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The Academic Workplace
SPRING/SUMMER 1997 — VOLUME 8, NUMBER 2
In This Issue
To Our Readers: The next issue of The Academic Workplace will be available in March, 1998, followed by the publication of a special NERCHE 10th year Anniversary issue in Summer, 1998.
Letter from the Associate Director
Technology is this year's hot topic. It figured prominently in each of NERCHE's think tank discussions. National organizations feature technology in their conferences and publications and are adding listservs, web pages, and teleconferences to their list of services. Certain not to be left behind, NERCHE has added a Web Site in order to reach out to new and expanding audiences.
Technology has arrived—and it is here to stay. We have very quickly become both accustomed to and dependent upon information technology for access to information, colleagues, and new student markets. In a few short years, it has streamlined our registration processes, expanded our libraries, transformed our classrooms and extended our campuses beyond their physical boundaries. In one of NERCHE's think tanks, an academic vice president used the image of a racing tiger to describe the pace at which technological advances are moving. He sees those of us in institutions of higher education as trying to keep our grip on the tiger's tail as we are sped erratically through the jungle that is our institutional landscape. No wonder we are overwhelmed, he said,—we are in the habit of driving oxen.
I am struck by this image and want you to hold onto it as I share the following snapshots from my own and colleagues' experiences over the last several weeks:
A chemical accident in a lab in the building housing the VAX causes the Internet and email to go down for several days. The phone calls start coming in--"Didn't you get my message...I was expecting a response to that letter right away."--"I need your revisions to the draft immediately..." When I am finally able to log on--there are over 50 messages to read through.
A professor shows up to teach his class on American history and has devised an elaborate and beautifully constructed lecture using the internet only to find that the software has failed and his presentation is ruined.
A faculty member down the hall has an ongoing conversation "online" with a colleague across the country, yet isn't sure of the name of the faculty member whose office is several doors down the hall.
And one institution is finally able to allocate money to upgrade computers for the faculty only to find that their system for on-line registration crashes with the students due to arrive back on campus in two short weeks.
Each of these anecdotes illustrates that we are indeed trying hard to hold onto the tail of the technological tiger. No one wants to get left behind in the competitive environment for students, dollars, and information. While we may not be able to slow the tiger, we need to be able to let go from time to time in order to take a breath, see where we are, chart our direction, and remember that technology is a tool to improve what we do, not drive what we do.
These things are clear. Information technology (IT) isn't just about academic support anymore. It's an issue of strategic importance to the institution, assuming the proportion of a philosophical crisis as each institution tries to figure out where to position itself on the technological spectrum. Boundaries are blurred. There are unavoidable connections between instructional support and campus-wide systems. Boards and administrators must make decisions about technology that could very well determine the future viability of their institutions. Some institutional leaders wind up making costly choices, because they have not taken the time to thoughtfully plan in their rush not to be left behind.
Technology can be just asmuch a trap as a panacea. A dazzling array of technological innovations (computers, cell phones, fax machines, the World Wide Web, etc.) have cranked up the pace of life to an intolerable level. We embraced these advances as both time and money savers, yet they often do neither. Rather than make us more productive, technology makes us less patient--especially with each other.
Susan Brady echoes these concerns in her review of Stephen Doheny-Farina's provocative book, The Wired Neighborhood. The author warns us not to confuse connectivity with community. He points out that you can't subscribe to a community the way you can to a discussion group on the net. In the feature article, Steven Gilbert explores three categories for integrating information technology into educational goals and missions and suggests that some of our problems result from a lack of strategic balance between these three.
It is so easy to lose this balance. Technology is a tool, one that should enhance and maintain the variety that exists within American higher education. Academic leaders must focus campus discussion and decision making on technology as a means to serve respective institutional missions and further educational goals--not as an end in itself. It is essential to create an environment that keeps academic values at the forefront. Only then can we ride the tiger rather than hold on for dear life.
— Deborah Hirsch
Events
Conversations with Judith Ramaley and Arthur Chickering
This spring, NERCHE continued its tradition of bringing together members from all of our think tanks and their guests to talk about the process of organizational change.
In June, at the Harvard Faculty Club, Judith A. Ramaley, President-elect at the University of Vermont and, most recently, President of Portland State University in Oregon, told the now famous story of Portland State's turnaround.
Under her leadership, Portland State renewed its commitment to community engagement as an urban university by blending university goals and priorities with those of the external community. They learned that true institutional transformation is possible if the university functions as an open system, exchanging information and resources with the community and remaining sensitive to community input.
Ramaley's New England colleagues were especially interested to hear how her vision of continuous change will be reinterpreted at the University of Vermont. We welcome Judith to New England and look forward to working with her in the future!
[...]
