Synopses & Reviews
Based on the author's extensive work with academic institutions and organizations,
Aligning Faculty Rewards with Institutional Mission provides guidelines for developing a coherent faculty rewards system, starting with the articulation of institutional priorities and following the process through the development of department guidelines and union contracts. It also includes abundant samples of actual documents in use at a wide range of institutions that have matched their policies with their practices. Consulting this book gives readers both a broad picture of the process and specific examples of resulting products—the tools needed to approach the task at their own institutions.
The book is designed for individuals at all levels of the institution who are charged with developing a coordinated faculty rewards system: from trustee to president to department chair to faculty member serving on relevant committees.
Contents, with sample documents, include:
- Developing an appropriate and effective faculty rewards system: characteristics and necessary conditions
- Getting the need for a revised faculty rewards system on the institutional agenda
- Developing an institutional mission statement
- Developing institutional and school/college guidelines
- Developing departmental guidelines
- Developing a union contract that supports a quality faculty rewards system
Review
One of the most important books for higher education for many years is the late Ernest Boyer's
Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities for the Professoriate (1990). Here, Boyer argued sensibly that the priority placed on faculty research, at the expense of teaching and service, was disproportionate. He cited data from a major survey showing that even at private liberal arts colleges faculty members believed that published scholarship was by far the most important factor in retention, tenure, and promotion decisions. At the same time, of course, administrators and faculty regularly proclaimed that undergraduate learning was their most important product.
Boyer's argument for a new understanding of what was important in faculty work&emdash;for an enlarged understanding of "scholarship" to include much more than the discovery and publication of new knowledge&emdash;was supported by his 1994 followup, Scholarship Assessed.
All this was most gratifying, and so was the frequency with which leading figures in higher education stepped up to podia at national meetings to declare that things were going to change.
But unfortunately they didn't, for the most part. The reason is that lip service and stirring speeches don't change faculty activity. Faculty members apportion their time and energy according to what they believe will benefit their careers, and the reward system in American higher education has not changed sufficiently to redress the imbalance between teaching and scholarship at most colleges and universities (to say nothing of service, which is even more overlooked in most reward systems).
Robert Diamond of Syracuse University has now written Aligning Faculty Rewards with Institutional Mission, an effort to help bridge the gap between what institutions say they want faculty to do and what they reward faculty for doing. It has a certain amount of exhortation, many more practical, real-world examples of promising developments. Filled with model mission statements, vision statements, institutional, school, college, and department guidelines, it will be an invaluable resource for the college or university which has the will to do something and needs shareable ideas.
At Syracuse, Diamond's home university, a college-wide statement on improving faculty effectiveness calls for departmental policy statements on how teaching is used in reward systems; student evaluations of all courses; syllabi on record and in use in all classes; annual peer review, mentoring, and teaching portfolios. Even here, though, the plan to "implement a policy of greater teaching and advising responsibilities (and recognition of same in the various rewards systems) for less active scholars" makes priorities clear: those who cannot do scholarship will have to teach more.
The connection between institutional reward systems and effective teaching is clear. A few years ago I reviewed a book called Rhythms of Academic Life: Personal Accounts of Careers in Academia in which a professor of management, writing an account of "Becoming a Teacher at a Research University," declared straightforwardly about her teaching "I don't feel I can commit the time and resources to do that well consistently." She has made a rational decision on how to succeed under the reward structure existing at her university. She learned from her seniors how to "make it in academia": "publish, plain and simple, and be competent at teaching so they don't have to get rid of you." Her students must be very grateful.
Perhaps the "reward structure" in American higher education really is going to change; perhaps scholarship really is going to be reconsidered. I hope so. If this happens, Robert Diamond's book will not be the cause, but it will certainly help guide us in the proper direction. (UNC's Effective Teaching web site, June 1999)
Review
"Diamond lays out the context and need for change and provides numerous valuable resources for any college or university that wants its faculty reward system to fully support accomplishment of its mission."
—Lion Gardiner, Rutgers University
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-182) and index.
About the Author
Robert M. Diamond is Research Professor and Director, Institute for Change in Higher Education, Syracuse University Formerly he was Assistant Vice Chancellor, Director of the Center for Institutional Development, and Professor of Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation, and Higher Education at Syracuse, and Director of the National Project on Institutional Priorities and faculty Rewards funded by the Lilly Endowment and the pew Charitable Trusts.
Diamond coauthored the 1987 National Study of teaching Assistants, the 1992 national Study of research Universities on the Balance between Research and Undergraduate teaching, and was responsible for the design and implementation of Syracuse University's ward-winning high school/college transition program, Project Advance. Diamond is author of numerous books, including Serving on Promotion and tenure Committees: A Faculty Guide (Anker, 1994), Preparing for Promotion and Tenure Review: A Faculty Guide (Anker, 1995), Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula: A practical Guide (Jossey-Bass, 1997), and, with Bronwyn Adam, Recognizing Faculty Work: Reward Systems for the Year 2000 (Jossey-Bass, 1993), and he is a consultant to colleges and universities throughout the world.
Table of Contents
About the Author.
Preface.
1. Institutional Priorities and the Promotion and Tenure Process.
2. Roles and Responsibilities: Placing the Issue on the Institutional Agenda.
3. the Institutional Mission and Vision Statement.
4. Developing Institutional, School, and College Guidelines for Promotion and Tenure.
5. Developing Departmental Guidelines.
6. The Union Contract.
Annotated Bibliography: Promotion and Tenure Resources.
References.
Index.