Issues at the Intersection

Subcommittee on Integration of Teaching, Research and Practice

Co-Chairs:
William Kotowicz, School of Dentistry
Sonya Rose, History

Members:
John Chamberlin, School of Public Policy
Constance Cook, Center for Research on Learning & Teaching
Brian Coppola, Chemistry
George Kenyon, College of Pharmacy
Charles Koopmann, Jr., Otorhinolaryngology
Richard Tolman, School of Social Work
John Volakis, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Karen Wixson, School of Education

Background

In Provost Cantor's remarks to the retreat audience on "The Future of the Faculty and the University" she acknowledged the challenges facing the University. She identified as a primary challenge the tension between the need to preserve what makes us feel we have a faculty of integrity and the need to change and grow as the University changes. It is clear from the discussions during the retreat, recent LS&A faculty focus group feedback, and our own discussions that a widespread and building frustration exists at many levels. We are struggling with an existing infrastructure that historically places emphasis on research in a community that is doing much more in a changing environment.

Faculty who are on the tenure-track at the University of Michigan are being pulled in different directions by internal and external pressures. These faculty are being asked to do more to accomplish departmental missions, sometimes without appropriate guidance in prioritization of tasks and often without recognition. Students want more "quality teaching time," both in and out of the classroom. Administrators want an ever-increasing amount of time devoted to research, to "important" committee assignments, and to other university service activities. Faculty involved in practice are expected to devote significant portions of their time to these activities. The public expects the faculty to devote more time to teaching as well as to pressing local, national, and international problems. External reviewers of funding agencies expect full-time research efforts devoted by these faculty. The expectations of government agencies and accrediting bodies dictate increasing amounts of service activity. Faculty themselves want and need to devote more time to their creative activities. And, finally, family members and friends want more time with them as well.

The tenure-track faculty have been the core of the intellectual life of the University. Their responsibility for the synergy among teaching, research, practice, and service has created "do it all" pressures that are widely felt. While it is recognized that these pressures/tensions are inevitable, managing them appropriately at the University, unit, and individual levels is critical to the long-term success of the University.

Many believe that the time has come to review the hierarchy of expectations of tenure-track faculty members and to restructure the system to allow for more flexibility of the profile needed to succeed in this track at the University of Michigan. The charge of this committee is to make concrete suggestions toward needed cultural changes and changes in guidelines within our existing tenure-track promotional system. These changes are needed if we are to retain an excellent faculty in an increasingly competitive academic marketplace. Further, these changes should allow the faculty to lead more balanced and productive lives.

Issues

Balance

As it stands now, most individual faculty members are responsible for "doing it all"—for engaging in cutting-edge research, for teaching, and for ever-increasing amounts of university service, and in some units, for clinical practice as well. Demands on faculty time are heavy and increasing. We need to consider ways to balance these various activities by reconsidering what we expect of individual faculty and reassessing how we reward faculty activities.

Practice

In addition to the faculty responsibilities that regularly are recognized, assessed, and rewarded, the addition of practice or application should be added when appropriate. By practice or application we mean engaging in clinical work or participating in the creation of public policy or in more general terms, applied efforts in the public community. These are activities in which many faculty are already engaged, and in the traditional promotional model, they are most often considered under the "service" heading. Practice may enhance both teaching and research efforts, and it is crucial that these activities be recognized as a valued aspect of a faculty member's professional commitments.

Reconceptualization of Scholarship

The concept of scholarship should be broadened to encompass research, teaching, and practice. For most of the professoriate, scholarship has been defined solely by research or what may be identified as the scholarship of discovery. We believe that an issue for consideration is the broadening of how we define and think about scholarship to include the scholarship of teaching and the scholarship of practice as described in the following references. (Boyer, E. L., Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990. Glassick, C. E., Huber, M.T., Maeroff, G. I., Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997, p. 36.)

Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Work

With encouragement from central administration, individual scholars are becoming increasingly involved in both collaborative and inter-disciplinary endeavors. Yet our usual methods of assessment are based on the model of the solitary researcher and the generation of knowledge confined to specific disciplines. The University community needs to consider how to meet these changing dimensions and parameters of research and scholarship.

