The Vice President for Instruction
Name of proposed new unit, OR Title of submission:
The Vice President for Instruction
Vice President for Instruction.pdf
Name of contact person for this proposal: Juan R. García
Contact person title: Vice President for Instruction and Dean of University College
Contact Address:
412 Administration Building
Contact Phone: 520-621-5066
Responses from President and Provost
Response #1> Back to List of White Papers
If you do not wish to comment publicly on this site, you may post your comments at uatransf@email.arizona.edu
Comments
The African American Advisory Council would want to insure that Transformations processes including consolidations and workforce reductions would not erode The University of Arizona's efforts to recruit and retain diverse faculty, students, and staff.
I agree that the Gen Ed system could stand some improvement. However, I think the negative impacts of this proposal far outweigh its potential benefits in terms of pedagogy. Other comments address problems associated with creation of a bifurcated faculty system and divorcing research from teaching. I will speak briefly to a third issue, the proposal’s potential impacts on the graduate training and research missions of the university.
Centralizing allocation of teaching assistantships (GTAs) would harm departments’ abilities to recruit and retain to graduate students. Departments have a responsibility to provide excellent undergraduate classes, and most of them do that most of the time. However, graduate departments also have a responsibility to provide teaching opportunities and other classroom training for their graduate students. These two imperatives are best balanced at a local (departmental) level rather than through a centralized authority. No matter how dedicated they are to good pedagogy, the administrators and staff of this proposed centralized GenEd unit will not understand the particular needs of graduate students in a range of very different fields. If departments are not able to promise graduate students of classroom training appropriate to their field, they will be unable to attract the best students, placing both their teaching and their research missions at risk.
The strength of this proposal is also the component that appears to be raising concerns. This is the use of a more diversified faculty to accomplish the undergraduate educational mission. I agree that teaching should not be divorced from research. However, there are cases on campus where it already is—specifically when classes are taught primarily by graduate teaching assistants who themselves are not far off in their educational level from those they are instructing. It is much better to have classes taught by professionals who are devoting themselves to the highest quality of instruction, which does mean drawing research into teaching practices. I would also point out that the model of using faculty who special in instruction is exactly what has run small, private, high quality institutions of higher learning for the last century. A mix of tenure track (research) and instructional faculty are also used at some large public institutions. The trick is that the instructional faculty are integrated into the departments that produce the research that advances the discipline. This assures that the instructional faculty are immersed in a culture that values research and where the integration of research into courses is the norm.
I am enthusiastic about getting better instructors in front of students, particularly at the lower division level. This proposal would help do that by harnessing underused resources on campus to keep instructor skills current and evaluating teaching of instructional faculty. If instructors were integrated into departments, it would not only mitigate the “second class” concern, but allow these individuals to serve as a local teaching resource to tenure-track faculty. This would encourage a two-way support system in which instructors have ready access to research information and researchers get teaching enrichment and teaching technology tips from instructors. In our department (which has one senior instructor now), tenure track faculty greatly appreciate the contributions of this person, because is knowledge base and teaching skill are highly respected and his contributions ultimately lower their teaching load. The students can’t tell that he is “different”. So there is no “second class” issue.
I think some serious thought needs to be given to what the correct balance is between numbers of instructional faculty and numbers of tenure-track faculty for the health of the undergraduate educational mission. We still want our quality ranked faculty in front of undergraduate students. We also still want to attract students to our majors and inspire undergraduates to research careers. One of the ways we do this is by putting active researchers in front of them in the classroom.
I think it is also important not to confuse small class sizes with quality instruction. I personally would love it if my lower division gen-ed course was much smaller than it typically enrolls. However, our legislature is unwilling to foot that bill and our students can’t afford to. That said, a great instructor can provide a better education to a large class than a poor instructor who has a small class. Of course, the optimal arrangement is a great instructor with a small class, but if you ask students if they want to pay for that in tuition dollars, I think you’ll find them quicker to compromise on class size before they compromise on instructor quality. The reality is that we must find a way to deliver quality education with the budget we have.
