A number of people have asked why we are considering major changes in P&T policy. The most definitive answers should come from committee members. But to get some discussion started, I can share the reasons I have heard from the committee and from the Vice Chancellor. Members of the P&T Committee have been kind enough to meet with me on a one-to-one basis to discuss policy and various proposals. In addition, the Academic Vice Chancellor meets with the AAUP president on a fairly regular basis to discuss upcoming issues that are pertinent to AAUP concerns. Her concerns about existing policy have come up in our discussions a couple of times in recent years.
1) The phrase “active involvement” is somewhat vague and misleading.
This is the reason most often given. The problem the Vice Chancellor seems to have with this phrase is that some young faculty conclude that it suggests that activity may be enough without anything actually ever being accomplished. My recollection is that while the Vice Chancellor felt this was particularly a problem in the scholarship area, she also saw the phrase as problematic in describing service.
The P&T Committee settled on this phrase back in the 1980s, and I remember that even we who were on the committee were not entirely satisfied with it. Perhaps we should have tried harder. The phrase could be more precise. However, having said that, any young faculty who read their department/school guidelines or attend the highly informative information sessions that the P&T Committee hold each year should certainly understand that active involvement demands real accomplishments in both areas.
The descriptors the current P&T Committee proposes for scholarship are an improvement. However, two references to peer review is perhaps overkill. Reference to “products (some peer reviewed)” is probably enough to make the point. In addition, part of the phrase “commensurate with department/school guidelines and the external peer review process” may not quite make sense when one realizes that commensurate means “equal in measure to” or “proportionate” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary). Being equal in measure to or proportionate with a process may be a bit confusing. On the other hand, being commensurate to department/school guidelines is a clear and useful phrase in pointing faculty to more detailed guidelines in what they are expected to accomplish.
The P&T Committee, for whatever reason, did not add any precision in describing what is expected in service. The proposed wording seems even less precise. “Active involvement” was replaced with just “involvement.” In the view of AAUP, more than just involvement should be expected. Faculty should also be expected to accomplish some things in the area of service. We feel that an expectation of some real accomplishments in service is consistent with not only current practice in how files are evaluated, but also with our mission, campus culture, and relationship to the community.
2) The Committee was mandated to make some kind of changes.
Most committee members seem to share this feeling. They seemed to feel that they had to come up with a proposal, even if it came very late in the year.
A similar impression existed last year when we thought that we had been told to adopt a very tightly defined external peer review process. We thought that we had no choice. Yet when faculty clearly and strongly communicated that the mandated policy violated who we were and undermined our mission, the situation changed dramatically. We were able to create our own policy so that it would be consistent with our campus culture and values. That is precisely what we did. We created a pretty good policy that is not overly burdensome and includes appropriate due process protections.
Whether that is the situation this year is not clear. The P&T Committee has already refused to make one change that was requested by retaining the possibility of tenure at the assistant level. AAUP fully supports that refusal.
We would hope that our faculty would refuse to enact other changes that we may see as inconsistent with our mission, culture, and relationship to the community, especially when once again, the precise nature of any mandate is not clear.
3) More scholarship, especially that which is peer reviewed, improves chances of having tenure approved by Columbia.
This is almost certainly true. What Columbia is willing to accept is a real concern that we must have. We do young faculty a disservice if we give the impression little to no scholarly accomplishments are required for a successful p&t application.
However, we are aware of no evidence that those who clearly meet the current level of “active involvement” in scholarly activity are having problems at the Columbia stage of the process. From my experience in giving advice to those few who have had problems, the problems stem from failing to clearly meet the existing standard of active involvement. AAUP feels that clearly meeting that standard, however described, and performing superior service should continue to be considered worthy of positive decisions.
The AAUP’s objections to the proposal do not rest on a “straw man” argument that service should be allowed to substitute for all accomplishments in scholarship. No one has made that argument in any serious way since sometime in the 1980s when the baby boomer generation of new faculty who glutted the academic market became a majority of the faculty. That generation expected to perform research and firmly believed that research informs teaching. AAUP’s objections concern balance and choice and the importance of service to the community.
4) Doing less service gives faculty more time to engage in research.
This observation is also unquestionably true. How much less service and the kinds of service most likely to be lost are the concerns.
