Tomorrow's Professor Blog

Folks:

The posting below, by Tom Ehrlich senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) looks at new directions for service learning. It is #19 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives. These short commentaries exploring various educational issues are produced by the CFAT. The Foundation invites your response at: CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
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Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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SERVICE-LEARNING IN UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION: WHERE IS IT GOING?

July 2005
Carnegie Perspectives

Tom Ehrlich has spent much of his long and distinguished career and intellectual energy working to ensure that educational institutions accept and act on their responsibility to educate for full participation in a complex democratic society. He has been a persistent voice in calling for a national dialogue about the public purposes of higher education. And he has persevered in working to ensure that institutions incorporate service-learning, a particularly important pedagogy to promote civic responsibility, into the curriculum and the institution.

In this commentary, Tom continues his call for institutional responsibility, but he also takes a look at the progress made. We invite you to join Tom in a conversation about this important work and directions needed for the near future.

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A decade ago, I was teaching service-learning courses at San Francisco State, including one on ethics and professions, which examined ethical issues in law, medicine, journalism, and business. In addition to their class work, students worked in non-profit organizations that provided professional services to people in need in the community. The course grappled with questions like “When and under what circumstances is it appropriate for a professional to lie or withhold the truth on behalf of clients, patients, news sources, or customers?” and wrote research papers linking their service with readings and class discussions. Students working in legal services offices, health clinics, and other agencies saw first-hand the ethical pressures on professionals as they wrestled with competing values and demands.

Service-learning is now a major national movement at every educational level, and is a particularly powerful force in undergraduate education. Connecting academic study with community service through structured reflection is widely recognized as contributing to learning that is deeper, longer-lasting, and more portable to new situations and circumstances. Campus Compact recently reported a three-fold increase in just four years in the number of full-time faculty teaching service-learning courses, from 14 per campus in 2000 to 40 per campus in 2004.

Campus Compact, other national organizations, and national legislation that created Learn and Serve America have helped to guide and propel the movement. But the primary engine has been the work of thousands of faculty members on campuses throughout the country. Their work has been documented in scores of books, including an outstanding series of discipline-based monographs published by the American Association for Higher Education, in the peer-reviewed Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, and in many other publications. Most leading colleges and universities now have a service-learning center, which supports a dedicated core of faculty. The California State University is a good example, with a system-wide office of community service-learning and centers on its many campuses that work together and learn from each other.

Now that service-learning has come of age, where is it going? I see three major directions, each of which has strong proponents. The first stresses service-learning’s value for enhancing academic learning, including both deeper understanding in the full range of disciplines and in professional preparation as well as the cross-cutting goals of liberal education, such as developing an inquiring mind and a liberal imagination. Community service that is integrated into an undergraduate curriculum enables students to connect thought and feeling, creating a context in which students can explore how they feel about what they are thinking and what they think about how they feel. It offers students opportunities to consider what is important to them-and why-in ways they too rarely experience otherwise.

A second direction is pursued by those faculty who use service-learning primarily as a vehicle to promote the skills and knowledge needed for leadership. Throughout the country, both curricular and co-curricular leadership programs have multiplied and many centrally incorporate service-learning. Faculty who support this approach emphasize that the knowledge and especially the skills of leadership are best gained in a real-world environment, where students must practice “in role,” and where effective leaders can be observed first hand.

A third direction-civic engagement-has come to dominate much of the literature of service-learning. Most of this literature concentrates on tying academic study to volunteer activities such as cleaning up a park, tutoring a child, or serving in a community kitchen. These programs have been shown to contribute to a greater sense of civic responsibility in students. This is a critical aim, one that is often short-changed in an undergraduate education that does not include service-learning. But, as my colleagues and I point out in our book Educating Citizens (Jossey-Bass, 2003), the focus on community engagement is insufficient preparation for active citizenship if it is not accompanied by experiences that support more systemic political or policy-related understanding and engagement. This has been a relatively neglected role for service-learning until recently, but we see evidence of growing interest in expanding the range of service-learning experiences to incl!
ude these aspects of democratic participation.