I recognize the problem, but I am completely unconvinced that a centralization of resources in the office of the VPI is the solution. With some thought, I think that the problems could be better – and more cheaply - solved in a decentralized fashion. I subscribe to the radical notion that administrative operations should serve faculty, not the other ‘way around.
And, despite the proposal’s protestations to the contrary, this would establish, without question, a two tier faculty at the UA - one for a junior college within the UA, the other for the faculty who have an active program of scholarship. The strength of a great research university is that new knowledge is disseminated by its producers and that students can see – and participate in - the production of that new knowledge. This proposal works against that vision.
Let’s not lose sight of where the GTAs (and their supporting budget) fit in here. At present, GTAs greatly facilitate both instruction and our graduate programs. Both benefit. With a narrowly focused scheme in which tuition dollars follow students – and supply the coffers of the VPI – graduate programs and the Graduate College get cut off at the knees.
I suspect that the many shortcomings in this proposal are a result of the lack of involvement of the many constituents who would be affected. The “proposal team” only looked inward. The participation called for in the preparation of the white papers is not evident here.
And, almost finally, I find it unseemly for the VPI to complain in this document that his office has yet to be allotted an operating budget. That is something he can take up with his boss, not with SPBAC. If he wants a public dispute over the matter, he can write an op-ed for the newspaper.
Finally (I mean it this time), consider that many of the white papers call for mergers and consolidations of units, with the attendant reduction in administrative overhead. This one, however, from one of the 39 vice presidents, associate vice presidents or assistant vice presidents, doesn’t do anything of the sort. It works in the opposite direction.
This proposal should be categorized as a non-starter.
I see two major issues with this proposal that directly and aversely affect two of the universities core missions: research and student-centered learning. With regard to the research mission, this proposal would divert the time of many faculty members, certainly those who are not housed in the College of Science, predominantly towards teaching and would be contrary to stated goals that faculty bring in more outside funding for research. There is only so much time in the day. Many faculty members outside the Science College are in top-ranked departments and this proposal would aversely affect the national standing of these departments (including my own, Anthropology). It will also create an even more pronounced two-tier system of faculty, namely teaching and research faculty. Is this the way to maintain our Tier 1 research ranking? Secondly, one of the most persistent student complaints I have heard on this campus (and I teach a large Tier 1 Gen Ed class) is the large size of Tier 1 and Tier 2 classes and the limited exposure to faculty in some of these courses. We get these complaints from our majors and other students, even though in our department all Gen Ed courses during the regular semesters are taught by core faculty. This proposal seems to move us even farther from a student-centered learning ideal.
The UA President's Hispanic Advisory Council, (HAC), is pleased to provide its evaluation of this White Paper/Proposal, with the specific goal of relating it to the joint UA/HAC goals concerning diversity and inclusion, recruitment, retention and gradution of Hispanic students and faculty, and on meeting the UA goal of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution by 2012. Additional criteria used when reviewing this proposal include the following; UA's land grant institution status and thus its location in the southwest and the changing demographics of this area; innovative program design including instructional methodologies; and whether the proposal realistically addresses the UA's business needs. HAC's mission is to strengthen relationships between the UA and the diverse communities within the State of Arizona by serving as a communications conduit and developing mutually beneficial parnerships.
HAC has reviewed this proposal and rates it as:
An Excellent Model- this proposal could be used as a model for meeting the above Hispanic Advisory Council/ UA criteria. It should move forward and be expanded.
I believe the VPI's proposal misses opportunities to develop a unique approach to general education and to align with the stated mission of the UA. Our established emphasis is research and we have an opportunity to involve students in the excitement of modern inquiry and discovery throughout their college careers regardless of academic discipline. Doing so will motivate and reinforce basic skills in arithmetic, writing, and reasoning.
