Chemical Education Today
Letters What Does It Mean to Be a Professor?
The author replies:
I find Robert Lichter’s commentary concerning faculty requests for compensation for curricular development worrisome (J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1610). Worrisome because I believe it indicates that he is out of touch with the situation of many in the teaching population that he has been hired to assess. Lichter deems requests for salary to redesign a course or integrate an instrument into the curriculum, as opposed to a major curriculum development, crass and out of step with the traditional view of the college teacher who accepts curriculum development as part of the job. That is certainly the view I saw and embraced as an undergraduate and in my early teaching career. While these views continue today, I suspect that they are held more by faculty at more affluent colleges where nine-month salaries for senior faculty approach $100K. For faculty at less affluent two- and four-year institutions where salaries are considerably lower, the choice of how to spend a summer may, by necessity, be more tied to income than to educational innovation. I suspect that if the choice is between teaching summer school and undertaking curricular development on one’s own time, the needs that accompany a single family income for many younger faculty may decide the issue. Perhaps I am the one who is out of touch. I hope so.
Let me reassure Professor Tabbutt that I am very much aware of salary levels in smaller—and some larger—institutions, although I question the extent to which senior faculty receive six-figure salaries. I dealt with this point in my second and third suggestions: faculty should be paid on a twelve-month basis. However, the more important issue is the purpose for which faculty get paid at all, which was the thrust of the commentary. Contrary to the implication in the letter, I do not question salary supplementation for major curriculum development. I do, however, question it for individual course development. That faculty understandably are compelled to supplement inadequate salaries during the summer is indeed regrettable, but expecting to get paid extra for doing that for which they presumably already are paid does nothing to bring about the systemic change that is required. Robert L. Lichter The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. 555 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10022-3301
Frederick D. Tabbutt 3224 Cove Lane NW Olympia, WA 98502
[email protected]
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 77 No. 12 December 2000 • Journal of Chemical Education
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