My Carnegie Foundation colleagues and I are now completing a study that focuses directly on education for political engagement. We have been examining 21 courses and programs from across the country that are expressly designed to promote political engagement, many of which include service-learning. Our results show significant positive impact of these courses on many aspects of students’ political understanding, skills, and motivation.

Just twenty years ago, Campus Compact was created because a small group of leaders in higher education thought that the “me generation” was a bum rap for their students. They believed that students should have opportunities for community service and committed themselves to providing those opportunities. By the 1990s, it was clear to those college and university presidents involved that community service would never be viewed by students or faculty as central to the mission of their institutions unless it was linked to the curriculum.

In the years that followed, service-learning has become a major force in American higher education. In my view it can and should serve all three of the functions I have outlined here: the disciplinary and other dimensions of liberal and professional learning, leadership development, and democratic participation, including individual civic responsibility and more systemic political engagement at the local, state, national and international levels. Unless it is used to strengthen all three of these important dimensions of undergraduate learning, we are not fully exploiting the potential of this powerful pedagogy.

Join the Carnegie Perspectives email list by sending an email to CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org with “Subscribe” as the subject line.

Folks:

The posting below looks a some qualities that make a good teacher. It is from a list of ten such qualities appearing in Chapter 1:What Makes a Good Teacher?, by Peter C. Beidler in Inspiring Teaching, Carnegie Professors of the Year Speak, John K. Roth General Editor. Anker Publishing Company, Inc., Bolton, MA. Copyright © 1997 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-882982-13-4 Anker Publishing Company, Inc. 176 Ballville Road P.O. Box 249 Bolton, MA 1-882982-14-2. [www.ankerpub.com] Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Preparing Doctoral Students for Faculty Careers That Contribute to the Public Good

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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WHAT MAKES A GOOD TEACHER?

In this essay I want to talk about ten of the qualities that make a good teacher. My method is absolutely unscientific. Readers who want to know what exerts say about good teaching should stop reading right now and open to a different page of Inspiring Teaching. Readers who want to know what Pete has noticed about good teaching are welcome to read on. My evidence is personal, memorial, observational, and narrow. I have known teachers in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, England, and China. Like Henry David Thoreau, I refuse to apologize for writing so much about myself. There is, simply, no one else I know as well. My hope is that my readers will be inspired to think far less about what I have noticed makes a good teacher than about what they themselves have noticed.

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NOTE: Abbreviated list chosen by Rick Reis. If you would like an electronic copy of all ten qualities described by Beidler just send an email to reis@stanford.edu]
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1. Good Teachers Really Want to Be Good Teachers

Good teachers try and try and try, and let students know they try. Just as we respect students who really try, even if they do not succeed in everything they do, so they will respect us, even if we are not as good as we want to be. And just as we will do almost anything to help a student who really wants to succeed, so they will help us to be good teachers if they sense that we are sincere in our efforts to succeed at teaching. Some things teachers can fake. Some things teachers must fake. We have, for example, to act our way into letting our students know that we can’t think of any place we would rather be at 8:10 on a Friday morning than in a class with them talking about the difference between a comma splice and a run-on sentence. An acting course is a good preparation for a life in the classroom because it shows us how to pretend. Our students probably know on some level that we would rather be across the street sipping a cup of Starbucks coffee than caged up with!
24 paste-faced first years who count on our joyous enthusiasm and enlivening wit to be the cup of Starbucks that will get them ready for their 9:10 class. But they will forgive our chicanery, even if they suspect that we are faking our joy. They will know it by the second day, however, if we don’t really want to be good teachers, and they will have trouble forgiving us for that. Wanting-really, truly, honestly wanting-to be a good teacher is being already more than halfway home.