AAUP has been long concerned with increasing service demands, especially university service on a proliferating number of committees and record-keeping exercises on campus. That was a great part of our objection to the external peer review process as originally proposed last year and to the original peer review of teaching plan several years ago. We have pushed to keep faculty off committees in their first year. We have complained when we felt that this norm was being violated. Yet despite all this, the “coral reef” of university service expectations continues to grow. The more that it grows, the less time will be left for community service or for scholarly activities or even for teaching, our number one priority.
5) Finally, some would justify these changes as making USCA’s policy more similar to that of other institutions.
Even with some shortcomings in descriptive terminology, USCA’s promotion and tenure policy has served the school well. We have attracted and retained an incredibly productive faculty in both scholarship and in service, not to mention teaching. Having served three terms on P&T and two and a fraction terms on PTR, I am always humbled by the accomplishments of my colleagues when I review their files. I am continually amazed that students from Augusta choose to come here rather than stay in Georgia and pay lower tuition to attend ASU. USCA has won high rankings year after year. Even Columbia officials praise us for the service we do in the community, witness the statements made by the Columbia Provost at 16 April awards ceremony. Our faculty perform extremely well in winning system, state and even national awards year after year.
Given our record, one might wonder why we should want to become more like other institutions. Given our record, we might be wise to be extremely careful in upsetting a balance that has served us so well.
Having said all this, perhaps a different balance that places more emphasis on scholarship and less on service would serve USCA and the community even better. That is the question posed by this new policy proposal.
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1) The phrase “active involvement” is somewhat vague and misleading."...any young faculty who read their department/school guidelines or attend the highly informative information sessions that the P&T Committee hold each year should certainly understand that active involvement demands real accomplishments in both areas."
ReplyDeleteSo the "active" part is finding out what the requirements are? I agree with the P&T committee that the Faculty Manual should have a clear statement of the expectations, and that peer-reviewed products are the best way to objectively measure real accomplishments in scholarship.
2) The Committee was mandated to make some kind of changes."Most committee members seem to share this feeling. They seemed to feel that they had to come up with a proposal, even if it came very late in the year."
While we are on the topic of precise wording, what exactly does the preceding quote mean? So, not all of the committee "seemed to feel" this way? Did any members actually feel this way? More importantly, were any specifically told they had to make changes? I am on the FWC, and we met with members of the P&T committee regarding the proposed changes. During that meeting there was not even a hint that the committee was under any pressure from anyone to make these changes. Of course, starting a rumor that this is being forced upon us would be an excellent way to gain opposition to the changes. One might expect a higher degree of responsible reporting from AAUP.
3) More scholarship, especially that which is peer reviewed, improves chances of having tenure approved by Columbia."However, we are aware of no evidence that those who clearly meet the current level of “active involvement” in scholarly activity are having problems at the Columbia stage of the process."
Policies are not written for the clear cases. Clarifying the language will make everyone's case a clear case. The "straw man" I see in this debate is that the expectations for scholarship have been ratcheted upward. The proposed changes suggest to me a faculty member should have a minimum of 2 peer-reviewed products when applying for tenure and promotion. This is a pretty minimal requirement by the standards of similar any 4-year university. If this is a big step up from "active involvement", then please tell me what exactly constitutes "active involvement".
4) Doing less service gives faculty more time to engage in research.I hope that one of the members of the P&T committee will address this comment at the meeting. To my recollection reducing the importance of service, or the amount of service required of faculty was never a justification for dropping "active" from the description. The only reason I remember for the word "active" being dropped, was because it did not add anything to the description. As I understand it, the point of the changes is to make the policy less vague, not to adjust the expectations.
It is possible that I misunderstood the justification offered by the P&T committee to the FWC in person, and to the FAC in writing. If so, I hope a member of the P&T Committee will correct me.
As I see it, the most recent AAUP post has great potential to mislead faculty into thinking that the P&T Committee had (or, perhaps, seemed to some to seem to feel that they were charged with)the goals of an increase in the level of scholarship, and a decrease in the value of service.
5) Finally, some would justify these changes as making USCA’s policy more similar to that of other institutions."Given our record, one might wonder why we should want to become more like other institutions. Given our record, we might be wise to be extremely careful in upsetting a balance that has served us so well."
If the proposed changes are viewed as an increase in scholarship expectations, we should be concerned if we are not like other institutions in that area. We do a lot of good things, but the main reason we are here is to provide the students with a quality university education. Our success in teaching our disciplines to our students is directly tied to our scholarly achievements in those disciplines.
It occurs to me that we are being distracted by the descriptors, when we really should be focusing on defining scholarship.