Students are excited by cutting edge research and by opportunities to interact with leading researchers. Therefore, instead of developing a cadre of educators who might potentially become isolated from research, we should emphasize excellence in both areas together. It is essential to encourage, empower, and equip existing (and future) researchers to become excellent educators. There are many good examples on campus. We also need to acknowledge and reward excellence in teaching and to hold everyone accountable. Therefore, I support many of the opportunities for professional development described in the VPI's proposal. Unfortunately, during my gen-ed teaching for the last 11 consecutive semesters, no one has ever asked to visit my Tier I/II classes as an evaluator.
An enormously depressing aspect of our gen-ed classes is the inability of our students to do 5-7th grade arithmetic, simple sentence writing, and elementary reasoning. I believe this problem extends nationwide. Lack of these skills (even at the Tier II level) forces instructors either to dumb-down courses or to devote enormous resources to remediation. A common problem is that students do not see the VALUE of these skills in their personal development except, for example, to pass a math test in math class. Therefore, I believe that ALL three of the above skill areas should be emphasized constantly (and somehow enforced) across the full curriculum. A research emphasis can do so naturally in an exciting fashion. Facility with simple arithmetic and numbers is especially lacking yet vitally important today so we need to emphasize quantitative expression and thinking in every single course.
I believe the UA can develop a uniquely appealing and effective gen-ed curriculum using research as a theme to model the value of basic skills in arithmetic, expression, and reasoning.
I object to the proposal as well and point to the paper's anticipatory wording near the end ("The last thing we want to do is create a two-tiered system"). In effect, this panel recognizes that this is exactly what the proposal is doing.
To have a second core of faculty being assigned/affiliated under the University College clearly presents an issue of equity. Already, as the proposal notes, there are not enough Gen Ed courses to meet students' needs. What happens should we get another round of budget cuts in five years? Despite the panel's assurances, I doubt very much that salary equity and retention would be high on the maintenance list, and I have no doubt that this group of teaching faculty would suffer the hardest blows. And it would be students--who need these courses to be supported and funded as well as possible--who would lose out in the end.
There have been many comments from others about the faculty involved here, but it would be students who would most adversely affected by this proposal. Giving them as many opportunities to work with research faculty should be a priority; to eliminate Gen Ed as one of those avenues would say quite a bit to them about the university's commitment to their overall education. I recognize that the proposal states that faculty would be given a *choice* to be teaching-intensive, but I can hardly see many doing so willingly, especially with the requirements that come along with "choosing" this path: our own research, plus "extensive and continuing professional development in the art of craft of teaching" and "some form of scholarship related to teaching." That's a tremendous burden, whatever the salary.
I would like to point out that the research cited in support of this proposal actually contradicts the proposal. Boyer clearly states that separating teaching from research produces a negative result for undergraduate education. Boyer clearly argues that teachers should not be separate from researchers and that classes should not be large. I don't think there is anyway we can pretend that this proposal will benefit the people who pay tuition at this university.
If one assumes that teaching in a field should be guided by research in that discipline and that general education needs to involve faculty from various disciplines, then one must agree that there are fundamental flaws in the basic assumptions of two White Papers: the Vice President for Instruction’s White Paper on General Education (no number provided) and the Undergraduate Writing Instruction (#126) submissions.
Most faculty will readily agree that teaching and research should be closely related and that it makes no sense to divorce instruction in a discipline from a body of knowledge that constitutes that field of study. An extensive body of research on the teaching of writing needs to be consulted in planning curricula to ensure the effectiveness of instruction. Research on the writing process provides guidelines for how to teach writing in ways that build on how students learn and what they need to learn to address various audiences and purposes in differing disciplines. In response to the premises of these White Papers, we offer the following comments:
Comparison to Peer Institutions: We have researched all of our ABOR peer institutions and find that ALL support writing through either a Department of English or a Program/Department of Writing Studies.
