractors' point here.  She was a city official, the public face of her institution.  Her decision to try to do her job not just remotely but from out of state indicated a lack of concern for the community she was being paid to serve.  The move was an egregious act on her part.  I can see the communities that residential universities and colleges serve not worrying too much about an occasional purely remote prof, but if this sort of thing starts to become commonplace then I can see the public becoming very put-out about it.  And higher-level university admins better not even think about trying to pull something like this.

[marshwiggle]

I'm not sure whether I mentioned this here before, but a couple of years ago a colleague of mine got permission to perform her library director duties remotely.  She had health issues, and the pandemic was lingering, and she planned to retire before too much longer, and her library was large enough that the director could delegate pretty much everything that had to be truly hands-on.  So the arrangement seemed fair enough.

Then word got out that she had moved three states over, and therefore could not be brought in to face the public in the event of an emergency.  It created such a stink that members of the Board of Trustees who gave her that sweetheart remote work deal were forced out, and the library director was forced to move back to the city for the remainder of her term.  She was still allowed to work remotely most of the time.

I suppose some of you are rolling your eyes over this, but I see the detractors' point here.  She was a city official, the public face of her institution.  Her decision to try to do her job not just remotely but from out of state indicated a lack of concern for the community she was being paid to serve.  The move was an egregious act on her part.  I can see the communities that residential universities and colleges serve not worrying too much about an occasional purely remote prof, but if this sort of thing starts to become commonplace then I can see the public becoming very put-out about it.  And higher-level university admins better not even think about trying to pull something like this.

For people from outside Canada, there's a big government workers' strike right now, and one of the big things the union is pushing for is remote work to be written into the collective agreement. It's pretty hard to see any way that could be done, given that there will always be a portion of jobs that can't be done remotely.

[Hibush]

For people from outside Canada, there's a big government workers' strike right now, and one of the big things the union is pushing for is remote work to be written into the collective agreement. It's pretty hard to see any way that could be done, given that there will always be a portion of jobs that can't be done remotely.

Wouldn't the criteria for allowing remote work approval be an important part of a collective agreement, so that the opportunity is available similarly for all rather than having a bunch of ad hoc deals that cause resentment?

[marshwiggle]

For people from outside Canada, there's a big government workers' strike right now, and one of the big things the union is pushing for is remote work to be written into the collective agreement. It's pretty hard to see any way that could be done, given that there will always be a portion of jobs that can't be done remotely.

Wouldn't the criteria for allowing remote work approval be an important part of a collective agreement, so that the opportunity is available similarly for all rather than having a bunch of ad hoc deals that cause resentment?

The big danger is in the default expectation; if the onus is on the employee to establish that they can do their job remotely, then that's entirely different than if the onus is on the manager to establish why the job can't be done remotely. The latter case would potentially open Pandora's box.