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Specific job duties and responsibilities of teaching and administrative faculty are constantly subject to change or modification as the circumstances and needs of the University and its units change. Departmental or unit reorganization or elimination may result in significant staffing changes. Administrative unit heads have the responsibility to manage the assignment, reassignment, redirection, and reorganization of job duties and responsibilities of the employees in their units.
Sometimes, the changes that are made in the assigned duties and responsibilities of an individual who fills a teaching or administrative faculty position on a continuing basis are so significant that they warrant an additional or changed job title. When the role of a filled position is redirected in this manner, necessitating a title change, the change is typically made through administrative approval channels. Because such change constitutes reassignment or redirection and does not involve or result in a “vacant” position, no search and screening process is necessary; the one position involved is already filled.
For example, when a tenured department chair elects to give up administrative responsibilities and assume the role of a full-time teaching faculty member, that change in title and function is approved administratively. The individual already holds a continuing faculty status at KSU and does not have to reapply and go through another search and screening process to shift job responsibilities from one KSU faculty role to another.
Likewise, when a teaching faculty member has a portion of load reassigned from instruction to administration that warrants the addition of an administrative title such as coordinator, director, etc., that change in title and function may also be approved administratively. Again, that individual already holds a continuing faculty role at KSU, which has simply been redirected. There is no need to reapply or go through another search and screening process to shift job responsibilities for that filled but redefined faculty position.
In the administrative faculty positions of instructional department chair and above (see KSU Faculty Search Guidelines and KSU Faculty Handbook Section 4.1.5 for specific policies), administrative reassignment is not sufficient for a permanent or continuing appointment. If current KSU faculty are to be eligible to take on one of those positions on a continuing appointment basis, they must emerge as the candidate of choice from a search and selection process. Academic tradition and procedural guidelines in the University System restrict internal administrative redirection and reassignment prerogatives in these cases.
Administrative faculty positions of department chair and above may be reassigned administratively out of the responsibilities of those positions to other faculty roles. KSU faculty in other roles can be reassigned administratively to the role of acting or interim administrative faculty positions of instructional department chair or higher. However, internal candidates for an administrative faculty position of instructional department chair or higher (on a continuing appointment basis) must formally apply for those positions as part of a standard search and screening process. In these cases, if a vacant faculty position does not exist because the previous administrative faculty remained on the KSU faculty in another capacity, a new vacant position would typically have to be created in the institutional budget.
Reassignment of a faculty administrator into other roles and unit(s) will be preceded by a discussion with the unit(s) involved. Administrative faculty serve in their administrative roles at the pleasure of their department/unit head and ultimately the President. Administrative reassignment does not constitute constructive discharge.
Administrative faculty who hold positions in non-instructional departments and who do not hold regular academic rank and tenure or tenure-track status usually do not have the option of reassignment to the role of a teaching faculty member in an instructional department. Rarely would such administrative faculty have an option of reassignment to a different set of administrative faculty responsibilities in their or another department on a continuing basis. Reorganizations and reassignments that affect such individuals may result in the University’s election of its option for the non-renewal of a completed employment contract or possibly to a mutual agreement that results in a change in status within the classified staff system. (It is not uncommon for administrative faculty in non-instructional departments to have emerged from classified staff roles earlier in their careers.)
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