Cost Factors Related to Writing Program Instruction: English has one of the lowest salary scales for GATs in the University of Arizona ($3779/average). The cost of paying TAs/GATs from other colleges to teach composition would be prohibitively more expensive based upon their GAT stipend scale. Because of budget cuts of over $1 million dollars since 2004, the Writing Program operates at maximum efficiency and still provides optimal quality of instruction. The scale of the Writing Program is staggering: 545 sections of 100- and 300- level courses in 2008, teaching 12,304 students. In addition, the Writing Program maximizes enrollment due to its historical tracking of placement and retention. In F08, first-day enrollment was 98.64% capacity, and 21st day was 95.9%.
Research: The UA Writing Program conducts research on retention, placement, and curricula. We participated in two ABOR funded initiatives, one of which was a collaboration with NAU and ASU. As an example of our research commitment in the Writing Program, we recently piloted and implemented an innovative course for developmental writers (at the urging of ABOR to eliminate “remedial” courses). Historically, students who had lower ability in writing were placed in a basic writing course, ENGL 100. Their time to degree was 3 semesters/9 units in order to fulfill the UA writing requirement. In Fall 2007, we eliminated ENGL 100 and placed these students in regular ENGL 101 classes with a one-credit Writing Studio (ENGL 197b) attached. Our research on these classes shows an increase in the student continuation rate of 14.2% and an increase in retention of 24.2%. In addition, 43% of ENGL 101+ are minority students (compared to 26.1% of the first-year students in F07). This kind of extensive research could not be conducted without a central disciplinary unit devoted to the teaching of writing.
Diversity of Course Offerings: In addition to First-Year Composition (FYC), the Writing Program offers an ESL sequence, including co-convened native and ESL sections. We also offer an array of advanced courses, including business writing, technical writing, advanced composition, and sophomore composition (focuses on writing in the disciplines). Some of these advanced courses are required by other majors for their professional accreditations.
Outreach and Partnerships: The Writing Program collaborates with more than 20 units on campus (New Start, Med Start, Retention, Library, Athletics, Native American, African American, and Mexican American Student Affairs, International Student Affairs, to name several) and works with Gear Up and the Southern Arizona Writing Project to partner with local schools. Currently, 13 sections of FYC are linked in a service-learning partnership with high school students. These relationships have been cornerstones of the UA land grant mission, and such early outreach, retention initiatives, and collaborative projects are hallmarks of the discipline of Writing Studies.
Teacher Course Evaluations: On a scale of one to five, the overall effectiveness on TCEs for Writing Program courses is 4.2. Considering that these are not elective courses, we are proud of the standards we uphold including the lack of grade appeals (none in 2007), and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from undergraduates.
Transfer and Articulation: In 2007, the Writing Program evaluated 1597 transcripts of transfer students to facilitate placement or exemption from FYC, read over 60 transfer portfolios and 31 CLEP exams, and processed schedule changes for 1108 students. It is imperative to have a central Writing Program administration to evaluate transcripts and articulate course goals and equivalencies among the community colleges and universities in Arizona and across the nation.
Publications: The Writing Program has published its own textbooks for 29 years (see this year’s A Student’s Guide to First-Year Writing). These custom publications provide professional development opportunities for graduate students, and they help celebrate a culture of writing on this campus (see First-Year Essay Contest). The Writing Program is truly dedicated to the mission of this university. We work to provide students with quality learning experiences; to offer opportunities that showcase their writing and critical thinking; to shepherd students into academic discourse; to mentor and teach them through the most difficult stage of their college careers. We fight for their right to be here (and stay here), providing both tutoring services like the Writing Center and opportunities to connect with their peers and instructors in a workshop environment devoted solely to the nurturing of critical thinking and writing skills. More than teaching only grammar, the UA Writing Program teaches students to think critically, write thoughtfully, research ethically, and become engaged citizens in this democracy.
