A Modest Question: What Does It Mean to Be a Professor?

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Chemical Education Today

Commentary

A Modest Question: What Does It Mean to Be a Professor? by Robert L. Lichter As many readers of this Journal know, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation provides support for advancing the knowledge, understanding, appreciation, and contributions of chemistry. Primarily through the Special Grant Program in the Chemical Sciences, we have furthered course and curriculum development, various types of outreach, acquisition of equipment in the tens of millions of dollars, and exhibits at museums and elsewhere, just to name a few activities. In most cases, the grants provide modest seed funding for initiating projects that subsequently are expanded or sustained either by the institutions themselves or through more extensive support from other external sources. The driver behind the Special Grant program—indeed, behind any grant program—is to facilitate change that would otherwise not take place without the support provided by the grant. Evaluations of requests for support stress this notion. In addition to the novelty and significance of a project, evaluations seek convincing demonstration that external support is essential for the project to go forward, for change to occur. Recently, I had the opportunity to review inquiries submitted to the Special Grant program for the year 2000. The largest category of request is for small, curriculum-related projects. Not unexpectedly, I found that equipment is the most highly requested item (72 percent). To my surprise, however, the next most highly requested item (40 percent) is salary support for faculty members. It is not unusual that support for equipment may be required for change that “would otherwise not take place”. But I remain puzzled by the idea that professors need to be paid from external funds to develop a single course or to modify or create a piece of a curriculum. Have circumstances altered so radically since my own faculty days that faculty members do not see development of courses or curricular units as an integral part of their responsibility? Where does this change in perspective come from? My concern here is not with expectations by academic institutions that faculty attract external grants for educational or research purposes, which institutions have come to rely upon when creating their budgets. Nor is my concern about the desirability of encouraging existing faculty—through sabbaticals, for example—to address larger curricular and pedagogical issues. These are entirely separate, albeit vital, matters that also require attention. Rather, I am focusing here on the highly specific topic of requests for faculty salary supplements for simple course development or curricular modification. Typically—and variably as a function of the type of academic institution—the academic year is devoted to teaching and the summer (or equivalent nonteaching period) to research. A tiny handful of U.S. universities recognize research as an essential part of faculty expectations and indeed pay faculty members on a 12-month basis, as

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do almost all non-U.S. universities. However, the overwhelming number of U.S. universities pay on a nine-month, “academic-year” basis. A practice has thus evolved over the last approximately half-century by which faculty members who do research can get “summer salary” from external (and occasionally internal) sources, presumably because the nonteaching period may be used otherwise for any arbitrary purpose, even if not related to one’s overall academic objectives. That practice seems now to have been carried over into the realms of teaching and course development. Somehow we have drifted to an unhealthy separation of those two activities. Faculty members appear to be saying that although they will teach, they will not take responsibility for revising or recrafting what they teach unless they are paid extra for the latter. I am hard-pressed to see the logic in this argument. Faculty members spend a great deal of time preparing for and revising their research. How can faculty members who are serious about their commitment to their students not embed modest course and curriculum development and revision within their concept of teaching? If a major departmental or institutional curriculum is being overhauled in a manner that demands intensive participation by many faculty members, and oversight and management by a leader or coordinator, then compensation through salary supplements, released time, or both, can be appropriate. For example, faculty members who oversee major building or laboratory renovation or construction may very well receive some kind of consideration. But summer salary for each of three faculty members to develop a single course to be taught in one department? Or for a faculty member to install a new piece of equipment? Academic-year “released time” to test a new laboratory sequence in organic chemistry? One month of “summer salary” to prepare new biochemistry lectures? Two months to install and customize a commercial educational software package? These are just a few of many real examples of requests we have received. The simplistic justification is that if producing new knowledge (research) is recognized by salary supplements, then producing new courses or curricula should be similarly acknowledged, if we value the latter as well as the former. I run into a rational block, however, when I reflect on the many faculty who are seriously engaged in course and curriculum development without benefit of supplemental salary. Somehow these faculty members have figured out that teaching and learning are one with course and curricula. They know why they are getting paid. If “summer salary” has in fact become a prize for achieving success in research rather than a means to carry out an activity that “would otherwise not take place”, then it is no small wonder that the concept would carry over to course and curriculum development. I readily admit that early policymakers and granting agencies have to take some responsibility for this unhappy state of affairs. If the locus of research, assigned for good rea-

Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 76 No. 12 December 1999 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu

son to institutions of higher learning, had not been seen as an add-on to faculty responsibilities, with accompanying faculty salary supplements, perhaps we would not be where we are today. Clearly, the solution to these disconnects is a radical revision of granting agency faculty compensation practices and the elimination of routinely awarded faculty salary supplements for both research and teaching. Just as clearly, however, such a step taken abruptly would be, at best, disruptive, and in any event won’t work without penalizing faculty members until and unless academic institutions adjust their own compensation schemes to an annual basis that recognizes both research and teaching. Nonetheless, I think there is a lot to learn from the experiences of the past. Let me offer four suggestions: • Faculty members themselves should eschew salary supplements for simple course or curriculum development, which should be built into their own professional expectations as teachers. • Colleges and universities should structure their measure of faculty expectations and corresponding compensation practices to recognize both course/curriculum development and research as components of faculty educational responsibilities, with proportions set by agreed-upon institutional practices and policies. If this restructuring means less formal teaching (fewer “contact hours”) in the short term so that students learn better in the long term, then

let administrators recognize this fact as the wise investment that it represents. • Similarly, colleges and universities should acknowledge the valid educational role of research for undergraduates and graduate students by including “summer salary” in their compensation practice and paying faculty on a 12-month basis. • Grantmakers should limit payment of faculty salary supplements for course and curriculum development and reform (and, ultimately, for research) to those unusual circumstances in which major investment of time and energy beyond agreedupon thresholds can be documented and justified. Clearly, these steps are not simple; they are not decoupled from each other; and they could not realistically be expected to occur overnight. However, if these recommendations were implemented, they would go a long way toward stemming and reversing the balkanization of academic responsibilities and toward restoring the notion of what it means to be a professor. Note The views expressed in this Commentary are solely those of the author. Robert L. Lichter is Executive Director, The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc., 555 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022-3301; rlichter@ panix.com.

JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 76 No. 12 December 1999 • Journal of Chemical Education

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