Senate considers proposal on teaching, promotion process

Although faculty members speaking about the proposal submitted by the senate's Tenure and Privileges Committee generally supported the idea in theory, they differed on how to document teaching activities and how much weight to put on them.

Provost Thomas Headrick told senators that his original request that the Tenure and Privileges Committee review the criteria for promotion to full professor was prompted by a concern that there were faculty members who were not being put forward for promotion by their departments because their research record did not match what is expected by colleagues in their departments "but who have been exquisite members of their departments in terms of their teaching and their service.

"I do not think we should have people left behind, people who are loyal and devoted to this institution, felt to be left behind by their colleagues because they don't seem to measure up in some aspect of what their colleagues seem to expect, but in fact are doing extraordinary jobs for this university," Headrick said. "If we're going to be a first-rate university, we've got to deal with that problem."

The proposal by the Tenure and Privileges Committee urges that dossiers provide documentation of teaching activities, including personal statements prepared by the candidates describing how their teaching, research and service activities interact in their careers and contribute to the progress of the university; teaching portfolios; evidence of educational leadership in articles and conference presentations on teaching, and, where appropriate, external letters of peer evaluation of teaching.

Margaret Acara, professor of pharmacology and toxicology and committee chair, said the goal of the committee was not to "devalue researchÉbut we ended up believing that it was important to reward the other missions of this university of teaching and service."

Although at one point it leaned toward recommending a two-track system of appointment ­ one emphasizing research, the other teaching ­ the committee ultimately decided against it because it was afraid instituting such a system would "create a class of second citizens," Acara said.

The committee instead proposed a process in which more weight is given to teaching "so that it would be valued as a criteria with full weight for the promotions process," she said.

She acknowledged that there had not always been consensus within the committee, adding that the recommendations the panel had submitted to the Faculty Senate were "what we were most able to agree upon."

This lack of consensus was evi dent, as well, among faculty members who spoke about the recommendations, including a member of the Tenure and Privileges Committee.

"I support the general thrust that we need to count teaching and service for more, particularly in the promotion to full level, but I don't think this is the way to do it," said committee member Don Schack, professor of mathematics. He disputed the notion that a two-track system of appointment classifies members of the teaching track as second-class citizens. "I have observed that all of the distinguished teaching professors and all of the distinguished service professors don't fail to write out their full title; they seem to take some pride in it," he said. "I think that you would find that people would feel perfectly comfortable getting promoted and would happily call themselves 'professor' thereafter."

He noted that he had a lot of problems with the committee's recommendations, including the personal statement. He said he felt promotion committees would consider how well the personal statement was written, rather than how well the candidate actually did his or her job.

Schack said he also was concerned that the committee is asking the President's Review Board (PRB), deans and the provost to make evaluations for which they do not have the relevant background. For example, he said, he could submit all the syllabi and exams for his courses "and the only person up at that level who might be able to tell you whether they were reasonable or not is the vice provost for undergraduate education (Nicolas Goodman, who holds a faculty appointment as a professor of mathematics), and that's an accident of appointment."

To promote teaching throughout the career ­ "not merely at promotion time" ­ the university must find mechanisms to get departments to evaluate teaching seriously, "and it's not by loading yet one more thing into the promotion dossier," he said.

"By default" UB has slid into a standard (for promotion) that is much too narrow, noted William K. George Jr., professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. It is not in UB's best interest to have standards that are not directly relevant to the university's primary mission, he said.

"What is our mission? Teaching is our mission, it is our only mission," he said. "I'm sick and tired of hearing us referred to as a research university....I think it has created undue problems for us.

"We teach here. That is all we do," George said. "We teach in the classroom, we teach in the laboratory, we teach with our apprentices-we call them graduate students-we teach with our post docs, we teach in the community-we call that service-we teach, we teach, we teach. That is our mission.

"Frankly, I don't think publications and research papers and research dollars are a wit more relevant to promotion than teaching is, and I mean teaching in all those contexts," he said.

Jack Meacham, professor of psychology, read several sections from the Faculty/Staff Handbook that stressed the importance of teaching in the promotion process, including one that stated "excellence in research is to be valued and recognized but will not counterbalance failure in teaching."

"I believe the resolution on the floor is weaker than what is in the handbook," Meacham said, noting that the criteria spelled out in the handbook are adequate in stressing the importance of teaching in the promotion process. "The problem is that we have tenure and personnel committees and perhaps the PRB that are not living up to their responsibilities with respect to the existing procedures."

Mendel Sachs, professor of physics, said the purpose of research-oriented universities is to "pursue the truth and communicate the truth," and good researchers will automatically have the inspiration to communicate.

While faculty at teaching colleges are good teachers, they rely on books and lack the inspiration of a good researcher, he noted.

"I think the attitude should be that research, scholarship and teaching are together, they're one thing, like Ying and Yang," he said, adding, "You really can't separate them."

Headrick told senators he is very concerned about the paucity of information about teaching that goes into promotion dossiers-both promotion to associate professor with tenure and promotion to full professor. The teaching capabilities of candidates for promotion basically are judged on student evaluations taken in classes over a period time, "which obviously measures some dimensions of some people's teaching, but it doesn't measure everything and it is not the 'be all' and 'end all' of what teaching is all about," he said.

Teaching "is not just what goes on between a student and a faculty member in a classroom. We've got to deal with that problem," he added.

The committee's proposal is "a step in that direction," Headrick said, although he said he does not agree with every recommendation. Personal statements can be self-serving, he noted, and the teaching portfolio must be expanded and developed.

He said he agrees that portfolios should be evaluated by "people who understand itÉpeople who are good teachers here or elsewhere and understand what goes into making quality teaching at a major university."

Moreover, UB should contact former students on a regular basis, "people who have been out five years or 10 years, who can relate what they learned to what was expected of them in the outside world and how it affected the way in which they see themselves and measure themselves against others in their field," he said. "I think that will improve the quality of information we get about the impact of teaching and what it really does for our students." Such evaluations will be a considered judgment, rather than a momentary response to a grade or an expected grade, he added.

In other business, the senate unanimously approved the proposed campus recycling policy that will attempt to increase recycling to 50 percent by 1997.

The body also adopted a policy requiring that its resolutions be accompanied by a brief rationale that addresses the financial implications, if any, of adopting or failing to adopt the proposed resolution; the potential impact of the implementation of the resolution on specific parts of the university, and a method for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed policy, including the period of evaluation, criteria and other relevant factors.