University Professional Development Council
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
Tel: 415-405-2852
mkumar@sfsu.edu
University Strategic Planning
Theme III: Academic Master Plan
Appendices
1. Principal outreach tools................................................................................................................... 2
1.1 All-Faculty Survey....................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Website submissions .............................................................................................................. 92
1.3 Whiteboard Transcriptions ................................................................................................. 99
2. Submissions from campus units and committees ............................................................101
2.1 Office of Research and Sponsored Programs ..............................................................101
2.2 Academic Senate Plenary session....................................................................................101
2.3 University Chairs’ Council ..................................................................................................103
2.4 Dean of Faculty Affairs .........................................................................................................105
2.5 Lecturer focus group ............................................................................................................110
2.6 University Professional Development Council ...........................................................112
2.7 Committee on Written English Proficiency .................................................................115
2.8 Undergraduate Writing Program ....................................................................................121
3. College councils (notes by committee members) .............................................................126
3.1 College of Business ................................................................................................................126
3.2 College of Health and Social Sciences.............................................................................128
3.3 College of Science and Engineering ................................................................................130
3.4 College of Ethnic Studies .....................................................................................................133
3.5 College of Liberal and Creative Arts ...............................................................................133
3.6 Graduate College of Education..........................................................................................134
3.7 Library........................................................................................................................................135
4. Departmental submissions and notes ...................................................................................137
4.1 Creative Writing .....................................................................................................................137
4.2 Health Education ....................................................................................................................138
4.3 Women and Gender Studies ..............................................................................................140
1. Principal outreach tools
1.1 All-Faculty Survey
My Report
Last Modified: 01/22/2014
1. 1. Recognition for Teaching. Here are some questions to consider: How
important is teaching to the university's mission? How does the university
encourage and recognize high quality teaching? How much weight
does/should teaching carry in RTP? How much does/should teaching matter
in hiring?
Text Response
All we do is teach
No. The university does not actively encourage quality teaching. There's very little
awareness of teaching. It occupies a minimal presence in departmental, college, and
university consciousness. Innovative teaching at SFSU is not valued. Really creative,
innovative teaching should occupy a much larger place within RTP. Teaching is essential in
hiring decisions.
xxxxxxx
Teaching is crucial to the CSU, much more so than research. We are supposed to educate
the next generation so that they will be able to both vocationally support themselves in a
real job after their undergrad degree (let's be honest- how many go to grad school
thereafter?) and hopefully also get a solid background in what makes someone well
educated, even if it's not immediately related to a paycheck.
SFSU and the CSU are teaching universities. This is the primary mission of the university
and the system. This should be the primary consideration in the RTP process. This is not
currently the practice. Everyone knows that research is the most important consideration,
and teaching is secondary. There is not a clear and rational way to evaluate teaching
currently. It's ridiculous that so much weight is put on teaching evaluations. The university
needs to develop alternative ways of evaluating teaching, and it needs to shift the RTP
process to more of a focus on teaching, otherwise we are not responding to the needs of our
students. Just to continue a bit... the focus on research is problematic for a number of
reasons. Faculty do not receive enough course release or administrative support to set up
and continue the type of research that's is expected. If a faculty member doesn't receive the
renewal of a grant, then they fall out of the grant-receiving institutions. Once that happens
they have to teach more, and then they don't have the time to respond to RFPs, and they
cycle down from there. This institution does not have the resource infrastructure to
support the R1 or R2 model, and faculty are greatly disadvantages. Also, the faculty who
care about students and who want to put their time and efforts into improvement of
teaching are thought to be second class citizens. In essence, there is a disconnect between
the needs of the students, the university mission, and the way in which faculty are
evaluated. This problem needs to be brought out into the light of day and opening
confronted.
Teaching is half of the equation for the uni mission - the other is student learning. Student
evaluations are the easiest means of gathering data and the literature says that most of that
is a popularity contest. Real evaluation of teaching recognizes that there is a difference
between a good teacher and a bad techer. Real teaching evaluation has remedies for a bad
teacher that are treated as a positive in the long term personal and professional growth of
an individaul or the collective of the professorate. In RTP with its many levels and the
individual 's organic productionof his or her file, teaching can take many different weights.
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The perception of the professorate is that teaching here takes a back seat to research.
Teaching matters in hiring - we always want someone to teach, so we don't have too!
Some years ago, when I met with the dean who would eventually hire me, he made clear
that teaching was THE most important thing. Obviously that is not the case anymore, at
least that's my perception. High quality teaching requires time in addition to classroom
time. At the same time, high quality research is difficult to sustain while teaching a 3-class
load. Teaching should have the same weight as professional development. Hiring is a
relative matter: the best teachers sometimes have never taught before as they are just
coming out of their masters or PhD.
teaching should be paramount. It seems however that one can get promoted with bad ( or
less than stellar teaching ,with evaluations hovering above the 2.0 mark) teaching and good
scholarship and that the other way around is not true. It thus encourages faculty to devote
much more time to research and writing than in advising, mentoring students or working
on their teaching all together.
Teaching is central to the University's mission. Access to success does not mean
distinguished faculty becoming even more distinguished, it means (young) people acquiring
the skills and tools they need to lead a happy and productive life in a rapidly changing
environment. I think the "faculty of the year" awards do a great job of recognizing
excellence/ The fact the the outstanding teaching award carries a larger cash stipend than
research or service awards is right on the money.
Teaching is central to the University's mission - it should matter considerably in hiring and
it should be weighted more heavily in RTP than scholarship and service. Currently, the
university does not do very much to encourage and recognize high quality teaching. Other
than making it through the RTP process, there is little incentive to devote the time
necessary to excel in teaching.
I don't see that the university values teaching vis a vis its adjunct instructors. I obviously
can't speak for tenure track faculty. My experience overall of the quality of teaching at SFSU
has been very positive.
The university rightfully places much emphasis on teaching. As a (not every semester)
lecturer, I don't see much evidence of recognition for high quality teaching; it may be there,
but I don't see it. I understand the university's need to rely heavily (and increasingly so) on
adjuncts and lecturers (and I'm happy enough for the work), but doing so necessarily
reduces teaching quality. There is no time, space, or social infrastructure for communication
and collegiality among so many adjuncts.
I am relatively new to the university. It has been made clear to me that SFSU is a teaching
university where teaching success is crucial to a tenure track faculty's achievement of
promotion and tenure. It appears to me that teaching carries a large weight in RPT and that
it is measured solely by student evalutation scores. In my opinion, having a high weight on
teaching in RPT consideration is valuable however their should be more ways to measure
the teaching success.
Teaching should be central to our mission. Little is done to encourage and recognize it.
(Having one winner/year is counter-productive.) Classroom observations and discussion of
student feedback plus mentoring should be ongoing. Teaching appears to carry little weight
in RTP (unless negative). Teaching should be critical in hiring.
Teaching should remain the core mission of San Francisco State University as outlined in
the California Master Plan for Higher Ed. Further, there should be more effort by the
administration to curb "mission creep," particularly those efforts among some colleges and
departments to move the University in the direction of a Research 1 institution without
regard to the stresses this creates for those faculty who are committed to teaching.
Teaching should be weighted more heavily in the RTP process and the administration
should take more interest in monitoring the quality of teaching, particularly in online course
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materials. Based on my 25 years teaching here, and as an early adapter of online
technologies, it's clear to me that in far too many cases the online versions of courses just do
not measure up to the quality we should be expecting of an institution dedicated the
teaching. We are allowing a dumbing down of the curriculum to occur.
There is too much pressure, esp recently, for faculty to produce quantifiable research, which
makes dedicating time and energy to teaching excellence more difficult. Teaching, esp under
the most recent Provost, seems to be less valued in tenure and promotion than during the
previous provost's tenure. Since the university is not a Research I, and does not provide any
regular support for research (like regular, non-competitive, guaranteed leaves with pay, or
a research budget for every tt employee), teaching should be valued more heavily in tenure
and promotion evaluations.
It is of course important to the mission. I am not sure how university
encourages/recognizes high-quality teaching. That's a good question. Teaching is an
important part of being an academic so it matters a lot in hiring and in RTP. However, I feel
like it is this big bubble. Everyone talks about how important it is yet there is not much
support (at the practical level), there is no extrinsic rewards, and it is too heavy to carry on
since it is always about teaching. Always.
Teaching is very important. It would be nice to see high quality teaching better recognized.
Do we give faculty awards for high quality teaching? I know we do this for research and
scholarship. What are the incentives for encouraging faculty to improve their teaching
especially after tenure? In our department most of the weight for RTP is in research.
Teaching must be passable - consistent scores of 2 or less. However, some teach huge
courses which weight the same as small speciality courses. This should not be the case. As
the incentive is then to teach small courses when the need is really with large courses in
high demand (over 100 students).
It is essentially what we do. Our dept in hiring has candidates teach a mock 2-hr. workshop.
Too much assessment and not enough attention to the uniqueness of our gifted faculty and
how they exceed simple mastery of area skills.
Of significant importanct. Encouragement and recognition for high-quality teaching needs
improvement
Excellence in teaching should be at the core of what we expect from all faculty. Excellence
in teaching in hiring, tenure, promotion, and post tenure/promotion review. Regardless of
grant $ and research, if teaching is not excellent .... Then we have a problem! Teaching
experience may not be available in some hires so the degree by which it is required needs to
b determined and it weight by each Department. Regardless if prior teaching experience is
available, all potential candidates need to know that excellence in teaching is a premium
and a core requirement.
1. Teaching is essential to the university's mission. 2. The university encourages high
quality teaching by requiring that excellence be achieved in teaching for the RTP process,
though "excellence" is all too often a fluid word. 3. Having been through this many times as
a candidate, chair of our departmental RTP committee, and chair of our department, I know
that it can be very difficult to assess, but still teaching needs to be the top priority in the RTP
process. 4. Assessing teaching competence is critical in hiring, though this is also a
challenge. We could only choose new faculty with a clear track record in teaching, but this
is very difficult to assess from outside the institution where the individual is coming from.
Probably the best comes from letters of recommendation, especially from the major adviser
whose opinions on teaching may tell us not only about the candidate but also about the
value given to teaching at that institution. This combined with experience, perhaps beyond
TA-ships, followed by having them give a guest lecture, is probably the best we can do to
assess this. The double challenge is that these excellent teachers must also be quite active
in research.
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By far the most important aspect of SFSU is for students to learn--both a practical education
for immediate employability and also a deeper education to reflect on the world as it is, and
as it is changing. Teaching, therefore, should be a central priority. But I also need my
students to be able to learn, with distractions and stressors held to a minimum. That means
they need affordable housing, and better financial support in the form of GRANTS, not loans.
Their level of indebtedness is beginning to seriously interfere with my ability to keep them
focused.
Teaching is central to the university's mission. The current Senate policy on promotion and
on RT reflects this commitment. The administration needs to understand this long-standing
commitment ot excellence in teaching, and to reward those faculty members who
demonstrate excellence in teaching.
SFSU is rooted in being a normal school. Excellence in teaching should be our highest
priority. There is no substitute. Quality of student output will follow.
Teaching is essential to the university's mission. It is and should be very important to RTP
and in hiring. Should research and professional develpoment become more a focus, such a
shift should not come at the price of devaluaing teaching. Such a structural change would
require a reduction in teaching load, but should not change expectations regarding quality.
Teaching experience and high quality are vital to any university. However, the other parts of
the WPAF; Campus/Community Service and Professional Achievement are just as important
because they motivate the teacher to be creative and innovative plus share their knowledge
to others - and the good name of SFSU.
Teaching is essential to our mission. It is the most important thing we do, because our
student population is especially vulnerable to social and economic pressure, and they need
their teachers' support, encouragement, mentorship. Teachers who feel that their teaching
is the most important part of their job should be encouraged to present evidence of
particular excellence in teaching in RTP files, over and above routine student evaluations,
letters from students, and class visits from colleagues. This could be documentation of the
thought process and time that go into all aspects of course planning, from the selections of
materials to decisions about classroom process to grading and other forms of evaluation
rubrics. Documenting the specific ways in which one's scholarly work contributes to one's
teaching could also be part of this. Teaching experience should not be essential to hiring, but
consideration of the candidates' interest in becoming excellent teachers should be.
Teaching should become much more important / weighted in all of our fields at SFSU. Many
colleagues seem to be much more concerned with daily politics, their salary, the union,
travel, research, service, etc., forgetting that a university is first and foremost an institution
of higher EDUCATION.
When it comes to hiring in Cinema, teaching is not secondary to critical or creative
productivity (research). But to be a terrific teacher, you have to be on the cutting edge of
the discipline, be it filmmaking or film and media scholarship. This is because our field is
constantly changing as new technologies, business models and critical paradigms reshape
how we make, distribute and see films. So for us it is not one or the other -- teaching or
research -- but both. With respect to RTP, however, I think research should have greater
prominence in the evaluation process. As a university we must promote research
productivity (broadly speaking, of course) in an effort to ensure that we are constantly
pushing boundaries for the society that funds our teaching loads. At the same time, "poor"
teachers should not be granted tenure or promotion. Hence, I would be hard pressed to
recommend tenure and/or promotion for a terrific teacher with poor research productivity;
at the same time, I would be hard pressed to recommend tenure and/or promotion for a
highly productive scholar or filmmaker that has failed repeatedly in the classroom. Finally,
the university needs to do a MUCH better job praising and awarding its best teachers. At
the University of Arizona, we offered annual department, college, graduate division and
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university teaching awards. The selection process was not as centralized as it appears to be
at State.
Teaching is central to the university's mission and should carry a lot of weight in both RTP
and hiring decisions. Before determining whether the university extends recognition for
high quality teaching, itis important to consider another kind of recognition: How do we
recognize good teaching when we see it? What criteria is used to determine whether
teaching is of high quality or not? There is too much reliance on student teaching
evaluations rather than student performance over a university career and the impact that
teaching actually has on learning. This is much more difficult to measure, but without
accurate measurement, the question of good teaching is mute.
Teaching should be central to SFSU's mission. I don't think it is given the importance that it
should either in RTP or hiring.
SFSU does not recognize Teaching enough. It should be important to RTP, but not the only
variable, as research and service are directly embedded in teaching and teaching
effectiveness. Student evaluations should not be the only means for measuring teaching
because there are a lot of variables that are not particularly related to teaching (such as
negative evaluations because the professor is "hard." There should be more development
and more variables to consider in terms of teaching effectiveness).
Teaching used to be extremely important, but I don't believe this new administration has
any investment in teaching due to the ways they are now interpreting the RTP process. On
paper, it looks like teaching remains a critical third of the evaluation process. In reality,
stellar teaching evaluations, full teaching loads (3/3), are routinely suppressed in
evaluation in order to focus on "culling the herd" of those individuals unappealing for
whatever reasons to the Provost.
Teaching has always been central to the mission of SF state. However, I think the university
has been creating unrealistic expectations amongst faculty by repeatedly encouraging them
to pursue high level research and write competitive research grant proposals while holding
down a very challenging teaching load. The university really should decide what they want
and then reward that in the faculty. One way to do this might be to distinguish between
teaching centered and research centered approaches among faculty, as well as to provide
more recognition for faculty who have outstanding teaching profiles, student reviews, peer
reviews, and innovative pedagogical approaches. I think teaching matters a great deal in
hiring bc many many years worth of students will be exposed go that teacher and their
methods.
I believe teaching is central to the university's mission! I do not believe the university
recognizes good teachers enough at this university. Teaching should matter greatly -- up to
50% -- of the RTP and should be more central in hiring than research. We are not -- despite
the lingo to the contrary -- a research university. Please focus on and reward good
teachers!!!
Teaching should be high on the university's mission. The majority of classes are taught by
adjunct professors however, which offers the students and the lecturers little in the way of
stability or consistency.
Teaching is absolutely central to our mission. It is why we exist. It is treated as very
important in hiring and RTP proceedings and largely ignored otherwise. This seems to me
to be a serious example of mission drift. The academic technology staff is excellent. But
faculty members seldom hear about teaching from Deans, the Provost and the President the most important people to talk about this central part of our mission. Teaching and
learning are too critical to our mission to delegate to the academic technology staff.
Teaching and learning are everyone's business, and that means we need to be clear about
what is working, what is not, and where we want to go. We urgently need a stronger focus
on teaching. We have little discussion about what even constitutes good or excellent
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teaching in the context of a new generation of globally connected students. They arrive
with huge skill deficiencies, and our current strategies are not adequate to bridge the gap,
so we lower our standards. That is not the students' fault. it is ours. If the strategic
planning process accomplishes nothing else, it will be valuable if it highlights a need for
greeter focus on teaching and learning.
Very important in all of these. But we must remember not to confuse teaching well with
teaching a lot. There should be ample time for quality teaching, professional development
with respect to teaching, and for other crucial activities like service and research/scholarly
activity.
Teaching is, by definition of the institution, primary! -- in both in RTP and in hiring!
Teaching is very important to the mission of the University. For RTP decisions, the Chair,
members of the department 's RTP committee and faculty who have observed the faculty
teaching the classes views should be given higher credence versus only the Student
evaluation scores of teaching effectiveness. Second, a faculty's grading style needs to be
factored in, whethe faculty is into grade inflation. Finally, what kind of courses have the
faculty taught
Teaching is equal in importance to professional development credits such as publications
and exhibits. In the Creative Writing Department, we require that all candidates teach a
class of undergraduate and graduate students, in full view of the Hiring Committee. At the
end of the process, the students share their feelings about the candidate. An excellent
writer who shows no life in the classroom will most likely not be hired. But in the area of
creative writing at SFSU it is vital that the candidate be outstanding as a writer and of
national reputation.
Extremely important. The single most important part of our mission is to provide quality
education to our students. Perhaps the most important lesson learned over the past 25
years is that individual students have different learning styles and so the methods used by
faculty should be diverse to match the needs of the students. In RTP, teaching excellence
should be baseline before considering other criteria.
Teaching is crucial to the university. Our students come from working class backgrounds.
Many of them could be considered "marginal" students. They need dedicated teachers to
inspire them to reach their goals. It is difficult to recognize "high quality" teaching. The
"most popular" professor might not be the most effective teacher. Every student is
different. A style that works with one student might not work with another. "High quality"
teaching is very difficult to quantify or to judge objectively. Therefore it is difficult to factor
"teaching ability" into hiring or promotion decisions.
Teaching matters. SFSU takes pride in the excellent teaching of its instructors, and rightfully
so. The problem lies in the determination of what constitutes "excellent" teaching. There is
too much weight placed on student teaching evaluations and quantitative scores, which
results in "teaching evaluation management." Classes are designed to maximize individual
teaching evaluation scores, not student learning, nor student success after graduation.
Certain college deans protect probationary faculty from teaching courses that are both labor
intensive and challenging to teach, while other deans have punished probationary faculty
for taking on difficult teaching assignments. For example, if the University wants to support
GWAR courses, it seriously consider its policy regarding probationary faculty teaching
GWAR courses. When it comes to teaching, context matters. The focus on quantitative
scores do not take into account factors outside instructor's control, such as furlough year,
student frustrations, and changing student demographics and expectations due to the
economic crisis since 2008.
I think teaching is incredibly important to the university's mission, but I do not think the
university at present encourages or recognizes high quality teaching. With the incredible
reliance on teaching evals as a measure of teaching effectiveness, and an over-emphasis on
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research over teaching, we have our priorities wrong. Teaching should be the most
important item in HRTP matters, not research/professional activities.
Teaching should be at the core of the university's mission, but should be recognized as
something that is done by faculty in and out of the traditional classroom setting. Mentoring
undergraduate and graduate students in independent research is teaching, and faculty
should get credit for providing that sort of teaching even though there are fewer students
than in large lecture classes. Teaching should continue to be an important part of the RTP
process; university faculty must teach and do a good job teaching. Teaching should not be
judged on how many classes, or about how "popular" the teachers are with the students.
Rather teachers that challenge students and help students change their misconceptions
about the world or form lasting new ideas are those that should be praised. Those teachers
may make students uncomfortable in the short term. We should not hire new faculty who
cannot teach and who have little experience in teaching. It seems reasonable that if a job
candidate must have a stellar research record when being hired, they should have some
significant teaching experience too.
Teaching is at the heart of this university's mission - providing quaility classroom
experiences and mentorship to help our first generation students and all others develop as
scholars and citizens involved in their communities. The university discourages quailty
teaching by weighing publishing too much especially at the level of the provost.
Departmental emphasis on teaching has been overridden by the provost and that has totally
distracted from the teaching emphasis in our college and university. Teaching should carry
at least half fo fthe weight in RTP and every faculty hired should have teaching experience
and be told the importance of teaching in their interviews.
I think teaching is fundamental to the University. Historically this University was founded
as a teachers' college and teaching was a priority for the faculty. For decades it served
many local students who were often first generation and desired a higher education. I
would say in the last ten years there has been a shift. Previously faculty shared office in the
spirit of cooperation and collaboration (and also as a space issue). Perhaps beginning in
this millennium hiring focused equal weight to teaching and research. While I believe
research is important I think it is often seen as more important than teaching. I hear many
of my tenure and tenure track faculty calculating their release time so they do not have to
be in the classroom. I think the University should more carefully consider the importance of
teaching--I also think there should be a mandate from the administration to make
Departments offer classes M-F and throughout the day. Many faculty cluster their classes in
the late afternoon and evening--for their convenience not for the students. This to me is
another indication of the dismissive role some faculty have for teaching.
Given our teaching load, it seems fitting that teaching should carry as much weight as it
does in the RTP process. Teaching at SF State necessarily involves engaging with diverse
student populations and evolving a teaching philosophy that works for mature students,
working students with scheduling challenges, students who differ vastly in their skill sets
and academic training. This should matter a great deal to a hiring committee selecting
candidates who can are prepared to meet the challenges of teaching our student body and
teaching a much higher course load than several other schools.
Teaching is very important to the university and its mission. I'm not aware of how the
university recognizes teaching outside of the Sarlo awards. If the university is going to
maintain a three tier RTP concept in terms of teaching, research, and service then teaching
should be weighted equally. The point should be to encourage the development of faculty
who embrace all of those aspects.
In my opinion teaching is EXTREMELY important at SFSU and should be the number one
priority for the universities mission, for instructor recognition, hiring, and evaluation.
It's the primary mission. Colleagues respect good teaching. Should be primary in RTP and
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hiring.
Teaching is extraordinarily important. The key to success here is the encouragement of the
cultural norm that great teaching takes place in our departments and colleges across the
university. We need excellent scholars who are also excellent teachers, and the RTP and
hiring processes should reflect that.
Teaching is an incredibly important component of the University's mission. We need to hire
those that can be effective teachers. But too much focus on teaching can render us into high
school teachers. Teaching must be balanced by research or other creative activity.
Teaching should not be any more than 50% of the working load.
Teaching is central and primary to the university's mission both at undergraduate and at
master's levels. The university offers some support to encourage high quality teaching
through offices dedicated to helping faculty develop and deliver courses. While there is also
some financial support for course development, the common opinion is that it is difficult to
secure. The lack of adequate financial support for graduate student TAs is one of the
fundamental problems facing the university. Many departments only use graduate student
support by offering credits; this is not a good solution. Until there is a way to teach the many
large classes (120 and more students) in a more hands-one way (discussion sections
thought the use of paid TAs), then much teaching will remain at a more superficial level
than it should be.