As various think tanks address ways of enhancing teaching and learning, they invariably turn to the issue of breaking down institutional boundaries as both a central challenge and strategy. In March, members and guests gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club to hear NERCHE Senior Associate Arthur Chickering, talk about creating linkages between academic and student affairs using the University Center at George Mason University as an example. In response, Sheila Murphy of the Student Affairs Think Tank and Academic Affairs Think Tank member James Martin described ways to form partnerships to promote student learning and faculty development. Afterward, participants shared observations, descriptions of collaborations that have worked, as well as challenges they face. Many think tank members brought the academic or student affairs counterpart from their campus as a guest.
The New England Resource Center for Higher Education is devoted to strengthening higher education's contributions to society through collaboration. It does this by working on a continuing basis with colleges and universities in New England through think tanks, consultation, workshops, conferences, research, and action projects.
Funded Projects
NERCHE's Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach takes a comprehensive look at academic outreach. Currently, the Program consists of three projects that 1) examine the status of faculty professional service in New England, 2) develop means for documenting service, and 3) develop skillbuilding programs for faculty engaging in service.
Project Colleague
Individual faculty have traditionally augmented their academic lives with work in the external community. Project Colleague, codirected by Cathy Burack and Zelda Gamson, brings together faculty with diverse expertise to develop the skills and relationships needed to support successful collaborative service projects. During the first phase, Project Associates—10 New England area faculty with extensive outreach experienceworked strategically on a number of areas, including: practical concerns of support and accountability; theoretical concerns about the relationships between service projects and the institution; and interpersonal concerns involved in building trust among constituencies. This summer, Project Associates will develop curricula for workshops that will be available to institutions and organizations based on this work.
Portfolio Project
NERCHE Senior Associate Ernest Lynton and Portland State University's Amy Driscoll, along with sixteen faculty from four institutions, are working to make professional service visible to colleagues and subject to peer review. Participating faculty are developing ways to document the scholarship of service. In November, the group worked with Lee Shulman, Director of AAHE's Scholarship of Teaching Project, to design a framework for documentation which culminated in draft service portfolios. In the spring, participating faculty met with faculty and administrators from their respective campuses to review and refine the drafts. The group will meet this summer to finalize the design and plan for dissemination.
Faculty Professional Service Project
A Report From the Field:
Faculty Professional Service-Enclaves
In a study that began in 1995, NERCHE set out to assess institutional structures supporting faculty professional service, defined as work based on the faculty member's knowledge and expertise that contributes to the outreach mission of the institution. Eventually, we focused on seven institutions that seemed particularly supportive.
Given the positive portrayal of service in their mission statements, strategic plans, and presidential initiatives, we expected to find "model" institutions: campuses with clear service orientations demonstrated by the language and actions of top level administrators, the campus culture, reward structures and level of institutional support. What we found instead was an enormous amount of collective activitygroups of faculty and staff doing service in the community. Unlike the isolated and often invisible individual faculty initiatives, these groups were visible. At institutions where the level of commitment to service was high, these groups thrived in productive collaborations with the external community. However, at other institutions, where those conditions did not prevail, the groups found themselves struggling for resources and support while at the same time carrying out their service projects
Service-Enclaves
We use the term "service-enclaves" to describe these faculty service groups. The notion of enclaves captures both the protected conditions necessary for the development of ideas as well as the isolation of a group that exists in an indifferent or even hostile environment. service-enclaves occur when there is an articulated institutional commitment to service but an institution's involvement with service activities is unplanned and haphazard. This is demonstrated by symbolic support and physical resources but little attention to the inclusion of service in policies and rewards. These groups took several forms: schools and colleges, especially in applied fields; centers or institutes, with a specific outreach mission; departments, such as applied social sciences; and institutional/community partnerships, such as with a K12 system or municipality. When we talk about schools, colleges and departments as enclaves, we are referring to the status of their service work, which continues to be marginalized on many campuses.
Characteristics of Service-Enclaves
Within service-enclaves, individuals operate with a high degree of collaboration. Enclaves involve groups of individuals oriented toward a common project or a common goal. They are much more effective than working solo. They also shared six characteristics that enabled them to be effective, vital and tied to the mission of their institutions. Those characteristics are leadership, flexibility, institutional support, consistency with institutional mission and culture, integration with research and teaching, and visibility.
Leadership: We found three distinct types of leadership at work at the project, unit and institutional level.
Entrepreneurial leadership is necessary to initiate and carry out the project and most often occurs at the project level. Advocacy leadership is most often demonstrated by a Dean, Director, or Department Chair providing the resources to support and encourage faculty service and connect the service to the institutional mission and reward system. Symbolic leadership at the institutional level by a President or Provost shapes the institutional culture of faculty service and outreach. This leadership from the central administration was seen as critical to broadening the concept of what constitutes scholarship and conveying the seriousness with which the institution regards service.
Institutional support: Institutional support is a critical measure of campus commitment. In order for service-enclaves to function at all, a minimum threshold of support is necessary. This can range from the provision of office space and student assistants to operational support, from released time or seed money to clearly defined criteria for service in promotion and tenure procedures. Enclaves situated in institutions with palpable service orientations are likely to receive significant and longterm institutional support, such as office space, overhead, and staff.