This proposal is a bad one for the future of the university on several accounts, and I have to express strong agreement with the concerns voiced below. In addition to those concerns, I would take a closer look at the source materials providing legitimacy for this paper. The white paper cites two authorities--the Boyer Commission's _Reinventing Undergraduate Education_ and Boyer's _Scholarship of Teaching_.
I find it incredible that the first source would be seen as sanctioning such a division between teaching and research. Throughout the Boyer Commission's report, it is repeatedly stressed that undergraduate education MUST be taught through research, by professors engaged in research. Here is what the Boyer Commission suggests:
"The basic idea of learning as inquiry is the same as the idea of
research; even though advanced research occurs at advanced levels,
undergraduates beginning in the freshman year can learn through
research. In the sciences and social sciences, undergraduates can
become junior members of the research teams that now engage
professors and graduate students. In the humanities, undergraduates
should have the opportunity to work in primary materials,
perhaps linked to their professors’ research projects." (17)
If this white paper were adopted, the professors doing the research would not be the ones doing the teaching. How this would encourage the teaching-through-research model the Boyer Commission suggests is unfathomable. I would suggest that those reviewing this white paper take a look at what the Boyer Commission report advocates, because, in general, the report takes a completely different tack than the one suggested here.
Just one other example, the Commission suggests that first-year students be taught in small seminars by experienced faculty (and when the Commission writes "experienced" here, it is clear that they mean senior research faculty):
"THE FRESHMAN YEAR SHOULD BE RECONFIGURED FOR MAXIMUM
benefit, and the sophomore year should evolve as a result of those
changes. The focal point of the first year should be a small seminar
taught by experienced faculty. The seminar should deal with
topics that will stimulate and open intellectual horizons and allow
opportunities for learning by inquiry in a collaborative environment.
Working in small groups will give students not only direct
intellectual contact with faculty and with one another but also
give those new to their situations opportunities to find friends
and to learn how to be students. Most of all, it should enable a
professor to imbue new students with a sense of the excitement of
discovery and the opportunities for intellectual growth inherent
in the university experience." (20)
If I read the Commission's report correctly, it advises AGAINST:
(1) Separating teaching from research
(2) Enlarging freshman class sizes
(3) Employing professional teachers who are only tangentially affiliated with a research discipline
As to the other source, Boyer's "_Scholarship of Teaching_," it should be noted that this is not a text in itself, but rather one of four inseparable categories that Boyer describes in _Scholarship Reconsidered_. And that book, though calling for a revaluation of teaching, also notes that to be a scholar means to be a teacher AND a researcher:
"What we urgently need today is a more inclusive view of what it means to be a scholar--a recognition that knowledge is acquired through research, through synthesis, through practice, and through teaching. We acknowledge that these four categories--the scholarship of discovery, of integration, of application, and of teaching--divide intellectual functions that are tied inseparably to each other." (24-5)
To move teaching away from research, in any form, is to betray the suggestions of the educational philosophies ostensibly undergirding this proposal.
I find this proposal extremely disturbing. In my department, regular tenured faculty and adjunct faculty both teach Tier 1 Gen Ed and graduate-level courses, and everything in between. I get very different and valuable intellectual engagement from both Tier I and graduate classes, and I suspect my colleagues who are adjuncts do as well, and this leads to better teaching at all levels. I know that my department is not unique in this structure, either. Separating GenEd from the disciplines it teaches can only be bad for the faculty who would wind up teaching GenEd, the faculty who would wind up excluded from GenEd, and most of all for the students. Furthermore, any proposal that offers "teaching efficiency" is likely to achieve this through ever larger class sizes, community-college-like teaching loads, or both, and these would harm the quality of learning.
Furthermore, the suggestion that the "teaching intensive" faculty would be offered more training in pedagogy than the rest of us is offensive. All faculty currently have access to a variety of sources of ongoing training in instructional methods. We have offices on campus we consult for instructional issues, workshops on campus, and off-campus sources such as the Tomorrow's Professor Listserv. Many of us ("teaching intensive" or not, teaching GenEd or not) do use these resources, and already receive training in the pedagogical areas mentioned in the proposal. Adding more training on these same topics for only GenEd faculty seems like a poor use of funding.