In my opinion, teaching is central to the university's mission. Since teaching and research
fuel each other, and the two interact dynamically toward a productive campus, I should
think that both ought to be of equal importance. The university ought to encourage and
recognize high quality teaching by working vigorously and diligently to replenish the
severely depleted resources for teaching support--these have dwindled and suffered
profoundly during the many, many years of budget cuts.
Teaching is fundamental to the University's mission. People should encourage and
recognize high quality teaching by raising salaries to all faculty and by encouraging sharing
best practices, collaboration, etc. in not evaluative settings. As a lecturer, I know my
teaching evaluations from students are crucial to being retained.
Teaching is our prime mission and should remain as such. Yet the university no longer
seems to value it. We don't celebrate it, we don't assist new or old faculty to teach better or
learn strategies to deal with teaching challenges (other than AT). There really is no Center
for Faculty Teaching.. one staff member in a cubicle does not a center make. We have
increased class sizes, limited TAs, limited resources; so faculty have had to accommodate by
limiting papers, making multiple choice exams, less time one on one with students, because
the focus has shifted to research. Teaching is what we do best and what most came here to
do, let's not try to be a research 1 institution when we don't have the support for faculty to
do research at that level without minimizing teaching, which I believe is our mission. It
should be critical in RTP, but in reality it isn't. Each new hire should be rated for teaching
potential instead of research potential, and in my college they aren't.
Focus on teaching is one of the things that makes SFSU unique. It should continue to carry
significant weight in RTP decisions and hiring. At the same time, we should recognize that
without professional growth, teachers can languish or lag behind in innovation. Teaching
should never eclipse professional growth activities---such as research or creative works---in
RTP evaluations.
Teaching should be considered an extremely important part of the university's mission, and
it should recognize this fact in the RTP process. Evidence of good teaching should also be
required in the hiring process.
The original mission of this University was to prepare future teachers, and that meant
preparing them well in undergraduate subject matter courses through good teaching as a
basis for any teacher preparation through education courses. Historically, teaching has
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been a central focus of this university, and throughout the last century SFSU enjoyed a
reputation in the region (I have lived in the Bay Area for most of my life) as the university of
choice for students who wanted to work with professors who cared about teaching. This
was still true when I came here in 2000, but the fact that you are asking this question
represents a disturbing trend here of a "wanna be R-I" institution. Clearly I believe
teaching should be clear requirement in hiring and the most important factor in RTP, as it
was when i was hired. That does not mean that research should not also be a clear
requirement and important in the RTP, but it should not be given precedence, nor should it
be allowed to crowd out teaching and erode good teaching practice, as seems to have been
happening over the past ten years.
In our college (science), I can't help but feel our Dean places WAY more emphasis on
teaching vs research (i.e, and I quote - we need to hire research superstars). Our primary
mission should be teaching. Period.
Why would someone be hired to teach who does not want to teach? There are plenty of
published academics who can do both. Stick with those educators.
Teaching remains very important to the mission. The university does not do enough to
encourage and recognize high quality teaching. Teaching should carry more weight than it
currently does in RTP, which has shifted more and more in the direction of publication in
the last decade or more. Teaching should surely matter a great deal in hiring, though it is
difficult to measure.
This institution was founded on the basis of excellence in teaching. We are not a research
institution nor should we try to be given our present financial conditions and realities. The
university simply does not furnish the proper conditions to promote research or support
tenure track/tenured faculty to publish vigorously and a typical 3 - 3 load simply does not
allow most faculty members to even be able to keep up with developments in their
profession. Teaching should remain central to RTP process and continue to be highly
valued. If we want to move towards being a research institution, then we should advocate
for the resources to support such an institution.
Teaching should be broadly defined to include graduate and undergraduate research
mentoring as well as classroom teaching. Teaching matters in hiring -- if we only hire great
researchers we will not necessarily get good teachers. However, active research programs
that bring in grant funding can help to support students and bring current issues in our
fields to our students; hence, it is important that we hire faculty with both strong research
programs and experience and enthusiasm for teaching.
Teaching is important, but it is hard to evaluate and it is especially hard to compare faculty
members. Every class is different. Some are easier to teach, some are fun, some are
difficult, some are large, some small, some are meant to be introductory, some are meant to
be intense and thoughtful. Evaluation needs a lot of scrutiny and usually it gets very little
scrutiny.
It often appears as though the university values publication and tenure over high quality
teaching. Lecturers who concentrate on teaching methods and success in the classroom are
not recognized for their skills or dedication and are treated like second class citizens, both
through insufficient compensation and a lack of security. Often, lecturers do not know if
they will be teaching a particular class until augments to budgets materialize weeks before
the beginning of the semester. There needs to be some way to recognize excellent teaching
by lecturers. In addition, the university should provide workshops in teaching techniques,
consultation with students who are experiencing stress, and how to best deal with students
with learning disabilities.
Very important. SFSU "was" known as THE teaching college in years past. It would be
helpful if course instructors have some experience in teaching, regardless of the age group.
Teaching is more than having the ability to conduct research.
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Overall, I think we do pretty well here, all things considered. Two issues: I fear the campus,
and perhaps the CSU in general, has drifted from a 'teaching first' place. The current
obsession with admin who favor Research over other activities (as reflected in RTP denials
and the like) I believe negitively affects teaching, since TT faculty tend to focus on what is
likely to cause them the most trouble when evaluated. Additionally, overemphasis on
Student evals is problematic, as it really should just be one measure of teaching, perhaps not
even a major one, but it is easy to count and tally, and while tending to be a popularity
contest for many students, it can present a distorted picture of a teacher's overall
effectiveness. Hiring should take teaching into regard, but it is often difficult when hiring
right out of grad school, as actual teaching practice is apt to be limited. This is one of the
times when I think the tenure process is a good idea, as five years is sufficient to figure out if
someone can become a good teacher. A better question for prospective hires is noting that
we are, in fact, a teaching (comprehensive) university, not a research one, no matter what
the hiring committee may indicate, and that if you want a position here, your students need
to be your focus, front and center. I have also encountered increasing reports (anecdotal
but from reliable sources) of profs who end up giving their students the short end of the
stick in some arenas (for example, refuising to write letters of reference or putting a 'cap' on
these. Some of this may be the result of workloand or too many students in large classes, but
is worrisome nonetheless.)
It seems to me that teaching is central to the university's mission, but it's losing ground to
research in many ways. The reduction in teaching load from 4/4 to 3/3 was accompanied
by a stronger emphasis on scholarly production, but that reducation could also be justified
as an opportunity to improve teaching, which many faculty have taken it to be. To the
extent that it does represent an emphasis on increasing scholarly productivity, it would
make great sense to move the university in the direction of Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning (SoTL), which would have the benefit of improving teaching and creating a
scholarly discussion of teaching theory and practice around the campus.
I would think that teaching should be very important to an institution of higher learning. I
don't know about the University as a whole but I know Dr. Kim, chair of the Kinesiology
Dept., supports and encourages high quality teaching and takes her valuable time to actually
sit in on some of our classes so that she can give us feedback and encouragement. I am not
positive what RTP stands for but I suspect it has something to do with teacher evaluation by
the students so I am going to phrase my response along those lines. I do believe that teacher
evaluations are important and a good tool for teachers. Take them, read them, and then self
examine; whether the evaluation is positive or negative, look at it and see what truth you
find within and most importantly, be totally honest with yourself. I am sure that there are
students who believe that if they give the teacher a good evaluation that this might
positively impact their grade and likewise some students who have been problematic
during the semester and have been reprimanded, feel that they can get some retribution by
giving a bad evaluation. I think the overall tone of the evaluations is more important than
any one singe evaluation. Teaching should be very important in hiring! That being said,
teaching is not what we do, it is what we are. Peace.
I think teaching is central to the university's mission. I'm not sure how the university
encourages and recognizes high quality teaching. I'm not sure what "RTP" is. Teaching
should play a key role in hiring, but not necessarily the only criteria.
Teaching should be central to the University's mission. I am concerned that slowly there has
been a move to give greater recognition and importance to research, which is fine, but that
with it has come decreased recognition for teaching quality, and much less concern for
teaching quality in hiring decisions. Hiring seems to now be overwhelmingly driven by
research which is not good for maintaining a culture where teaching quality is viewed as
important and is recognized and rewarded.
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Teaching is critically important to the mission of SFSU. The university encourages high
quality teaching by having all RTP decisions depend on it for at least a third of the decision,
along with scholarship and sevice. This seems appropriate, although the measure for high
quality teaching is not particularly well-supported when the university bases its decisions
primarily on student instructor evaluations.
Teaching is of central importance. It should be seen as critical and central to the university's
mission as it always was.
I think teaching needs to continue to be the primary mission of all CSU campuses, as it has
traditionally been. As such, I think it should carry primary weight in hiring and RRT
decisions. Also, as a member of the GCOE, I wish graduate teaching were recognized as
equally important to undergraduate teaching.
Teaching is highly important to the university's mission. It is the university's first step to
reach out to our diverse student population. High quality teaching should be rewarded and
recognized in the RTP process.
Teaching should be the number one goal of our institution. It's the reason The University
exists. Nothing should be as important as providing our students with the highest quality
education possible in a culturally diverse and intellectually stimulating environment.
How important is teaching to the university's mission? Critically important How does the
university encourage and recognize high quality teaching? Previously through CTFD, which
needs full restoration. How much weight does/should teaching carry in RTP? 30-40%,
though we need a more nuanced view of teaching performance than is provided by the
numerical scores on How much does/should teaching matter in hiring?
Teaching ability should account for 30-40% of a faculty member's performance. However,
teaching evaluation requires multiple forms of input, and currently the university does not
provide sufficient support for multi-faceted approaches to monitor and improve teaching. A
faculty member can receive good evaluations from students, yet the students have not
grasped the necessary concepts. Teacher evaluation is a challenge at all levels of education,
from kindergarten to university. The university should develop innovative approaches to
assess teaching capabilities.
Teaching and research are the two main reasons why universities exist. Both should count
in RTP and hiring. However, the size and number of classes at SFSU leaves little room to
focus on anything else other than teaching, at least if one wants to do it (or both) well. I
don't think SFSU recognizes high quality teaching. One would first need a discussion of what
"high quality" means. The implementation of technology is often (mis)taken as a sign of
quality.
Teaching is highly important. The university should use peer reviews as well as student
evaluations; they should also rely on the chair's assessment of faculty teaching
loads/innovation/strengths. Teaching should carry 1/3 weight in RTP.
Teaching is central to the mission of the university. The university recognizes teaching in
part through the RTP process and, in a token way, through occasional awards. I would like
to see teaching continue to be the FIRST category considered in the RTP process, and I
would like to see it weighted somewhat more than the other two categories. It would also
be nice to receive financial remuneration for teaching. In my department, teaching is a part
of the hiring proces that comes only second to the area of the field in which a new hire is
sought.
Teaching has become less and less significant in the 20 years I've been here. I think it
should be more important than scholarship or service in RTP. It is less important than
scholarship (and service doesn't really matter). Given the erosion of working conditions at
the university (larger classes, less support for lecturers, more administrative layers, salaries
not keeping up with the cost of living), I don't think that teaching is as much a priority and I
think that faculty who teach are increasingly devalued.
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Teaching and professional development of our students is the central mission of SFSU, as it
should be. The faculty do both research and teaching, but teaching should be tops. We
don't recognize outstanding teaching enough at SFSU. I am only aware of one annual award
for outstanding teaching here, which is far too few for a faculty of our size. Both research
and teaching should remain requirements for RTP, but teaching should be weighted more
heavily.
The answer to this question was a no-brainer for many devoted SFSU citizens - SFSU was
first named SF State Terachers College in 1921. Faculty and students before us have
established this great people's university* as one of the best UG and MS-serving institutes.
*(93.9% student population are California residents). Teaching shall remains a top
priority for university's mission, faculty hire and the RTP process. Unfortunately, the
university has not encouraged enough recognitions/rewards to recognize teaching
excellence in our faculty.
I do think teaching is critically important to the university's mission. However, I think that
there has been a slow shift to emphasize research and scholarly activity on an equal, or
perhaps even more important, level. I am the chair of the RTP committee in my department,
and our Dean without question considers research to be as important as teaching. Also,
after being "encouraged" to revise our RTP criteria, the Dean of Faculty Affairs and Provost
refused to approve it until we added language to give weight to grant-seeking activity.
Regarding hiring, teaching should absolutely matter. Our department requires all
prospective faculty to teach a class during the on-campus interview. The best answer to
your question is provided by the CSU mission statement which, presumably, we aim to
follow as a CSU campus. http://www.calstate.edu/PA/info/mission.shtml
One of the missions of the CSU is to provide access to an excellent education, and one of the
ways to engage students is through qualtiy and prepared faculty. Currently faculty are rated
and ranked by the scores and comments students provide at the end of each course they are
enrolled in, through faculty evaluations. Too much weight is given to these scores, as facutly
are expected to attain a score of 1.0-1.99 on a scale of 1.0 - 5.0. Teaching matters in hiring if
faculty are ranked and rated on this skill. However, what if those who teach well, teach
more; those who research well, research more, and each are ranked favorably for the skills
and attributes they bring to our University?
I do not feel teaching is considered at all when evaluating RTP files. After a faculty member
is promoted to full, there is zero incentive from the University to improve teaching.
Therefore, when promoting faculty, teaching should be given the most weight. Once we
promote someone who really only cares about research, we will never be able motivate that
faculty member to improve their teaching.
Teaching should absolutely matter in hiring. There should be more support for new
technologies in teaching and developing new courses, though training, workshops, and
TIME (i.e. course releases).
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
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2. 2. Support for Teaching.Here are some questions to consider: What
resources currently exist at SFSU to encourage and sustain high quality
teaching? What kinds of resources would you need to improve your
teaching? (Facilities, technology, faculty development, etc.)
Text Response
Bring back STFD
I don't know of any. Time is a key resource. Also feedback and collaboration from other
faculty.
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xxxxxxx
I think that AT does a pretty good job. iLearn is very useful, and it appears there's additional
support for people looking to pre-record lecture segments (for, say "flipping the
classroom") which I will likely try in the future. It would be nice to have some support to
hire TAs to assist with some of the grading, but I recognize that that's a question of limited
resources. Honestly, I think the professors who seek help can find it and the minority who
just whine would whine about their silver platter not being gold. I recall in the Academic
Senate that someone bemoaned not having his/her own office. Who the heck in Internetsavvy San Francisco needs to have a private office to get work done?! Let's use our
resources more effectively rather than create overhead costs that don't directly add to the
student learning experience.
Faculty resources to support teaching are very limited. the CTFD needs a new director. The
current director has never taught and treats faculty like children. A new director who
comes from faculty needs to take over that position, and the center needs to be resourced
and revitalized. There is a great need for the center, but right now it's dysfunctional.
High quality teaching is an individual endevor. It is not a matter of departmental concern
other than in the student evaluations. Department chairs hate to hear the dreaded student
complaint of "bad teacher" ther eis no remedie. Remedie is not punishment! Remedie is not
negative - tylonal is a remedie for fever. The biggest and best way to improve teaching is
through faculty development. At this time I get no money to travel to better my teaching; I
get money to travel to present my research.
Better technology, especially systems that allow to create a record of the classroom activity
and presenations: demos, lectures etc. For example: wireless mic packs, better VGA
switches to quickly move between different sources: computer, light table (elmo visualizer),
etc.
All of the above would be welcome. What exists needs also to be better advertised. I may be
a good idea to grant time off ( without sabbatical competition) to update teaching materials
and syllabi, develop new courses etc.
The resources that currently exist are fragmented and not well recognized or used. The
center for effective teaching isn't. The most effective support comes from academic
technology who combine solving problems in existing situations with suggestions of how to
enhance the student esperience. Quite frankly, the biggest barrier to teaching
improvement is faculty who use the cover of academic freedom to create faculty-friendly
classes On a personal note, having a testing center where I could send students for
remediation or for asynchronous testing could help spend more class time building skills
and less class time assessing progress.
The most important thing is smaller class sizes. Without an opportunity to interact with
students, get to know them well, and provide frequent feedback on their performance, we
might as well simply record our lectures and put them online. Teaching credit should also
be given for supervision of independent research because such supervision leads to some of
the most important and enduring learning that students experience.
testing
The Academic Technology Center resources are incredible and quite beneficial in
addressing q. 3 re curriculum.
Briefly put, I would need for my time and energy to be valued enough (that is, compensated)
for me to spend more time on campus, with more opportunity for communicating with
colleagues and students. As it is, I just have to be in and out and on to the next underpaid
task. Not your fault, not my fault, just how it is, but teaching quality suffers.
The faculty development office in the Administration building, the seminars through
Academic Technology, the beginning of the semester faculty retreats (college and
department level).
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There should be resources at the level of every department/program. Centralizing this role
has failed. Resources should include mentoring, discussion groups, feedback meetings, info
sharing on methods. Technology use training should be one-on-one.
Most of our current resources appear focused on encouraging online course development
and teaching, and yet very few resources are dedicated to evaluating the effectiveness of
that online teaching. The administration has encouraged this trend arguing that it's
convenient for students and it's cheaper than building proper infrastructure like smart
classrooms, seminar rooms (for graduate courses) and transit access for students to get to
the University. We need new classroom and graduate seminar spaces.
There is too much pressure, esp recently, for faculty to produce quantifiable research, which
makes dedicating time and energy to teaching excellence more difficult. Teaching could be
better supported if the university reduced class sizes or provided consistent monetary
support to hire 2 GTAs per very 100 students (for classes with enrollment held at 100 or
more). No class that is too big (100 is too big), no matter how excellent the instructor, or
how well he/she adapts to the large class, can produce the same kind of excellence in
teaching as a smaller class of half the size. There is just no way to provide individualized
mentoring and teaching when instructors carry so many students. Reduce the number of
large classes and ensure that NO class on campus enrolls more than 60-70. It requires
offering more sections of some courses, but this is the most effective way teaching
excellence can be supported institutionally.
Not much. iLearn is the only one I can think of. It would be great to have TAs - that way
given how much already we teach, we can at least have a TA to do more cumbersome work
(entering grades etc.) so that we can focus more on quality of our teaching and be able to do
research a little bit.
To maintain high quality teaching we need to make sure that the resources are available to
support good course instruction. In some cases this means hiring GAs to help with grading
(the demands for writing aspects in courses is increasing). In other cases it means providing
more up to date resources to support innovative classroom instruction (instrumentation,
computers, supplies). Many innovative classroom instruction needs better classroom
design. The best classrooms would have modular tables and chairs where students could
work in groups. Many faculty are trained in traditional lecture style of teaching. This is not
an affective teaching strategy and they need to be trained to use more student-centered
pedagogy. However, what is their incentive to do this? Where are the resources for this?
Barely any--Center for Teaching... has been stripped to hire many AVPs who pad the
administration and "seal in" top admins, making them less accountable to faculty or
students and the core missions of the university. It is a national trend, by the way.
Weak support
I have been at SFSU for 12 years and have been a chair for this entire time. I do not believe
the question is what resources do we have etc..... The problem is how do we get those
faculty members that need I to take advantage of these resources. Once tenured it is very
difficult to get PROBLEMATIC faculty to engage in resources to improve their teaching,
scholarship, and service, especially teaching. Department chairs have no real authority
other than to identify weak faculty or faculty that are not reflective of what we consider the
professoriate. We can have all kinds of services/recourses.... But HOW DO YOU GET THE
FACULTY MEMBER TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM?
Some of the new mentoring and workshop activities are promising. Providing wellfunctioning smart classrooms that allow multiple modes of instruction as well as the ability
for hands-on, interactive, and group work, is essential. The biggest challenge is combining
the need for LLH with these modes -- classes that need break-out group work are not served
well in the current LLHs. Limited funding for GTAs is a serious barrier to providing highquality classes supporting large numbers of students. We should be better at this than the
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UCs, but we are hampered by lack of funding for GTAs. And this also limits our ability to
attract good graduate students, which can get more GTA funding at research-one
universities.
One tech item comes to mind. Newer laptops and tablets have HDMI video out, which is not
very compatible with the older VGA/HD15A format/plug that is the only typical connector
to overhead projectors in most classrooms. It would be easier to show slides and video if
we had HDMI connectors.
restore the office of faculty development, and institute a system of on-going re-training for
classroom teaching practices.
Truly, beyond the feedback we get from our students, the support we receive from our
Department Head is the real support we get. Improvements in facilities (starting with
restrooms and water fountains and working up) would certainly make us feel better about
the work environment. A discretionary materials/supplies budget and a realistic
departmental equipment/technology budget would be helpful. However, recognition from
my Department Head and students is what keeps me coming back.
There are very few tangible resources. Things essential to encourage and maintain excellent
teaching include: more space to work (student resource rooms, faculty not sharing offices
etc), manageable class sizes, sufficient faculty/lectures to offer more than a bare bones
curriculum. These kinds of improvements provide faculty increased ability to teach their
specialties/interests, provide a more positive and morale-supporting work environment,
and indicates respect both for students and faculty. The same could be said for staff - better
conditions for staff in turn supports faculty and students. More support for faculty
development would also improve teaching, and the student experience. Travel support and
course releases are essential, as being an effective teacher relies on being up to date and
active in one's field.
Resources are there but poorly used. It would be great if AT and CTFD worked together to
develop events, courses and resources. They could be more pro active and visible.
There are resources-- the CET, for example-- but inadequate time and incentives for faculty
to use them. The course load and volume of students demand time triage, especially with
the university's recently increased (and misguided) emphasis on volume of publication for
tenure and promotion. Technology itself solves nothing, in fact it often tends to multiply
our workload in unproductive ways. I already use iLearn, Turnitin, PowerPoint visuals in
class, and much too much of my time is consumed by student and administrative e-mail.
What I would need to support my teaching would be: one course less per semester for a
year and available tech staff to help me brainstorm more interesting ways to use the
available technology. More intellectual opportunities for the faculty would help a lot too:
more speakers, time/recognition for taking online courses in my field. I would like to take a
Peking University EdX course in Mandarin on Chinese architecture, for example, which
would be a great language booster that would strengthen my courses on China, but I simply
don't have time.
There are not enough resources currently devoted to encouraging and sustaining high
quality teaching. In addition to more teaching awards, we should find ways to provide
"release time" for our best teachers that are looking to do such things as: 1) develop new
courses and curricular tracks; 2) develop, test and use new instructional technologies; and
3) write textbooks and online course materials that they share with colleagues.
DIVA and iLearn provide paths to innovative ways to deliver course content and to evaluate
learning. Smart classrooms allow varied in-class activities, as do flexible classroom
furnishings. Limiting GWAR classes to 25 students makes it possible to prepare students to
write in the discipline. The number of IT people who actually understand and can
communicate the changes and quirks in DIVA and iLearn is limited. Those people should be
rewarded, and more IT staffers should know and be able to share that information when
16
faculty ask for guidance. Classrooms need to keep up with technology and be as flexible as
possible (which seems more feasible that trying to assign classrooms based on varied
teaching styles). Faculty should have a space to share teaching-related research from
across the campus. Since we are teaching a similar (if not the same) population what
colleagues learn is likely to resonate with all of us.