2. Good Teachers Take Risks

They set themselves impossible goals, and then scramble to achieve them. If what they want to do is not quite the way it is usually done, they will risk doing it anyhow. Students like it when we take risks. One of my own favorite courses was a first-year writing course in which I ordered no writing textbook for the course. On the first day I announced, instead, that my students and I were going to spend a semester writing a short textbook on writing. It was, I said, to be an entirely upside-down course in which the students would write lots of essays, decide as a group which ones were best, and then try to determine in discussion what qualities the good ones had in common. Whenever we hit upon a principle that the good essays seemed to embody and that the weak papers did not, we would write it down. Then we eventually worked our discovered principles into a little textbook that the students could take home with them. It was a risky course. It was built on a crazy no!
tion that first-year college students in a required writing course could, first of all, tell good writing from less-good writing, and, second, that they could articulate the principles that made the good essays better. My students knew I was taking a risk in setting the course up that way, but because they knew that my risk was based on my own faith and trust in them, they wanted me-they wanted us-to succeed.

We teachers have something called academic freedom. Too many of us interpret that to mean the freedom from firing. I suggest that we should interpret it rather as the freedom to take chances in the classroom. I love taking risks. It keeps some excitement in what is, after all, a pretty placid profession. I like to try things that can fail. If there is no chance of failure, then success is meaningless. It is usually easy enough to get permission to take risks, because administrators usually like it when teachers organize interesting and unusual activities. For some risky activities it may be best not to ask permission, partly because the risks that good teachers take are not really all that risky, and partly because it is, after all, easier to get forgiveness than to get permission. Teachers who regularly take risks usually succeed, and the more they succeed the more they are permitted-even expected-to take risks the next time. Taking risks gives teachers a high that is healthy for them and their students. It makes good teaching, good learning.

4. Good Teachers Never Have Enough Time

Just about all of the good teachers I have known are eternally busy. They work 80-100 hour weeks, including both Saturdays and Sundays. Their spouses and families complain, with good reason, that they rarely see them. The reward for all this busy-ness is more busy-ness. The good teachers draw the most students, get the most requests for letters of recommendation, work most diligently at grading papers, give the most office hours and are most frequently visited during those office hours, are most in demand for committee work, work hardest at class preparations, work hardest at learning their students’ names, take the time to give students counsel in areas that have nothing to do with specific courses, are most involved in professional activities off campus.

For good teachers the day is never done. While it does not follow that any teacher who keeps busy is a good teacher, the good teachers I know rarely have time to relax. The good teachers I know find that they are as busy teaching two courses as teaching three. They know that they do a much better job with the two courses than the three because they give more time to the individual students, but they also know that for a responsible teacher the work of good teaching expands to fill every moment they can give to it. They might well complain about how busy they are, but they rarely complain, partly because they don’t want to take the time to, partly because they don’t like whining. Actually, they seem rather to like being busy. To put it more accurately, they like helping students-singular and plural-and have not found many workable shortcuts to doing so.

7. Good Teachers Try to Keep Students-And Themselves-Off Balance

I have learned that when I am comfortable, complacent, and sure of myself I am not learning anything. The only time I learn something is when my comfort, my complacence, and my self-assurance are threatened. Part of my own strategy for getting through life, then, has been to keep myself, as much as possible, off balance. I loved being a student, but being a student meant walking into jungles where I was not sure my compass worked and didn’t know where the trails might lead or where the tigers lurked. I grew to like that temporary danger. I try to inject some danger into my own courses, if only to keep myself off balance. When I feel comfortable with a course and can predict how it will come out, I get bored; and when I get bored, I am boring. I try, then, to do all I can to keep myself learning more. I do that in part by putting myself in threatening situations.

A couple of decades ago, I developed a new teaching area-an area I had never had a course in when I was a student: Native American literature. It would have been more comfortable for me to continue with the old stuff I knew, but part of what I knew is that I detest stagnation. I rashly offered the department’s curriculum committee a new course. When they rashly accepted it, I was off balance, challenged by a new task in a new area. I now teach and publish in Native American literature regularly.

In 1988 I began to feel that I was growing complacent teaching the privileged students I have always taught at Lehigh University-mostly the children of upper middle class white families. It was getting too comfortable, too predictable. I applied for a Fulbright grant to teach for a year in the People’s Republic of China. When the appointment came through, I was scared, but I signed the papers and not long after went with my wife and four teenaged children to Chengdu in Sichuan Province to take up the teaching of writing and American literature to Chinese graduate students. I have never felt so unbalanced in my life-teaching students who could just barely understand me, even when I was not talking “too fast.” It was a challenge to teach such students to read the literature of a nation most of them had been taught to hate and to write papers in a language that was alien to them. And that was only part of the unbalance. The rest was riding my bicycle through streets the names of which I could not read, eating with chopsticks food that was almost always unrecognizable and often untranslatable because nothing quite like it grew in my native land. Never have I felt so unbalanced for so long a time, but never have I learned so much in so short a time.

