Summary
Notes of "Final Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Reconciling
The Faculty Reward System with the Multiple Missions of Texas
A&M University," Prepared by the Committee on 9/23/99,
Revised by Faculty Senate on 12/13/99 & 1/24/01, 21 pages.
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty_senate/Reward.PDF
[Summary Notes read by J.T.P. Yao and corrected by J. M. Roesset]
By J. T. P. Yao, 8/20/01
"In May 1991 the Task Force on the Multiple
Missions of Texas A&M University delivered its report to then-President
William Mobley. … Its recommendations remain valid, and largely
unimplemented today. We hereby endorse the report and its recommendations,
some of which merit particular emphasis here:
·
The University should review its criteria and procedures for hiring,
evaluating, promoting, and reward faculty so that all University
missions are considered; so that individual contributions toward
the total intellectual and University community are given appropriate
weight along with contributions toward the disciplinary communities;
and so that scholarship is considered to be more inclusive than
the conduct of research or the publication of refereed articles.
·
The University should emphasize the improvement of its teaching
mission, giving attention to the use of techniques that have been
successful in the development of the research mission.
·
The University should encourage, recognize, and support interdisciplinary
efforts that focus on broad issues of public policy or social
concern.
… It is now time to stop recommending change
in our faculty reward system as it relates to the multiple missions
of Texas A&M University, and to start implementing change."
"… Why do missions and rewards diverge?
…
·
Changing nature of higher education - …
·
Over-emphasis on research and creative activities - …
·
Effort to tie rewards to objective, quantitative measures…
·
Limitations of teaching evaluation models - …
·
Imposition of standardized models of reward…
·
Narrow understanding of faculty reward - …
·
Unique challenges of professional programs - …"
"… An appropriate reward system possesses
three characteristics:
1.
The functions rewarded at the individual faculty
level, in aggregate, must coincide with the multiple missions
of the university.
2.
The reward system must be able to accurately
recognize and distinguish various levels of meritorious activities
in all areas of performance.
3.
The rewards must be tangible enough to influence
faculty priorities more strongly than competing influences.
Our present reward system falls far short in
all three areas. … Evaluation of teaching suffers from a
lack of generally used methods of assessment beyond student evaluations.
…"
"… Discovery-based research and publications
is an essential element of scholarly activity at a university,
but it should not be the only valued element of scholarly activity.
… Faculty members are largely dissatisfied with the traditional
emphasis on numbers of publications, and believe other forms of
scholarship deserve reward as well. … Discussions about a
broader, more encompassing definition of scholarship have been
catalyzed in recent years by Ernest Boyer… who put forth
four forms of scholarship: discovery, integration, application,
and teaching. …"
"… First, scholarly activity is central
to our University. Second, any changes to the faculty reward system
must not cause a reduction in the overall quality of scholarship.
Third, as we better reward other areas, we must not expect each
faculty member to excel in all areas. … For consideration of tenure, the current emphasis
on both teaching and scholarship is appropriate. Somewhat more
flexible guidelines are appropriate at the level of promotion
to full professor. … Finally,
post-tenure review should assess the contribution of a faculty
member toward carrying out the University's overall mission without
requiring a contribution in any specific mission."
"… First, good teachers often go unrewarded.
Second, teaching is not given as much weight because evaluators
believe their assessments of teaching performance to be less accurate.
For teaching to be given the weight it deserves… it must
be evaluated fairly and accurately. … Existing University
policy, proposed by the Faculty Senate and approved by the President,
states that classroom evaluations of teaching (SET) must not be
the only means of evaluation of teaching performance. … Different
assessment techniques measure different aspects of teaching performance.
Only through the use of several measures can assessment be made
of the full dimensionality of teaching performance. …"
"RECOMMENDATIONS
…
a.
An increased emphasis on teaching, academic advising, service
to the department/college/university/state/nation, and the integration
of research into teaching.
b.
An improved set of procedures… for both formative and summative
evaluation of teaching and for the evaluation of academic advising.
c.
An appropriate balancing of emphasis on the three traditional
areas of teaching, research, and service which will allow for
a more synergetic reaching of the goals of the unit, college,
and university. The unit documents for annual evaluation, promotion
and tenure should include a consistent set of elements and be
distributed to faculty on a regular basis…
[Readers who are interested in this report are encouraged
to read the original report in its entirety. Other summary notes
on faculty reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu
under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]