We need more support for uses of technology. For example, I tried to use Qualtrics for
surveys with a large class and learned that it is limited to minimal use. It could be a great
tool and it fails. Also iLearn has become worse rather than better. The quiz function is much
poorer than it used to be and you can no longer use linked files. This is ridiculous.
Furthermore, many of the classrooms do not support high end AV. A modern university
should have a robust, flexible online classroom support system and the classrooms should
all have high end, reliable projectors. They should be usable by people with multiple kinds
of tablet and laptop connectors. They should also include decent sound systems.
Not very much. However, academic technology is good, but hard to get solid help during the
semester since they are under staffed.
There are no resources to encourage and sustain high quality teaching as long as RTP
remains pegged to administrative capriciousness. Simply, if one knows that the Provost can
override exceptional evaluations of teaching, why bother? The metric in play now appears
to be only at the level of quantifiable research. Humanists who don't work with this kind of
data are just simply out of luck.
I do not see many resources. The cafe used to have some teaching resources, but those seem
to be less present. I would like to see more recognition for excellent teaching and perhaps
peer groups centered around pedagogical approaches.
Less technology would probably lead to better teaching. Give profs incentives to go sit in
each other's classes and give constructive feedback to each other. We do not do that often
enough.
As a lecturer, I would like more support from faculty in the form of teaching resources and
stability. Lecturers in our department can not depend on consistent employment from one
semester to the next. This disjointed teaching hurts the students.
The academic technology group is excellent. They do excellent programs and provide very
useful support, especially for integrating technology into the teaching and learning process.
What is missing is any kind of established structures to encourage peer-to-peer support
among professors.
Solid time should be allocated (compensated or released) for faculty development with
respect to teaching.
I would appreciate a document camera workshop a few days before classes begin.
Faculty teaching development is important both for Long time faculty as well as for new
faculty
The Center for Teaching and Learning has been reduced to only one staff member and
cannot be considered to be a factor one way or the other. The center of teaching is the
classroom itself, and quality in that area is guaranteed by the relationship of the instructor
and student. If an instructor is failing, the word comes to the chair and other faculty by way
of the students. At the end of the semester, student evaluations are taken very seriously.
The recent decision to move student evaluations online was a mistake. It guarantees that
only a third of the class will respond. When the instructor hands out the evaluation to the
class, however, everyone present responds. It's part of the class requirement to do so.
We can encourage good teaching through a robust CTFD that explores and experiments
with different pedagogical approaches. Most importantly, we need to continue to focus on
methods that work with first generation college students in California. This is where the
institution makes the greatest impact on both individuals and the future of the state. We
need to challenge departments to reexamine curricula to determine if which material can be
17
taught successfully in large course sections completmented by small classes for other
material. This may require a thorough restructuring of courses.
It is important to recognize that it is extremely difficult to teach large classes effectively.
The kind of resource that I would need to improve my teaching is smaller class sizes. It is
extremely frustrating to see my students paying higher and higher fees while I see my class
sizes rising. It is impossible to give students the individualized attention they deserve when
you are teaching 75-80 students in a class. What resource do I need to improve my
teaching? HIRE MORE FACULTY!
There needs to be more consistent support for teaching. There needs to be clearer
guidelines: 1.6 in one college is acceptable teaching, while in another is is deemed worthy of
great concern. Faculty need time and support to develop new courses and/or redesign
curriculum--perhaps offering faculty course releases to redesign curriculum. It is difficult
for faculty to invest time in their iLearn modules when they are going to disappear after 2-3
years as archiving is difficult and far from ideal. Most importantly, scholarship on teaching
and learning needs to be fully recognized and valued if SFSU expects faculty to do research
and publish on their teaching.
Very little. If you want a quantitative measure of how little the university values teaching,
just look at the discrepancy in staffing in the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development
as compared to ORSP. The teaching center has just one employee, while the research office
has a dozen or so. If the university truly values teaching it will greatly expand the CTFD
and get someone in there who truly can inspire and support faculty teaching.
The amount of funding provided for providing practical, hands on learning experiences is
absolutely shameful. I recognize that having laboratory courses is expensive, or that paying
faculty or graduate students to teach discussion groups may not be financially beneficial for
the university, but students need more opportunities to practice their knowledge from
larger lecture classes, and to apply their knowledge to real-world situations in laboratory
classes. Minimally, we need funds to provide graduate student teaching assistants a living
wage and tuition when they are teaching our classes. We need funds to purchase functional
laboratory materials enough for students to use them and not just observe them being used.
We need funds to provide adequate research materials for every laboratory class to
function. Additionally, faculty need time to perfect their teaching. Teaching a full load
during the academic term is like an endurance exercise - surviving it is the main goal. The
summer is when faculty need to get caught up on scholarly activity, and there is little time
for faculty to spend reflecting on courses and revising them significantly, unless those
faculty do not actively engage in scholarly activities. Bottom line: If SFSU is looking for
improvements in teaching, give faculty MUCH more release time from their teaching that is
specifically intended for them to spend working on their courses.
No resources exist that I am aware of that encourage high quality teaching. The CTFD has
been defunded to the point of embarassment for our university. Teaching mentorships
should exist and be highligthed in each college and grants for training and development of
teaching skills for every facutly member at the point of hire.
We need smart classrooms. Every classroom should be equipped with a computer, internet
access, a projector and coursestream technology. Also there should be ports for students to
charge computers and cell phones.
The CTFD offers some resources that were valuable when I was a recent hire. Increasingly
though, it seems like these resources aren't of much use to me. I wish there was more
support in ways one needs it the most: time. If there were professional development
opportunities or financial support for release time for course planning and curriculum
development, I'd find myself more likely to use some of the CTFD's resources.
I am not aware of any resources on campus to encourage and sustain teaching outside of the
CTFD which appears to be underfunded and of problematic status.
18
Paid teaching assistants would be great for more student contact in large lectures. Along
with that, mandatory discussion sections lead by TAs would significantly improve student
achievement -think UC system. Reliable and fast Wifi connections in ALL instruction rooms
in ALL buildings. I use lots of multimedia content in lecture and the poor wifi connection has
hindered delivery on many occasions.
There's an office whose name I can't recall to encourage it. I rarely have time to take
advantage of its offerings. My teaching would be improved by having break-out rooms so
classes larger than 20 could split into groups occasionally without staying in the same room
where it's too noisy and in some cases (e.g., HUM 133, which in other ways too is horrible
for teaching) where the chairs are in fixed positions, so the students can't face each other.
I'd love to team-teach as I did in the NEXA program, where the depts. were not penalized
and where you got one semester assigned time to prep. I have several cool ideas for teamtaught, interdisciplinary courses. I'd love to meet more of my colleagues, especially now
that LCA is the result of merging so many depts. A small amount of money for some
social/intellectual events would help a lot. I wish classes were small enough for me to
meet at least once with each student to discuss each paper. One-on-one is invaluable.
The single biggest obstacle to improved teaching is having too many students. A seminar
should be 15 students, not 25, if the students are to receive the attention and detailed
guidance that a seminar can and should provide. Large lecture courses should have more
and better trained graders and assistants to provide feedback. And an overload of MA
students working on exams and theses means that they don't get the one-on-one attention
that they deserve. Part of the solution is more full-time faculty and more class offerings.
Online Academic Technology is helpful. As to what's needed, teaching labs in Chemistry &
Biochemistry are in shambles. We are struggling to provide students with lab benches with
functioning cabinet doors and locks. We need a new building.
See answer to (1) above, and not need for support for graduate TAs. In addition, the
support for in-class technology is excellent. The existing guidelines for Peer Review of
Instructor's teaching should be a good way for all individuals to receive helpful (and
critical) comment on methods and abilities. Often, however, the process is poorly
administered or the comments are mundane and provide few targets for improvement.
Hiring of lecturers is hampered by the CBA, and Chairs can be trapped into re-hiring
mediocre lectures.
Although the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching is valuable, at present, the faculty is
severely overwhelmed with paperwork, often to the point where the valuable technological
training is underutilized. What is essential at present is to replenish depleted funds for
departmental and college staff, so that valuable teaching time is not wasted on work that
used to be handled by college and departmental staff. Even more important, release time
ought to be provided once again--to support program facilitators; track supervisors;
coordinators and other crucial functions. At present, in the liberal arts, these functions have
no support whatsoever, and depend on the philanthropic good will of already overworked
faculty. Finally, release time ought to be reinstated for graduate culminating experience
directorships. Since chairing a master's thesis is analogous in time between the liberal arts
and the sciences, it is perceived as unfair (and most certainly non-productive) to provide
support only in the sciences.
More paid time for lecturers to share best practices, participate in professional
development, and collaborate on classroom strategies.
Current resources: The good thing is AT, it is the place to learn new technologies, their
summer institutes are great, but we need more. Their helpdesk is far superior to IT when it
comes to Ilearn and other technologies, it is one of the few things that is run right at SFSU,
don't mess with it; support it and learn from it. That's about it. I occasionally look to SEPAL
in COSE for ideas as well, but that is not their mission. CTFD is a joke when it comes to
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teaching, in the past there was a newsletter, workshops, grants, etc. all is gone now.
Needed resources: 1) Let's start with TAs, graduate students to help faculty do grading in
their classes, help with prep in labs and activities. This would free up some faculty time to
meet with students, and help them be more innovative with small groups within larger
classes and try new teaching techniques. It would also provide some support for our grad
students. 2) How about a retreat that focuses on teaching, and additional workshops on
teaching techniques, challenges, working with large classes, participatory learning, etc, 3)
Let's also make it easier to team teach a class and give faculty credit for doing so. 4) We
could also be more flexible in scheduling, MWF for 50 minutes is old school for so many of
us these days and stifles creativity and interaction. How about MW and TuTH schedules
leaving fridays open for field trips, on campus activities, community service or service
learning activities, special 1 unit courses, etc. 5) and lets dump the little chairs with tiny
desks, they are not conducive to interaction at all.
SFSU should provide an environment conducive to increasing the involvement of GTA
instructors. The university should encourage use of GTAs to supplement large lecture
courses by offering discussion sessions with students of introductory courses. This can be a
significant benefit to GTAs as well as undergraduates. No one is suggesting that GTAs
replace faculty; but in lecture courses without significant hands-on components, extra
discussion sessions with GTAs can play a crucial role in reinforcing subject matter.
I have not found the Center for the Improvement of Teaching to be very helpful. A few years
ago I contacted it to request a tutorial on PowerPoint and I was told that it couldn't be
arranged unless I brought with me a group of faculty members who also needed the same
thing.
The physical, technological, and professional development resources all exist. The resource
that is missing is TIME and along with that too few faculty to share the workload and
collaborate with. A workload of 4 classes per semester does not allow time to prepare, let
alone time for research, and the continuing demand to increase the number of students per
class similarly increases time spent, not to mention the dilution of quality of instruction.
Too much of our very good technical support services focus on "processing" more students
so we can better "handle" larger classes. This approach does not foster quality in teaching.
It's all about getting away with appearing to focus on teaching by learning how to maintain
appearances on the cheap.
SOPs for review of new faculty teaching, including REQUIRED review of tenure track
lectures, which is NOT the norm in our colllege.
Start by upgrading the classroom computers. They are outdated and hard to use.
Few substantive resources exist. More release time for co-teaching would be good. More
availability of sabbaticals.
As someone who directs a program and teaches both language and literature I can tell you
first hand that our institution, while highly valuing all of as faculty, is not in a position to
keep up with latest developments in the teaching of second languages with the "explosion"
of technological enhancements that are out there (e.g., such as those at language teaching
centers say at Brown University or the University of Texas to name a couple of well known
ones). We need more workshops and conferences here at SF State to expose our faculty to
such developments. I had hosted one such conference and invited faculty from foreign
languages and certainly saw the potential of such efforts. We live in a multicultural society
but our support for disseminating and supporting cultural literacy in these areas is not
where it needs to be.
We need more computer projectors in classrooms. I have taught a graduate seminar in a
laboratory every year I have been at SF State, and these rooms are set up with lab benches
and no projectors -- not conducive to discussions of papers and presentations of student
seminars. We need better sound-proofing of walls between classrooms. When I use active
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teaching the room gets loud, and this is sometimes objectionable to the instructor next door.
Good technology is very helpful. Convenient faculty development. Help with curriculum and
pedagogical development.
Here is a simple request - some use powerpoint, some use white/chalk board. There should
be a light switch in each classroom to dim the lights in front of the screen. I used the board
in rooms which have bulbs removed in the front of the room for ppt, so my lecture is in a
shadow and hard for students to see. Classroom lighting is much more important to me
than Ilearn (which I barely use at all) - diverting some technology money into fixing the
lighting problems would be greatly appreciated by me and my students.
The university should provide workshops in successful teaching techniques, technological
assistance with iLearn, and how to use the many resources available through the library,
media resources and archives.
Not sure of any resources within the department I work. However, it would be extremely
helpful to participate in job-alike discussions within and outside of the university; along
with the ability to participate in conferences/workshops to provide up-to-date information.
I suspect probably the best thing would just be more communication/interaction between
instructors. Whenever I talk to folks in other units, I am often impressed by what they are
doing, how they are experimenting, how they handle bigger classes etc (although this last
one gets me depressed too.) Obvious starting place is something resembling a university
club, but just more contact, formal and informal, is good. Hard to do with our commuter
campus and everyone busy, but likely would pay dividends. A more faculty friendly admin
would sure help too, but if I go one much longer I will start sounding like regime change in
the provost's office. Hopefully new prez will scope out the scene and things may improve.
The campus provides reasonable facilities for teaching, though the classrooms in which the
primary AV support are monitors on carts need to be updated. Displays on those monitors
are too small for most students to read. While more faculty development in teaching
would be welcome, it may be difficult to create sufficiently appealing professional
development for faculty without creating space outside of the regular semester and/or with
additional support (and RTP credit) for participation. A summer institute on teaching, for
which faculty are nominated and which lead to departmental faculty development
opportunities might provide a strong model for campus-wide faculty development.
What resources currently exist to encourage and sustain high quality teaching? One of the
most important resources that I see is the support of my department and the leadership
therein. I know that I can come and speak with the administrative staff on any subject
involving my classes and students specifically and the University in general. They are
always ready, willing and able to sit and talk and help in any way they can and believe me,
this is a great resource.
I'm not aware of any resources that exist at SFSU to encourage and sustain high quality
teaching other than the graduate course in Instructional Technology, which I found helpful.
The challenges I have in teaching ITEC 299 don't have to do with technology or faculty
development. I'd say my main challenges are 1) technology, namely the iLearn system,
which I continue to find clunky and difficult to use; I prefer Canvas LMS much more; and 2)
devoting the time needed to engage with students online and improve the quality of videos
and other materials.
Maybe more faculty development opportunities related to teaching - work shops and small
grants and course releases. I say maybe because we are so busy hard to know if the existing
resources are being well used.
Promotion decisions are made based on teaching quality, which certainly keeps it in the
forefront of thought. We have a faculty development group on campus that presents courses
and support for high quality teaching. Summer Institute supports teaching and the creative
use of technology in teaching. ORSP support of research indirectly supports high quality
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teaching.
Excellent resources, including iLearn. Some of the rooms (e.g., HSS 130) are too hot. The
temperature in such rooms needs to be adjusted so that the professor and students are
comfortable.
Need: equitable course load (GCOE still carries a 4 course load although university leaders
frequently assert that everyone has a 3 course load); release time for course development;
better technology infrastructure; policies that allow for teaching cross-department and
cross-college that are revenue neutral for departments (I am lucky to have a chair that
supports my cross-disciplinary work, but I know that it costs my department every time I
teach a class with a code other than my department's)
More up-to-date teaching facilities/technologies, for example document cameras, should be
available to professors.
We have made great strides in modernizing every classroom with wireless internet access,
video projectors and computers. We have online support for our teaching, via iLearn. To
improve on the teaching experience, it would be helpful to have 1) easier to understand
grading software on iLearn, 2) more collaboration with other schools, particularly
community colleges, 3) more guaranteed teaching and professional development
opportunities for GTAs.
Subject matter experts are not necessarily experts in teaching, modes of delivery or
technology. We must give faculty the support they need to develop and assess their classes
The poor facilities and technology at the university are severely detrimental to effective
teaching. There are very few classrooms where students can have access to computers;
audio-visual equipment often are missing, non-functional, or difficult to obtain. Space is
always lacking, and the classroom set-ups are not conducive to interaction among students
or between instructor and students. There needs to be significant investment in the
teaching infrastructure, instead of roadblocks, such as classrooms not being available (can
only get rooms of a certain size with a required number of students). There are no rooms
for small-group interactions and tutorials. Faculty development is pointless without the
necessary hardware.
Facilities and technology are key and currently hinder my teaching quite a bit. I have no
seminar classroom and when I teach seminars I am often put in rooms that do not dim or
that do not have projectors or a set up that makes sense for a seminar. Such spatial and
logistical things detract from my teaching to a surprising degree.
If the university wanted to save money, it might easily do away with the faculty
development center (forgot what it is called), as it has been almost useless since it opened,
and it certainly has been a drain on resources. I would like to see those resources put into
simple things like markers to write on the white boards in classrooms. (It really lowers
morale to find that a classroom is equipped with dry markers, such that it is not possible to
write on the board, or to carry around markers to be able to write on the board.) OR, even
better, it would be nice to have the electronic boards so prevalent in high school classrooms
these days. I'd also like to have a way to make text show up large enough for students to see
when I hook up a computer to an LCD projector. It would be helpful to renovate classrooms
like BH 226, a shallow, WIDE classroom for 80, where the instructor has to run back and
forth from the center of the room to the AV equipment located to his/her right. This is one
of the most poorly designed classrooms I have ever seen. The kind of faculty development
led by Mary Soliday (Dir. of WAC/WID) is useful, But she has to grovel for funds to set up
workshops and/or involve faculty in writing activities. I also like the kinds of workshops
Academic Technology has provided.
I would need smaller class sizes. Also, every new class seems to be more and more
challenged by writing and critical thinking. I would put a lot of resources in tutoring for
english learners and for students whose K-12 education was limited by the state's
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divestment from education. I think the investment of resources in tech is really a bit like
putting lipstick on a pig. I like tech and would like to build out the online components of my
teaching. But tech is no substitute for class time where people are prompted to think
independently, where they are expected to make arguments defended by science (not just
opinions), and where they learn to communicate clearly. Most students are not able to do
these things when they come here. We need to graduate students with these skills and
there is no app that'll do this.
CTFD has great workshops, but faculty don't have time to attend them. In my 10 years here,
I've been able to attend just 1 teaching workshop. It was great, but I wish I could do more.
We need more support for online teaching, particularly in developing video streaming. I
would love to offer more online courses, but we don't seem to have the technical capacity to
do so on a large scale. Also, let's get rid of our physical computer labs, in lieu of an
enhanced-capacity labspace. Today, there is no reason why computing should be placedbased (I'm responding to this survey from Starbucks), and our students are certainly used
to mobile computing. Physical labs are so 1990s, and it makes the university look like a
dinosaur.
Reserch classroom facilities that can support innovative inquiries and discussion-based
teaching modes (particularly in STEM education) are critical and missing. Technology
support (online course training, design and delivery) is so essential, however the university
has failed to retain high quality personels to support such critical areas. We need teaching
facility that can address current teaching needs, ongoing teaching training for all faculty
(summer-, winter institutes, workshops etc), and competent instructional technology
support teams.
I do think teaching is supported at SFSU. I think the main resources needed involve
technology. This includes campus-wide wi-fi infrastructure, smart classrooms, virtual
library access, iLearn, etc. I think SFSU does a good job in this regard, particularly
considering the resource limitations of a public university.
I have used and appreciated the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development for many
years and worked with them to develop and encourage teaching skills of myself and others.
Meg Gorzycki is now in an office of 1, and her resources are underused and it would appear
undervalued. Hence it appears that the University does not value the encouragement of
teaching skills for our faculty. We do however support technology usage, as the support for
ilearn-our teaching and learning management tool-has more bodies who do an wonderful
job. But, technology is as good as the teacher who who understands quality teaching and
how to teach his/her students.
I would need more time. I don't need workshops or money. Time. We all know how to
improve our courses. It simply just takes time. That is, I need to spend all my time on
research, so updating or improving my lectures will not happen. I am spending the next
three weeks on my break working on my research. I would love to spend this time updating
some of my lectures.
Most teaching innovations seem to happen because faculty initiate them. It is hard to take
advantage of campus workshops etc because our days are so packed. Perhaps more
support within departments?
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
92
3. 3. Curriculum.To what extent do our curricula and teaching prepare
students to act conscientiously in an increasingly globalizing and
technologically sophisticated world? Are there ways that we can strengthen
this preparation?
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Text Response
d
Our curricula reflect a globalized sense of knowledge. Issues of justice are prevalent. Our
curricula are not integrated with technology.
xxxxxx
We need to make sure students balance both vocational and traditional (for lack of better
word, liberal arts?) learning. We would be remiss in not giving them any of the former, but
we need to also be sure to keep the University aspect (which is related to the word
"universal") in mid I'd also advise that we step up our career counseling efforts. Most of
our students are not going to grad school or working for Daddy's Firm, so they do need to
have a tangible plan for how they plan to earn money after graduating.
Right now, the way in which these issues are addressed are ad hoc. It depends of the focus
of the program and the faculty. In order to adequately address these issues, we would need
an intentional focus on these areas. The new GE with the upper division overlays and
threaded courses might help.
We need more sponsored talks for the university community. A presedential speakers
symposia of outsiders and insiders. Thesymposia could even be featured TED talks with
commentary form our world reknown faculty. Speakers symposia, perhaps is too narrow.
There ismuch that could be included in this - dance, theater, music, olympics, skateboarding,
graphic novels, chefs, and on and on.
Teach students to code, as in "writing code", even if at the most basic level. That is the
proper way to know and control the tools, and not be controlled by them. The currect trend
to make technology "transparent", that is invisible has the negative effect that one cannot
customize the tools and is also unable to troubleshoot it when something goes wrong. Write
HTML, do not use dreamweaver. Use R, do not use Excel, etc.
I lie the new phrasing of the question! I think that the new GE certification with its
overlays does a good job identifying the courses that do just that.
I think we do a pretty good job what with the serevice learning institute and a strong study
abroad program. A good way to strengthen student preparation would be to require
significant real-world experience (internship, practicum, study abroad) in the samwe way
we require all students to have significant expereience in writing.
Incorporate the talents and expertise of the AT staff more directly into faculty workshops.
Train faculty more explicitly in using technology no matter which rooms they teach in.
We've got everything in place, but we are not demanding enough of students. They get away
with whining, cajoling, and manipulating for grades instead of actually having to think and
learn. For example, when I assign a reading, and two (maybe) out of forty students has read
it before class, I can't do my job. Students know that, and they know that there will really be
no penalty for not working because I can't reduce all of their grades enough, and they have
the leverage of assessments.
The answer to this question may be different depending on the major of the students.
Providing a solid liberal education and basic communication skills should prepare students
to explore this on their own. It shouldn't become a focused agenda item.
There should be a center we can go to when we need a guest speaker for example.
Everything is on the shoulders of the teacher otherwise. That center should have a database
which every faculty can easily access to.