ReplyDeleteLee Shulman (professor emeritus at Stanford University, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and past president of the American Educational Research Association) has given the following description:
"For any activity to be designated as scholarship, it should manifest at least three key characteristics: It should be public, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one's scholarly community. We thus observe, with respect to all forms of scholarship, that they are acts of the mind or spirit that have been made public in some manner, have been subjected to peer review by members of one's intellectual or professional community, and can be cited, refuted, built upon, and shared among members of that community. Scholarship properly communicated and critiqued serves as the building block for knowledge growth in a field."
In the light of the Faculty Assembly agenda having reached us today, and reflecting on the exchanges posted on this blog over the last several days, I want to try to offer a clear and comprehensive formulation of how this debate seems to me it should most sensibly be characterized. Much of what has passed as disagreement here seems to me simply to boil down to misunderstanding, a failure of scholars from different disciplines to understand each other. In this regard, what has been characterized here as an attempt by the P&T Committee to give clarity to unclear requirements actually points to what may be the strongest argument against the new language. A specific definition of scholarship which attempts to suit all situations is not in our best interest because, (1) each discipline’s situation is very different, and (2) the standards will be applied by members of a future P&T Committee who, themselves, will have a hard time seeing beyond their own disciplines so as to apply a specific standard reasonably to someone in another. I believe we are served well by the broadest language possible because it avails itself of many circumstances, and I believe we would be poorly served to do away with it. The change proposed here in the new language not only provides too-specific guidance about research products, but also establishes that the long-fabled (rarely seen) path to tenure and promotion through service is gone. In an environment where research support is, to say the least, inadequate, this penalizes faculty for things beyond their control. This, together with my earlier comments about how we would be bootstrapping undocumented practice into policy, describes a suite of interrelating arguments against the new language that I find compelling.
ReplyDeleteSeveral earlier postings suggest that some of those arguments I have summarized above are erroneous. Quickly to rebut the mains ones—certainly the last thing I am calling for is for anyone to “throw money at” a problem. Our problem is not one wholly of money, though it is very much a problem of the unequal distribution of money. To speak an unpalatable but plain truth, faculty compensation is unequal. This means that we all cannot equally fund our own research activities when the university fails to fund us. Beyond that, faculty across our campus enjoy different and unequal access to equipment and support. Faculty in the sciences, for example, enjoy laboratory facilities which no one would dispute they need in order to conduct primary research. In addition, they also enjoy the same library privileges the rest of us enjoy. For some of us, however, the library is our only laboratory, and the insufficiency of library and other funding falls on us disproportionately. Primary research in the humanities frequently requires travel which, for example, may not be always necessary in the lab sciences. Finally, while no one would dispute that the NSF is underfunded, it certainly requires a particularly fortunate perspective to call attention to that fact. NSF enjoys annual funding in the range of $6 billion. In contrast, the National Endowment for the Humanities is funded at about $140 million per year. No one could dispute that there are important considerations in, for example, equipment costs which might begin to account for the vast difference (and, this reinforces my earlier point that science faculty enjoy lab equipment above the support received by other faculty). Still, this 98% difference should say something about the availability of external funding outside the professions and the sciences. There is less political will to fund those of us who do not produce “useful” things. In these ways, the situations of faculty across our campus are quite different. And, a measurable, important difference boils down to funding. This is inescapable.
A personal example—over this last Christmas break, I spent a full day at the University of Chicago library reviewing the private papers of a political philosopher I’m writing about. Those papers don’t exist anywhere else. One must go to Chicago, or one must pay the U of C library a lot of money to duplicate them. I was fortunate that my parents live in Chicago and I was able to incorporate my research into my vacation. Had that not been the case, I would have been in a very difficult position to get access to those materials. This is typical; I encounter such problems routinely, and they cannot be solved by our library, the Columbia library, or ILL. Such problems require sufficient funding either for duplication or for travel, neither of which I enjoy. My research would benefit substantially (and, it would go a lot more quickly, I would produce more research products) if someone were to “throw some money” at me for these purposes. Because no one is doing that, I am at a disadvantage when compared to my campus colleagues in other disciplines (who enjoy labs for primary research, or can somehow subsidize their research more easily) and my colleagues elsewhere (who enjoy much more support from their institutions). (An example of institutional support—Ann Marie Popp, who taught here not long ago, was given a budget in her first year at her new institution to build a collection in the library to support her research. In 6 years, no one at USC-Aiken has been able to make me a comparable offer, so I have bought countless books myself. We do not subscribe to even one journal in my subfield of political science. Neither do we have electronic access to current volumes of the Review of Politics, the most important journal for my work. To adopt a metaphor, my lab has no equipment in it for me.)
