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MANAGEMENT
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Planning and Academic Resources

Faculty Workload - Assigned Time

Purpose

The awarding of assigned time is governed by the Faculty Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the California State University (CSU) and California Faculty Association and relates to guidance from Faculty Workload Policies and Procedures EP&R 76-36. Deans are responsible for ensuring compliance with workload policies and procedures and have authority to implement supplementary guidelines for their respective college. Any supplemental college specific standards must comply with CSU policy and the guidelines outlined herein. These divisional guidelines establish consistent practice for the administration of faculty assigned time.

Report Assigned Time
Report Assigned Time

What is Assigned Time? 

Assigned time is work that takes place in lieu of your primary teaching responsibilities; it may often be referred to as a course buyout, course release, or reassigned time. Since this work cannot be tracked through the academic course schedule, you are asked to report this work through InfoReady. You should not report any stateside course weighted teaching units (WTU’s) as assigned time in InfoReady since that workload is already being captured in the course schedule.

Per CSU and Collective Bargaining Agreement guidelines, all reported assigned time must receive campus approval prior to the beginning of work. Assigned time pertains only to a faculty primary stateside appointment, however, any faculty teaching Extended Learning courses as in-load for their primary stateside appointment must report the workload for these courses as assigned time. All other Extended Learning course workload should NOT be reported as assigned time in InfoReady (i.e. overload and additional employment).

Timeline

Per CSU and Collective Bargaining Agreement guidelines, all reported assigned time must receive campus approval prior to the beginning of work. Official submission start/end dates may vary but will follow a general timeline within the academic year.

Spring/Fall Submission Timeline
Submission Dates Fall Reporting Spring Reporting
Submission Opens April November
Submission Closes May; Make-up window in August December; Make-up window in January

Resources

For Faculty

For Reviewers (coming soon!)

Guidelines & Audit Documentation

University Reimbursement Rate

This is the budgeted salary range for the cost of hiring temporary faculty to cover instruction normally assigned to tenure track faculty who have been released for instructional assignments. Please note that this will be effective July 1 and we will be reviewing this rate for future years.

Reimbursment Rate by Fiscal Year
FISCAL YEAR RATE PER WTU
2026-27 $2,500
2025-26 $2,500
2024-25 $2,500

Support

Contacts for questions regarding Assigned Time guidelines or processing:

  • FACULTY: Please contact the Associate Dean, Department Chair, or Lead Analyst of your home college 
  • For InfoReady Support: Contact assignedtime@csusm.edu
  • Accessibility statement:California State University San Marcos is committed to ensuring that the campus web environment is accessible to everyone, especially those with disabilities. As a community, we work together to address the usability and accessibility of the web sites contained within CSUSM’s web environment. While our resources available on our website have been developed using accessible site choices whenever possible, some of the information may be represented in a visual way.

    If you encounter any issues interacting with the site or need an alternative format for reporting your assigned time via InfoReady, please contact our team at assignedtime@csusm.edu. For more information regarding general digital accessibility at CSUSM, visit the accessibility website.