This depends on the class. I believe many faculty infuse their curriculum with current
topical areas. However, this is not measured readily so it is probably hard to know. Perhaps
a survey could capture this?
See #2--with more support for excellent teaching and resources for those who need
mentoring. With rewards for innovation, not roadblocks and periods of quiescence for
submitting new and innovative courses.
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Students are prepared somewhat but not significantly. Yes.
I believe we do this in our teacher preparation program in Secondary Education. The
guidance from the CCTC California commission on teaching demands it from us.
TECHNOLOGY In teacher preparation of the 21st century teacher is critical. Our program at
state needs to reflect this and we need to lead the way. I have already started some efforts
with some major technology firms and many of my faculty have incorporated 21st learning
skills I to their course curriculum. We have a ways to go! But we are certainly aware of
global learning and it's relationship to teacher preparation at the secondary education level.
Globalization and technology is an increasing challenge for society and particularly for
universities, but universities are particularly challenged to deal with it. Keeping faculty upto-date and aware of trends is critical, yet we must avoid responding to any trends without
careful consideration of consequences. While universities are medieval in nature, there are
some consistent tools we have that still work -- peer review, for instance -- though we must
be aware of the potential for technology to compromise the security of our tools.
I teach courses that focus on globalization, practical political theory, and citizenship. I am
very happy that SFSU supports this theme, and I think it should continue. As for technology,
I think we should push students to be curious about what is coming up, and to look for
enduring changes in contrast to obsolescing novelties. Getting more knowledge-economy
work done while using less electricity is an important trend; distributing our computational
activities onto multiple devices and servers may be a lasting shift. The one thing that seems
to obsolesce the least, though, is clear, experssive, persuasive writing.
General Elective requirements have gone overboard. They severely impact how much
room there is in the undergraduate currlculum for training and educating our students in
their chosen major. The GE requirements have become quite politicized, and no longer
appear to serve our students as intended.
Establish guidelines for the writing of course proposals that include a recognition of the
need to develop and encourage skills in technological innovation, communication and
critical thinking.
In my opinion, the best preparation will come from hiring teaching staff with solid
connections to the field.
Resources, resouces, resources.
We could use a variation of projects, assessment and international references in our
teaching. I know we send a lot of students for a year on the Study Abroad program but in my
experience those students come back disconnected from others in their major. Also, many of
them graduate soon after returning so we don't really see what they got out of the
experience. Therefore, less Study Abroad and more on campus internationalising in faculty
classrooms.
Streamline the new GE process: get rid of the overlays, make the approval process simple
and straightforward, get rid of most of the maddeningly vague and proliferated "learning
objectives." Hire some people to develop and teach a curriculum in the digital humanities.
San Francisco is the world center for game development, social media etc. How can we
justify our existence if we don't prepare our students to take advantage of that?
While I can only speak for our department, it seems that we urgently need some major
curricular adjustments to make our education more useful to our students.
I think we do a good job of this in Cinema. We try to support other units by offering a minor
in film and media studies (and we've just proposed a second in animation). I don't have
enough experience evaluating too many other departments at State, but I have worked
closely with Journalism, Creative Writing, Art, and Philosophy. These Departments do a
terrific job preparing students to act conscientiously in an increasingly globalized and
technologically sophisticated world.
This depends on student choice. Some students choose a combination of classes that will
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prepare them well and others avoid that opportunity. A strong and visible International
Relations Department and well-supported and publicized area studies minors will provide
students the opportunity to understand globalization and take those inquiries into other
classes. Classes in both IR and area studies should be offered frequently and made available
to all students (except the IR core courses). Incorporating technology into the classroom
and making it part of students' daily lives through their classroom work is the best
preparation for a technologically sophisticated world. Students should be posting work
online and getting feedback that way, They should be encouraged to use technology to
demonstrate learning. This goes back to the idea of recognizing good teaching. Teaching
that uses technology and requires students to use technology is good teaching if we want to
strengthen preparation for a technologically sophisticated world.
We are so far behind the technology curve that we clearly do NOT support this.
It does not, because across campus, using academic technology is not required. I use it, but
there are many leadites in my department that sometimes "hinder" my efforts.
The recent photo of a student posing with a knife in the student newspaper indicates to me
that we aren't preparing our students to make ethical and reflective judgments, i.e. to act
conscientiously. Ethical orientation requires curriculum to be able to embrace nonquantifiable outcomes and I doubt seriously that Assessment would accept such efforts.
I think this very much depends upon the faculty member and/or the course content.
Do you mean critically engage? Or make students able to run the rat-race along with the
rest?
I can speak mostly for the college of business. I don't think we prepare students well for an
increasingly globalized world. The pressure to cram a lot of technical skills into the
curriculum means we short-change the real purpose of a college education - the ability to
think critically, learn from new conditions and experiences, and to engage constructively
with "others" with different cultural experiences. We need to shift the balance from the
technical skills to the skills for understanding.
Yes , there are many ways that Sfsu can take in globalization Of the curriculum, by
technology, by having faculty participate In Fulbright and other programs
In keeping our students current with our discipline, we naturally respond to the changing
world. I teach two classes that specifically address this issue: CW881 Poetry Machines,
which includes significant material on cyberpoetry, and Contemporary World Poetry, in
which we study poets like Fernando Pessoa, Paul Celan, Maria Sabina, and Wislawa
Symborska. Students today do much of their research and reading on their electronic
devices such as smartphones and Ipads; the classroom laptop is already considered oldfashioned. When a question of fact comes up on the classroom, I ask students to research it
immediately on those devices. The students need little guidance in technology; it's the
course subject matter that's of importance, because this still requires the cracking of books
and the vast preparation, lectures, and guidance of the instructor.
The phrase "technologically sophisticated" seems to infer that the advent of mass
technology has been and continues to be a positive for our students. One might argue that
opposite, that hte advent of technology in all aspects of our lives has been terribly damaging
to our intelligence and our society. We might serve our students better by requiring a
media literacy course as part of the information technology requirement. Graduates should
understand how much they are being manipulated by mass media.
We should be encouraging our students to be active politically. Our students need to vote in
their home precincts. We, as a university, should be targeting state legislators who are
working against the interests of public higher education. We should be organizing students
by zip code and bringing pressure to bear on individual members of the state legislature. If
every student in the CSU system were registered to vote, and voted as a bloc, there might be
more support for the university in the state legislature.
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SFSU students seem to have a strong sense of social justice and are ready to participate in
an increasingly global world. They are open to technology--we are blessed to be located in
the Bay area with its proximity to Silicon Valley. We need to prepare students more in
cultural matters--SFSU students are not strong in their knowledge of world events, of
cultural histories, and the history of ideas. It would be a mistake to promote technology and
business at the expense of the humanities and the creative arts.
I think our new baccalaureate requirements do this well.
I don't find the 4-year curriculum to be well integrated. Nor do I know of any specific ways
in which my courses are meant to prepare students for this conscientious act.
I believe the above suggestions help. However at the end of the day isn't it the academic
discourse that transpires rather than the clever PPP.
I think we do a very good job on this front. Several courses have a global component and
our students are extremely motivated about engaging with these aspects of our curriculum.
We don't have the resources to invite visiting scholars or exchange programs with
researchers from international institutions, but these have often provided valuable
opportunities for students at other institutions.
We can strengthen our curricula by continuing to recognize the importance of creative arts
and ethnic studies as means through which students can learn how to act conscientiously in
different cultural contexts.
More focus on second language acquisition and linguistics -these topics are increasingly
important in a globalized society.
Don't gut the Foreign Language and Literature Dept.
Paying attention to these world developments has its importance. But it must not be
overlooked that the basic academic skills of reading, writing, and analyzing are as vital as
ever in today's world.
Curricula and teaching provide a strong set of theoretical knowledges and practical skill sets
for students to function as active and politically aware way.
We do this well, in support of our mission. However, as a result of cuts and furloughs and
years of lost funds, we are struggling to attain the levels of support we had a decade ago! We
are like an automobile with a ruptured head gasket--we are able to run for a while to a
limited capacity, but we do not function as a result at fullest ability, and eventually may
become dysfunctional.
We do a good job in this. I'm sure it could be strengthened as well -- I think by encouraging
more practice writing, speaking, and thinking.
I think we all try to do this, The new GE will also contribute. Requiring service learning and
internships could also help. And perhaps bringing in speakers and opening that to the
whole campus. Like the Goldman Environmental Award recipients, they usually come to SF
to get their award, they could come to SFSU and give a talk to students, faculty. It would be
tremendously inspirational and bring people from all over the world. They could be ticketed
events with students, faculty and staff getting in for a minimal charge and opening it up to
the public. Let SFSU be a place of teaching and welcoming learning. Exposure and
experience I think are key for student preparation.
SFSU already does enough to prepare students to act conscientiously in our current world.
One could argue that it goes overboard, emphasizing this point too much. SFSU should
recognize that there are courses and subject materials, especially within the sciences, which
are totally devoid of ethical content. Courses should *not* be required to contain an ethical
component as this is a significant violation of academic freedom.
I do not teach these skills in my classes and I was not hired to do so. In terms of using social
media, it is my opinion that students make greater use of them than faculty members do.
There is clearly not enough focus for our own part on how and when to use technological
tools, and beyond that I see very little focus on the ethics of the use of these tools.
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Resist the temptation for on line courses. Encourage students to study and work - the onus
of learning is on them. As Ed Koch said - I can explain it to you but cannot understand it for
you..
Assign outside projects to students so they can gain experience not available in the
classroom.
We are strong here I think.
We are in a transition I would say, speaking from the vantage point of the Humanities. We
do not have enough resources for even us as faculty to keep up, I would say, let alone inform
our students. Having said that, some faculty make it a priority to keep up and integrate
technological advances but I believe it is a case-by-case basis. There is always room for
improvements but technologically can never be a substitute for great teaching. I would
never underestimate the importance of face to face contact especially for the teaching of
language or nuances in cultural literacy.
We can strengthen this preparation by ensuring students know how to use search tools to
find peer-reviewed literature and to fully use library resources. They have become so
reliant on google-type searches for everything that they don't know how to go deeper to
access the meaty content on which the surficial web summaries are based.
Yes, one way we can do this is model this behavior ourselves. We can provide more hands
on experience with the community. We can keep up-to-date and get rewarded for keeping
up-to-date on curriculum.
I would like to see an organized way for teachers to share their perspectives and techniques
to increase student's critical thinking skills and dedication to community service. We face
an unprecedented threat to the planet's existence due to global climate destabilization and
the university should be contributing more to awareness about this unavoidable problem.
But the university is not making this a priority, reflecting society's denial. The university
should draw upon the expertise of our faculty to address this issue through curriculum and
public forums. We can become a leader in increasing awareness and finding solutions
especially since the impacts of global warming has significant social justice implications.
The curricula and teaching is on target. However, I believe more on-the-job types of training
needs to be included with the research provided regarding best practices.
A greater emphasis on literacy across the curriculum, in all departments and at all levels,
can only strengthen students' abilities to act in the world. Perhaps an inclusion of ethics
across the curriculum might also strengthen this focus, as would regular colloquia on social
justice.
As a Taekwondo (martial art) instructor I have always been taught and truly believe that
the kicking and punching techniques that we teach are simply the tools we employ to instill
a sense of discipline, honesty, respect for self and others and the importance of hard work
and fair play in our students. The value system that all traditional martial arts encourage is
the greatest benefit that the practitioners receive from their training. Since Taekwondo is a
full medal Olympic sport, practitioners get to interact with a range of different cultures and
Taekwondo has become an international family. Anywhere I have been in the world, that
includes China, Indonesia, Ireland and France, I can simply go to a Taekwondo school
(dojang) and I am immediately accepted as a family member. It breaks down the barriers
between cultures because there is something that we have in common and that is our love
of our martial art. As for the technologically sophisticated world, Olympic Taekwondo has
become extremely technologically oriented. Competition these days involves computer
scoring utilizing impact sensor in the sparring equipment and even instant replay. To see
the impact that technology has had on Taekwondo simply go online and type in Taekwondo
competition and you will see what pops up and how world wide the following is. I
personally am in contact with Taekwondo people from all over the world utilizing social
media. At my age I am not as good at it as the younger generation but I still manage to keep
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tabs on the martial arts world via the internet.
I can't speak to the curricula of any program other than the ITEC 299, for which I'm a colecturer. For that I would say it does only a mediocre job at preparing students to... [the goal
described above]. The ways we could strengthen this preparation would be to require
students to do more activities involving higher-order thinking skills, to give them feedback
on their work, and to model it for them. We currently do very little of that in this course and
I would do more if it were up to me.
Through GE we have worked to put social justice into the curriculum and now more
recently sustainability. We could consciously work to instill the responsiblity and skills
needed to act. One avenue to do this would be through the creation of a leadership
certificate that many majors could include as part of complimentary studies. Dean
Greenwell had begun working on a leadersjhip certificate. Another approach would be a
campus speaker series that brought notables that exemplify acting in the world to address
important issues.
At least some courses help prepare students for the future.
Based on my knowledge, largely limited to GCOE, we do this pretty well. I think our
technology infrastructure is not great, and this shows in a relative weakness in this area of
preparation. Also, I don't know if this is the right place to list this, but there is a real
problem in that the GCOE cannot meet the scheduling needs of the working professionals
we primarily serve, teachers. Since summer and intersession courses now "belong" to
extended learning, and since summer and intersession don't count as part of our already
heavy teaching load, we cannot offer most classes at the times our students most want and
need them. This is a huge problem in terms of meeting the needs of our students.
Emphasize social responsibility and strengthen opportunities for service learning.
There is some conflict between the CSU' s push to get everyone in and out of university.
Lifelong learning is a continuum, not a credential.
When students cannot master the basic reading, writing, and arithmetics skills, they are not
prepared for any world. Students cannot learn to enter a sophisticated world when they are
not prepared for university-level work. They need to be tested for academic proficiency, in
multiple ways, to ensure that they can be ready for advanced coursework. Also, because of
our open admission policy, students enter the university without the same skill levels. For
example, some students never learned to type on a keyboard. We need to have some
standards and ensure that all students meet these standards before reaching upper-division
status.
I think the school needs to hire good faculty and trust that they will carry this out. Faculty
need to be allowed intellectual autonomy ; it doesn't really help to put this in "learning
outcomes" -- it needs to come from a genuine place in order to be effective, not from a
bureaucratic mandate.
We talk a good game, but do not act it. We say a lot about globalization and
internationalization, and we sent quite a few students to other countries on semester-long
study abroad programs. BUT student fees for short-term study abroad programs are run
through CEL, which means the cost is exorbitant. The CEL fees are a BARRIER for shortterm study abroad. Many students can't afford the cost of a semester away, but they can try
to swing a short-term experience. Yet our costs stand in the way of such an experience. I
truly believe that an international experience is essential to a well-rounded education. We
have a number of faculty who would like to lead such experiences. But the cost is
prohibitive for students and, thus, for them.
I think students in our program are prepared in these ways. When I have students from
other programs in my GE classes, they are less prepared than our majors. Maybe everybody
thinks this about their students because we all have an attachment to how our students are
prepared. That said, I think the university curriculum is extremely uneven. In our
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department context, I think we could strengthen the preparation by supporting faculty. The
main change I'd like to see is having support for non tenure track faculty to work on
curriculum development. It is utterly crazy to have meetings about the curriculum and to
not be able to hear from faculty who are the experts in some aspect of the curriculum
because they are not paid to attend faculty meetings or to participate in curriculum or
faculty development. We have created a system where the faculty who are making the
decisions are not always the teachers, and the teachers are so busy teaching they can't give
input on what is needed so they can teach. Another insanity is the whole system of
augments. Bringing in faculty to teach classes central to the curriculum a week before
school starts is budgetary genius and a pedagogical nightmare. If the university want to
support these goals (as opposed to just putting them on banners), each department would
have a budget based upon student enrollment patterns. Then, we could actually train
faculty and plan. Faculty who were full time, whether they were lecturers or tenure track
would have .20 for governance, student support and planning. Lecturers would be full time
at .80 teaching and faculty would be full time at .60 teaching. If we were given the tools, we
could figure out how to deliver and not burn our selves out in the process.
Not at all. We (as a nation) has failed to prepare our students for emerging globalizing
workforce and as life-long learners. There are many ways to fix this and the university and
faculty need to work together to derive effective problem-solving approches.
This probably differs by academic discipline. In my experience, this generation of students
is heavily connected already through the use of technology and social media in their
personal lives. I think we can build on this by incorporating the technology into our
classroom experiences, assignments, etc.
May we flip that question as support for teachers in developing curriculum. How can we
support our faculty to develop curriculum for an increasingly globalized and technology
sophisticated world? What programs and technology do they need access to and with to
provide the appropriate learning environemnts for their studnets?
Yes. Given faculty more time to work on their courses.
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
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4. 4. Contingent Faculty.Does the use of contingent faculty (full-time and/or
part-time lecturers) impact teaching and learning at SFSU? How could we
improve the professional experience for contingent faculty and make more
effective use of their expertise and skills?
Text Response
Treat 'em right!
I'm not sure. In some cases, yes. Especially when faculty are hired at the last minute and
given syllabi and textbooks.
xxxxxxxx
I think lecturers- especially part time ones who are working in their field that they teach inbring a valuable perspective to students that us full time academics sometimes lack. I'm
going to reserve judgment on full-time lecturers who what the equivalent benefits that
tenured faculty have. If you don't go through the hell that is getting tenure, what makes you
think you deserve the rewards? Certainly there should be a chance for long term lecturers
to convert to the tenure track, but they have to compile the WPAF, too.
I don't know. It's big problem.
Teaching core clases with contingent faculty that are hired at the spur of the moment does
not make for a well thought out and RELAXED environment for student learning. Contingent
faculty talk to students,and others - we all know they are paid less; we all know they are
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hired on an as needed basis.We have real experts taht are contingent faculty, but we have
grad students at the MS level teaching eng 214, this is the rule not the exception. Where do
they get the chops for teaching? on our most vunerable students.
Pay them more money.
Pay them better is the first step. They can bring a wealth of expertise , especially if we can
recruit not only PhDs but professionals in their field ( former military and intelligence
experts, diplomats in residence, retired CEOs etc.)
When it works well, adjunct faculty are a tremendous resource for students. They bring
current, real-world perspective into the program to balance the more theory-oriented
approach by tenured faculty. When it doesn't work well, we are forced to find a place for
long-term part-time faculty who are no longer current in their field. One way to help them
be more effective is to give them assistance with the non-teaching aspects of the job and a
mentor type program to help them assimilate into the academic culture
Contingent faculty are dedicated to their teaching, however, the system of evaluation
rewards popularity rather than effective teaching. Consequently, contingent faculty and
probationary faculty are naturally biased toward inflating grades to preserve their
livelihood. That does not help anyone.
So far my experience is that contingent faculty are not treated with the respect they
deserve. The University does not offer overt opportunities for further training or
mentorship - contingent faculty must ferret these opportunities out on their own. When
there are issues, contingent faculty often takes the brunt of the blame.
Pay us more, take us more seriously so that we wouldn't have to take as many assignments
in as many places. You already know that, of course, and I know that your hands are tied.
Often contingent faculty offer students an additional benefit (for those faculty that work full
time in the field of work and teach one or two courses). There seems to be less benefits to
students to have lecturers who only teach full time and don't add value to the field or school
through research or service. Actively involving these individuals in the school in ways other
than just teaching would make better use of their expertise and skills
Yes, having such a high proportion of lecturers has a negative effect. We have too many
lecturers, too many of them under-prepared and under-supported. The uncertainty of
continued employment is a big problem. We need to set clear limits on duration of
temporary employment in order not to mislead and take advantage of lecturers. We need to
include them more in decision-making and provide them with more mentoring and
evaluation.
I think the University should pay more attention to contingent faculty teaching online
courses as I can see that these faculty are often neglected and because students have such
low expectations of their online courses, they simply don't expect as much of those faculty
teaching online. This reliance on online courses taught by contingent faculty creates a
greater and greater burden on the brick-and-mortar faculty to do much of the quality
teaching, meaningful advising and meaningful interactions with students.
Of course. Because contingent faculty are paid so much less (5000/ course!), they often have
to teach much heavier loads or teach at multiple institutions in order to make ends meet.
Even when they might have a full-time load at another institution, many times they still
keep 1 or 2 classes at SFSU in order to maintain their rights/benefits. The result of all this is
that they are over-taxed and over-worked and it probably often shows in the quality of
teaching they can provide to students. If the institution paid lecturers more per class, they
might not feel the financial need to overload themselves by teaching too much in any one
semester. the university needs to provide a better wage in order to encourage that lecturers
are more effective in their teaching.
Contingent faculty play an important role. We have many talented lecturers with PhDs that
help teach our curriculum. Given the focus on research, we have faculty teaching less so to
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make sure we can accommodate the student demand for our courses, we rely heavily on
lecturers. Many come from UCSF, Stanford, and UC Berkeley - they are mostly post-docs
looking for academic positions. We also have full-time lectures that help tremendously with
our GE program as it is heavily subscribed. Their single focus on teaching typically means
that they do a good job in the classroom with regards to student evaluations. They may not
be at the cutting edge since they are not engaged in research. However, they do have a
breadth of knowledge that seems well-suited for our GE courses.
Significantly impacts teaching. Higher quality of contingent faculty needs to be attracted.
Efforts should be made to improve the qualifications of current contingent faculty.
We have outstanding contingent faculty in Secondary Education. All experienced teacher,
school principals, and superintendents! As a Department we include them in everything
from Department meetings to voting on curriculum and major program and Department
issues. Their vote is prorated according to their average academic year time base.
This
treatment is because we as a department faculty not only care deeply about our contingent
faculty but because of the strength and expertise they bring to our Department and
credential program. Contingent faculty that have been identified by a Department process
as outstanding need to be recognized and rewarded. I am happy to serve on any committee
to explore possibilities.
To start, pay them a living wage.
I am a lecturer. And I am teaching four courses again this semester. I do so because I truly
love and enjoy teaching. But four courses pushes my limit; I need to teach this much
because I can barely pay rent (in the East Bay) on the low pay of SFSU. It seems so obvious
that perhaps we don't reiterate this enough: lecturers need to be paid better. (Full-time
faculty too, I suspect).
Yes, it does. In an ideal world, most teaching faculty would be on the tenure-track, and the
hiring process bringing them in would be no less rigorous than it is now for TT faculty. Of
course, public education is going the other direction, so I don't expect that dependence on
contingent faculty will change, but that does not mean that is a good thing. The question is
worded in a very one-sided way -- it does not ask about the experience for students or for
departments. There are many very good lecturers, and there is probably always a limited
role for such positions. But, there are two fundamental problems with the reliance on
lecturers. First, stadards in the hiring process for lecturers are not even close to those in
the hiring of TT faculty. And second, in my view it is a mistake to encourage colleagues to
depend for their whole career on being a lecturer, with the insecurity that will always
entail.
We cannot easily fix the current system, because the premises on which it rests
are fundamentally flawed. Lecturers are simply not full-time members of our campus
community (most have jobs at several universities or colleges), and this is innate to the
current system.
The use of Lecturers facilitates the University's mission, and allows for professional
development among tenure-track faculty. On-going re-training and evaluation of lecturers,
as well as TT faculty, will help raise the standard of teaching in all departments.