Flexibility: Opportunities to serve the community often arise suddenly and require innovation, collaboration and quick response. Coupled with uncertain funding, this means that service-enclaves must be creative and resourceful about obtaining and deploying resources.
Mission: The congruence between the work of the service-enclave with the institutional mission is important for supporting, encouraging and rewarding faculty work in the community. service-enclaves thrive in institutions that have a history of operationalizing their service missions.
Visibility: For service-enclaves to become integrated with their institutions, they must be deliberate about reaching out to the institutional community. The traditional mechanism of generating visibility through inhouse publications is not effective in an academic culture that marginalizes service. Our service-enclaves used a more diversified approach which included visiting and speaking to classes, offering faculty workshops and seminars, oneon one recruiting through informal lunches and office visits, as well as the usual channels of departmental or faculty meetings.
Integration with Teaching and Research: Faculty within service-enclaves could clearly articulate the relationship between their service and their teaching. This was demonstrated in a number of ways including conceptualizing both content and methods, developing curricula that incorporated service, and student involvement in projects. Faculty reported many ways that service reinforces scholarshipfrom guiding research endeavors to creating academic programs. But this relationship is problematic because of the position that traditional research holds in the academy and its importance as a measure of faculty performance. As faculty try to combine service with they research confront a number of obstacles, including limitations on time, inadequate means of documentation and lack of rewards for service work. Even when faculty write about the impact of service on pedagogy, on students, or on curriculum, this kind of "action research" does not result in publications in mainstream journals, a key to promotion and tenure.
Institutional Change
Change in any institution is a gradual process, and there is no recipe for making faculty professional service a more significant priority in colleges and universities. Each institution responds to change in ways that reflect its values and beliefs. A service agenda cannot be imposed. But a culture that embraces service to varying degrees can happen gradually and incrementally. We believe that the enclave model can be a powerful force for grass roots changeif there are enough service-enclaves, if they collaborate with other units within the institution, and if they selfconsciously connect to institutional missions. An institution can move beyond a collection of service-enclaves to pervasive commitment to its service mission through active support for public service by way of institutional structures, policies and procedures.
For more information on the Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach and its projects, contact CathyBurack, Project Director, at (617)287-7745.
How To Think About How To Learn
by Steven W. Gilbert, Director, Technology Projects, American Association for Higher Education, Washington, D.C.
Conventional wisdom says that if colleges and universities are going to thrive in the Information Age, institutional leaders must apply information technology as a strategic resource for teaching and learning. True enough. What's often absent from this otherwise sound advice is a framework for helping governing boards and presidents get started. How should leaders advance teaching and learning by using information technology? How will teaching and learning change? What might be the results?
The specific answers to those questions will vary among institutions, of course, but as a preliminary step, trustees and presidents might find general guidance by examining three emerging patterns or paradigms, outlined on pages 5 and 6. None of the three models is a prescription for an ailing institution or a stepbystep recipe for governing boards; rather, each represents a way of thinking that can help trustees and presidents reexamine their institution's mission and develop informationtechnology strategies.
Each pattern defines some of the probable goals, results, and characteristics that might occur if an institution pursues a particular approach to integrating information technology in its academic programs. The first pattern focuses on cost-effective mastery of learning and the certification of achievement, skills, knowledge, and understanding (the "Certificates" list). The second describes improved communications and relationships among individuals who like to learn and teach (the "Mr. Chips" list). The third describes learning communities based on common experiences, values, and educational connections (the "Sweatshirts" list).
Most higher education institutions already meet these needs to varying degrees and with varying levels of awareness; this "mix and match" approach is key to the successful implementation of information technology. No single pattern should prevail. Institutional leaders who narrowly focus on one model exclusively will overlook the power and importance of the other two. Indeed, they may miss opportunities for comprehensive, effective institutional planning and may generate misunderstandings, frustration, and heated argument, rather than useful deliberations.
For example, when political leaders, board members, or presidents announce they are going to increase the institution's investment in technology, they often have in mind the "Certification" model, based on increasing productivity and providing wider access to academic programs. When faculty members urge greater investment in technology and support services, that falls under the "Mr. Chips" paradigm, which suggests a focus on improved teaching and learning. And when education futurists and technology enthusiasts talk about the overarching role of technology in education, they're thinking of the "Sweatshirts" list, which proposes extending the institution in the lives of its constituents and creating a community that supports lifelong affiliation, satisfaction, and learning.
The most frustrating and counterproductive encounters among representatives of these groups can occur when an institution decides to invest significant funds in a specific technology application for a particular constituency. They discover too lateif at allthat they have different perspectives, values, and goals. If the advocates of a single approach more clearly understood that other legitimate approaches exist, everyone would benefitespecially the institution.
