Kathrin Stanger-Hall, research fellow, integrative biology
Dear Members of the Faculty Council:
We presently have a unique opportunity to make UT not only a leader in research but also in undergraduate education. However, one of the biggest threats to improving education at UT may be the attitude that a deeply flawed proposal (e.g. the University College) is better than none. This is politics at its worst. There are realistic alternatives that would have a real impact on education. We have to put education center-stage. This requires a focus on educators, not on administrators.
Why focus on educators?
At the very core of the decline in college education in the US (see Figure 1 below) is a neglect of critical thinking skills in education. We are generating students can choose between options given to them by repeating back memorized information, but who cannot process new information and evaluate options that are new to them. Only 30% of college graduates are able to comprehend a complex text or interpret data represented in a graph. It should be the goal of education reform to educate the remaining 70%.
It has been the goal of the administration in the College of Natural Sciences to increase the participation of research faculty in the undergraduate curriculum. Similarly, legislators have demanded that their children be educated by the “best” faculty, in terms of international reputation, at UT. These efforts are misguided and result from a deep misconception that (primarily) research faculty are better teachers than (primarily) teaching faculty. This is simply not true. Great researchers are not necessarily the best teachers (on average they are not: see Figure 2) and tend to challenge students less than teaching faculty (Figure 3). To get the full benefit of a lecture undergraduate students need to be able to think critically (which they cannot). What we need is top quality educators that teach students critical thinking and life-long learning skills early on, so they can benefit from this throughout their College career, including upper level classes taught by research faculty.
Another misconception assumes that teaching faculty teach because they couldn’t succeed as research faculty. This prejudice may partly stem from the practice of assigning a higher teaching load to research faculty whose research productivity has declined, or from hiring new PhDs as temporary teachers in their home departments until they secure a post-doc position. Faculty that have a passion for teaching and make a conscious career choice to primarily teach undergraduate students, training them in critical thinking and life-long learning skills, are ignored at best, or even looked down upon by current administrators. This is evidenced by teaching faculty’s low pay scale (e.g. less than graduate student teaching assistants in the Biological Sciences), high teaching loads (risking burn-out), and lack of job security (see Figs 4 & 5 for a UT-wide salary analysis for 2003/2004).
UT is a public Research University that is obligated to educate undergraduates, while maintaining its top research status. Why not pursue both goals with excellence instead of forcing a mediocre compromise? The University College is an expensive and ineffective compromise that will neither improve education at UT, nor facilitate research.
Pursuing research & teaching with excellence
Why not serve the dual mission of the University with faculty that complement each other in these goals? Why not establish tenure-track lines for top educators as we do for top researchers? Why not have tenure-track lines that span the whole range from 100% education (100E) to 100% research (100R: as already practiced in Molecular Biology) with all variants in between depending on the needs of the respective Department? Why insist that only a 70R/30E appointment deserves tenure, considering the wide-ranging responsibilities of a public University?
Taking a more flexible approach to the tenure-appointment would have a major impact on education at UT, and it would send a clear message that UT truly values education (and its educators). Other public Universities (e.g. in Georgia and Florida) are already implementing such a system. Clearly, such an approach would cost less and require less administrative staff than the proposed University College, and the impact on education would be substantially greater.
Campaign Strategy:
Valuing faculty that are both excellent teachers, and highly motivated to teach undergraduate students, should be at the core of an education campaign. The campaign should focus on new classrooms and tenure-track teaching positions. Tenure-track teaching positions could easily attract donors by attaching the name of the donor to the position, e.g. John Smith Teaching Professor, or Maria Smart Professor for Excellence in Teaching.
It is essential that education reform is centered around educators that are qualified and motivated to take on this challenge. Such excellent educators would be attracted by tenure-track teaching positions. Many administrators will label such a goal as “unrealistic”, but now is the time to revisit these attitudes.
Attached: Figures 1-5 (see below)
Figure 1: The State of College Education
Figure 2: Student course evaluations for all SBS courses taught in 2003/2004
The following data are based on all the undergraduate lower-level courses taught in the School of Biological Sciences at UT in the 2003/2004 academic year (n=119). Source: MEC.
Legend: T: 18 tenure-track (primarily research) faculty, SL: 7 senior lecturers (primarily teaching faculty), L: 21 lecturers (primarily teaching faculty); the data are not corrected for different teaching loads among faculty. Survey Items: 1: Course well organized; 2: Communicated information effectively; 3: Showed interest in students progress; 4: Assignments and tests returned promptly; 5: Student freedom of Expression; 6: Course of value to date; 7: Overall instructor rating; 8: Overall course rating.
Figure 3: Perceived Workload and Student Ratings
In general, there is a negative correlation between instructor ratings and perceived workload in the Biology core (e.g. correlation coefficient = -0.509 for BIO 214; p=0.031): the easier the course, the higher rated the instructor. The following analysis shows that Senior lecturers are rated higher than tenure-track faculty (see Figure 2) despite higher expectations for student performance (measured as perceived workload by students) underlining the teaching excellence of this faculty group.
Workload Ratings: The possible workload ratings in the student surveys were: excessive, high, average, light, or insufficient. To compare the perceived workload in the student responses between different classes and student numbers, the workload responses were scaled by giving an excessive rating a value of 2, a high rating a value of 1, an average rating a value of 0, a light rating a value of -1, and an insufficient rating a value of -2. I multiplied these values with the number of responses in each category and then divided by class size (total workload responses). As an equation: Average perceived workload = ((N responses excessive * 2)+(N responses high)-(N responses light)-(N responses insufficient *2)) divided by (N total responses for workload).