I have noticed that good teachers try to keep their students off balance, forcing them to step into challenges that they are not at all sure they can handle. Good teachers push and challenge their students, jerking them into places where they feel uncomfortable, where they don’t know enough, where they cannot slide by on past knowledge or techniques. Good teachers, as soon as their students have mastered something, push their best students well past the edge of their comfort zone, striving to make them uncomfortable, to challenge their confidence so they can earn a new confidence.

9. Good Teachers Do Not Trust Student Evaluations

Neither do bad teachers. But there is a difference in their reasons for distrusting them. I have noticed that good teachers, when they get really good evaluations, don’t quite believe them. They focus instead on the one or two erratic evaluations that say something bad about them. They good teachers tend to trust only the negative evaluations: “I wonder what I did wrong. I suppose I went too fast, or perhaps I should have scheduled in another required conference after that second test. I wish I could apologize to them, or at least find out more about what I did wrong.” The not-so-good teachers also do not trust student evaluations, but they distrust them for difference reasons. They tend to trust the positive evaluations but not the negative ones: “Those good evaluations are proof that I succeeded, that my methods and pace were just about right for these students. The others just fell behind because they were lazy, because they never bothered to read the book or study for the exams. Naturally they did not like my course because they put nothing into it. Besides, how can students judge good teaching, and anyhow, what do they know? Anyone can get good student evaluations by lowering their standards, being popular, and by pandering to the masses.” Good teachers tend to discount the positive evaluations, however numerous they may be; less-good teachers tend to discount the negative evaluations, however numerous they may be.

Folks:

The posting below looks at the many problems one finds with classroom PowerPoint presentations. It is by Thomas R. McDaniel, Converse College, and Kathryn N. McDaniel, Marietta College number 29 in a series of selected excerpts from the National Teaching and Learning Forum newsletter reproduced here as part of our “Shared Mission Partnership.” NT&LF has a wealth of information on all aspects of teaching and learning. If you are not already a subscriber, you can check it out at [http://www.ntlf.com/] The on-line edition of the Forum–like the printed version – offers subscribers insight from colleagues eager to share new ways of helping students reach the highest levels of learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum Newsletter, Volume 14, Number 34 © Copyright 1996-2005. Published by James Rhem & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Communication Skills for Department Chairs

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THE PERILS OF POWERPOINT

Thomas R. McDaniel, Converse College, and Kathryn N. McDaniel, Marietta College

College professors everywhere are incorporating PowerPoint presentations into their classroom lectures. Faculty often pressure their deans to make every classroom a “smart classroom,” and those fuddy-duddy faculty too slow to embrace this quickly-emerging technology are considered Luddites, resisters to change, out of step with modern student expectations. Technology can be a boon to pedagogy, but it is not without its perils. Before jumping headlong into the rushing tide of PowerPoint presentations, consider these cautions and criticisms about this popular teaching tool:

1) It’s Inflexible.

When you use PowerPoint to convey information and ideas, it limits not only the content you can convey, but also the pace at which you present. If a student has a question (which the format of PowerPoint discourages anyway), the presenter may lose the flow of the PowerPoint in trying to answer it. If the student’s question requires a quick jump ahead to a later point, the presenter will (if the program will allow it) have to scroll through upcoming points to address it. This can lead to confusion and a sense of disorder for both the presenter and the students. If the presenter has included too much information on the slides, students may delay the presentation by insisting that they “haven’t finished” copying everything down. If you find out that your audience has a different level of knowledge than you expected (for example, if they didn’t do the reading they were supposed to), the presentation cannot easily be adapted to fit the new situation. What all of these “ifs” demon!
strate is that there’s insufficient flexibility in the presentation form to allow for any surprises-those wonderful “teachable moments” that energize a lesson.

