How flexible are Lecturer positions?

[IamAporcupine]

DH has been just offered a Lecturer position. He is over the moon, and I am very happy for him too.
I work as an SRA and do quite a bit of traveling for work.
We have not discussed it in detail yet but I am aware we will have to re-structure our lives and I am worried we will struggle.

Can we do it? How flexible is a lecturer position? I know some even work remotely most of the time, but is that alwats possible?
I should probably know this, but I am in a state of shock and cannot think properly!

Thanks!

ps - if anyone happens to work for a North East University and does not mind sharing their experience, please PM me!

'Lecturer' is a title that describes different jobs and different terms and conditions, in truth.
Some are employed "just" to teach, others are mainly at the University because of their research and have to lecture as well as the main job.

The % of time lecturing is going to vary, and, IME, the timetable changes semester to semester. So at one point you might be lecturing until 5pm on a Tuesday but another time you might have Tuesdays free.
As to how much of the time outside of timetabled lectures is flexible, that again will depend to some extent on the institution and also to some extent on the subject. So, if you are a scientist, you will need to be working at work because you need lab time. If you are lecturing in the humanities, you might be a bit more flexible where you can do research etc as you only need access to your lap top so could physically be anywhere.

Probably depends on the institution, and the departmental culture. I’ve been in depts. where the Head is v keen on people being visible, in their offices, working. Then it’s switched the other way with a new manager.

My contract says something along the lines of we are not obliged to be on campus to undertake our work (meetings, teaching, tutorials withstanding of course), and our local union promotes this to both academics and senior management.

On a full time contract, in term time I’d probably be on campus 3-4 days per week, maybe only 2 the rest of the year. Lots of working from home wherever possible.
No one bats an eyelid if you arrive at 10.30 and then leave at 4 in my current department......we’re trusted to do the work.

Hi, NE university SL here. What's his specialty? That'll determine the flexibility although my experience is that in general it's a reasonably flexible role outside of the scheduled teaching commitment. In my institution it's role dependent how much and when you can be flexible.
Hope this helps and congratulations on the new role. I love my job hopefully he'll love it too.

Congrats!

In terms of flexibility, as everyone has said, it depends on the discipline and on the institution. I'm in social sciences in a RG uni, and we have a flexible working pattern except for term times which are quite full on- 3 or 4 days needing to be present, for teaching. If you ask very nicely it can be on three days. But rarely consecutive days so you wouldn't be able to necessarily live away for three days, it would be more Mon-Thurs.

We also get less teaching in the first year of lecturing to ease in and prepare materials, often people negotiate either no teaching in the first term or 50% across the year. Worth asking.

Out of term time, no-one monitors us whatsoever just through performance targets which are yearly or even less- so the workload to get those done is heavy but no-one cares where we work in terms of writing/grant applications/travel.

Thank you all for your answers!

He is in Social Sciences, and was told he would have approx 1:1:1 teaching : research : admin?

This is going to be huge for us - really hope we can make it work

This thread is a lot duller than I thought it would be from the title. Disappointing.

Another question - how is your performance measured?
Publications? What happens if you do not bring money in through grants?

Again, that depends on the department and university.

In my department, which is in the Social Sciences, we have targets for research income, publications, impact case studies and teaching quality scores.

In my university, in some of the science departments failure to meet your research income target would put you automatically on performance management. This isn't the case in my department.

In my department, failing to meet your publication targets (at least 4 x 3 or 4 articles per REF period) could theoretically result in you being put on performance management or being moved off of a research contract so you aren't entered in the REF. In practice, this has never happened, but the threat is there. It has happened in other departments.

In reality, for most people, you would just never get promoted if you missed your targets because the targets reflect the university's promotions criteria. This is different if you have to pass a probation period, as most starting lecturers do. Then, you could fail your probation and lose your job, but most departments will do everything they can to stop that happening if someone appears to be trying.

Thanks Phphion

My husband (medical sciences) was an important contributer to the last REF round yet at the same time forced onto a teaching only contract (in a restructuring) because he wasn't seen as bringing in enough income ... Mind you he's still trying to reduce his teaching load down once they worked out what a full-time teaching load should actually look like - a few of them were already doing "too much" before the restructuring as it was ... Outside full term he works from home a lot.

Another relative in a humanities area has been able to do a lot remotely, can actually get a sabbatical every X years (don't know the details just that he has had one), though I gather in a few years they will need to be present 5 days a week for a period of time. I suspect they've been able to postpone the commitment that needs that until their youngest is in secondary.

Good luck, hope it all works out and you can find the life-patterns you need.

But ... I am currently annoyed with a colleague who should be making an effort to be present but is not. And for various reasons the people he (inevitably it’s a man) needs to see are now contacting me. He’s simply said “I am not here in July” but is not on leave. I am, however.