I write as a faculty member who has been extremely productive in my research and would presumably be assigned to the research tier, and yet I have no enthusiasm for this further balkanization of learning. I appreciate that the proposal's authors warn against the creation of a two-tiered faculty (researchers on top, teachers below). I note as well that they offer no logic or prescription for preventing that hierarchy, because none exists. Divide the faculty into research and teaching components and hierarchy will follow.
Students come to us because we pride ourselves in offering a learning experience that is presumed to be superior to that of, say, Pima College. This proposal creates a community college within the University – which might be all right except that (1) southern Arizona already has a thriving, relatively inexpensive community college that is eager and prepared to compete with us for students; and (2) doing so negates our primary advantage as an institution of higher education, which is the ability of students to take classes with faculty who are at the cutting edge of their fields. We can’t and shouldn’t become Pima Community College (much less University of Phoenix) with a research component – if only because they got there first and will always do that job better than we. This proposal moves us in that direction.
As the Director of the Creative Writing Program, I must voice great concern over the concept of releasing the teaching of our 200-level introductory courses in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to "teaching intensive faculty" under another unit. The introductory courses in our major are carefully designed and monitored by our faculty, and link inextricably with our 300 and 400 level courses in the major. We are working to create more, not less, articulation and communication between the requirements in our major, and it is essential that we maintain control of these Gen Ed courses.
We are currently working on ways within the English Department to create a better experience for our Creative Writing majors and minors, and our progress in this very, very popular major would be impeded by a move such as this. I object strongly to it.
In addition, I have deep trepidation over what it would mean to institutionalize a two-tiered faculty system. It is beyond difficult for instructors teaching 3 or 4 classes a semester to also "remain at the cutting edge" of their field, or to "engage in scholarship." Rather than creating more jobs that discourage our teachers from doing their own research, the University should be bold and socially forward thinking, bringing more relief and support to the instructor and adjunct and GAT base we currently have.
Members of SPBAC:
The aim of this proposal is to increase the teaching loads of UA faculty. It does not do this directly (this would obviously threaten UA’s aspirations as a research university) but by creating a “teaching faculty” whose loads will be higher than the two courses a semester that is now the norm.
The proposal recognizes the danger of creating a two-tier faculty and apparently assumes that this can be prevented by creating salary equity. Even assuming that salary equity would be maintained (highly unlikely), a two-tier faculty would nonetheless result. The notion that differences in salary are what lie behind academic hierarchies does not suggest much understanding of those hierarchies.
A teaching faculty would be a captive faculty. Faculty who are not in a position to move (or who have no wish to) are the ones who get paid less in the modern university.
The idea that the new arrangement would lead to improved instruction also seems suspect. Support for teaching is a good thing. Lack of such support can lead to poor teaching. The presence of such support does not, however, produce good teaching. Devotion to one’s subject is necessary to that, along with devotion to our students’ learning.
In general, this proposal seems to me to me to come more out of the experience of management and administration than it does the experience of teaching and research.
Changes made at this moment of financial crisis should not make it more difficult to return to sound practice after the crisis passes or after it becomes apparent that that the change hasn’t been a good one. The creation of a teaching faculty of the sort imagined by this proposal would create such a difficulty.
The position of the many adjuncts now teaching and supporting teaching in the university does need to be improved. This isn’t the way to do that.
This proposal identifies some of the basic problems in the gen ed system. However, I see two fundamental problems with it.
First, as others have already commented, this proposal doesn't take into account the fact that small programs cannot have faculty dedicated only to gen ed offerings. In the case of Italian, we're "jacks-of-all-trades," and cannot simply set aside a faculty member / instructor to just gen ed. Furthermore, the gen ed offerings are a valuable component of the Italian Program, so they couldn't be "outsourced" to other programs.
