Institutional Responsibilities and Workload of Faculty in Baccalaureate Dental Hygiene Programs

Abstract

This article reports the results of a study conducted to determine the institutional responsibilities and workload of full-time faculty in baccalaureate dental hygiene programs. A mail questionnaire was sent to program administrators, who were asked to distribute it to faculty. Faculty reported an average work week of 50.5 hours, which includes 46.9 hours spent on paid activities and 3.6 hours spent on unpaid activities. In specific workload activities, the majority of faculty time was spent on teaching undergraduate students (56.8 percent), institutional service (14.9 percent), and research/scholarship (9.5 percent). Forty-seven percent of the faculty described their primary professional research as program/curriculum design, and 78 percent were not engaged in funded research. The most common form of scholarship reported by faculty was presentations at professional meetings; this outnumbered all other types of scholarly activity, including publications. Faculty spent significantly more time than they preferred on teaching undergraduate students and institutional service. Faculty spent significantly less time than they preferred on teaching graduate/first professional students, research/scholarship, professional growth, and public service. We recommend that future studies compare workloads and scholarly production of dental hygiene faculty in associate and baccalaureate degree programs. We also recommend future longitudinal assessments of institutional responsibilities and workload of baccalaureate dental hygiene faculty.