Campus Conversations—Phase I
Georgia State University
Procedure
This report is a synthesis of individual reports from campus
units at Georgia State University (Colleges of Business Administration,
Education, Health and Human Sciences, and Law, the School
of Policy Studies, and three units of the College of Arts
and Sciences—Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences).
The process was coordinated through the University’s Center
for Teaching and Learning (CTL). Associates of the CTL collected
the information used in this report based on discussions with
faculty members and department chairs, surveys, luncheon meetings,
and postings to electronic bulletin boards. The Associates
are faculty members from each department in the university
and who provide a conduit for information to and from the
CTL.
Definition of the Scholarship of Teaching
The Georgia State University faculty responded in two ways
to the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning (CASTL) draft definition of the Scholarship of Teaching.
The colleges that represent professional schools (i.e., Business,
Education, Health and Human Sciences, Policy Studies, and
Law) accepted and endorsed the draft definition as expressing
a clearly defined procedure that appropriately fits as an
option in the academic agenda for faculty. On the other hand,
faculty from the various areas of the College of Arts and
Sciences viewed the definition of the Scholar of Teaching
as having the following limitations: Scholarship, as defined
in the CASTL definition was seen as unclear, too informal,
and not sufficiently rigorous as compared to scholarship within
professional disciplines. There was not, however, a proposal
for an alternative definition by any of these groups.
Conditions Supporting the Scholarship of Teaching
There was agreement across the university on several conditions
that support the scholarship of teaching, including the articulation
of support from the university administration, an increased
emphasis by the administration on documenting teaching effectiveness
for annual evaluations, promotion and tenure, and post-tenure
reviews, and increased faculty development resources through
college and university committees including funding for innovative
teaching proposals.
Additional conditions were reported for specific units within
the university, including the option of a teaching track for
senior faculty, requiring a teaching portfolio as part of
the annual evaluation, and the scholarship opportunities offered
by a broadening view of teaching that includes infusing technology
into a course, service learning, and an increase in the venues
for discussion issues of teaching and learning (e.g., brown
bag lunches, faculty mentoring projects, and graduate teaching
assistant training programs). There are numerous clusters
of individual faculty and faculty groups across the departments
of the university who systematically examine aspects of teaching
and learning. In many departments there is support and resources
for these efforts.
Conditions Inhibiting the Scholarship of Teaching
In the context of our large, research university, the condition
that most inhibits the scholarship of teaching is the extent
to which it competes with more traditional agendas and policies
for evaluating faculty productivity and allocation of faculty
time and university resources. In some departments publications
in the area of teaching and learning would receive little,
if any recognition as scholarship. In many departments junior
faculty could be at risk for not receiving promotion and tenure
if their program of scholarship did not follow the traditional
discipline-specific path. As the tenure and promotions policies
are under the purview of the faculty in the colleges, modifications
in such policies to include the scholarship of teaching would
require a grass roots effort the change what individual faculty
consider scholarship.
Some faculty members see the small number of outlets for
scholarly work in their discipline as a limitation. The amount
of support for grants in teaching is far less than funding
for more traditional forms of scholarship. Policies that support
the concept of the scholarship of teaching are sometimes confusing
and counter-productive. For example, an expressed commitment
to teaching and learning can result in an increased teaching
load and reduced time for scholarly examination of teaching
and learning. Department hiring procedures more typically
select faculty for research skills and evidence of external
funding in discipline-related areas as opposed to funding
in scholarship of teaching.
Finally, the university is not a centralized academic community,
but a richly diverse set of communities of scholars. As such,
communication is often difficult and systemic change can be
sporadic across units. Efforts at creating and maintaining
campus conversations across the university will require a
variety of initiatives across many units.
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