2) It’s Risky.

How many times have you seen a PowerPoint presentation where some technical difficulty
a) made it impossible to start the presentation on time?
b) caused the presenter to lose the presentation entirely and end up fumbling halfheartedly
through the presentation?
c) made it difficult to change the “slides,” making every transition a long or clumsy process?
d) created a problem with the sequencing of points such that the presenter lost his or her place?
e) all of the above?

Technology is a wonderful thing, but its use also opens up all kinds of possible delays and technical difficulties. The real trouble with PowerPoint technology is that the presenter becomes too dependent on it and often cannot simply abandon the technological “enhancement” to perform the lesson anyway when technical difficulties arise, as they invariably do.

3) It’s a Crutch.

PowerPoint often serves as a crutch that prevents academics from developing real teaching skills. This is particularly a problem for academics who have spent most of their training in relatively isolated activities (researching in labs and libraries and then writing up their research) and who often have introverted tendencies. Instead of having to develop a pedagogy that engages the class at some level, instead of having to learn to communicate ideas to the individuals within the class, the professor can spend hours laying out a PowerPoint presentation that resembles a scholarly publication more than a lesson and that presents the information in a way that stifles communication between teacher and students. This is “presentation,” not teaching.

4) It’s Boring.

One of our students talks about PowerPoint classes as a “Zone-Out Zone.” Not only is it easy for students to zone out during a presentation, it’s often actually difficult for them to stay focused and attentive. This occurs for several reasons. First, a PowerPoint presentation seems to signal to students that they will not be necessary for the next 50 minutes or so, that their presence is purely as an audience, and as a result many students automatically disengage even at the very outset. (Having the lights out provides a cue.)

Second, presenters often put all of the salient points of the presentation on the slides, bullet-pointed for clarity-and sometimes they even distribute a handout of the information on each slide. Why does a student need to listen to the presenter read through each of these, even if there is a longer explanation? The pacing seems to slow down painfully; the students never have to figure out for themselves what the key ideas or points are; they have become merely scribes, copying down information. No matter how many “cool graphics” you have, if they don’t relate to the material (and are just “frills”), students will tune out everything of substance.

5) It’s Style without Substance.

The stylish presentation that PowerPoint offers often occurs at the expense of substance. Instead of spending time researching and studying the content, the presenter spends hours figuring out how to have the bullet points “fly” in. Examples end up watered down because of technological limitations or the lack of an appropriate graphic. Complex ideas are reduced to bullet points and clever images which don’t allow for nuance, multiple perspectives or definitions, or points of contention. Excessive stylish features slow the pace of the lesson and reduce the amount of material that can be conveyed effectively.

Even the best PowerPoint presentation is impressive not because of the insights and ideas conveyed, but because of the skilled use of technology it represents. In thinking about whether or not a PowerPoint presentation was effective, people will often focus on the technologies used, the frills and graphics, the smoothness with which the technology functioned. This is the last thing you want students to be getting out of your lesson-that you, the teacher, are good with technology.

Like Any Tool . . .

While PowerPoint can be a great addition to a teacher’s pedagogical repertoire, it is no magic bullet guaranteed to make professors better (and more impressive) teachers. Like any tool, it can be misused or abused, and when that happens teaching effectiveness may be undermined instead of enriched. Effective pedagogy means knowing the benefits of any given teaching tool. Those who know the “perils of PowerPoint” are most likely to avoid its pitfalls.

Contact:
Thomas R. McDaniel
Senior Vice President
Acting Dean of Graduate Studies
Converse College
Spartanburg, South Carolina
E-Mail: Tom.McDaniel@Converse.edu

Kathryn N. McDaniel
Assistant Professor of History
Marietta College – Ohio
E-Mail: McDaniek@Marietta.edu

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Folks:

The posting below, by Lloyd Bond, senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) looks at the importance of the evolution, as opposed to revolution, of ideas in teaching and learning. It is #18 in the monthly series called Carnegie Foundation Perspectives. These short commentaries exploring various educational issues are produced by the CFAT. The Foundation invites your response at: CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Perils of PowerPoint

Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning

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THROWING OUT THE BABY WITH THE BATH WATER