I agree wholeheartedly and entirely with the glowing encomiums for the life of scholarship, and with the definitions of scholarship, which have been offered here. I share an esteem for the special emphasis we should give to peer-reviewed products. I don’t believe service is a desirable path to tenure and promotion at a university. I have written in this forum already that I entered this career for the opportunity to engage in scholarship. I give no ground on those claims. But I do believe there are many of us here who would be doing more research if we had more resources, good and capable people who are thwarted by circumstances like those I have described. I also believe that the institution that places its faculty in the position I describe here is obligated to pave a broad avenue toward tenure and promotion, with as many options and advantages as possible. The measure of an acceptable P&T standard which will apply to all must be taken from the perspective of the most disadvantaged faculty, a perspective which may not be not widely understood. This is the crucial point.
Initial P&T recommendations are not made at the departmental or college/school level at USC-Aiken, and one need only read the comments posted here to see how easy it is for us to misunderstand one another’s disciplines and circumstances. Accordingly, we should be skeptical that a future P&T committee would understand the full impact of these disadvantages and differences I have identified, or take them into sufficient account when it applies the specific requirements of the new language. Such a committee may not even include a member from an applicant’s discipline, as the P&T workshops make clear when we are told to explain what we do as to a layman. That committee must, therefore, be left as many ways as possible to enable good and capable faculty to demonstrate their merit. This is the only way we can overcome the insufficiency of resources and the natural misunderstandings which arise from the different types of work we do, and the widely varying paces at which we do it.
It gives me no pleasure to defend a path to P&T through service. Candidly, I believe that path has encouraged young faculty to behave in unhealthy ways that give too much emphasis to service at a cost to the culture of scholarship on our campus. Not only does that injure the faculty, but it also sets a poor example for students. Yet, it suits the campus that we are, factually. For my own part, I felt much more confident of my recent P&T application because that option was there: it reflected my real circumstances. Given the structural disadvantages I have described, we are all owed that reassurance. If we do good work and earnestly desire to be doing more, there is nothing to be gained by putting ourselves at a further disadvantage. We are acting against our interest if we narrow the path, restrict our own options, before these problems are addressed. Both the elimination of a service track and the specificity of the language have the effect of narrowing the gateway. That gate should remain as wide as possible until the university addresses the problem of resources, enables us to do the work we desire to do, so that our P&T applications may be weighed more comparably, more easily. But initially, at least, this is not our problem to fix. It begins with university action to improve circumstances, not faculty action to tighten the expectations.
I apologize for the length of this post. The good news is, if you have read this far, you have the pleasure of knowing everything I think—and, knowing further that now I need not say any of this at our meeting on Tuesday. Time saver!!
Here is a link to the Political Science program at the NSF:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5418&org=SES&from=homeThe bottom line is that an expectation of more than 1 peer-reviewed product over 5 years is minimal, and completely in keeping with the resources we have available. I spent 7 years at a school with fewer resources, and their expectation was the same.
I have served as an external member for 2 search committees for 2 different departments on this campus, and the expectation they conveyed to applicants was in keeping with this guideline.
I did my post-doctoral work on parasites of amphibians in Costa Rica, and it was published in a top-tier journal. I do not have the resources to continue that line of research, so I ask questions that I can address in local systems, and publish those results in less notable journals.
Having the standard of peer-review is logical, objective, and practical, especially given your concern that it is hard for the P&T committee to evaluate accomplishments for unfamiliar disciplines.
Umm.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to sound like I know my own discipline. But, that NSF program doesn't apply to my subfield.
Another misunderstanding, masterfully demonstrated.
Just trying to help.
ReplyDeleteI misunderstood your earlier argument as a more broad comparison of disciplines, not a personal plea based on your specific subfield.
Thus far, we have seen the complete litany of arguments that arise whenever scholarship expectations are addressed.
ReplyDelete1) Scholarship should be more broadly defined.This approach always winds up as a laundry list of what people already are doing. For work to be considered scholarly, it must be presented in a format that is broadly available to be commented upon and built upon by other scholars in the same field. The standard of peer-reviewed products is universally recognized, and easy for the P&T Committee to evaluate, regardless of the field of the applicant. The message our manual should give for P&T requirements is: do not make the committee's decision a difficult one. Requiring peer-reviewed products sends this message.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone could obtain a graduate degree without recognizing the importance of peer-reviewed products. Ironically, most recommendations against requiring peer-reviewed products are preceded by a statement of how much the
recommender values scholarship. The simple question is: would you hire an applicant for
a tenure-track position that had no peer-reviewed products? If not, then why would such products be a requirement for getting the job, but not for keeping the job?