Recommendations

1. Whether it is always necessary to hire new faculty who can "do it all" equally well, or whether a unit should expect to hire some faculty who have different strengths and interests in the four dimensions.
2. Whether the expectations for excellence in all four areas should be different during the pre- and post-tenure years.
3. Whether individual faculty could be given the opportunity to pursue excellence in different subsets of responsibilities at different stages in their career.
4. Whether the Schools and Colleges should encourage individual understandings between faculty members and their unit chairs, with agreements on the percentage of time to be devoted to each of the four dimensions during each contract period, and with the understanding that the percentage might change from one contract period to another because of unit needs and faculty interests. Additionally, successful asymmetric promotion portfolios should be identified by the Provost and deans. These portfolios should be redacted and distributed to deans, Executive Committees, and appropriate appointment and promotion committees for studied consideration in promotion process assessment.

The Provost, deans, Executive Committees, and faculties should begin a dialogue to discuss the reconceptualization of tenure-track faculty responsibilities. These discussions should include:

1. Considering practice as a separate dimension of the conventional activities of teaching, research, and service.
2. Broadening the concept of scholarship to include the scholarship of teaching, research, and practice. Background materials for this dialogue should include the vision statement and materials from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
3. Explicit consideration of the value of collaboration and interdisciplinary work to the mission of the school, college, unit, or department and the place that such work should play in the evaluation and promotion process.

Evaluation

Following unit discussions of the scholarship and performance of teaching, research, practice, and service, appropriateness of evaluative procedures should be considered and changed where indicated. These discussions should include the development of evaluation measures for collaborative and interdisciplinary work. It is recognized that the evaluation of this work is complex in nature but should be done at the unit level by deans and Executive Committees in communication with the Provost. Particular attention should be paid to documenting these activities with both appropriate external and internal promotional letters. Appointment, promotions, and tenure documents and promotional process materials should minimally include:

1. Internal letters documenting collaboration and interdisciplinary teaching and research.
2. External letters from collaborators indicating the specific nature of the contribution of the candidate to a collaborative project.

1. Faculty should have a strong hand in the development of a system for evaluating their teaching.
2. All forms of teaching should be evaluated, not just classroom performance; e.g., mentoring of faculty and graduate students and curricular development.
3. An important consideration in teaching evaluation is the use of multiple methods of evaluation involving multiple sources of data. Among the sources of data should be student evaluations, peer reviews, and teaching portfolios.
4. Each academic unit should encourage faculty to take advantage of formative evaluation of teaching (i.e., teaching support services) before the unit makes personnel decisions about them. The Provost should provide the academic units and their faculty with the support and resources to implement what may well be labor-intensive and time-consuming evaluations of teaching, and to encourage creative initiatives to improve teaching and curricular development.

There is currently little flexibility in the tenure clock process. This rigidity may prevent some faculty from taking advantage of appropriate opportunities to engage in activities that promote the synergies among teaching, research, and practice that we seek to foster. Flexibility in the tenure clock should be studied by a University-wide committee appointed by and reporting to the Provost.

Rewards and/or Awards

Traditionally, the reward system has been focused on scholarship related to research. New programs of rewards should be developed by the Provost and deans to include:

1. Awards for complete integration of duties "doing it all" that carry status, money, release time, or other resources.
2. Competition for faculty nurturing fellowships for teaching, service, or practice foci.
3. Granting reductions of some duties to allow for more intensive involvement in others; e.g., reduction of teaching to pursue either practice or service involvement, or reduction of practice or service to pursue more teaching.
4. Policies related to sabbatical leaves should be reviewed to increase flexibility of justification to include activities supporting pedagogical projects, practice-related scholarship, as well as service-related activities.

Because quality mentoring is an important factor in successful faculty development, there should be an increased University effort in training for mentors. The Provost and deans should identify successful mentoring programs, both within and outside the University and should widely distribute appropriate associated materials (e.g., LS&A and Surgery). Units should be responsible for implementation of a faculty mentoring program.