The use of lecturers is a fine way of bringing field relevance to our teaching. However, we
should discontinue the practice that is now decades old of taking heavy advantage of their
temporary status. Tenured and tenure-track staff should have regular review with a
priority on their teaching skills. Reasonable pay for equal work would be nice for lecturers.
Lectures can provide a very positive, often necessary, experience for students, especially in
those fields which value the insights and skillse of its practioners. However, over-reliance
on lecturers does not support a consistent learning environment - lecturers come and go.
And there are many advantages to tenured/tenure track faculty that are sacrificed when
hiring is required to be so budget conscious.
They are needed and the variety of new lecturers - some longer term and some new - makes
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for a refreshing experience for our students and faculty. The system in place is fine.
Absolutely, but not uniformly. Many are terrific, devoted teachers. We should provide more
of the kinds of events that enhance their intellectual lives and provide them a chance to
showcase their work. Why don't we have a distinguished lecturer lecture series, for
example? Also, stop using MA students as low cost and largely underqualified teachers. If
they can't be adequately supervised because of the other time burdens on senior faculty,
this is not an apprenticeship, it's exploitation. Hire more lecturers instead or--dream world
here-- hire more T/T faculty.
In our department, we have a large number of lecturers, many of whom are part-time. We
continue to notice a lack of "buy-in", commitment and investment from these faculty
members. If we could commit to these faculty members in the form of a full-time
appointment, there might be an increased commitment on their part in return.
I could write a monograph on this question... with all but a few words devoted to the union
contract that, in my view, has done little to actually help lecturers while undermining the
needs of tenure-line faculty. I spend a great deal of time managing lecturer entitlement
obligations, for example, and at times feel locked into hiring someone that only meets the
minimum teaching standards of the department. Overall, I think we rely way too much on
part-time lecturers, do not provide sufficient pay or opportunities for full-time lecturers
(e.g., long-term contracts, opportunities for them to "promote"), and should consider
putting far more funding into hiring tenure-line faculty.
Clearly the use of contingent faculty impacts teaching and learning. The best action for
everyone is to be sure contingent faculty is truly contingent; we should not be covering
classes with adjuncts unless a contingeny arises. If we know that classes will need to be
covered, we should hire tenure-track faculty to cover them.
They should be paid more. They are very important to integrating our students into the
professional community.
Yes. Because they are not evaluated. There is no quality control. They do not need to invest
in using academic technology most effectively, and it impacts question #3 in terms of
technology. I have encountered resistance in developing an engaging online course for a
popular GE because department leadership wants to use it for contingent faculty. So, instead
of me offering an online course to 120 students, my department would rather fire 3 to 4
lecturers to do 3-4 sections. I stopped pushing, as I'm not tenured yet....
Stop treating lecturers like temps; figure out a way to move Ph.D holders into real tty
positions.
We need to create more welcoming environments and internal support systems for part
time lecturers. These individuals often add a great deal of skill and expertise, but they are
treated somewhat like outsiders. We should encourage leadership and community building
among lecturers and find opportunities to recognize excellent lecturers just as we do full
time professors.
Contingent faculty needs to be paid better -- they do the same amount of work. If we have a
social justice mission, it should start by paying fair wages to contingent faculty. Stop hiring
lecturers, create more tenure track lines!!
Yes, it impacts the teaching and learning greatly. Contingent faculty should be included in
curriculum development meetings, have tenured/tenure-track mentors and have a path to
tenureship. If their skill set meets the department and students' needs, they should not be
prevented from tenure-track positions if they do not have terminal degrees.
Our heavy reliance on contingent faculty is a VERY mixed blessing. In a few rare cases, they
bring valuable practitioner skills. In many instances, they represent a significant drop off in
teaching skills. We don't have any mechanisms (that I know of) to help an adjunct professor
take advantage of our academic technology group or other resources to improve basic
teaching skills. in addition, the union environment means that it is hard to replace someone
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who has gotten locked in, but does not perform well. In several instances, we've had to wait
for a relatively poor lecturer to retire before being able to upgrade. We are very
underinvested in ways to help lecturers upgrade their teaching skills. We need a way to
compensate them for investments in teaching improvements, since they seem to be a long
term part of our strategy.
Treat more like regular, professional faculty as much as possible.
-Build a sense of community to make adjuncts feel more included in the University perhaps a social club? Thursday evening drinks? An adjunct faculty common office with a
coffee maker, a copy machine, laptops, a couch and desks? -I teach in the English
Department and it seems there are always plenty of courses offered fall the fall semester,
but nothing for spring. This is very stressful for staff who need benefits. Is there any way to
offer fewer sections on 114 and 214 in the fall and more in the spring? My understanding is
that staff often leave the University to teach elsewhere because it's just too stressful to stay.
Hire contingent faculty who have at least 5 years post masters Experience. Second, have
peer teaching evaluation & feedback for them. Have them participate in course design and
modification Sessions
SFSU part-time faculty are fortunate that the full-time faculty are unionized, which
guarantees better working conditions and even pension rights for instructors who teach
more than two courses a semester. The part-time faculty in creative writing are invited to
all the faculty meetings, and their opinion is taken into account.
I have witnessed so many truly exceptional lecturers over the years that I cannot find fault
with them in the classroom. This is not universally true, but there are many great examples.
They do not however participate (in general) in curricular design. They often teaching
introductory level courses or niche courses that do not allow them to see the full scope of
departmental curriculum. We can improve thei
Contingent faculty are bearing the burden of a university that is striving to balance its
budget based on attrition. When one tenure track professor is hired for every five tenured
track professors who retire, it is the contingent faculty who pick up the load. Contingent
faculty are, by definition, quality teachers because contingent faculty who are "poor"
teachers are quickly weeded out. Unlike tenured professors, contingent faculty have little
job security. Consequently, contingent faculty work hard to improve their classes
constantly. Unfortunately, the attitude among tenure/tenure-track faculty is that a "parttime" lecturer is essentially a reminder that there are fewer tenure slots in a department. In
order to improve the professional experience for contingent faculty, it would be helpful to
change the attitudes of T/TT faculty. The university should adopt a platform of "best
practices" for lecturers. Simple things like newer computers and stable office
accommodations would be very helpful. Also, lecturers should be encouraged to participate
in department policy decisions.
The increasing, creeping reliance on contingent faculty impacts adversely teaching and
learning at SFSU. Lecturers are teaching many classes (some 7-8 classes a semester). They
do not have the time to support students, and they often cut corners, which they hide by
giving out good grades as they were Halloween candy so students do not complain. The
increased reliance on contingent faculty is also immoral and does not promote social justice.
Underpaying individuals for their labor is exploitation. They have less time and financial
resources to do research, and they have no job security. The University is not immune to the
age of precarity, but it should not be actively participating in this trend on relying on
contingent faculty.
It does; in some ways for the good and some ways for the worse. I think, however, that
having relatively few permanent faculty given the size of our university, hurts our efforts
and developing meaningful curricular changes. Again, having a vibrant CTFD could help
both permanent and contingent faculty.
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Lecturers are great when the demand for courses is higher than can be provided by faculty.
I have appreciated that postdoctoral researchers in my laboratory have had access to
lecturer positions when research funds have dried up. If anything these people are paid too
little. I think SFSU should consider another model as well: have more very large lecture
classes taught by tenure-track faculty with integrated "discussion" sections taught by
graduate students.
Give contingent faculty development money for training regarding teaching skills. We have
excellent contingent faculyt that we underpay and do not fund for training or even inform
about training through CTFD.
I am one of those faculty and have taught here for 32 years. My career here as a
"contingent" or adjunct holds value to cover T/TT faculty release time. We are generalists
so we can teach many different courses 9I have taught about 15 different courses over the
years). For those of us who have chosen this as our career we serve on committees, attend
faculty meeting and retreats and contribute countless hours without remuneration. Some
of my colleagues value me and some do not--I am not sure how to convert those who do not
see the value of lecturers.
Better pay and more security.
I'm not contingent, so I hesitate to speak for them, but I bet it would be better for them and
students if the faculty were told longer in advance whether and what they'd be teaching.
A number of contingent faculty rank among our finest teachers. However, there are also
plenty of contingent faculty who do not have much connection to either the university or its
students, and this has negative effects on teaching. There is also the problem that
contingent faculty often lack opportunities to keep up with the scholarship in their field. As
great as our contingent faculty might be, there is just no getting around the fact that the
contingent system is bad for teaching and bad for students.
The CBA can make it difficult to avoid rehiring lecturers whose work has become substandard though who have obtained entitled status. Many lecturers provide outstanding
tuition, and they need to be provided with a more satisfactory position in terms of salary
and job security. With the fluctuations in the CSU budget, the lecturers have been used
(and abused) as the cushion which can be increased and then cut as central funds increase
and decrease. This is a crazy way to run a university system, and regardless of the
Californian fiscal instability, the university should find a way to proactively maintain
stability for faculty, lecturers, and students.
Support contingent faculty. Hire and retain them more humanely. Transition ASAP to a
more favorable balance between T/TT faculty and contingent faculty. Consider alreadyfunctioning contingent faculty for conversion to T/TT positions.
The use of contingent faculty means that many faculty are not compensated or appreciated
comensurate to their role in the univesrity. Raise pay, inform lecturers what classes they'll
be teaching for the entire year at the end of the spring semester, pay for professional
development, and encourage them to participate in every level of the University by
compensating them for their time.
Contingent faculty definitely impact teaching and learning, they negatively impact T-T
faculty as they usually do not engage in service or graduate theses, putting more work on
fewer TT faculty. In may instances they do not contribute to teaching innovation or
research and are usually extremely over burden with teaching due to low salary per class.
I would like to see less lecturers and more T-T hires, whose responsibilities are more
inclusive of all that needs to happen at SFSU. We shouldn't have so many lecturers and the
ones we do have should come from industries, organizations where their expertise can be
available to students. Full time - PhD lecturers are just work horses and a true waste of
efficiency at the university. They work at teaching all the time, have no time to engage in
writing or research thereby taking themselves out of the academic market or any job
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market. I think it is abusive.
In my experience, both as a student and as faculty of engineering, we have difficulty
attracting talent—both student and faculty. It comes as no surprise that we are unable to
attract the "best of the best," since renown begets renown through positive feedback, and
we lack renown to begin with. If I were an elite Ph.D., chances are I wouldn't "settle" for an
appointment at SFSU except perhaps as a holdover until a real position opens elsewhere, or
unless I felt strongly about settling down in San Francisco. And as for students, well... the
best sales tool is a good product, and students want the best education they can get for their
money. We have had some exceptionally talented lecturers with B.S. and M.S. degrees—
providing equivalent or superior instruction compared with most of our Ph.D.'s for juniorand even senior-level courses—and unfortunately, I have seen the best of them leave their
teaching appointments for better opportunities (such as CSUM). Those who remain are
often either unambitious and uninspired, or are employed full-time in industry and teach
for recreation or charity, so cannot afford the mental effort to make substantial
contributions to the program. I think it reasonable that, with the scarce supply (afforded
us) of quality Ph.D.'s, we should make concerted efforts to tap the other supply. By offering
legitimate rewards and opportunities to those without Ph.D.'s, and by involving them in
decision-making, we can better capitalize on what they have to offer, attract better
instructors, and raise our educational standards. Not to mention, they'll be more affordable
than Ph.D.'s, so more of the budget can be spent on equipment, programs, and research.
With higher standards and better research, we can build our reputation, and with a better
reputation we can attract... well, you get the picture. Maybe someday we'll be able to
attract students and professors of sufficient quantity and quality so that we can be selective,
but until then it seems we should more creative with how we compensate our other-thanPh.D. instructors and with the standards we apply to them. Perhaps the best way to learn
what we need is to ask those who were ambitious enough to leave of their own accord. P.S.
I'm employed full-time in industry and teach recreationally, so I don't stand to benefit from
the aforementioned suggestions. I just happen to be a devoted alumnus who hopes one day
to be proud of his alma mater.
Contingent faculty provide a valuable part of the SFSU experience. At the same time, could
there be a slippery slope? How long until *all* faculty become contingent? While I have
friends who are contingent faculty, it is a bitter thing to realize that the more contingent
faculty we hire, the fewer tenure-track faculty we can hire; and if we allow this to go on
unchecked, we may unwittingly destroy the position that is the traditional tenured
professorship. We should be supporting faculty with living wages, we should be supporting
tenure, and we should be supporting national searches for excellent faculty. The use of
contingent faculty goes against all this.
Pay them more and open up tenure-track lines for them.
We could hire more faculty! The ratio of faculty to lecturers has been continuously eroding
across the system and notably here at SFSU. Many of our lecturers are freeway flyers who
do not have the time to do the long term preparation that faculty can and have put into
developing their coursework. As things stand we don't even have enough faculty to advise
our lecturers and coordinate with them on the courses they teach. Pay them for some prep
time. Pay them more per class, and then maybe it won't be so tempting to just forgo faculty
and do go with the cheaper plan. (this is another way to say we don't want our faculty to
teach, just hire a lecturer, it's cheaper). On the other hand there are some vey good longterm lecturers who deserve a stronger commitment from the university.
Simple - reduce the 50+% of courses taught by temp faculty. You get what you pay for and
while some temp faculty are excellent, they cannot fulfill the many rqmts for faculty
including research and service, and are not invested enough to truly commit to helping our
students.
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Start by paying a fair wage. Then make sure contingent faculty are trained in SFSU
classroom technology.
This negatively impacts us. We need to hire more permanent, tenure-track faculty.
Contingent faculty are not compensated properly. Morale is low especially with the
unrealistic cost of living in the Bay Area. We must deal with this issue before asking any
more of them. To address your questions beyond this important factor--compensating them
for their time towards professional development is a must.
Yes, these faculty are important to providing the curriculum to our students.
I have found that part-time faculty are usually not really part of the department as a whole
so they teach their own classes and go home. They do not really know how their class
content fits in with the rest of the program curriculum and usually they don't care they just
want to teach what they know. This is a problem with full time fact also, but they are more
aware when students are complaining about repeated content or overlapping material. I
think it is better to have full time and part time faculty who work together to develop
curriculum. I think administration should give all faculty the opportunities to do this type
of work.
The combination of a low pay scale and lack of any benefits is not good for lecturers. My
new obamacare bottom of the barrel health insurance now costs annually much more than a
semester's 3.0 course's take home income. (I'm one of the people whose health insurance
costs doubled under the new plans.) My teaching reviews are outstanding, but I will not be
teaching much longer - financially, it makes no sense.
SFSU promotes a caste system regarding contingent faculty, yet at the same time depends
on this resource. Lecturers are paid a fraction of the salary of tenure/tenure track faculty,
have little or no job security, are not provided office space and are often excluded from
faculty meetings. This is unacceptable. Lecturers, especially those who have taught at
SFSU for many years, need more pay, more job security, more recognition and a road map to
a tenure track and/or more job security. The fact that this question is part of the survey is
a hopeful sign.
Providing opportunity to be involved in department meetings and professional growth.
A very over-worked and vulnerable sector of campus. Many of them are super and carry a
disproportionate load. Many have reasons to be part time (family etc) but many also would
appreciate better treatment and more secure longer term deals. Many problems for them
come from dept chairs who do not know the CBA rules very well, or choose to play loose
with them, and an overworked (charitable view) or incompetent (probably more realistic)
HR dept is not currently serving them very well. I normally don't like to suggest sending
resources to anywhere near the admin building over other academic areas, but HR needs a
massive overhaul, and if they returned to a more functional basis, I suspect that would help
lecturers about as much as anything.
We have many committed and skilled teachers who act as contingent faculty for the
university. The increasing presence of contingent faculty, however, creates several
problems. 1) It reduces the number of full-time, tenure-track faculty available for commitee
work and shared governance, reducing the time such faculty have to devote to teaching and
scholarship. 2) Contingent faculty are often (though not always) less steeped in the current
debates in their fields than tenure/tenure-track faculty. 3) Students see little distinction
between contingent faculty and tenure/tenure-track faculty, which leads less often to
greater respect for contingent faculty and more often to less respect for tenure/tenuretrack faculty. We need to boost our tenure-track lines, create more positions for full-time
lecturers, and create space and incentives for those lecturers to participate in the
scholarship of teaching and learning in their fields.
The use of contingent faculty certainly does impact the teaching and learning at SFSU in a
very positive way! How could we improve the professional experience for contingent
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faculty? For me one thing that could be done is to put up all classes for registration early in
the process. Often my Taekwondo classes (activities classes) and my Practical Self-defense
class (academic class) do not go online until a large portion of the student body has already
registered for the semester. Students who do early registration do not even see that these
classes are available to them. Since we are required to have a certain number of students
registered in our classes or they are dropped, it would be a great help to us to have the
classes available when early registration begins.
I'm sure the use of contingent faculty impact teaching and learning at SFSU as it is affecting
education everywhere. The general problem seems to be the combination of low incentive
to improve teaching and take time to give students individual feedback they need (given the
time vs. pay) and high incentive to give easy As, thus diluting the quality of education and
playing their own small role in the eventual downfall of civilization. Kidding aside, it's about
doing more with less in terms of time, human resources, and technology. One of the best
ways you could make more use of my skills is in reducing the time I have to spend in a
dysfunctional LMS like iLearn. Give me Canvas and my course development experience will
be a dream.
Lecturers do a great job teaching. We could treat them much better than we currently do.
We could fix the allocation of augment funds so it is done well ahead of time so lecturers
know if they have a course to teach or not and can prepare (and go through less
unneccesary anxiety). We could through Senate rules require that all departments include
lecturers as voting members (possibly weighted by teaching load) in department meetings.
Many times, full- or part-time lecturers provide a unique perspective that full-time
academics cannot provide. They may be practicing the craft/trade/skill etc. in the real work
world, where many of the students aspire to be. If not done already, such people could have
a certain amount of paid time to meet with the full-time faculty to prepare or evaluate
teaching units.
Part time faculty -- such as lecturers -- are extremely important to the health of a
department
The lecturers in my department are excellent teachers and supervisors. Their contributions
should be valued and recognized.
Contingent faculty should be given financial support and encouragement to participate in all
faculty development opportunities. Idea exchanges between contingent and tenured faculty
should be encouraged and fostered.
Contingent faculty should not be hired on an ad hoc basis. More planning is needed to
ensure that we can recruit the best contingent faculty members. Like the hiring of
tenured/tenure-track faculty, open positions should be advertised widely, and contingent
faculty candidates should be interviewed and properly trained. Contingent faculty
members often serve for a period of time; so some investment should be made for their
hiring.
What does "contingent faculty" mean? Is this a new term? Are we talking about part
timers? Lecturers? I would suggest asking THEM how to improve their experience. My
guess is their response would begin with better pay, but I don't know as I've never been a
part-time faculty member.
As I said in the previous comments, make them full partners in governance and planning.
Stop the over use of augments. Upstairs needs to actually PLAN… not use contingent
faculty to correct what appears to be poor planning.
Another no-brainer question. Focus on 1) professional enrichments, training and
collaboration among different disciplines; 2) foster and retain talents; 3) effective
mentoring among faculty; 4) teach-in for every faculty (including chairs and deans)
In my experience, our contingent faculty are extremely dedicated and serve our academic
mission well. In some ways, because they are not burdened by the typical responsibilities of
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a tenure track faculty member (research, service, etc.), they are even more focused on the
teaching part of our mission. They are able to dedicate all of their energies to the classroom
experience. We can improve their life on campus by formally including them in our
department operations. Our department includes contingent faculty in faculty meetings,
retreats, decision-making, etc. Presumably most departments also do this already.
It is up to the departments and colleges ot use the skill and talents of their lecturers.
In our department, we only use very highly skilled instructors.
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
84
5. 5. Teaching and Professional Activity. What role do your research or
creative activities play in your teaching? How do you balance these two
activities (professional activity and teaching) in your academic life?
Text Response
Until I'm promoted to full, I'll continue to submit articles to The International Journal of
Obscure Academic B*llsh$t and pretend to be delighted to "have the opportunity" to do so.
After that, I'll be more selective in such participation, and spend more time on my primary
mission, which is teaching.
There's not much overlap. I know there should be, but what I teach is pretty far removed
from my research. This is a hard divide for me.
Balance? I steal time. I don't do a good job in one to favor the other at any given time. And
this changes given the demands that are the most current.
If professional activity equals reasearch, then the reaserch bears on teaching and vice versa.
Reasearch includes classroom examples and teaching emplys elements of the research.
I incorporate my research in international law in my classes so I hope that I always give my
students some good account of e most recent developments as well as contemporary
debates in the literature.
I conduct research to inform my teaching and I work with industry practitioners on projects
that are not necessarily publishable, but help me stay current with what is happening in the
field.
They are balanced with great difficulty. Teaching in the CSU system is far more labor
intensive than teaching in the UC system, where teaching assistants, graduate students, and
postdocs are readily available to give guest lectures, run tutorials and grade exams and
papers. In addition, most faculty members in the CSU system do not have the luxury of
teaching seminar classes to small groups of students on topics that are directly relevant to
their research. The lack of research infrastructure makes the task of doing research much
more challenging too. Ideally, a faculty member's research should inform his/her teaching
and his/her teaching should make a contribution to his/her research.
To me, research and teaching are linked. One generates information for the other (both
ways). I share the results of my academic field research in the class and I research different
teaching methodologies which I then publish.
At some times research has been more central than at others. Always, I keep up in my field,
but the degree to which I can contribute depends in part on other admin and service
responsibilities that I take on. One way to balance is to include pedagogical research in my
portfolio, but that type of research is not valued by RTP. It is important to have current
knowledge to share with students and to be engaged with work within in one's field. This is
something many lecturers do not do, however.
It is hard to balance when almost all the discourse is on teaching.
Research and teaching are intertwined. The research activities influence my knowledge of
the most cutting edge fields in my area. I bring this to the classroom. The students really
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enjoy understanding the field through this lens. My research activities involves many
students so I see the research as a teaching opportunity as well. In fact, I spend many hours
mentoring students in my lab in high quality research. It does not seem that those hours are
seen as teaching, when in reality it is the best mentored experience that any student could
have. Unfortunately, only a handful of students can experience this given the cost.
It is absolutely essential. If you do no9t publish books in our discipline, you cannot teach
those who are taking a degree to do same. In that way we are lucky--we are working
writers. For other disciplines it is more complex--research and publishing should fit the
area of expertise, which should determine its standards within reasonable limits and
expectations and be understood by upper administration as to their unique characteristics.
Significant.
Research does play a major role in teaching and an equal playing field for all faculty at SFSU
needs to be provided. My faculty teach a 4/4 load and still have accomplished publishing,
writing grants, serving on committees etc.... They do so because they have no choice if they
want to be tenured and promoted.... Teaching three courses and supervising candidates in
the field in any given semester is an enormous work load on top of crafting the time for
research, etc..... We do it!.. Is it fair, NO! The NEW LEADERSHIP of the Graduate College of
Education needs to work earnestly with Department Chairs on this workload issue.
Research is critical to my teaching. I spend a great deal of time on research, though
increasingly it comes in supporting the research of our students. This is essential to making
our university model work. Trying to balance professional activity and teaching as
completely separate from each other will always lead to compromises.