Institutional leaders should develop an overall strategy that embraces elements of all three lists.
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The Certificates List
Providing Certification, Productivity, and Access
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The Mr. Chips List
Fostering Teaching and Learning Relationships
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The Sweatshirts List
Building Connections and Learning Communities
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Focus
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1. Enhance learners' abilities to master skills, knowledge, and understanding.
Implicit Philosophy: The ability to demonstrate the results of important learning matters more than how learning is acquired.
Focus on the rational and intellectual basis of knowledge
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1. Enhance relationships among learners and teachers; respond more effectively to individual differences.
Implicit Philosophy: Personal relationships are the basis of implortant learning.
Focus on the transmission of knowledge.
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1. Develop and sustain communities based on shared experiences, values, and educational connections.
Implicit Philosophy: Social relationships are the basis of some of the most important kindes of learning.
Focus on social construction and transmission of knowledge.
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Students
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2. Increase institutional productivity, cost effectiveness, and ability to reach more diverse students efficiently; increase student access electronically to courses in disciplines for which many institutions cannot maintain specialized faculty
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2. Enable students to achieve deeper and additional learning in courses and degree programs.
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2. Increase ability of students and faculty to learn and work effectively in groups.
Emphasize collaborative, service, and project–based learning.
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Faculty
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3. Encourage uniformity of remedial and introductory courses across institutions to increase economies of scale associated with developing courses and materials offered by many institutions with little faculty intervention.
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3. Expand faculty options for designing and tailoring courses using a greater variety of materials and media. Support a variety of teaching approaches that reflect various teaching styles, preferences, and capabilities.
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3. Modify institutional structures (schedules, rooms, labs, equipment) to support varied configurations of people learning independently and in groups via telecommunications .
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Responsibility
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4. Increase students' responsibility for their own learning. Decrease the time it takes students to complete courses and degrees, without sacrificing content.
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4. Have students share more responsibility for their own learning.
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4. Acknowledge faculty expertise and leadership while increasing student–faculty collaboration and shared responsibility for shaping courses and programs.
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Interactivity
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5. Increase interactive educational responses to individual students' different learning styles, preferences, and capabilities.
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5. Increase interactive educational responses to individual students' different learning styles, preferences, and capabilities.
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5. Increase interactive educational responses to different learning styles, preferences, and capabilities of different student groups.
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Funding
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6. Make substantial capital investments quickly with the hope that they will lead to lower operating costs for students and institutions and to reduced costs for additional educational applications of information technology.
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6. Find new revenue sources or seek nonacademic cost savings to support increased operating costs. Make the capital investments required to develop, maintain, and enhance the infrastructure needed to help faculty integrate technology in courses.
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6. Use ongoing education connections and learning communities to develop active fund–raising programs. Engage alumni, nonmatriculated students, and continuing–educatio n students. Allocate course costs over larger and more varied student groups.
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Rewards
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7. Modify reward structure to encourage most faculty to adopt new technology–based teaching approaches rapidly.
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7. Modify the formal reward structure to encourage faculty "pioneers" to adopt new technology–based teaching approaches rapidly; reward mainstream faculty more slowly.
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7. Modify the formal reward structure to encourage collaborative work among faculty and students.
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Competition
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8. Compete effectively for additional students while maintaining the same size or smaller faculty body.
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8. Compete effectively for additional students and faculty by investing in technology without diverting or diluting funds from other effective forms of education.
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8. Offer educational options that attract a wide variety of students and enable them to work together in groups to maximize their varied expertise and perspectives.
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Relationships
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9. Increase efficiency of education transactions between students and the faculty, staff, and administration. Enable students to transfer credits and document academic accomplishments easily.
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9. Form educational relationships among students and faculty, staff, and administration.
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9. Form long–lasting group relationships among students and faculty.
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Student-Facu lty
Ratios
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10. Increase the student–faculty ratio.
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10. Decrease the student–faculty ratio and increase the faculty and student work loads, at least temporarily.
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10. Redefine the student–faculty ratio to account for different forms and levels of student participation, ranging from online "lurking" to face–to–face presence.
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Predominant
Form of
Information
Technology
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11. For this approach, distance education — especially with a video component — would be used more than other information technologies.
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11. For this approach, e–mail and the World Wide Web would be used more than other information technologies
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11. For this approach, faculty and students would use groupware, "Intranets," and other computer– mediated communications and tele-communication s more than other information technologies. Rapidly changing applications, media and the Web soon may enable greater collaboration.
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Rather than viewing these three lists as distinct paradigms separated by rigid boundaries, it may be useful for trustees to view them more as flexible groupings that can be adapted to fit different purposes and audiences. Institutional leaders should develop an overall strategy that embraces elements of all threeideally in proportions that reflect each institution's unique goals and characteristics.