June 2005

By Lloyd Bond

In his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, physicist Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific revolutions are characterized by a completely new world view that is incompatible with what it replaced. In this sense, scientific revolutions are non-cumulative; rather than build on what has gone before, they jettison completely the assumptions and premises of the theories they replace. Darwin’s theory of evolution did not tweak the prevailing notion of a static, instantaneously created natural world not essentially different from what we see today. The Origin of Species threw out the notion entirely and replaced it with a living world evolving over eons of time through natural selection. The heliocentric structure of the solar system proposed by Copernicus (and refined by Kepler and Newton) did not build on Ptolemy’s elaborate geocentric model; it dismissed it out of hand, and in so doing changed forever the way we view our place in the universe.

On a less lofty scale, educational reforms often propose similarly radical new world views. In its original incarnation, the “whole language” movement in reading instruction dismissed “phonics” as a misguided way to introduce young learners to the written word. It was argued that children should be immersed in actual text with associated visuals and discussion. The ability to spell and read with understanding would come in due time. The “new math” reform of the 1960s rejected practice and drill on the “times tables” as a mindless activity that turned young learners off from mathematics. Tom Lehrer, the professional mathematician turned occasional cabaret performer, summed up the entire approach with his quip that the important idea underlying new math is “to understand what you are doing, rather than to get the right answer.”

“Traditionalists” were deeply skeptical of these reforms, and with good reason; many of the innovations were based on faulty premises. There was precious little hard-nosed, empirical evidence to buttress the exalted claims on behalf of the new approaches to instruction. Moreover, the vast majority of elementary school teachers were ill-prepared, especially in mathematics, to handle the innovations. The net result, if one believes the traditionalists, was a generation of young people, the majority of whom could neither spell, read, nor perform simple mathematical operations. And the reaction by the public, the press, and elected officials was predictable: a call across the nation during the 1970s and 1980s for “back to basics” instruction and a proliferation of minimum competency standards for promotion and high school graduation.

Over the past quarter century, cognitive scientists, working closely with teachers in actual classrooms, have introduced a measure of sanity to the sometimes vitriolic debates. Studies of the development and nature of expertise in an ever-increasing variety of areas-from reading and writing to mathematics and electronics, from physics and piano playing to baseball knowledge and chess-indicate that with proper instruction and practice, proficiency develops from novice to expert in an orderly way and is characterized by a sequence of more or less distinct stages.

Briefly, these studies demonstrate that proficiency and expertise are predicated upon five fundamental principles: (1) newly learned information is processed through a series of “memory registers,” each of which is subject to different limitations and each capable of different kinds of storage and processing; (2) proficiency depends critically upon the acquisition of “automaticity,” the capacity to respond automatically to certain components of complex tasks, such as number facts and words in context, thus reducing the processing load of working memory; (3) problem-solving ability and the ability to read with understanding are not mysterious competencies that some persons possess and other do not, but rather depend upon a specific, prerequisite knowledge base that can be acquired by most people; (4) expertise in a given domain (mathematics or chess, for example) depends crucially upon how relevant knowledge is organized and stored in long-term memory; and (5) profi!
cient performance is either retarded or facilitated by how problems and text are represented internally.

It turns out that traditionalists and reformers were both right in their own way, but both were overzealous in their devotion to a particular mode of instruction and in their blanket dismissal of the competing point of view. The drill and practice advocates of early mathematics instruction, and to a lesser extent the phonics advocates of reading instruction, appreciated the importance of the second principle above, that certain, “low level” skills must become second nature in order for higher-level performance to emerge. But they often failed to follow through with tasks that engage and challenge. For their part, the new math and whole language advocates failed to fully appreciate the critical enabling role of automaticity, sometimes with disastrous results. Nor did they fully accept what we now know to be true-that automaticity develops only through continued practice distributed over appropriate intervals.

Throwing out the baby with the bath water may well characterize scientific revolutions, but in the world of education and schooling, where new claims must be tempered with the wisdom of practice, progress is rarely made in such spectacular fashion.
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Carnegie Perspectives is a series of commentaries that explore different ways to think about educational issues. These pieces are presented with the hope that they contribute to the conversation. You can respond directly to the author at CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org or you can join a public discussion at Carnegie Conversations.