I get no support from SFSU for conducting research. So my research has stopped for the past
18 months. I only recently learned that I might be eligible for funding to go to one
conference. That is good news, since I was expecting that I would have to forego
conferences entirely in 2014.
At SFSU, research is often a component of teaching, so that faculty members apply research
findings and methods to their teaching, and use their teaching experiences as part of the
professional development. This system should continue.
As a lecturer, I hold other responsibilities outside the University classroom. These activities
often inform my teaching. In addition, there is no substitute for reading, writing, and
collaboration with colleagues.
Isn't this painfully obvious? Research is critical to teaching. In my field, keeping up to date
is essential to maintaining a relevent syllabus, to engaging students, to providing them with
skills and knowledge and perspectives that will help them be successful (in the many
meanings of that word). The more I can be active in the field, the more the students will
benefit. There is not ehough balance. Research and professional activities are secondary
when teaching 3/3 and actively participating in advising and othe aspects of student
/department/campus life.
Very important - keeps me current and on top of my subject and field. If we only taught we
would get tired and stale with no motivation to go 'out in the professional world'. It's also
fascinating to do research, creative activities and teach - each one feeds the other. Students
love to hear about how faculty are working/presenting in their field, even in a small way it's a great way for students to open up and ask questions about our work in and out of the
classroom. I wouldn't have it any other way for professors. When faculty are hired they
are aware of the commitments to the teahcing and creative activities etc. so they ahve time
to plan for it in their tenure track years and continue after.
My research life is important to me, but conditions of life at SFSU make it difficult to do as
much of it as I would like. It does figure directly in my teaching, and that's how I keep it
alive.
As mentioned before, the expectations in the area of professional activity are (too) high.
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Since the two areas are not necessarily related in our field, the time spent on professional
activity takes away from teaching preparations.
I spent my first twelve years in tenure-line ranks at R1 institutions, having earned tenure at
two different institutions before coming to State, where I learned quickly how to balance
research and teaching responsibilities (and service, of course). In both places, I would teach
at least graduate seminars that provided an opportunity to advance my research interests at
the time. I did not publish on "teaching," but I think that's another smart way to go (though
one has to be careful to ensure that they're publishing original research rather than
textbooks and related materials that leverage extant research). In my view, State should
refocus on graduate education for this and many other reasons (external funding, teaching
load balances, etc.). It's hard to balance teaching and research when you are not teaching at
the graduate level!
Research revitalizes my teaching. I incorporate my research into the classroom directly and,
indirectly, what I learn through research influences the perspectives that I bring to teaching.
I try to teach what I know, what I research, which is also a lot better for the students. They
deserve to learn from an expert, not just someone who read the same book they did. I look
upon teaching and research as two parts of my job. An accounting department has to get out
the payroll every week or two, but it also has to compile the annual report and get ready for
the auditors. Getting out the payroll is no excuse for not having the annual report ready on
time. Teaching is no excuse for not doing research.
My research and creative work are key to my teaching. I bring material from them into the
classroom continually. Unfortunately, from the middle of the semester to the end, I end up
getting swamped with teaching and administrative work and no longer have time for the
research and creative work.
It is central. I have tried to include students' professional development and my own in my
teaching, in addition to service. Integrating all three areas is not easy, but I have publication
outcomes from it, but my college leadership does not acknowledge it. Because
acknowledge is low, I'm actually looking for other positions at other Universities/Colleges
who will value my ability to connect teaching, service, and professional development into
one comprehensive package.
I test theses for my publications in the classroom. I also upload my publications when
relevant to their ilearn sites.
It is very difficult to balance creative and research activities with the teaching load that we
have, in particular, I think it is next to impossible to prepare a competitive federal grant
proposal whole teaching a full time load. This is particularly the case for creative studio
classes which typically meet for 6 hires per week, this means 18 total contact hours for a
creative arts professor, which combines with class prep. Committee work, office hours, and
other responsibilities leaves almost no time for any kind of concentrated work on research
and grant writing.
I bring my research into the classroom -- otherwise I would have no time for it.
My research plays a small role in my teaching. Every other year, I get to spend part of a
lecture or two on specific things I do in my research. (My teaching does inform my research
a bit. I have been able to publish work on pedagogy.) I read constantly in the practitioner
literatures (more than the peer-reviewed literature) to keep my classes near the cutting
edge. unfortunately that is hard to work into my published research. My professional
activity has contributed a little to my teaching. I have been engaged in a series of
community organizations over the last decade. i get to mention them occasionally in my
classes, but they don't have a major effect on my teaching. I heard the President talk about
how his teaching allowed him to engage undergraduates directly in his research. That has
not been my experience. The pressure of teaching required courses with established course
outlines is very different from teaching seminar or other class that connects directly with
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research.
I just finished graduate school, so for me, teaching and research are integrated.
Without research one cannot be an effective teacher. Faculty engaging in research bring
new ideas to the Classroom, which is not possible when faculty are just Teaching from a
textbook.
The two are obviously directly related. What the instructor gains through research goes
into the classroom, and the classroom experience can suggest areas of research to explore. I
recently published a second edition of my anthology Postmodern American Poetry: A
Norton Anthology, which required two years of intense preparation and research; the
anthology, in turn, is assigned in some of my courses. It's a poor instructor who sees a gap
between his or her teaching and creative activities.
Frankly, it has been rare that I have encountered students with the background and
sophistication to participate in my research which can be quite esoteric. On the other hand,
I have involved them in great success in applying the knowledge of the classroom to the
community at large either through applied projects, community service learning,
community based research, or civic engagement. This has been particularly true of first
generation students who benefit from connecting classroom learning with real world
experience.
Staying current in the field enables me to teach my students the latest interpretations of the
information available.
My research would play a greater role in my teaching if it would be recognized and
supported. It is discouraging to submit research award proposals and sabbatical proposals
and be repeatedly turned down for inexplicable reasons. On more than one occasion I have
been told that my proposal outshone by far other proposals, only to learn later than mine
was not funded-yet the poorly written proposal and the vague proposal with no clear
outcome were. My teaching and obligation to my students come first. My research is
extremely important to me, and I am proud that I am internationally recognized for my
research. Balance?! Perhaps with a 3/2 teaching load.
Not as much as the university would like to think. The balance almost always shifts to
research if I'm up for promotion, but teaching if I do what I'm passionate about. Since I
spend most of my time teaching the courses my department needs me to, very little of my
time is spent teaching in my area of expertise.
I consider mentoring of students in my laboratory to be teaching. In that regard, 100% of
my teaching is based on my research and creative activities, because all of that work is done
in collaboration with graduate students in my laboratory. How I integrate into teaching of
large classes depends on the course materials. In some of the laboratory classes I have
taught, the curriculum is constructed around my research and creative activities. However,
that is only possible when those research activities provide funding for the laboratory class.
Overall, I find that the research topics are of great fascination to the students and they really
enjoy it when we take some time to discuss research projects in larger lecture classes.
Balancing teaching and research or other scholarly activities (in addition to professional
service to SFSU and the community) is a very large challenge. Creative activities often
require large chunks of uninterrupted time - a luxury for the typical faculty member. The
frenetic pace of teaching multiple classes each term leads to a lack of such time and can
cause burn out of faculty who are desperately trying to balance all aspects of their
professional careers.
I teach full time at the University as a Lecturer (5 courses). I no longer do research but I
have in the past, read current literature and attend colloquia and conferences. I am
involved in many community based work so I bring those experiences and well as the
related research knowledge to the classroom.
Not very well. I am came into this institution as a scholar with an active research agenda
42
and several publications that I had been able to begin in graduate school. My teaching load
and the absence of significant resources for travel, release time, research grants have meant
that I have had to cut down on my research commitments. I still publish, but my output
simply does not compare with peers at comparable institutions in other parts of the
country. The only period when one can pursue one's research is during the summer if one
isn't teaching, which usually leaves one with enough time for one article a year; in some
years even less.
Research and creative activities are equally important to my teaching, I do not look at them
as needing to be balanced because I must do them both. Sometimes a performance can
become a research opportunity and sometimes a research opportunity leads to creative
endeavors. This, to me, is what it means to do interdisciplinary work.
My research serves as content here and there in my teaching. That is, I introduce students to
some of the topics I am working on outside of the classroom -this helps better integrate the
two sides of my academic career.
My research activities are directly reflected in much of my teaching, which I love. I balance
them with great difficulty. Even taking a Professional Leave without Pay is not enough--I'm
very stressed and it's affecting my health.
The two are completely intertwined. My research is in the classroom every week, and the
classroom feeds the research. Even during the busiest times of the semester, I reserve a day
or two a week for my research.
Research plays an incredibly important role in my teaching. In fact, I don't even want to
think about teaching without doing research. My research in relevant fields helps me make
lecture content much more than repeating what's simply spelled out in the textbook. In
addition to insight brought about from their own work, research active faculty are attuned
to ongoing research (through attending conferences and keeping up with journal articles)
that allows them to enrich course content.
Research-led teaching is at the core of outstanding university education. One of the
problems with relying on lecturers to teach so many classes (at least in my department in
my experience) is that the lecturers have little time or resources or desire to engage in
primary research. Until the current term (from arriving at SFSU in 2008-Dec 2013), I have
found little support for my research. Travel grants never cover the full costs of the standard
national professional meetings, and I have always had to meet these costs out of pocket. I
have only been able to continue my work by manipulating grants that I had held before I
joined SFSU. More recently, the university's program of Individual or Collaborative grants
have made it possible to get relief from teaching in the coming term, and the sabbatical
program will help in Spring 2015. The ability to carry out significant research depends on
time. For a faculty member on a 3/3 load and with a normal set of service duties, there is no
time to do research during term. So, if there is a balance then it is a seesaw that swings
violently one way (holidays and the summer) and then the other (term time).
My research is essential to my teaching and my teaching to my research. I plan my research
so that it enables my teaching to flourish and I plan my courses so that they benefit from my
academic research.
For me, crucial. My research/creative activities totally inform my teaching -- and I'm a
lecturer. I balance it by being clear that my research and creative activities are as crucial as
my teaching. I'm a "good-enough" teacher -- and I'm very good -- but I set up my syllabus
and assignments so that I can be done at the end of the semester and so every assignment
has impact on student learning. I evaluate whether the amount of effort I put in grading is
greater than the learning impact on my students and I change assignments if I feel that I'm
spending too much time grading for the impact.
I try to continue my research and writing while teaching, but the work usually ends up
happening all summer, with no pay. I also try to include graduate students in my research
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along with a few undergrads. I have found it impossible to separate research and teaching
because of the workload of teaching. I can't just do research in isolation from my teaching. I
use graduate seminars to help update me on the literature, focusing some of the seminar on
related work and I work with grads to help write papers for publication where they have
some authorship. My grads help m e with new technology for statistical analysis and GIS,
which I don't have time to relearn. I spend a lot of time working with them on their theses.
I bring up my research in some undergrad classes where appropriate. But it is only a small
part of what I teach. As I currently don't have funding for my research, what I need comes
out of my pocket for expenses. I don't have time to write a grant because of teaching so
much. It typically takes 8 hours of research a subject for one hour of teaching, as I feel the
need to be current in an increasingly changing world, so preparing, teaching 3 classes, then
grading pretty much takes up the entire time. So research happens after hours and on
weekends. So the two are really not balanced and I tend to be overwhelmed with a poor
quality of life because of trying to do the impossible. I think it would be better to work at a
Research 1 institution or a teaching college instead. Guess I'll look for another job.
It is part of SFSU's calling that teaching and professional growth go hand in hand. More is
demanded of SFSU faculty than of faculty elsewhere, because we must achieve excellence in
both. To be honest, I do not know how I balance these two activities. Each day it seems a
miracle.
This is a difficult thing to do. I'm not sure that I'm able to keep these two entities in balance
at all.
Because my field is Math-Education much of my research is directly related to my teaching,
and in many cases could/would not exist without it. But I am in a unique position. That
said, my teaching load, work with graduate students, and other responsibilities still do not
allow adequate time for research.
This is essential, but must be balanced.Yet I find myself at the point where I cannot commit
to obtaining research grants to support my research without compromising my teaching.
I bring experience from the field to my classroom at each session. These anecdotes help
reinforce the subject matter of the course.
It is a hard balance to strike, when the UTPC and Provost's office speak out of both sides of
their mouths. Essentially faculty are expected to develop a profile that increasingly
resembles a Research I university faculty member in terms of publication, without that load,
while also devoting time to teaching at a high level of quality. This is an untenable balance.
Ultimately, the balance should probably shift back in the direction of teaching. That is, after
all, what the students come to us for.
My research is central to my teaching pedagogy. I try to integrate my current research into
my lectures and gain valuable perspectives in discussing the issues with students. They
often challenge my assumptions and make me rethink as to how I propose an intellectual
problem. That is not to say that I only teach what I happen to be researching but I make a
small portion of the class syllabus relevant to my own intellectual pursuits where
applicable. My disposition and morale increases manifold when I feel I am contributing
towards knowledge in a given subject.
My research is essential to my teaching. By having an active research program I can bring
my teaching to life, with real-world relevance. I involve students in my research through
field trips and independent research experiences. Balance is tricky but I wouldn't want to
only teach or only do research, so I like finding ways to accomplish both.
My research is on teacher education and I also teach in teacher education so my teaching
and my research are daily well aligned. I also volunteer in nonprofit programs for children
with disabilities and I work with teachers who teach teachers who work in SPED, so fairly
aligned.
I not only teach full time (5 classes) as a lecturer, but engage in research, publish in both
44
popular and academic publications and contribute to the community through volunteer
work. None of this is recognized or compensated since I am contingent faculty through the
university, although I receive moral support through my department. The same activities
are required of tenure/tenure track faculty and result in promotion and increase in pay.
This situation is unfair and inconsistent with the university's mission of social justice.
Both are important; and are used in my teaching. Reading and trying out new ideas, along
with obtaining feedback from students is always helpful.
Luckily I have a fairly 'hands-off' unit that does not meddle excessively with my research
agenda, although they don't support it very well either. Always need more time, sabbaticals
are great, resurrecting release time or otherwise finding ways to give folks precious time
would likely be splendid all around.
I research my own teaching and my students' (SoTL), which makes the integration of my
teaching and professional activity smooth and natural.
I am always doing research into the martial arts and it is plays an important role in my
teaching. When I began researching the impact of acupuncture points on martial arts it
opened up a whole new area of training as well as thinking and it changed my teaching
considerably. It also gave more in depth meaning to things that I had already been teaching.
When I began my martial arts training in the 1960's my instructor, the late GM S. Henry Cho,
told me "always have a beginners mind!" This allows you to be open to new ideas and
concepts which you can then incorporate into your teaching.
Some of my research is key to my teaching. Some of my reserach is not aligned with my
teaching and while beneficial to me and to the world plays only a limited role in my
teaching. Balance is a challenge - but I think balance gets worse as we push toward R! type
reward and recognition structure. Currently as a full professor I have the freedom to put
time into a reserach project that will benefit my teaching but is not prestigous, may not
bring in grant funds, and may result in a report rather than a peer reviewed pub. If I were an
assistant prof and under more R1 like expectations it would be difficult to make the same
choice and my teaching would suffer.
Research plays a role in that in provides examples to bring to the classroom. Balance is
difficult, but having dedicated time for research helps.
My teaching interacts often with my research. The students learn from my research
experiences.
My research is very integrated into my teaching. I involve students in my work to some
extent, contingent on funding. The high course load in GCOE deeply constrains the type and
scope of research I am able to accomplish.
With a heavy 4-4 teaching load, it is impossible to carry out research projects and write
peer-reviewed journal articles.
There needs to be a balance between professional/administrative activities and teaching.
No teacher should feel compelled to forego teaching because research or administrative
activities demand more time. We lose good teachers too soon, due to burnout. Publish or
perish should not be the active role model. Students lose out when they do not have access
to their instructors, because instructors are engaged in research, administration or
promotional activities. If conferences and publishing are also a priority, then an instructor
should be able to take a semester off to persue those activities, but devote the bulk of
his/her time to teaching.
My professional research activity informs my teaching. In a rapidly developing field, where
new information often changes the traditional view, research activity keeps me updated
about what materials are relevant and valid. I would not be able to teach if I were unable to
conduct research.
The dialogue between my research and teaching is quite strong. They feed one another,
though not necessarily in straightforward or "instrumentalized" ways. I don't balance them
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very well at all. I am constantly overwhelmed. But it is a goal to work towards. The hardest
thing is prepping for 3 separate classes each semester. It would help if I could teach two
sections of a single class, or teach a class more than once a year. I am working towards this
situation with my department.
There is almost no time to conduct research or write during the semester. (This past
semester, I turned into a grading machine, with 150 or so students, all of whom turned in
written assignments, so I barely had time to teach, given the grading.) I run a short-term
study abroad project, which has been the source of my professional activity of late, but
although I made a lot of progress on a book about it on my sabbatical of Fall 2012, I have
had NO time to touch it since I returned from sabbatical.
I don't. It is really difficult to find the time and mental bandwidth to be available to
students, to work with them intensively to support their development and to do the creative
work I'd like to do. And the work I am doing would not be valued by our provost. At this
point, I am looking forward to retiring so that I can do the work I haven't been able to do at
SFSU.
Research is critical to my teaching. They are always linked for me, as I bring my research to
class to highlight what we are learning and reading about. Similarly, I often rely on my
classes to advance my research. Without major grants and doctoral students, I rely a lot on
my classes to help me collect data.
Absolutely essential. It is the only reason that I applied and accepted the position at SFSU.
However it has been harder and more challenging to balance both in current academic
setting and our disciplinaries when external grant fundings are needed to carry out teaching
& research activities.
I do incorporate my research activities into my classroom experiences, particularly for
graduate students. The fact that I conduct research enhances the discussion of certain topics
that I cover in my undergraduate and graduate classes. In addition, my research lab
provides undergrads and graduate students with valuable research experience. Balancing
teaching and research is a challenge. Most of my research writing is done off campus, on
weekends or during "down-time". When I'm on campus, my days are filled with teaching,
advising, service, etc.
Both are essential to each other and our students development. Our students can be part of
faculty research and we can support their research interest and development. As the
expectations rise for the quantitly of publications it is challenging to balance with the
quantitiy of teaching preparations and other committee activities for faculty.
The university has gained a significant population of active researchers in the hiring wave of
the last 10-15 years, but has not entirely come to terms with it in resources. What meager
resources we had to support research and travel disappeared during the budget crisis.
These should be restored and expanded.
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
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6. 6. Additional comments.Is there anything else you want to tell us about
teaching at SFSU?
Text Response
it's important.
Teaching is the core of our mission - - yet it's not valued as a core activity. We need more
ways of supporting, recognizing, rewarding teaching innovation and creativity.
xxxxxxx
First of all, I love teaching at SFSU. I love the fact that I have so many students whose
parents didn't go to college or even graduate from high school. I Our top 10% could beat the
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pants off of Stanford or Berkeley students for their smarts, their drive and (especially) their
ability to overcome adversity. I have no fear for our country's future when I see that we
have so many talented immigrants, and as long as this remains a place where a person of
Chinese heritage can marry an Indian, Korean, European or other without reprisals or
disdain, we shall persevere as a nation. That said, I think we honestly need to look at the
bottom 10% of our students and tell them to shape up or get the f*#$% out of the classroom
until they have the maturity or discipline to try harder. I understand some students may be
slow learners at first, but after two terms of probation, why the hell are we wasting our
time, seats in tight classes, or taxpayer dollars? SFSU is in a position of privilege in that we
have high demand and we should use this to increase our selectivity. Let the dregs go to
CSU Podunkville. If we could jettison the losers, our overall reputation would increase and
would benefit the top 90%. Sorry to be "elitist" if that's the word, but I'm tired of making
excuses for people who honestly don't deserve a college education.
I think there ought to be more of a focus on what students need. Right now the focus seems
to be on faculty and what faculty need to do to get tenure and promotion. If I didn't feel the
requirement to publish, I'd be a better teacher.
Teaching is the heart of what we do at SF State for the population of students that we serve.
If our students were from white middle income housholds, then teaching would be easier.
But our students do not have that privleged background. We work hard and our students
work hard - together we change the world one degree at a time.
It's a great place to teach. The diversity of the student body and the faculty is the best thing.
Unfortunately the teaching load is usually to high to leave enough time for exploring and
utilizing many resources that go untapped most of the time.
A bit like a dysfunctional marriage, you stay at SFSU because of the kids. They are a great
group but increasingly challenging to teach. We cannot correct all the inadequacies of the K12 system in CA,( and if CCSF closes , it is a catastrophe for us) but we need to make sure
that we offer enough resources for ESL students, Learning disabled students, vets, etc.
It would be great to have an elite track for honor-type students. Because there is such a
wide renage in the degree of preparation it is difficult to serve all students effectively with a
one size fits all pedagogy. I also believe we can do a better job of incorporating students'
experiences in extracurricular activities and part time work int the academic program.
I would like to reiterate that my main concern with teaching at SFSU is that few people seem
to understand how difficult it is to have responsibility for every single aspect of a class. One
unit of teaching at SFSU is far more labor intensive than one unit of teaching outside the CSU
system. We are lucky to have a 9 unit teaching load rather than a 12 unit load, however, my
colleagues at other CSU campuses seem to be spending less time teaching their 12 unit loads
than I spend teaching my 9 unit load. They have smaller classes, get more credit for teaching
lab sections, and have fewer demands re scholarly productivity.
It's very frustrating to me that my work is expected to be impeccable and excellent (and I
have my own reasons and motivations for demanding that same level of myself), but
students are not held to high standards. I'm not talking about the low level of preparation
that many exhibit; I do understand that and I'm perfectly happy to teach to where they are,
wherever that is. But the institutional expectations of them are very very low.
The students are rewarding. There is little in the way of faculty exchanges and collegiality is
limited by politics and fear.
Interestingly, this all-teaching discourse created by those who somehow got tenured, don't
bother publishing anymore, and are lazy to do so but instead embrace this all-teaching
discourse since they have nothing else to offer as their academic idenity turned into a
teacher-only identity (no pun intended). Along those faculty, are also most of the
administrators, who are resentful to the faculty who doesn't teach winters and summers
since they want to do research, and who never understand how much teaching sucks the life
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out of faculty and their academic identity - at least the way teaching is talked about and
handled at SFSU.
Needs better administrative support, especially at secretarial, IT, and teching assistant
levels. Current level of support is poor.
I love SFSU and continue to be committed to excellence in what we do at the Department,
College, and University level. We have some challenging issues before us and I believe we
can meet these challenges if we are willing to listen, be creative, and truly implement a
system at SFSU of social justice and equity. We continue to put this out there as a corner
store but I believe it is not truly adhered to......
SFSU. Is a great place to be! I am happy
to serve in anyway I can to make it an even better place for the 21 century!
I work to hard, but fortunately I love the work I do.
I love and admire the students.
I only answered one specific question above, because the rest (and even the one question I
answered) really would require much more than 25 minutes to do justice. And, frankly, I
do not trust the current process enough to trust that spending a lot more time on
answering these questions would not be a waste of time.
Teaching excellence should be a sine qua non at the University. Retention of teachers should
be contingent upon their achievement of excellence in teaching. Probationary faculty who
are not excellent as teachers should not be retained, and especially should not be given
tenure. We are NOT an R-1 institution. Any pretense that research should predominate
over teaching -- or that mediocre teaching is acceptable as long as one has achieved
recognition for research or professional achievement -- should be rejected.