2) It is more difficult to publish in my field than it is in other fields.Dr. Millies has been kind enough to offer several examples of this tactic. Once again, there is always irony attached to these statements. The premise is that the person making the statements understands everyone else's disciplines well-enough to know how easy it is for them to produce peer-reviewed products, but that no-one outside of that person's discipline understands the constraints placed upon them. It seems pretty clear that we all operate under the same constraints, and have the same advantages.
A simple test of the veracity of any claim that it is more difficult to produce peer-reviewed products in certain disciplines would be to look at the timing of P&T at different institutions. If it were harder to achieve in some disciplines, the tenure clock would run longer for those disciplines. I am unaware of any such examples.
Why is this a good test? Because the only way to determine if someone's work has the potential to produce peer-reviewed products (especially if they are not doing scholarship/creative work in your discipline) is to see those products. If it took longer to produce those products in certain areas, then more time would be afforded to those disciplines to meet that standard.
3) The univeristy doesn't support/value scholarship.This argument always makes me think of the teaching evaluations from my students that claim I am not concerned about their grade. It is never a complaint about my availability, or their dissatisfaction with the review sessions I offer, because there are positive comments about those on the same evaluations. Their logic is simple...if I cared about their grades, I would raise them.
It is not reasonable to expect the any university to fund your scholarship. Faculty at certain private institutions do have advantages in this regard, but we are not teaching at those institutions, either because we did not want to, or because we were not competitive for those positions. Faculty at more research-oriented institutions are expected to find external funding for their scholarship, and will not make it past their 3rd-year review if they do not. Moreover, the additional support for research at those institutions comes from the overhead generated from externally funded proposals. We are not required to obtain external funding, so we should not expect to have the advantages that external funding provides.
It is reasonable to expect an institution to provide faculty with opportunities to advance their research, and we all have those opportunites. The ROP program is designed to provide seed money to get a scholarly program going that will improve a faculty member's chances of getting external funding. The EVCAA, up until the recent budget problems, has provided release time, and in some cases summer stipends, for faculty developing grant proposals. Our funding for travel is in line with other institutions of our size.
The inability to obtain funding for one's own scholarship does not have to be a sign a sign of weak scholarship, and will not prevent anyone from getting tenure, but the ability to adjust and remain productive with limited resources is critical.
4) This is a teaching university.Scholarship is necessary for faculty at a 4-year institution. Students that are taking upper-level classes and doing independent scholarly work should expect to gain an understanding of the standards held within a specific discipline. This is an expectation we cannot meet if we are not periodically subjecting our own work to those standards, or cannot meet those standards.
Any argument invoking comparisons to research-oriented universities cannot be made without revealing a complete and total misunderstanding of the requirements that exist at those institutions. My reading of the suggested changes is that you should have at least 2 peer-reviewed products when you apply for tenure or promotion. That level of productivity needs to be accomplished almost every year at an R1 institution. Moreover, if those products are publications, a large proportion of those would have to be in top-tier journals. Finally, a long list of publications in top-tier journals would not be sufficient for tenure or promotion at an R1 institution if there was not a strong record of procuring external funding.
The level of scholarship suggested by the proposed changes is an excellent compromise that will ensure faculty remain involved in their disciplines, without overburdening them.
5) Service will suffer, and the university's reputaion will suffer along with it.It is true that the university has an excellent record of community service, but our primary responsibility to the community is to produce graduates that have a solid understanding of their discipline. I do not believe that the excellent record of service we have is because it has been undertaken by faculty that want to pad their resume for tenure or promotion. If that were the case, the service would be adequate, not excellent. It seems to me that the faculty undertaking these exemplary service commitments do so because they feel strongly that it is the right thing to do. That being said, there is nothing that will damage the reputation of the university more than not producing strong students.
Our mission statement and values statement are clear as to the importance of the link between scholarship and teaching. We cannot live up to these values by redefining scholarly activity, and I have yet to hear a convincing argument that the peer-review process should not be a part of the definition of scholarship. In short, I would not classify any of these listed objections as arguments; they seem to me to fall more into the realm of excuses.