Keep in mind that each paradigm is oversimplified and flawed. For the first list, examples of significant costsavings from academic uses of information technology are scarce. Similarly, for the second list, few welldesigned studies have demonstrated conclusively the superiority of learning enhanced by information technology. And for the third, institutions are just beginning to use groupware and the Internet to foster and sustain learning communities, so their effectiveness is untested.
Conversely, each paradigm also is gaining validity as successful examples accumulate: Distanceeducation programs at the Open University and the National Technological University and the rapid growth of the University of Phoenix support the first model; rapid growth in the number of faculty members who use email and the World Wide Web for education support the second; and society's growing thirst for meaningful community experiences and industry's growing commitment to using groupware support the third.
As trustees and presidents create a vision of how their institution should provide education, they should consider the three lists in the context of these questions:
Which pattern fits best with which kinds of educational purposes, faculty, academic disciplines, and colleges?
What mix of the patterns fits best with your institution's mission and your educational values?
Most important, what kinds of students can benefit most from programs based on the first list? The second? Whatgroups of students could benefit collectively from programs based on the third?
And finally, a word of caution: The value of higher education as an enterprise would be undermined severely if institution leaders were to allow these three paradigms to produce "separate and unequal" systems, with one being accessible only to a wealthy elite. Instead, higher education must evolve in balance to meet the educational requirements of a modern democratic society in which information technology is integral and respected.
Individually, each institution must find its own mix of the three approaches; collectively, higher education must offer viable opportunities for every kind of student. The opportunities must be affordable, of high quality, support teaching and independent and collaborative learning, and offer a rich array of information technology resources for all who deserve and can benefit from them. Further, the higher education system must enable students to demonstrate their educational achievements in ways that others can easily understand and respect. Finally, learners and teachers should have multiple opportunities to form and remain part of the communities in which they can learn from and with one another over long periods of time. This is truly a vision worth working toward.
Think Tanks
One of NERCHE's hallmarks is its Think Tanks for faculty and administrators from New England colleges and universities. Think Tanks meet five times a year for intense discussions of the most serious issues facing higher education.
Academic Affairs Think Tank
Under the leadership of Zelda Gamson, Director of NERCHE, Deborah Hirsch, Acting Director in Fall 1996 and Associate Director in Spring 1997, and Robin Jacoby, Dean of Academic Affairs and Planning at Lesley College, the Academic Affairs Think Tank devoted the year to the theme, The Impact of Technology. After taking a broad view of the policy and planning issues concerning technology on campuses today, the group turned to specifics. Philip Friedman, Vice President of Academic Affairs & Provost at Bentley College, asked think tank members for information about the most important tech-nology planning and organizational issues they face on their campuses. They considered the following questions: How do you make decisions when you don't know much about technology? How do you develop a plan for technology when it is changing so rapidly? What are the challenges ahead and what organizational structures have we developed to meet them? How can we and how do we plan when we may be uncertain about financial resources? How can we reconcile the availability of resources for the academic side of the house with the pressing needs on the administrative side?
These discussions resulted in a session on technology from the viewpoint of chief academic officers at the annual conference of the American Association for Higher Education. Participants from the think tank were Deborah Hirsch,Philip Friedman, Robin Jacoby, and Bonnie Kind, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Worcester State College.
At the third session, think tank participants examined the pedagogical and curricular issues involved in information technology. Discussion leaders, Robert Golden, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Keene State College andRobert Martin, Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Westfield State College, developed vignettes illustrating the problems and possibilities of instructional technology from members' information about their own campuses
Several readings were especially helpful to the group this year: "Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity" by William Massy and Robert Zemsky; "Planning for Academic Computing" by G. Phillip Cartwright; "Asking the Right Questions: What Does Research Tell Us About Tech-nology and Higher Learning?" by Stephen C. Ehrmann; "Teaching and Learning in the Computer Age," by Trent Batson and Randy Bass; "The Coming Ubiquity of Information Technology" by Kenneth Green; and "Technology Precipi-tates Reflective Teaching," by Lee R. Alley and Philip C. Repp.
Associate Deans Think Tank
Technology was also on the agenda of the Associate Deans Think Tank, which spent the year talking about Critical Issues under the direction of Milton Kornfeld, Associate Dean at Brandeis University and Deborah Hirsch, Associate Director at NERCHE, this semester.
In February, members discussed the use of technology in academic advising in a session led by MaryAnn Alexander–Ellis, Associate Dean, School of Undergraduate Studies at Lesley College and Lois Nuņez, Associate Dean of Sargent College at Boston University. Facilitators presented the results of a survey (distributed to think tank members via electronic mail!) on uses of technology for advising degree audits, grade reports, budget allocation, training and support, as well as systems or policies that have been developed to deliver these services. The subsequent conversation covered issues, including system incompatibility, privacy and issues of access, and tradeoffs between efficiency vs. delivery.