Join the Carnegie Perspectives email list by sending an email to CarnegiePresident@carnegiefoundation.org with “Subscribe” as the subject line.

Folks:

The posting below offers, through an interesting example, some good pointers on negotiating an acceptable resolution to difficult situations oftent found in academia. It is from Chapter 3, Methods of Conflict Resolution in an Academic Environment, from: Work and Peace in Academe, Leveraging Time, Money, and Intellectual Energy Through Managing Conflict, by James R. Coffman, Kansas State University. Copyright © 2005 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-882982-84-3 Anker Publishing Company, Inc. 176 Ballville Road, P.O. Box 249, Bolton, MA 01740-0249 [www.ankerpub.com]. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar

Tomorrow’s Faculty

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NEGOTIATION

A plethora of literature exists on the subject of negotiation. The purpose of this discussion, however, is not to conduct a literature review but to place negotiation in the toolbox of the prevention, resolution, and management of disputes in academe. Negotiation is a process of give and take based on the interests of the parties to the dispute. The trick is to determine what those interests are. They are frequently straightforward and involve such issues as the distribution of space in a new building or allocation of new tuition receipts or budget reductions. However, as noted in the section on fact-finding, framing, and reframing in Chapter 2, the interests actually may involve underlying concerns that only are symbolized by a specific disputed incident or situation.

Negotiation is an informal process aimed at getting the parties in a dispute to play creative roles in arriving at a solution that they can live with. It might be led by one of the parties or conducted formally or informally by a third party. It might take place in the student union over lunch or in an office or conference room. Negotiation might all happen in one sitting, or, much more likely, over several short sessions. In academic settings, ombudspersons can play an important role in the process as shuttle diplomats, witnesses, or both.

A tenured associate professor with a long history of disruptive behavior and limited productivity is the subject of repeated complaints by students and, more recently, parents. A growing number of individuals have accused the professor of temper tantrums and abusive behavior. Recently, he was alleged to have screamed at a student and shoved him for breaking an unusual glass bottle unearthed at the early 19h century trading post site on an archeology field trip. The student had fallen into a nearby ditch and broken his elbow. The professor admits “speaking sharply” to the student, but denies pushing him. Other students on the trip relate that they were not subjected to physical contact, but indicated the instructor had lost his temper with more than one of them. While no one saw the alleged shoving incident, they all agree that the injured student told them about it immediately afterward, and they believed him. Two of them had taken him to a nearby hospital for treatme!
nt. A week later, a recent graduate calls the head of the department. He relates that he has heard about this incident and remembers that a similar thing happened to him. In his case, the professor had grabbed him by his shirtfront and screamed in his face. He did not report it then, but now wishes he had. The alum says he had a good grade going and just wanted to take it and run.

The department head reaches the conclusion that the professor should be dismissed. He is compelled by the ongoing combination of disruptive behavior, evidence that the students are being abused, and negligible productivity on the part of the professor. On a previous occasion the head already knew about, in which the professor threw a wet sponge at a graduate student, he had agreed to seek anger management treatment but had not followed through.

The recommendation for dismissal is made to the dean, who agrees with the decision after interviewing the professor (who still denies the allegations), the student making the complaint, and the alumnus. The recommendation is forwarded to the provost for action.

Upon interviewing the professor, the dean, the department head, the injured student (accompanied by his parents), the alumnus, and other students and faculty, the provost is confronted with a dilemma. As a result of these interviews, he learned of two other recent graduates who may have been subjected to some kind of physical contact by the professor. He believes, as did the department head and dean, that in addition to his generally disruptive behavior, this person really does have a history of abusive treatment of students. There is good reason to believe that the man’s behavior may have crossed the line to battery on at least two occasions. The police are looking into a possible battery charge in the current case, but the absence of third party witnesses makes it unlikely. The provost found the injured student’ testimony very compelling. The difficulty is that he also believes there is a real risk of losing in a university-level grievance. His reasons for this conc!
ern included the fact that the professor’s tenure is at stake. That could have a strong influence on a grievance panel, depending on its constituency. He also knows that the selection of a grievance panel is largely a random process. The provost also is concerned that some of the witnesses will be hard to assemble (especially the alumnus, who lives 2,000 thousand miles away), and that the professor is sure to have some vociferous support from colleagues who see him as being railroaded. In fact, three such individuals already came to see him on the professor’s behalf during his inquiry.