The second issue, as I see it, is more philosophical. I read this proposal as putting us on the path to a "Rio Salado College" model. That is, where the "real" faculty are actually supervisors of teams of part-time instructors. In the case of this proposal, it might turn out that the "real" faculty would set up and administer the gen ed offerings, and then hire them out to the professional teachers.
Rather than this plan, why not just open up the promotion & tenure path? P&T committees can take a more active role in the supervision of assistant & associate faculty, monitoring exactly what kinds of progress they are making. Allow faculty to renegotiate their 40% teaching, 40% research, 20% service and reach tenure through different paths that suit their interests and abilities.
I am deeply concerned about this proposal, and it is unclear to me whether faculty teaching in the general education mission at the UA were consulted at any point in this proposal's development. I care deeply about pedagogy, and I have worked closely with many of the units mentioned here (ILC, TLC, the pilot program on PRS or personal response systems, the Teaching Teams preceptor program, the honors college...). While there are many valuable suggestions here for ways to improve the quality of general education classes, the overall suggestion to turn to a system of "teaching intensive" positions is problematic for many reasons. First of all, the suggestion that a faculty member would be teaching a 3 or 4 class load per semester, actively involved with all of these support units to continually improve their teaching, and still be able to keep up research ("Finally, faculty are expected to remain at the cutting edge of their field and work...") seems like an add-on that has been given little thought or attention. I teach at the gen ed level, at the graduate level, and I have an ongoing research project. This allows me to train graduate students on multiple levels, it allows me to fund the graduate students my department accepts, and it enhances my undergraduate teaching. I am clearly not the only faculty member that finds this balance critical to my continued productivity. Along similar lines, the proposal's attention to undergraduate development at the initial stages of their academic career is laudable (and useful for retention), and yet there seems to be a hidden gap that fails to explain how these students transfer from general education classes taken during their first few years with "teaching intensive" faculty employed in the general education curriculum, into a department with sustainable relationships with tenure-track faculty and the kind of scholarly focus that a major seeks to develop. I am familiar with schools that take a "first year curriculum" approach - and they are institutions with a much smaller and more manageable freshman class size. Cutting students and faculty off from departments with specific academic missions in order to centralize funds and administration is, to my mind, a very dangerous business solution that ignores the larger goals of teaching and research that should be at the heart of any top-notch academic institution.
I recognize the importance of this proposal in supporting multiyear and teaching faculty and providing them with a means for advancement, development and support. But there are a number of issues in this proposal that I am concerned about and I think warrant careful attention. In many units, including my own, Gen Ed instruction is done not only by teaching intensive faculty and multi-year lecturers but by regular faculty. Further, our multi year lecturers are fully integrated into the teaching mission of the unit, teaching at all levels (including major-level classes and grad classes.) They do not only teach GenEd. I'd be concerned that these faculty would be disconnected from our dept and that regular faculty would be prevented from teaching the Gen Ed classes in their units. I apologize for the negative metaphor -- as I do not believe this was the intent of the proposers -- but to a degree this seems to verge on setting up a ghetto for adjunct faculty. The impacts of this proposal on graduate level funding (and recruiting) are obvious. Less obvious are issues of disciplinary expertise in the hiring of faculty for teaching gen ed classes, and the hiring of Teaching assistants. Should it not be the case that for, for example, that the hiring of an instructor and support staff for a class in some discipline is best determined by the unit or department that knows the most about the discipline? In the model described in this white paper, I'm not clear on how this could happen. As I mentioned above, I do support the notion of a vehicle for the promotion and support of our teaching intensive faculty, and I do believe that there are many ways in which we could improve our general education opportunities so that they give students a more satisfying experience. But I'm not convinced that centralizing the teaching staff will show significant benefits in either area, nor will necessarily save in terms of budget, so this proposal should be taken with great caution.
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