This method allows the comparison of the workload ratings of all classes on the same scale (between -2 and +2) independent on class size. For the graph above: these workload ratings were multiplied by 100 (+100 =high and -100=light workload) to make the values visible on the same scale as class size (12th class day) and attendance (responses on the survey day). Attendance numbers are not corrected for withdrawals or Q-drops.
Figure 4: Average Annual Salaries of tenure-track (primarily research) and non-tenure-track (primarily teaching) faculty at UT: all Colleges 2003/2004
Figure 5: Non-tenure-track (primarily teaching) salary relative to tenure-track (primarily research) salaries in UT Colleges 2003/2004 academic year.
J. L. Erskine, professor, physics
I appreciate the opportunity to offer a few personal observations and suggestions regarding the Report of the Task Force on Curricular Reform.
The Report is based on a valid objective that emerged from the Commission of 125 Document; namely, to critically examine and improve, where possible, the undergraduate curriculum at The University of Texas at Austin.
I believe that the primary flaws in the Task Force recommendations (which are abundantly clear from reading the Minority Report by David Hillis) are rooted in the absence of a critical assessment of the problems that need to be solved. This perception has been amplified by others in recent articles in The Daily Texan, in the College of Natural Sciences Forum on the Task Force Report, and in letters posted on the University Council web site
The Task Force Report focus is the undergraduate “core curriculum” at UT Austin, including the benefits of offering our students a broad and common intellectual experience. The issue of core curriculum has been widely and vigorously debated for over a century. The issue is often framed by posing the question: “What is the central mission of a University?” It is clear that there is no universal answer; there are too many different types of universities, and there exists cultural divides between academic disciplines (for example, Humanities vs. Sciences and Engineering). A recent New York Times article by Matthew Pearl (Op-ed, Sunday, February 26, 2006) provides an interesting perspective on this issue.
The recommendations by the Commission are valid (the undergraduate educational experience at UT Austin can certainly be improved) and some of the assets and constraints recognized by the Task Force are relevant: UT Austin has unique resources and a different mission (as a major public research university) compared to most of the other State of Texas educational institutions. How should we proceed? It seems to me that several questions need to be addressed.
1)
Should a university-wide core curriculum be adopted? I believe this would be a very bad solution to a problem that probably doesn’t exist. Each college, and certainly each department, has a good idea of what skills their graduates need to function effectively in their profession, and compete in the job market. Evolutionary fine tuning of skills-development courses is probably all that is required to rectify most deficiencies, not revolutionary restructuring. A business major requires different math skills than a physics major; an engineer needs different writing skills than a communication major. Most of the skill-development courses should be governed by departments.
2)
Do we need to establish a “University College” and “Signature Courses” to offer UT Austin students a common intellectual experience that transcends the professional training offered in the various academic departments? In this case, the idea of a common intellectual experience has merit, but the Task Force has offered a very bad solution. The new administrative structure (University College) would squander resources, and the proposed (Signature) course titles are more appropriate for a Colloquium, not a core course: “Global Climate Change;” “Concepts of Nature in Science and Art.”
There must be better alternatives to the proposed “University College” and “Signature Core Courses” that would provide a common intellectual experience, broaden the scope of college experience, and that would not require reallocation of degree credit hours. I offer one suggestion that might be feasible to implement with modest additional resources, and without the need for a new college.
Require all entering freshmen to register (one credit hour, two semesters) for “Freshman Signature Lecture Series.” Each academic department would offer weekly lectures on various topics selected to enrich the college experience and stimulate interest in subjects that are of broad concern in our modern society. These lectures should be exciting, provocative, and entertaining, and could involve debates involving faculty with opposing views. Each freshman student would be required to attend at least one lecture per week.
The logistics of setting up and running such a program are significant, but not overwhelming. The departments would be responsible for the individual presentations; a college-wide office would coordinate activities. Assuming 7,000 freshmen and 250 students per lecture hall requires at least 28 lectures per week. To keep costs low and quality high, it might be a good strategy to award full teaching credit to a faculty member for preparing an outstanding lecture and delivering it each week. There should probably be more topics than the required 28 lectures to provide students with options. A large fraction of the sign-up and organizational functions (including brief weekly student evaluations of lectures) could be carried out using an interactive web site.
Competition for favorable student evaluations would encourage departments to promote high-quality lectures by screening topics and faculty selected for the Freshman Lectures. The lectures could be useful in helping students with an undeclared major to decide on an academic direction. The range of topics or faculty debate issues is very broad, and would require only reasonable oversight by a governing authority, to ensure balance, breadth, and quality. Truly excellent lectures would attract faculty participation.
3)
What about some of the other issues addressed by the Commission and the Task Force: granting AP and transfer credit; dealing with advising; graduation rates; retention, etc. Most of these issues merit continued discussion, but seem to be best suited for solving within individual colleges or departments.
I believe that significant improvements can be achieved in educating and training undergraduates at UT Austin. Most of the improvements require only evolutionary changes in already-effective department programs. I have not seen a single compelling argument that suggests that we need the massive restructuring of our undergraduate programs with the new Signature Courses and University College that have been recommended by the Task Force. If additional funding can be raised for undergraduate programs, it should be used to support well-conceived improvements at the department level.