Participants concluded that the impact of technology will force us to rethink and redefine the advising relationship. Some of the elements of advising such as disseminating information on policies and procedures can be done faster and more efficiently through electronic outlets. Other aspects, such as translating and interpreting that information, transmitting academic values and culture, and helping students make and reflect on their decisions, will always require person–to–person contact. And despite the fact that technology may do a better job of information dissemination, it is precisely this activity that often serves to build the advisor–advisee relationship so that mentoring can and will occur. The group found the new monograph published by the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) on Transforming Academic Advising Through the Use of Information Technology especially useful in informing their discussion.
Subsequent meetings examined distance learning and competency–based education. The group concluded the year with an all day retreat on legal issues and the administrative role in ethical decision-making at Rhode Island College. NERCHE Visiting Fellow Nancy Thomas shared her dissertation research on this topic and her experience as former university counsel.
Department Chairs Think Tank
The theme for the Department Chairs Think Tank this year was The Mentoring Role of the Chair. Under the leadership of Janice Green, NERCHE Senior Associate, and Ellen Kosmer, Chair, Visual and Performing Arts at Worcester State College, the group explored the scope and range of departmental decision–making, mentoring new faculty, evaluating teaching, and ethical issues concerning students and student–faculty relationships.
The discussion of evaluating teaching, led by Judith Davis Miller, outgoing chair of Communication Studies at Sacred Heart University, drew on the chairs' long experience dealing with a particularly difficult and paradoxical issue: how to evaluate faculty teaching for annual reviews and other institutional reasons vs. how to improve teaching.
Referring to three articles read in advance, "Student Ratings of Teaching" by Wilbert McKeachie, "The Peer Collab-oration and Review of Teaching" by Pat Hutchings, and "How Evaluations of Teaching Are Used in Personnel Deci-sions," the group discussed the following questions: Should colleges and universities have teaching standards, i.e. criteria for evaluating teaching performance? If so, for what purpose? Who should establish the criteria? Who should be involved in the evaluation process? What sources of information should be used? Consideration was given to student evaluation forms purchased from elsewhere, peer evaluations, teaching portfolios, self evaluations, and student outcomes assessment.
Further, members talked about whether the same evaluation materials can serve both the purposes of improvement and review. How willing are faculty, in any case, to have their teaching seriously evaluated? If there is resistance, what measures can be taken?
Think tank members are marshaling their considerable expertise to provide consultations to chairs at their own and other campuses.
Student Affairs Think Tank
The Student Affairs Think Tank considered this year's theme, Student Affairs' Role in Preparing for the Future, from a number of different angles. In February, Marlene Godfrey, Dean of Students at Lesley College and Paula Gagnon, Vice President of Student Affairs at New Hampshire Technical Institute, led a discussion of governance, focusing on styles of leadership, the relationship between student affairs and presidents, and the role of student affairs in campus governance. Many members talked about the role of student affairs in governance with respect to change in presidential leadership on their own campuses — noting both the challenges and the opportunities. Various readings added different perspectives to the discussion: Andrew Wolvin's "When Governance is Really Shared," and Jack H. Schuster's "Policing Govern-ance" examined shared governance systems and faculty senates. James Fisher's "Reflections on Transformational Leader-ship" added a provocative dimension to the discussion of leadership styles.
At the April meeting, facilitated by Ann Fitzmaurice, Dean of Students at the University of Hartford and Sharon Kipetz, Dean of Students at the University of Connecticut, members examined the effects of technology, and information technology in particular, on think tank members' professional and personal lives. The group paid specific attention to the impact of technology on interactions between student affairs professionals and both students and faculty. Especially thought provoking was the exchange of ideas about the potential for "campus community" in the midst of listservs, email, and distance learning.
[...]
Formerly the Liberal Learning Think Tank, the General Education Resource Network (GERN) continues to develop its general education consulting capacity. Co–led by NERCHE Senior Associate Jan Civian and Charles Combs, Chair of the General Education Department at Berklee College of Music, the group spent the year tackling issues of general education reform, including design, implementation and evaluation. Members used cases developed by GERN members as well as material from the book, Revital-izing General Education to shape these discussions.
In addition to substantive areas of general education reform, the group examined contextual concerns, such as the various roles that general education consultants play on campuses and the often politically charged atmosphere that exists when a general education program is being reviewed.
General Education Resource Network
Finally, GERN is developing several programs to be offered next year at NERCHE for campuses involved in general education reform. Possibilities include "mini" think tanks and case–writing workshops for administrators and faculty currently engaged in the reform process.
NERCHE Consultation & Outreach
Consultants affiliated with NERCHE have been providing workshop and evaluation services to a number of New England colleges and universities, as well as institutions in other parts of the country. NERCHE prides itself on working closely with campus contacts to determine an institution's needs and design a forum or process that will meet them. NERCHE also offers a number of special workshops to campuses.