As stated initially, excellence in teaching should be our highest priority. Sorry to say, other
stuff often gets in the way.
In case it does not come up later - I do not believe that the GWAR structure is working as it
should. Too many students are coming out of Eng 214 or transfer equivalents, etc., and
who simply cannor write. It burdens teaching in the discipline when students cannot
communicate as they should. The GWAR course is not the place to teach really basic
writing!
Students do not seem to understand the role of the professor and Office Hours as an
extension of teaching, to discuss progress but also student interests or opportunities in the
field. However, they do think of meeting a professor during Office Hours as coming to a
'counselor' in high school when they have done something wrong. Therefore, it is difficult to
get students to come and talk about their work and interests in Office Hours - it would be
great if this culture could change.
It's the usual story: great faculty, staff, and students, inadequate support all around.
Chinese proverb: even the cleverest housewife can't make a meal without rice.
A renewed focus on teaching might significantly improve the student (and faculty)
experience at SFSU. Especially with the wide-spread range of backgrounds, it might be wise
to deemphasize student evaluations of teaching. After all, if they were truly experts who
were truly able to evaluate course content and delivery, they might not need to attend our
classes.
Our students are under such pressure to work longer hours and graduate more quickly,
simultaneously, that teaching them in ways that will actually prepare them for the futures
they want becomes a challenge. We need to maintain standards, but also be sure that the
standards and criteria we set are actually preparing them for the twenty-first century, not
the world as it was when we graduated.
The teaching load is too heavy, particularly when it is combined with the administrative
work we are expected to do.
The teaching load is crazy! We can not teach 160+ students a semester, and produce
professional outcomes while maintain an active record of community service. I have been
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able to do this, but have not been recognized or acknowledged for it, and this motivated me
to look for a position elsewhere where the student teacher ratio of lower, and where my
work is valued.
I teach 3/3; I never seem to qualify for release time. I have many colleagues who have
managed to work the system so that they can at least get "leave with difference in pay." It
seems that this administration is moving to a two tiered system in which the majority of the
faculty will teach to pay for a small elite's subvention, an elite that seems to be inordinately
found in the sciences and the social sciences.
One research area that I wish the university would support more is the scholarship of
teaching and learning, or sotl. Finding opportunities to educate faculty about scholarship on
their own teaching practice would not only enhance their teaching, but would also allow for
a really appropriate area of research at a university at which innovative and excellent
teaching is so important. Please help faculty to find opportunities to turn their teaching into
a research area through SOTL approaches. I would also appreciate a discipline-specific
survey of faculty workload so that the university could compare, for example, time spent in
teaching versus research vs department responsibilities in math and science; to time spent
in teaching vs research/creative activity and dept. activity in creative arts, humanities, etc.I
think this would give a better picture of the very real workload issues that prevent faculty in
engaging in serious research given highly challenging teaching loads. Tis might also lead to
recommendations and support systems for faculty to better manage workload issues so
they can maintain a balance between teaching, research/creative activity, and community. I
am curious as to whether such a survey of workload and time spent in diff, activities has
been done recently at sf state. I would be curious to see it.
At the beginning of the semester, we had a lovely presentation of research agendas at SFSU.
How about making next year's faculty opening ceremony about outstanding teachers???
We focus a lot of our communications on upgrading the research environment. And we
celebrate the research and creative outputs of our faculty. This is all very appropriate. But
the resounding silence about teaching and learning in our daily conversation, and in the
communications from the senior leadership sends a strong message. We sound like we
want to be a baby R-1 university, instead of being one of the great teaching institutions in
the country or the world. We will never match the great grant and alumni funded research
engines in our area. But we can be one of the great teaching universities on the planet and
still do good research and be a leader in community engagement. But we can't do that if we
don't talk more and do more to increase the focus on teaching and learning.
I enjoy the evaluation process. It feels collegial and informative. I really appreciate the
thoughtful feedback.
Current method of faculty evaluation of teaching is Not fair for faculty who are passionate
about what they teach Have high standards and teach difficult courses
Insist on a high academic standard for both faculty and students. There's a good reason that
the University of Chicago did away with its competitive sports programs. Sports programs
may create alumni loyalty and have a fundraising function, but they're a recreational waste
of time. Don't allow faculty with national reputations to be hired away because funds are
reserved for other areas than faculty development.
Once class size reaches 60, it doesn't matter if it goes to 100. The personal interaction is lost
at a certain size class.
Teaching is a passion for me. It is a passion for the vast majority of the faculty at SFSU>
Teaching at SFSU is extremely rewarding. It can also be extremely challenging. Just this
semester I have seen homeless students. I had students students not coming to class
because they have to work at their jobs at Target. I have seen students sleeping in class
because they are working two or more jobs while trying to going to school full time. I'm not
entirely sure how to help all students during these difficult economic times, but one thing is
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certain: insisting that all (probationary) faculty have 1.5 or better teaching evaluation
scores is not the answer.
Just that it's a shame that it is not valued on our campus. So many faculty are passionate
about teaching and would like to develop more time to it, but don't feel it will be valued by
the university.
The SFSU students are incredibly diverse. That diversity comes in all flavors, including
readiness for college. While some students are as good as any across the nation, I have
found that an alarmingly large proportion of the students in my classes are unprepared to
be matriculated at a 4-year university. They do not come to class, do not take their studies
seriously, and are trying to balance and juggle too many things. No matter how much they
may want to get a college education, they are wasting everyone's time.
I wish The Center for Teaching and Faculty Development was as robust as in years past.
Pam Vaughn did a good job with developing programs of which I participated.
There is much I value about the student population I work with here and it's a genuinely
gratifying experience. That said, in recent years the classroom has often felt like an unsafe
space with several seriously disturbed students dealing with a range of mental health
issues. This often means we deal with issues like inappropriate student conduct, potentially
violent behavior, student threats etc. While we do have some resources to help us deal with
these students after-the-fact, it does seem like we need more support to keep such students
out of the classroom in the first place.
The survey says to try to reply by Dec. 10, but I got it Dec. 23.
I have taught at universities in Europe and in the US (including Stanford), and I have found
the SFSU students to be the most engaged, alert, and vibrant students I have ever shared a
classroom with. Their feet are on the ground, and they don't take any crap from anyone. In
brief, teaching at SFSU is the most rewarding pedagogic experience I have had. It is an
opportunity to change people's lives, to light fires in young (and not so young) minds, and to
play a fundamental role in making society a better place.
Sometimes, many of us feel so demoralized and depressed by the long, long struggle with
egregiously cut resources, that these lyrics (from Peter Weiss's play, MARAT/SADE) occur
only partially in jest: Marat we're poor And the poor stay poor Marat don't make us wait
any more. We want our rights and we don't care how We want a revolution Now
Seriously, we need a strategic plan that involves urgent triage for neglected research and
teaching resources--and not the creation of new administrative positions or offices or staffs.
Thank you for your consideration.
Um, it would be great if the tools for lecturers -- copy machines etc. were working and able
to be used when needed.
In the last 5 years at SFSU I think teaching has really taken a back seat to trying to get
funding for research and publishing and is reflected in RTP. With the loss of the CTFD
Director and most of the staff we lost a lot in terms of people who cared about teaching and
resources spent on teaching. I don't think the Provost of Dean of Faculty Affairs puts much
effort or resources to teaching. With the loss of Senate retreats we have lost opportunities
to talk about teaching, And it seems faculty are so busy that they have no time to work on
enhancing teaching. Even sabbaticals and mini-grant proposals can't be about teaching
anymore, just research. I have seen the quality of teaching decline in favor of finding
researchers that can deliver large grants instead of high quality instruction. Risk and
Liability issues on internships and experiential learning opportunities, like field trips have
also been stifled and contribute to a decline in the learning opportunities for students. The
CSU wanted degree factories rather than places to encourage and support student learning
and an informed citizenry, and I fear that is what we are becoming.
Only that we need to keep it at the top of our priorities.
Stop trying to be a RO1 type university and chasing $ - our primary mission should be
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teaching.
Great school. Fantastic faculty. Love the new library. Students are serious and smart. A
great university.
We are in a a very good institution but are beset by serious financial challenges. Colleagues
who teach in large lecture classes need more TAs. Those who have vigorous research
publication records should be given a RA (research assistant) occasionally as well. That is
what faculty USED to get at public institutions. We have settled for far less for too long.
I think that if SFSU wants to show they care about teaching, they need to show they care
about the College of Education. The College of Education trains their K-12 teachers who
teach the children in the Bay area who ultimately apply for admission to SFSU. San
Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and some places in the northern part of the peninsula are not
known for good public schools and those are the areas that are mostly covered by SFSU
teacher education. SFSU can't say it cares about teaching when it ignores its College of
Education which it has done since I've been involved with this university -- 1990.
I would like to thank you for this opportunity to contribute to the dialogue and comment on
the two-tiered system of recognition, support and compensation regarding tenure/tenure
track and contingent faculty.
Teaching at SFSU is a wonderful experience because I am working with other teachers who
are as dedicated to their disciplines and I am to mine. Teachers here work together, share
and most importantly encourage each other. Peace.
A common sentiment is that it is difficult to get the students to read all the materials before
class. It may be a generational thing. I have heard this from many others.
Our students are wonderful! I find my students to be deeply engaged, passionate about
issues of equity and social justice, and incredibly hard working. I don't think I'd have
students I enjoy more at any university, anywhere.
Teaching should be one of the highlights of SFSU. I am proud to be teaching here and I hope
the Univeristy can recognize more effective teachers and consider their contributions in the
RTP process.
It is one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my professional career and I
feel honored to be a part of this faculty.
I do the very best job I can do given the constraints of the situation (large lecture classes
with no TA's) If I were at a small liberal arts school I'm sure I would assign more writing
and give students more careful feedback on their writing. HOwever this is not viable here.
I just finished turning in my grades for Fall 2013 - 24 hours late, for the first time in 25
years at SFSU. I taught a GWAR course with 27 students, an upper-division survey couse
with 85 students, and an upper division elective with about 40 students. The GWAR course
is, of course, writing intensive, and I put more time into that class than either of the others.
Regardless, the particular upper division elective has a written assignment every week, and
the large course has 4 short papers and 2 exams. I am exhausted, which may account for the
tone of my responses to this survey. Now I've got to turn around and get ready for spring.
I'm exhausted! I don't think I can carry this kind of load again,
The students and community at SFSU are really special. I really love working with the
students. And the bureaucracy is a nightmare. I had lunch with a friend who is also tied to
State yesterday and we were joking about SFSU being the place where "ideas go to die".
Change is glacial. There is so much entrenched inertia. Nobody wants to bring money
through ORSP. Our online capabilities are less sophisticated than other CSUs or CCSF. If
planning is happening, it doesn't seem to change things on the ground. And when people
make changes, it seems only to make things MORE complex and to set up more
impediments (e.g., the new travel reimbursement system). There is zero flexibility, even
when logic would dictate that things would work better if somebody actually took a chance
and thought about whether or not a system is working. Our provost is out of touch with
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what is beautiful about this place. I think we are doing good work here, and could do even
more with visionary leadership that was willing to take chances.
Our students deserve better instructions from our existing talented faculty. There are so
many ways to enrich academic excellence in this university. Thanks for doing this.
The Office of Community and Service Learning is and has been a wonderful support team
for accessing the community and engaging and supporitng our faculty in meaningful ways in
and with our community. With the advent of service learning courses, faculty were
supported with the development of curriculumn that engaged student learing in High
Impact Practices. applying their book knowledege to real problems and needs of the
community.
Statistic
Total Responses
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7. 7. Reputation. What is SFSU’s reputation for scholarly and creative
achievement? How important is this reputation? 7
Text Response
This is a difficult question to answer.
About par for peer institutions. Important only insofar as you don't want a negative or zero
reputation.
Xxxxxxx
We are but a pale shadow of Berkeley, but that's beside the point- we are a CSU not a UC.
I think this depends on the field. In some fields it's very strong, but not in others. I think
this reputation is important to administration. I think faculty are very much underpaid for
what's expected.
we have some super stars, but in general we are middle of the road. and middle of the road
ain't so bad.
Don't know enough, but I think it's high in certain areas.
I think better reputation creative arts than in more traditional scholarship.
My level of professional achievement is low. This colors my perceptions in this area. My
perception is that each college has a different reputation and the university as a whole is not
known as a research institution. With Stanford and Berkeley nearby we are not going to
stand out. I believe the reputation of creative arts is stronger than that of scholarship.
In some areas it is excellent and in some areas there is no reputation to speak of. I believe
that reputation is very important.
In some corners the reputation is excellent. Overall I believe the "world" views us as a state
colelge, no more and no less.
good, as far as I know.
It appears there is a desire to increase the amount of scholarly and creative achievement
within the university. Personally there should be a continued focus on advances in this
area.
We don't have a much as a reputation as we deserve, but reputation is not that important to
our primary mission of teaching students who are not Ph.D.-level.
I don't know. good question. Reputation is everything. It attracts faculty, it attracts
students, it attracts employees.
I believe we have a good reputation for training a diverse student population. I am not one
to care much about reputation, however, the students will benefit if we are recognized
nation-wide for our training. I assume it would also bring more donors to our campus. My
frustration is that I believe we are an excellent institution, however, I am not sure this is
fully appreciated especially in the Bay Area where we have some of the top schools in the
nation.
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Very important and prominent in many fields in which areas of excellence should be
promoted. It should also be the goal of the upper administration to understand our milieu
in the arts, social engagement, and culture and use its resources to strengthen and enhance
our visibility, not import another model of school boosterism (teams, pep rallies,slogans,
mascots etc.) that doesn't suit our context in a highly cosmopolitan, diverse, gender and
sexuality aware, technologically advanced locale. We can't get bigger by appearing smaller
in our goals or horizons.
Poor reputation. This is very important
Reputation is very important. In the area of Teacher Preparation we need to continue to
move forward with the changes necessary for the 21century teacher! We can do this... But
we need TRUE LEADERSHIP at the Deans level. A Dean that has the background experience
in education/teacher preparation, and more importantly, a Dean that has the leadership
skills in working with a diverse faculty. A Dean that believes in participatory decision
making and knows how to move a faculty forward with respect and has the interpersonal
skills to do so. I am hopeful our NEW DEAN WILL HAVE THESE QUALITIES. While with
the CUNY system before I came to SFSU, THE reputation of SFSU was widely known! I
believe it is still their but at the department or program level. We need to do a mush better
job marketing ..... We are given NO RESOURCES FRO MARKETING in Secondary Education .
This needs to change!
It's highly important, and the reason I am here. It greatly helps the students when it's not
seen as competitive with teaching.
I don't know.
It is quite low, and, of course, it would be of great help if it were much better. But, I don't
see how that will happen, given circumstances.
Scholarly and creative achievement are important to faculty members at SF State, and
should be rewarded. But students come to the University to gain skills, not to do primarily
to do research. So the role of the faculty is to use research and professional development to
enhance their ability to teach students. Research and professional development should aid
the faculty to become better teachers. teaching should not take a subordinate role to
research and professional devlep0oment.
SFSU’s reputation in the Humanities in the 1960’s was outstanding. A fair amount of
polishing is in order. Refer to “excellence in teaching as the highest priority.”
No idea, but I don't think that in most fields it has a particularly noteworthy reputation. The
reputation matters if one is trying to do something other than be a teaching university. But
on the other hand I contend that a teaching university would be better in that role with a
strucutre that more robustly supported scholarlship.
I think that SFSU is probably lower down the scale compared to most universities in
scholarly and creative achievement, but that the creative achievement would be slightly
higher than the scholarly achievement. These are both important to SFSU otherwise we
become known as a teaching institution only. While this is noble, we also need to stretch
ourselves to a high level of scholarly and creative achievement for the overall reputation of
SFSU. We sould be able to do it all, the faculty are more than capable.
Good on both. I'd say the creative achievement is more important for public awareness and
outreach.
SFSU's reputation seems to be strong. When it comes to attracting students, I am, however,
skeptical as to the actual value of this reputation.
The reputation is uneven, of course. Some disciplines rank quite high; have a terrific
reputation. Others do not. I think this is widely understood by people and institutions
concerned with such matters. If we're to attract the best teachers and scholars, we need to
find ways to even out and improve our reputation. One way to do this is by improving
graduate education and graduate funding across the university -- as well as support for
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external funding and projects supported by external funding.
The reputation varies by department. Theater, for example, is highly regarded. Other
departments are less well-known. Reputation is important because of what it represents.
Universities get reputations by having faculty who do good work on a consistent basis. This
helps students get into better graduate programs and get better jobs as they start their
careers. This also means that were prepared by faculty who taught them what they need to
know to do well in those endeavors.
I think we have an ok, but not strong reputation. It is unrealistic to expect a better one with
the teaching load we have.
I do not know that we have this. We present ourselves as a campus that values teaching, but
the conditions on campus does not make it possible for us (professors) to teach most
effectively. We need to honor our status are R2 and not try to be R1.
Depends on the field. As a whole, I don't know that any CSU is considered at the level of a
research 1 institution, even though SDSU qualifies as such an institution. Some departments
may be well thought of in their respective disciplines at the national level, but it really
depends on faculty visibility at the national and international levels. In terms of getting
students into doctoral programs, our scholarly reputation is important. It helps if faculty are
"known" in some way in their fields, even if only through conference appearances.
I think the reputation for creative achoevement could be improved with better leadership
and more prominence to the creative arts which have been subsumed into the giant college
of humanities and creative arts. I would like to see the identity of the creative arts be
strengthened and more support for marketing of the creative output of our students and
faculty.
I sincerely do not know. We should make sure not to compete for reputation with research
1 schools.
SFSU has a strong reputation for creative outputs. We turn out some really strong research,
but have a minimal reputation in my field. It is important for us to continue to build what
reputation we do have in these areas. But we will never be Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan or
UNC.
Not quite there yet. But we probably deserve more respect than we get.
No comments
This is the most important aspect of SFSU.
SF State's reputation is excellent, and it should be. We have many fine scholars. This should
be one pillar of our mission, but we should not be consumed by it.
Graduate schools and Ph.D. programs covet our students. That is important.
Depends on the department. I think there are areas in which it is easier to make a national
(international) impact than others. I don't think our reputation is that important (other than
for people trying to raise money). We should be focused on our mission, which is teaching,
not research.
Poor. By most, we are considered a "teaching" school where no serious research is
conducted.
I think SFSU has a good reputation but of course and institution could find room for
improvement--USF (my undergrad alma mater) has a fantastic marketing campaign that
has elevated their profile.
We have several well published scholars who are doing fantastic work in a range of fields.
But somehow this hasn't added up to a stellar reputation for scholarly achievement at SF
State. I appreciate what the Provost is doing to change this by setting up higher research
standards for our faculty.
One of the things that strategic planning is showing to me is that SFSU's reputation is
unclear and so we are collectively trying to decide what we will emphasize going forward.
For myself, I hope to emphasize social justice, equity, and art in all of their complexity and
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difficulty. I am not interested in turning these concepts into palatable bites because the
history of SFSU shows they are ideals that must be constantly renegotiated in order to
remain relevant.
In my field, not much reputation for scholarly achievement. Don't know what second
question means.
It has a solid reputation. If nothing else, it makes it a more attractive place to work.
Reputation is not so great. I don't think this is critical though (although perhaps not when it
comes to fund-raising). We can still do good work, and many of us do.
The university's reputation for scholarly achievement is poor, with little recognition offcampus for the very real achievements that faculty have made. Most people who teach here
(and we all see the central role that teaching has on campus) feel that their scholarly
achievements are not acknowledged or appreciated.
Excellent. Considering the quality of the faculty, it is incredible that we are not more
celebrated. Doubtless, this is due to an inability--from depleted resources--to publicize our
institution, its quality, and itss considerable achievements.
Good, I believe. I believe reputation is important to attract high quality faculty and engaged
students.
Great in the Arts, moving forward in Science..Reputation used to mean more in attracting
quality faculty and students, but I think teaching and opportunities for learning attracts
students. I hear from many alum I meet how they liked SFSU and mostly their teachers.
Facilities attract faculty and we have poor facilities.
SFSU's reputation for scholarly and creative achievement varies department-bydepartment. It is very important to conduct national searches for faculty, which would
enhance this aspect.
The CSU has a moderate-to-low reputation for scholarly achievement, and this is perhaps as
it should be for an institution that needs to place most of its efforts on teaching a generally
under-prepared student body.
I believe SFSU has a growing reputation for scholarly achievement and a well established
reputation for creative achievement. I think this reputation is strong among state
universities and should continue to grow and remain strong, BUT not to the detriment of
teaching. I think our strong teaching reputation enables our scholarly and creative
achievement.
Damn good for a CSU - this is important.
Great reputation
From the perspective of teaching language and literature (I cannot comment on areas
outside as I simply do not know enough), I think it is good given the university's financial
constraints. But those who rigorously publish, I believe, have sought resources outside of
the university to given them much needed time for research & writing.
It seems to depend on the field. Some individuals are very well-known for their scholarly
achievements. Our reputation overall is not as good as other institutions with PhD
programs and a lot better funding. Reputation is important in attracting funding and press,
which breeds more funding and press.
I don't know what the reputation is in other areas, I have heard it has a good reputation in
creative arts. Reputation is important.
Students involved in the Master of Arts in Education programs continue to give fairly high
marks.
Overall, I think it is pretty good. We won't get the press the big folks do, and probably
shouldn't, but our efforts in the community (I am thinking particularly of Ethnic Studies and
HSS, as well as many science oriented or depts formerly known as BSS based) are notable
and worthy.
I think our reputation for teaching and preparing teachers should matter more than our
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reputation for scholarly and creative achievement.
SFSU has an outstanding reputation for scholarly and creative achievement! To emphasize
this point, take a look at the alumni of this institution and you will see how our alumni have
had a positive influence in everything from politics to entertainment. Take a walk in the
hallway by the center court yard of the gym bldg. and in the main hallway of the admin bldg.
and you will see the alumni that have influenced every aspect of our society from
entertainment to politics and don't forget sports! How important is this reputation?
Extremely important! Even an old jaded, former New Yorker like myself was extremely
impressed when I saw the Who's Who of SF State Alumni!
Our reputation varies greatly by department. I dont know overall what our reputation is but
I dont think it matters very much.
Moderate. Not sure it is important to anyone, but I am impressed with my colleagues'
creative work!
As far as I know, we don't have much of a reputation in terms of quality of research. ORSP
has a reputation of being extremely hard to work with (I have learned this from colleagues
at several other universities who have struggled to collaborate with SFSU).
Very important.
SFSU's reputation for scholarly achievement is mediocre to poor. This poor reputation
prevents talented individuals from being attracted to the university to perform the
necessary research.
I think it is hugely important, and I think SFSU has a good reputation in this regard
particularly among the CSU system.
There are some people doing some really interesting things. I don't feel strongly about the
reputation.
Our reputation for research is that we do applied research for local issues. I think this is a
good niche for us, given our institutional capacity for research (relatively low) and our
professors' teaching loads (relatively high). With Cal and Stanford as neighbors, we should
be trying to become a research-1 university, but should embrace our status as "the city's
university" and focus on applied research that help local issues.