So lecturers do need to uphold their commitments. And I find my male colleagues rather more selfish about this ...

I agree with others here- it varies massively. During term time, I am usually in at least 3 days a week, often 4. This week, I have yet to set foot in my office and am not sure whether I will go in at all. Nobody would notice as so many people are away or on leave or just working from home. I have a shit-ton of work to do so I am in no way slacking and actually, skipping the commuting time leaves me more time to work.

And Beans, I know the feeling. Even when I am not the module leader, I end up having to do all the emotional labour because my male colleague is ‘unapproachable’ and ‘doesn’t explain things as well as you’, yet they constantly go on about his intellectual brilliance and refer to him as ‘prof’ and me as ‘miss’ (we’re both lecturers and both have PhDs). And his office is always empty too. Aaagh. But I digress....

As a comparison, to some pp though, and to show how different different subjects and universities are, since dh was appointed a Snr Lecturer, his workload has gone through the roof, and he is in work from 7.20am until 6.30pm 5 days a week. Then the marking has become ridiculous, since the Universities now admit twice as many people per year / module / cohort than they dd when he started.

Fortunately our dc are older now and we don't rely on childcare.

I’m also in the humanities. During semester time I’m in 3-4 days, but I rarely go in outside of teaching. It’s like a ghost town in my department during the summer. Many people need to do research abroad and it’s the only time we can do that.

If your DH doesn’t need to travel for research, the main reason for traveling is for conferences—so not very much. The workload can be very demanding, but there’s tends to be a lot of flexibility

Thank you all for the additional replies.

We will have to wait and see, but I am guessing that he will have some flexibility.
We are both aware that it will be demanding but are happy to take the plunge. I have been working FT on temporary contracts and the stress was killing me, so this new job also means that I will have more freedom to negotiate my position.

@Pota2 and @BeansandRice - that sounds very annoying, specially the 'Prof' and 'Miss'.......

My dp is a lecturer in a STEM subject and he can be reasonably flexible......except when he can't be. When he is actually teaching there is no flexibility, if there's a lecture at 9, then that's when he has to be in but he doesn't have an enormous teaching load, or at least not under grad, so it's only a few weeks a year. He usually drops our ds at school 2 days a week but it can't really be relied on as obviously he can't do that when he's in Germany or the states or wherever, arrangements would be tricky if I worked so absolutely couldn't step in (I'm a SAHM). It's not like he has a line manager checking what time he gets in or leaves but the work load is such that he simply couldn't contemplate taking the piss (plus his own self motivation obviously! ). He never works from home but works at home pretty much every evening.
He brings in a lot of funding but it's never enough, the powers that be always want more, got half a million grant? Great, what have you done for us today? Colleagues who have had funding dry up have found their teaching load massively increases, they then don't have time/resources for research, aren't ref-returnable, don't get grants, teaching increases. ....and so on.

Depends on the course and the size of the university. A relative has recently started as a lecturer for a STEM course that is very popular and he has zero flexibility as he needs to teach 2 lectures a day (one in the morning, one in the afternoon), 3 tutorials everyday, and also make himself available in his office for 4 hours every day. He is paid a lot for his time to he fair.

I'm a senior lecturer in humanities - I agree with a pp who said that we have a high work load, but a lot of flexibility.

In teaching term I go in approx 3 times a week. Out of term, on average once a week (although next week I'm in 3 times - all meetings/ exam boards).

However, I am working all.the.time. Between teaching, the admin and research and the pressure on us (and indeed, my own desire) to publish continually, your work is, essentially, never done. There's always another paper to be written, review to do, marking to complete, etc. So, you have to be quite disciplined about how you manage your time if you want to achieve any sort of healthy work-life balance.

That being said, and despite the rather grim atmosphere in HE at the moment, I love it and would rather do this than anything else. One of the reasons for that is the flexibility - that for the most part I can organise my time as I wish and I don't have to answer to anyone on a daily basis. I'm also fortunate enough to have a stellar HoD who is supportive and a proper human being.

Anyway - congrats to him on getting the post.

he can be reasonably flexible......except when he can't be. When he is actually teaching there is no flexibility, if there's a lecture at 9, then that's when he has to be in

Same in Arts & Humanities. When I'm not teaching or in meetings, my time is very flexible. But I can't just miss or rearrange teaching. It's almost completely inflexible.

It's a paradox that a lot of people don't understand.

That is such a good point that I often forget @BeansandRice

Likewise in my institution it is absolutely forbidden to reschedule timetabled teaching. Likewise, big meetings that you're invited to by someone more senior. We also have zero control regarding what day or time our teaching is scheduled and it changes each term. Can make planning childcare/ pick-ups and drop-offs a bit of a headache as often we don't get our timetables until quite late. I have friends at other HEIs though who have a lot more say over when they teach.

Thanks a lot everyone!

I think we should manage (she says...) although my main concern are my work travels