The provost believes that if the matter eventually goes to court, the parties are almost certain to be ordered to attempt mediation. Some judges will push the mediation issue to the point of a near mandate to settle. This always involves giving something up, usually money. He also suspects that the chances of winning in court are limited, primarily by the possibility of losing a grievance. At this point the provost makes two lists as follows.

A speculative assessment of the interests of the professor:
1) He is within two or three years of being able to draw social security and probably will need to be able to bridge that gap with some supplemental income.

2) He is six or seven years away from eligibility for Medicare and maintaining health care insurance is likely to be a big issue. However, he is eligible for retirement and is assured of participation in the university health care plan but would have to pay the entire premium himself. This would occur, however, only if he retires as distinct from being fired.

3) He owns a number of rental houses, according to common wisdom, and these may provide a basic income stream. As an aside, the provost recalls more than one incident in which elected officials complained bout the professor mowing the lawn of his rental properties during the workday.

4) He seems to be a basically unhappy person and is bitter about his experience at the university. Perhaps he would like to leave under the right circumstances.

Interests of the university:
1) The university would be better off replacing the professor, given his low level of productivity, long history of disruptive behavior, and apparent uncontrollable temper and abuse of students. While the physical aspect of student abuse has not been proven, the evidence is strong enough to be very concerned about it.

2) A standard process of dismissal, grievance, and lawsuit would be very costly in terms of widespread disruption among faculty, staff, and students, commitment of time by innumerable people, and out of pocket cost to the institution.

3) The possibility of the university losing a campus grievance and possibly in court is significant; an opinion shared by the university attorney.

4) There is the possibility that the professor actually is innocent of the worst of the allegations, although this would require some sort of conspiracy between the current student and the recent graduate, who seemed not to have known each other when the alleged incidents occurred. Exploration of a separation agreement would indicate to the professor that the chances of dismissal for cause were high (this could be stated explicitly) and would give him an opportunity to choose if he wanted to fight the allegations or leave.

After assessing the two lists, the provost decides to explore the possibility of a settlement agreement. The university attorney agrees this approach has merit. The provost then meets with the professor and an ombudsman. The ombudsman, a historian of long and good standing, has worked with the professor earlier in the matter to advise him of his rights and to clarify procedures such as appeal, grievance, and affirmative action reviews. The provost tells the professor directly that, as he knows, dismissal has been recommended for reasons with which he is familiar. He further indicates that he is leaning toward supporting that recommendation. Before proceeding in that direction, however, he states his desire to learn whether the professor would be interested in exploring some kind of negotiated agreement that would include his resignation. The ombudsperson is witness to the fact that the man was not pressured and that no specific offer or commitment was made.

The professor agrees to think it over. Within two days, the provost receives word through the ombudsman that the professor would like to receive a proposal. A process is initiated in which each party reviews options with his attorney, but lawyers are not involved directly in the exchange. The ombudsperson becomes a shuttle diplomat between the professor and the provost. The provost’s assessment of the professor’s interests was pretty close to the mark. The outcome is that the professor agrees to retire without being designated as emeritus but with all other privileges of retirement, including continuing eligibility for medical insurance at his own expense. In return, he is to receive a cash payment that will significantly help meet the cost of medical insurance. The agreement includes a confidentiality clause. It does not become a matter of campus conversation and speculation and never appears in the press.

Reasonable people could argue long and hard about whether this fictionalized case was handled appropriately or not. However, it is used as an example of interest-based negotiation for two reasons. It does exemplify the process of moving from strongly held positions to the interests the parties need to address. It also exemplifies a form of raw pragmatism that sometimes is essential in the resolution of a dispute and negation of its potential for collateral damage, including an ongoing furor that drains the intellectual energy of a large number of people for a long period of time.