Summary of Chapter IX (Change Faculty Reward Systems), Reinventing Undergraduate Education, (A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities, Boyer Commission* on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University (http://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/pres/boyer.nsf/webform/)

Summary by J. T. P. Yao, 8/30/98

"The typical department in a research university will assert that it does place a high value on effective teaching at the baccalaureate level. … At the same time, however, discussions concerning tenure and promotion are likely to focus almost entirely on research or creative productivity."

"The reward structures in the modern research university need to reflect the synergy of teaching and research – and the essential reality of university life: that baccalaureate students are the university’s economic life blood and are increasingly self-aware. … Budgetary constraints and the nature of survey courses may mean that some such courses continue; still, the teaching schedule of each faculty member needs to provide for small-group situations for baccalaureate students and a context that places them in joint exploration. Faculty course loads must also allow for research mentoring as part of normal operations rather than as poorly-compensated overloads."

"Since it is likely that most universities will need to retain some large classes, those individuals capable of striking success in the classroom should be suitably rewarded. Recognition as distinguished teacher-scholars should include added remuneration."

"In calculating academic rewards, it has been painfully difficult to evaluate the quality of research as separated from its mass. … The publication of Scholarly Assessed, begun by Dr. Boyer before his death and published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, pursues the issues of evaluating research. … But at this point promotion and tenure committees still find teaching effectiveness difficult to measure. … Evaluating good teaching will always be difficult, but effective integration of research and teaching should be observable, as should be development of interdisciplinary approaches to learning. Departments and deans must be pressed to give significant rewards for evidence of integrated teaching and research and for the imagination and effort required by interdisciplinary courses and programs. When publication is evaluated, attention should be paid to the pedagogical quality of the work as well as to its contribution to scholarship."

1. Departmental leaders should be faculty members with a demonstrated commitment to undergraduate teaching and learning as well as to traditionally defined research.
2. The correlation between good undergraduate teaching and good research must be recognized in promotion and tenure decisions.
3. A ‘culture of teaching’ within departments should be cultivated to heighten the prestige of teaching and emphasizing the linkage between teaching and research.
4. Prestigious professional research meetings such as national disciplinary conferences and the Gordon Conferences should contain one or more sessions that focus on new ideas and course models for undergraduate education.
5. Sponsors of external research grants can and should promote undergraduate participation, as the National Science Foundation has begun to do, thus facilitating the research experience of undergraduates.
6. Rewards for teaching excellence, for participation in interdisciplinary programs, and for outstanding mentorship need to be in the form of permanent salary increases rather than one-time awards.
7. Teachers capable of inspiring performance in large classes should be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
8. Committee work at all levels of university life should be greatly reduced to allow more time and effort for productive student-related efforts."

* Commission members include Shirley Strum Kenny, Chair (President, SUNY at Stony Brook), Bruce Alberts (President, National Academy of Sciences), Wayne C. Booth (Professor Emeritus of English and Rhetoric, University of Chicago), Milton Glaser (Designer, illustrator, and graphic artist), Charles E. Glassick (Senior Associate, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), Stanley O. Ikenberry (President, American Council on Education), Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Dean, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania), Robert M. O’Neil (Director, The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, and Professor of Law, University of Virginia), Carolyn Reid-Wallace (Senior Vice President for Education and Programming, Corporation for Public Broadcasting), Chang-Lin Tien (Chancellor Emeritus and N.E.C. Distinguished Professor of Engineering, University of California at Berkeley), and Chen Ning Yang (Director, Institute for Theoretical Physics and Albert Einstein Professor of Physics, SUNY at Stony Brook).

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