Evaluation of liberal arts programs and curriculum development in general education have been among the most sought after topics by NERCHE's consulting clients. Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity, edited by NERCHE affiliates, pays special attention to implementation of curricular change. It analyzes the change process through the multiple lenses of organizational, economic, political and cultural issues on campuses. Among NERCHE consultants on general education are members of our think tank, the General Education Resource Network (GERN). By realistically acknowledging the unplanned, nonrational and even unwanted aspects of campus curricular planning, consultants bring uncommon clarity to the human side of curriculum reform.
The Program on Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach offers special services to the engaged campus. Consultations are ideal for institutions that need assistance in identifying strategies for linking service to scholarship. Workshops, available in a variety of formats, are designed to help participants examine specific service topics and develop action plans. NERCHE Faculty Associates provide consultations and ongoing mentoring to faculty and administrators who are building the varied skills necessary for conducting outreach.
NERCHE's workshop, The Challenge of ADA – What Faculty and Administrators Can Do To Support Disabled Students, offers models of collaboration between administrative divisions and faculty.
NERCHE is available to provide assistance or referral on a number of topics. Please don't hesitate to contact Jane Dixon, Outreach Coordinator at (617) 868–5541 or return the form on NERCHE's Back Page.
Book Review
The Wired Neighborhood, Doheny-Farina, Stephen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). 188 pages plus references and notes.
Reviewed by Susan M. Brady, NERCHE Visiting Fellow
As we work and live in today's information economy, most of us have increased our techno–literacy over the past decade. We hold great hopes for new technologies. They bring flexibility: allowing us to telecommute and work from home. They provide level playing fields: treating genders, ages, the abled and disabled equally. They are liberating: bringing the world to our doorstep via optic cable, allowing us to plug in or out at will. They are glamorous: making each individual a rider on the information highway of ideas with people we would not otherwise know or reach. They bring connectivity: linking us at the click of a button to a diverse community bounded not by geography but by ideas.
Or do they? Does this knowledge-based society create new sets of haves and have nots? Does the Net turn us into nomads, people who have no need to be anyplace and therefore have no place? Are we in danger of becoming so distracted by the verbal and the virtual that we no longer participate in our real communities? Do the new technologies serve the digitally select in electronic cottages or do they isolate us from our colleagues, alienate us from fellow workers, tethering us to leaner and more productive corporations in digital sweatshops? Are we substituting neighbors, real people with faults and foibles, in geo– physical neighborhoods with e–mail buddies out there, on the web? Can the seduction of global techno–utopias make the tangible and relevant seem pedestrian?
These are the issues and concerns examined in The Wired Neighborhood. In this four–part book, Stephen Doheny-Farina takes a critical look at the life enhancing and life alarming qualities of today's technologies. He balances the viewpoints of the "techno–utopians and neo–luddites." This book is a warning to net users to think about the impact of net use on relationships with colleagues, neighbors, families and social institutions. It outlines the issues which need to be weighed to ensure that the staggering increase in availability of technology serves the common good.
Doheny–Farina sees technology (phone, fax, modem, fiber optics, television) as non–neutral, evolving, and complex. He is committed to the concept of a physical, geographical community which includes "complex social and environmental necessities. It is not something you can easily join. You can't subscribe to a community the way you subscribe to a discussion group on the net. It must be lived. It is entwined, contradictory, and involves all our senses. It involves the `continued, unplanned interactions between the same people over a long period of time'" (p. 37). He passionately reviews community's importance to our society. He makes you want to go out and join a local citizens group!
His arguments that "BANCS" (Big American Net Companies) do not share these concerns and that the net, by its very nature, helps people avoid coping with difference and diversity are reasonable and compelling. Activities which support applying net technologies to local and regional publics, helping to build and support communities, will come from local residents, not from BANCS.
Community nets are in their infancy but have gone from zero to thousands in less than a year. These are free, accessible via a public space to all or from home by those who have the means. These experiments, surprisingly, have not simply served the educated, connected and literate; they have improved access across all socioeconomic levels. Such networks are struggling with access, growth and sustainability issues: all of which Doheny–Smith believes are resolvable infrastructure concerns. The more difficult struggle is with achieving democratic participation and community development agendas. They may improve public participation at the local level and a social transformation, or be used simply as cheap on–ramps to the information highway.
In one case a community net served to debate traffic patterns in town, provide information about local schools, help people find baby-sitters and discuss downsizing the town's employees. In another case where the community net was focused on an upcoming election, it was heavily used, but by very few people. These are experiments that explore technological solutions for our dissolving communities. Like public access television and local cable TV broadcasts, community nets are a worthwhile effort.
As college and university administrators, we have seen that distance learning, when it is not plagued by technical problems, can provide cheap, accessible alternatives to traditional classrooms. As technology becomes less text based, more interactive and capable of delivering curriculums to larger populations, it changes the nature of the campus. When courses serve several thousand students, one wonders if the faculty will still decide the curriculums. When the majority of our students access libraries, laboratories and lectures via electronic media, what happens to the campus? On the neighborhood level, what happens to the community if the local school becomes obsolete?
As Doheny–Farina reviews and refines ten general guidelines for people interested in shaping nets for their communities, we higher educators must think about shaping technology to serve the educational needs of students and the role of our campus communities in meeting those needs. The fragility and possibility of both deserve our attention. This book serves to remind us that we all must seek to use technology for the common good.
Web Sites
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News
The Ernest A. Lynton Award for
Faculty Professional Service & Outreach
At the annual meeting of the American Association for Higher Education's Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards last January in San Diego, NERCHE presented the first annual Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach to Dr. Maria de Lourdes B. Serpa, associate professor of education and director of special needs programs at Lesley College, Cambridge, Mass.
The Award was established to recognize a faculty member who connects his or her expertise and scholarship to community outreach. This year's recipient demonstrated excellence in each of the criteria for the award: 1) sustained effort in community outreach and professional service; 2) use of innovative and imaginative approaches; 3) institutional impact through teaching, program development and student/faculty participation; and 4) external success through scholarly output, community impact and student learning.
Dr. Lynton's work at NERCHE, where he remains active as a senior associate, has raised the profile and status of faculty professional service both nationally and internationally. This annual award pays tribute to Ernest Lynton's vision and his tenacity in its pursuit. He champions a vision of service that embraces collective responsibility, a vision of colleges and universities as catalysts not only in the discovery of new knowledge but also in its application throughout society. In his own words, Lynton professes: "Knowledge is not an inert commodity to be stored like the gold in Fort Knox.... It is dynamic, constantly made fresh and given new shape by its interaction with reality."
An experienced classroom teacher in both general and bilingual special education, Dr. Serpa has worked in education at the local, state, national and international levels on literacy and language issues for underserved immigrant school populations and their families. "I came from a Portuguese family that very early on... instilled in me the idea that along with education, community service is really important..." She has been recognized for her service by the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, and most recently, received the Commander of Public Instruction Award from the President of Portugal. In accepting the award, Dr. Serpa noted: "I feel very fortunate to be part of the Lesley College Community, an institution that recognizes and supports the importance of community involvement and volunteer activities." She ended her remarks with the words of Edward Hale: "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something, and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."
For more information about this award, please contact Cathy Burack, Project Director, (617) 287-7745.
Diversity defines the Doctoral Program in Higher Education Administration, inaugurated in 1997, at UMass Boston's Graduate College of Education. Students bring a maturity of professional expertise and personal experience to their academic work. They come from liberal arts, researchoriented and technical institutions that are public and private, two-year and four-year. They work as faculty members in a variety of fields and as administrators in academic affairs, finance, student affairs, continuing education and institutional research. Seven students from the first cohort are at the dissertation stagewriting on topics ranging from changes in the hiring process for fulltime faculty at universities that have experienced financial distress to the relationship between freshman year residential and commuting experiences and retention of African American students at predominantly white colleges.
The Program Office is located in the Graduate College of Education on the first floor of the Wheatley building. To receive a brochure or other information, please call Virginia MacKay at (617) 287-7601; (617) 287-7664 (fax).
New Working Papers by NERCHE Staff
An Overview of Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach in New England
While it is changing, the relationship between faculty professional service and institutional support is ambiguous. To gain more clarity, NERCHE surveyed New England colleges and universities about the status of service on their campuses. Overall, campus missions support outreach, but faculty reward systems tell a different story. This report details the responses of 120 institutions, broken down by institutional type, to questions about the types of professional service faculty are engaged in and the policies and structures that support such activities. Faculty professional service is discussed from the perspectives of the campus and its mission, faculty, reward systems and students.
Campus Commitment to Service: The Role of Faculty Professional Service-Enclaves
Based on information about mission statements, strategic plans, and presidential initiatives, NERCHE set out to locate institutions in the New England area that could serve as models of institutionalized faculty professional service. Rather than finding models, researchers visited seven sites and discovered an enormous amount of collective activitygroups of faculty and staff working together on service initiatives in the community. This paper discusses the characteristics of these service-enclaves and the potential for these groups to move forward a service agenda.
These Working Papers will be available in June 1997, for $5.00 each, prepaid.
The NERCHE Working Papers Series covers a range of educational and workplace concerns in the following areas: General Education, Faculty Labor Market, Professional Service, and Organizational Change. See below for ordering information.
Congratulations To
NERCHE is delighted that former Academic Affairs Think Tank member Sue Huseman, is returning to New England. She leaves Monmouth College in Illinois, where she was President, to become Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs of the University of Maine system.
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If you would like more information on NERCHE Working Papers or other NERCHE offerings, please return the form below to: New England Resource Center for Higher Education, University of Massachusetts Boston, Graduate College of Education, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3393. Telephone: (617) 287-7740; Fax: (617) 287-7747
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