An essential and critical part of academics. This will continue take SFSU to next stages of
excellence.
This is a broad question. I assume the reputation varies by academic area. In other words,
I'm sure our reputation is better in some areas than others. In terms of the academic
mission, research reputation is important for attracting graduate students and faculty in
some disciplines.
Well known in particular departments, colleges and the faculty within them.
The university seems to want to take credit for our scholarly and creative achievement
without much real support behind it.
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8. 8. Professional Activity and Mission. At SFSU, to what extent are scholarship
and creative activities integrated with values such as globalization, social
justice, and community engagement?
Text Response
not enough, obviously
My sense is that these are pretty sensitive to our university goals.
xxxxx
Again, it depends on the department. In some departments, faculty are very focused on
mission related research, in others not at all. It's easier for some disciplines rather than
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others to create this connection.
this maybe heresy, but I don't really care about how integrated those three areas are into
my scholarship/creative activities.
VERY integrated.
Globalization and social justice - a lot. Community engagement not so much in the
scholarship arena.
That varies considerably from college to college. In my opinion, we have tended to
overvalue research that has an immediate impact at the expense of basic research that
might have a far larger and more enduring impact in the long run.
Again, in some corners, very well integrated; in others, lip service and oin still others, not at
all.
Depends on the individual and the department/program. Sometimes a lot, often not much.
& that can be appropriate.
This is something talked about all the time but I am not sure.
It seems that many faculty are engaged in social justice and community-orient activities. We
are a very diverse campus and this brings globalization. I dont think this has to be imposed
upon, but is a natural outcome of the people who make up our campus and their interests.
Very much so and that too should figure prominently in the narrative we tell.
no clear evidence of integration
Again, I believe we do a great job with globalization and community engagement. But we
fall far from what I believe is the true evidence and implementation of a social justice model.
This varies greatly by discipline. Community engagement is important in my area, as much
of my research is environmental and is integrated with local efforts to protect the
environment.
I think the integration is very strong. These are certainly the values we teach in Urban
Studies and Planning. This fall, several of my students joined me in a protest against police
brutality that intersected with questions of housing and gentrification-displacement in the
Mission District. Active outreach and community engagement are direct extensions of what
we discuss in the classroom: the ethics of policy.
The previous campus-wide long-range planning effort made these connections plain. We do
not need to re-hash those same discussions, having achieved a firm policy on the
importance the Universrity has for those values.
Refer to “excellence in teaching as the highest priority.”
Depends on the field......
A lot, on the one hand, and not enough, on the other.
Too much. More freedom, and less forcing into certain directions would help.
In the former Creative Arts, I think the integration is strong and one of our greatest assets.
However, the arts at State are in a precarious position. More needs to be done structurally
and through university communications to return the arts to their former prominence on
campus. The same can be said, I think, for the humanities and social sciences.
Again, that depends on the department. International Relations is completely integrated
into globalization, with every class giving students the opportunity to explore the
phenomenon from a different perspective, often incorporating a social justice lens. An
interdisciplinary faculty assures that the dialogue on globalization reaches far beyond the
comparative politics classes offered in a Political Science Department. The Cinema
Department is particularly effective at offering social justice films that speak to issues that
cross borders. Seeing concert audiences leads me to believe that the Music Department is
effective at community engagement.
This part is good and well supported.
This varies by individual faculty. Since coming to SFSU, I have tried very hard to integrate
my teaching, research, and service to the University's mission of social justice and
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community engagement, but have not been recognized for my efforts. Only my department
gives me credit. Upper levels do not. Again, because of this, I am actively looking elsewhere.
Faculty integrate their scholarship, but it remains to be seen if the administration can make
similar synthetic judgments.
I think there is a great deal of overlap between community engagement and creative
activities. There are so many partnerships with local organizations in the creative arts.
Whether design outreach, art outreach, performance, gallery shows, Etc. I. Terms of
research I think that the depends a great deal on the individual interests of e researcher or
research group.
On paper it is, in the classroom across colleges, I do not know. It would be good to ask profs
to find out if they are teaching students to run the rat race or to resist it.
I think SF State is truly impressive in terms of social justice and community engagement. I
think we can do a lot more on globalization, given our very global faculty and student body,
and our role in international exchange. The global element seems (strangely) to be
secondary in our conversations, even though our our global make up is evident in our faces.
Minimally -- as they should be
Resources need to be given to faculty who have conducted research.
SFSU is at the top rank with regard to these activities, in part because of the nature of San
Francisco as a location. SFSU is also historically one of the top universities with regard to
social justice and community engagement.
Scholarship is greatly integrated with these values across the campus. Faculty often choose
to come to SF State because of this integration.
Again, varies wildly by department.
I think this depends on your field. For people working in a field like "health equity" I'm sure
this is hugely integrated. For folks working in oceanography, less so.
I think it is good but could be improved. For example Chico State has an "Up All Night"
University wide community fundraiser. Also one book one community is a great program.
Highly integrated depending on where one looks.
Probably colleagues and the administration respect projects that integrate the two.
The emphasis on these issues is admirable, but much more can and should be done.
In some departments and scholarly areas, there is a clear connection, though in many areas
there is little engagement.
These are emphasized, I hope not to the detriment of other aspects of what used to be our
mission, such as interdisciplinary studies.
Well-integrated in my experience.
It is not really a priority in terms of RTP , especially community engagement. It is often
discouraged in favor or large money grants for new faculty. Our faculty have these values
and have to work hard to be allowed to pursue them. Often much of this research and
activity is low budget and with recent pushes for Deans to come up with more IDC, they are
in fact discouraged. That's the reality.
SFSU over-emphasizes the extent to which social justice as an idea is applicable across the
curriculum. In many disciplines, social justice enters only as a tangential notion, and in
many other disciplines, it is entirely irrelevant. It would be an imposition to create a
requirement to teach social justice across the curriculum.
I think that most faculty try very hard to integrate all of these issues into their teaching all of
the time.
Always. When I attend symposia, research sessions, awards ceremonies, etc., I am always
impressed with how globally connected projects are and with the social justice implications
and community engagement . In my field social justice and community engagement are
almost automatically part of the research we do.
No comment
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SFSU is a leader in these fields.
I believe it is on a case-by-case basis and is something that is addressed more cogently in
departments and individual courses that deal with ethnicity, transnationalism and
immigration studies (national or comparative literature programs, anthropology, ethnic
studies, women and gender studies, to name a few, etc.)
Depends on the field. In Biology, pretty well integrated if the course is medically-related or
conservation related. Basic science without those kinds of connections is less well
integrated with global and social issues.
I do not know to what extent...I know there is some focus on those areas.
There appears to be a disconnect between the university's stated goals of social justice and
community engagement and the emphasis on research and publishing. If the university
wanted to promote these goals and deal with issues of globalization, it should provide
support (financial, release time, etc.) for faculty to engage in community forums about these
issues including global climate destabilization.
These concepts are integrated throughout all coursework and instructor discussions.
Again, I think this area is well handled. Many people and depts are community oriented,
however broadly you define "community" and I think lots of good happens here.
I will answer this question by saying this; after testing a young woman in Club Taekwondo
at SFSU for her black belt, she graduated and immediately left for Afghanistan to help
educate young Afghani girls and women. This is the type of globalization, social justice and
community engagement that our students are involved in not only nationally but also
internationally where they are truly putting their lives on the line for what they believe in.
The integration is very uneven - some departments it is strong department focus and they
hire faculty whose research reflects these themes. In other departments the emphasis is just
on prestige, grants, and publications and scholarship is not intergrated with these themes.
Frequently, or all the time.
That seems to be a very researcher-specific question. My own work is very integrated with
issues of social justice and community engagement, less so with globalization.
My professional scholarship activity is not as directly relevant to those institutional values
as that of other faculty members.
I think they are very integrated. However it is frustrating when such things come as
bureaucratic mandates as opposed to arising organically within an individual's interests,
work, and their own ethics.
We talk a good game, but we don't really support it financially - ESPECIALLY student
experience internationally.. It's my sense we do well on community engagement and in
teaching about social justice.
Directly or indirectly theses activities contribute to mentioned SFSU values.
Again, probably depends on the discipline. In my discipline, it is thoroughly integrated in
both the undergraduate and graduate experience. This includes the course offerings,
classroom experiences, community learning experiences, etc.
This depends on the department RTP criteria and what the faculty are recognized for or
expected to acheive. SFSU is known forand has been recognized for its activity and support
of social justice and community engagement. Would this be because of the work of facutly?
The problem with these values is not the values themselves but the perception that every
piece of research should reflect one of them. Research/scholarly achievement can be
rewarding for its own sake, not its "relevance."
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9. 9. Recognition of professional achievement.Here are some questions to
consider: Does the university sufficiently recognize and reward excellence in
scholarship and creative activities? How much weight does/should
professional achievement carry in retention, tenure and promotion
decisions? How much does/should professional achievement matter in
hiring?
Text Response
I generally think so.
It is recognized in RTP - - perhaps too much. And lately there seems to have been a wee bit
more recognition. Not really that important.
xxxxxx
I think we do a reasonable job of balancing teaching and "professional achievement." as it
were. That said, once I get full, I'm looking forward to laying off quite so much publishing.
Recognition of excellence in scholarship is a bit ad hoc. There is much more emphasis put
on this right now than on teaching. I think the weight on scholarship should be 30%, with
another 30% on teaching and 30% on service. I don't think scholarship should be the
primary focus in hiring. The primary focus should be on whether or not people can teach
the kinds of students we have.
professional achievement may out weigh teaching in our hiring processes.professional
achievement is not really valued in RTP.
The yearly faculty retreat that started last year is a good step forward. In RTP, 2/5 would be
the proper weight (2/5 for teaching, 1/5 for service). In hiring: it's relative, again the best
teacher might be staright out of school.
see teaching comments I think that they are fundamental but if thy trump quality of
teaching than I m not too sure
This is a very confusing area. What is excellence in scholarship? The expectations for
productivity continually creep upwards while the infrastructure stays the same. Do we
recognize the least mediocre? It is like professional achievement is in a separate box from
everything else in the University and we only open it up for tenure and promotion. I try to
do research that informs teaching and builds relationship with the outside community.
These are not valued for tenure and promotion purposes. They are only valuable when we
give lip service to the idea that our scholarship aligns with our mission.
No, the recognition and reward for excellence in scholarship and creative activities is below
par. Professional achievement should be weighted less heavily than teaching, though it is
important to consider in hiring. That said, many junior faculty leave the university after a
year or two of service when they realize the university does not really have the
infrastructure to support and sustain high quality research.
It appears there are broad definitions related to the quality of scholarly activities (as there
are at most universities).
The university recognizes and rewards scholarship, not excellence in scholarship. And that
is rewarded only within the RTP process, not for tenured profs and not for its own sake.
Professional achievement should carry some weight in RTP and hiring, but not above
teaching. Of course, good teachers need to be current in their fields.
No to question one. the university only seems to recognize excellence in scholarship when
that scholarship is quantifiable (i.e. results in a grant or publication that can be counted),
and even that recognition seems to be limited to tenure and promotion reviews. There is no
"bonus" for showing a strong record of research excellence, and most of the support (paid
time away from teaching, research funds) needed to produce strong research is not offered
through the university. There are too few resources to encourage research. An occasional
paid leave or grant for which one applies is not sufficient support to ensure regular and
excellent research. Until these conditions change, research should not be weighted as highly
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as teaching in tenure, promotion or hiring.
Not really. Professional achievement activities make noise. That's the most important aspect
of creating reputation. I personally feel like there is no reward and no recognition. What
happens if I publish in an A journal vs C is a mystery. Most faculty don't like those who
publish quality stuff and then they try to use teaching as a weapon.
Yes - this is significantly recognized and rewarded.
It should figure highly in all of the above and superior achievement should be recognized
and rewarded.
No. There is some role in the tenure/promotion process but the bar is set very low. Should
be one of the most important factors in hiring.
Professional achievement is extremely important and I believe SFSU does it's best to reach
out and recognize faculty. I believe the Dean of faculty can make some improvements in the
area, I.e., have a digital process whereby faculty can report professional development
achievements and that can then be both posted on the faculty affairs web site and through
an email to the entire campus community. As of. Ow we really only have the campus memo
and if you are lucky to have something's someone really feels is great a write-up about you
on the SFSU web page. We need to celebrate everyone's accomplishments somehow!
It should be equal in weight to teaching, but this cannot lower the expectations on teaching.
How do we do that?
I am not sure what recognition would mean. Substantively, I hope it means promotion. I do
think it should matter in hiring decisions.
I believe the current Senate policy on RT and P reflect the campus's values on excellence on
schlarship and creative activities. I think a re-assessment of the same values is counterproductive, compared to an effort to improve and maintain a high standard of excellence in
teaching.
Refer to “excellence in teaching as the highest priority.” (Broken record, no?)
1) No. 2 and 3) fair amount. A fair amount. But if the university were to support its
teaching mission by supporting scholarship, then these ought to matter more. 4) Too
vague/situation dependent to respod here.
Professional achievement should be VERY important in retention, tenure and promotion
decisions. Professional achievement - or potential achievement - should matter a lot in
hiring.
Yes, the university rewards excellence in scholarship and creative activities that produce a
documented record. Excellence in professional achievement should be rewarded, but not at
the cost of seeming to devalue other kinds of excellence, including especially excellence in
teaching and advising. Scholarly excellence should and does matter in hiring. What
happens at SFSU is that excellent early-career scholars drown in a mire of teaching overload
and administrative tasks.
1.) Yes. 2.) Less than it does now. 3.) Less than it does now. Overall, there is too much
emphasis on the area of professional achievement.
The university does not recognize and reward excellence in scholarship and creative
activities specific to the disciplines housed in Liberal & Creative Arts. We have merged
cultures and perhaps saved some money, but at the expense of reputation and faculty
morale. As I note above, professional achievement and teaching should carry the same
weight in hiring. Professional achievement should carry a greater weight in retention,
tenure and promotion decisions. We need to do a great deal more to promote excellence in
the area of professional achievement.
Scholarship and creative activities should have considerable weight in hiring. The weight in
RTP should depend on the resources that the university makes available to carry out
research and creative activities. For example, if there is only one Presidential Award that is
suspended in times of buget tightening, the faculty who did not receive it cannot be judged
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by the same criteria as faculty at a university the offers all tenue-track faculty a year-three
sabbatical. This is also true in terms of post-tenure sabbaticals. Limits on travel funds also
undermine presentation of research. On the other hand, faculty who consistently teach
summer school and produce little research should be advised that they are allowing their
day job to suffer as they moonlight.
I think it is important, but I believe we have lost some excellent teachers because they didn't
emphasize research/creative work.
There is not enough recognition for professional achievements. Only 1 award given out
every year, and it to mostly to senior professors. I think non-tenured, TTK should have one,
for "most promising" etc.
No, the University doesn't recognize appropriately: that's clear from the RTP debacles. If
we're looking for balance between three categories, then, it should only be counted as a
third. Isn't that our contract and the University's critieria? In hiring, it depends on the
department again. Furthermore, if you're hiring a new phd, you can't expect them to be on
their way with a book contract immediately. Why would they accept a csu wage when a
research one place would take them for that?
No, in my opinion, the university does not adequately recognize excellence in Scholarship
and creative activity. Professional achievement should matter a great deal in rtp decisions,
because a faculty member that can only teach will probably burn out eventually, and will
not be contributing much to their field. However, a faculty member that is centrally focused
on teaching could still perform research into the scholarship of teaching and learning, or
SOTL, which is why I have repeatedly mentioned this as a good fit for Sf State.
I believe since Provost Rosser came to SFSU, research and scholarship has moved front and
center in discussions about what SFSU does.
I don't think the university has created an effective environment for scholarly excellence.
The tensions between teaching, service and scholarship means we all feel inadequate on at
least one dimension all the time. Professional achievement is the key differentiator in RTP
decisions, even though the bar is not terribly high. I do appreciate being able to work on
very applied problems. I managed to get tenure based on research that would not have
even been considered at many R-1 universities, because I have aimed at practical
significance instead of theoretical impact. I enjoy that freedom very much. It allows me to
work on issues that connect with my values,instead of leaving me at the mercy of half a
dozen A-list journals.
Carries considerable weight and might be the best rewarded activity in terms of recognition
on campus. However, time and what we provide to support research remains rather
arthritic.
Very important -- though secondary to teahing.
Professional achievement and growth needs to be placed High on the list for growth of the
university and it's reputation
Professional achievement is the be all and end all of academic life. Our department's hiring
policy requires of tenure-track candidates at least one published book by a press of
standing. Continued publication is expected as well.
The university most definitely recognizes excellence in scholarship. However, we would
benefit from broadening the measures of quality work from the limited range of discipline
specific outcomes to other forms of scholarship that have greater immediate impact on
community needs as opposed to theory. Along with this broadening of the definition of
scholarship should come a greater recognition of the importance of programmatic work
that applies the concepts of scholarship to real world issues. I fear that the university has
been moving in the other direction of late succumbing to traditional measures of quality
work. I believe one of the most important projects we can undertake is the creation of
guidelines and standards for producing and measuring quality engaged scholarship.
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It is easy to quantify professional achievement. Consequently this factor carries too much
weight in RTP decisions. Teaching experience should carry more weight than professional
achievement in hiring decisions.
Professional achievement should "count" more than teaching in RTP decisions. If external
letters are going to be "required," then they should factor in the decision making.
I think that professional achievement is virtually the only thing that matters in HRTP issues.
Our department spends at least three times as long discussing candidates professional
achievements than teaching or service. I've yet to see a candidate in danger of not getting
tenure or promotion over teaching or service, but it happens regularly if their research isn't
up to snuff.
Does the university sufficiently recognize and reward excellence in scholarship and creative
activities? No. As long as people make the "minimum" requirements there is not any formal
recognition of excellence above that. How much weight does/should professional
achievement carry in retention, tenure and promotion decisions? Large. We are scholars
and must practice scholarly activities. How much does/should professional achievement
matter in hiring? Large. We should hire scholars.
The short answer here is 'no.' Professional achievement does seem to carry tremendous
weight in RTP decisions, but beyond that there isn't much recognition of it. E.g. we don't get
merit-based raises as in other institutions. I do see that the Faculty Retreat is an effort in
the right direction, though.
See my previous answer re: balance in RTP.
I think professional achievement in research should be secondary to quality teaching.
No, the univ. does not sufficiently recognize and reward them. I.e., it doesn't give enough
help to make them happen. We hire people who are great in both teaching and
scholarship, then drive them crazy insisting they teach really well AND produce a book
without sufficient time off, money, office staff, etc. The well-meaning office that sends out
email about grants, etc., does almost nothing about the humanities. So such achievement
should matter in hiring and RTP (though not as much as teaching), but it should be
SUPPORTED.
Professional achievement is extremely important. I rank this higher than teaching
effectiveness. As I stated earlier, I think it's research that makes us good educators. I am not
so interested in being recognized for research, but am more cognizant of the fact that the
University is not always committed to supporting research activities on campus. For
example, it is difficult (if not impossible?) to hire soft-money research professors who may
or may not teach, but could enrich research activities at SFSU. University needs to make it
easier for faculty to conduct research.
Recognition of excellence is low, and most faculty feel that the university values
professional achievement less than teaching work or proficiency. In my department, the
boundary criteria for retention, tenure and promotion with respect to professional
achievement are very low, at a level that few other universities would tolerate. It is an
embarrassment. SFSU has allowed departments to retain too much autonomy in setting
their own criteria. It is time for the university to step up and set higher standards for
professional achievement within individual departments. Professional achievement
should be equal or more important than pedagogic experience in hiring.
No, it does not. Primarily, there is an inadequate amount of funds to support research and
creative work. These should ordinarily carry a great deal of weignt, but how do you penalize
a candidate whose research has suffered from inadequate fiscal and release time support
for research and creative work? Even the Modern Language Association has recommended
that diminished campus funding--combined with the paucity of publication outlets in the
liberal arts for books, monographs, and articles--should be accounted for in weighting
retention, tenure, and promotion decisions.
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In recent years this has ramped up to the detriment of teaching or even scholarship of
teaching. I think we recognize this enough. In recent hiring we have had to exclude
candidates fresh out of graduate school or those without lots of grants an publications,
ending up with a pool with far more grants and publications than the current faculty.
Professional achievement or potential should matter, but not to the extent that potential is
not considered. I think this is a mistake.
While the university does recognize excellence in scholarship, it could do more. The
university should create a system of awarding assigned time for professional research to
those that are successful at it. For example, many professional growth activities are grantfunded. As a result, professional growth activities are a source of income for the university.
The university would do well to give assigned time to those who have a track-record of
bringing in outside grants, so that their success could be increased. The existing presidential
leaves for probationary faculty are highly appreciated.
The university does recognize sufficiently excellence in scholarship, which should count
relatively less in hiring than it does for RTP decisions.
The university doe sufficiently recognize and reward excellence in scholarship and creative
activities. Professional development does and should carry sufficient weight in the Hiring
and RTP process, but should not take precedents over teaching. Also the definition of what
counts as scholarship should not be allowed to be narrowed, as seems to be a current trend,
to fit the definition of some (preferred?) disciplines.
Definitely too much weight in COSE,.thanks to Dr Axler. This is somewhat balanced at higher
levels.
Professional achievement is, of course, extremely important in the RTP process but, as I
mentioned earlier, ideal conditions need to be set in place to foster the proper conditions to
generate excellence in this area. More resources are needed not less nor should punitive
measures be placed on those who do not publish as rigorously as others. Academic presses
have scaled back in the number of titles and areas they wish to invest in. It is not always the
case that faculty have fallen behind in his or her respective field but there are legitimate
barriers out there. In my field, for example, it is almost virtually impossible to publish
unless there is a series devoted to the general area of study. The same emphasis should be
placed on hiring as it is placed on supporting the faculty throughout the RTP process. If
support is not available, the pressure on producing publications should be less not more
and vice versa.
Professional achievement matters very much in hiring. It should be the top consideration,
followed by teaching experience and enthusiasm. It should weigh heavily on RTP decisions.
Most important in these decisions, including salary actions at the times of promotion,
should be professional acheivement while at SF State. High achieving faculty should be
rewarded by closing salary gaps that were originally based on differences in experience at
the time of hiring.
I don't know what you mean by recognize and reward. How would a university recognize
and reward people for excellence in scholarship and creative activities. I have no idea how
they would do that. In our department people go around during faculty meetings and tell
what they have accomplished since the last faculty meeting and we all congratulate each
other. Is that what you mean? As far as tenure and promotion, as far as I can tell most
people get promoted and tenured, which I think is good, but most of those are not at the
same level and the ones who do well are sometimes treated worse than the ones who do
poorly. In teacher education we call it the fellowship of mediocrity.
This question mentions retention, tenure and promotion and appears, once again, to
concentrate on tenure/tenure-track faculty ignoring the contributions of contingent faculty.
Much of my thinking on this came from earlier responses to Teaching; to summarise, I think
we are getting away from our primary mission with an over emphasis on research, reflected
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by admin in RTP denials and difficulties.
Does the University sufficiently recognize and reward excellence in scholarship and creative
activities? I believe they do but this would probably vary from department to department. I
know the Kinesiology Department certainly does but I cannot speak for other departments.
Professional achievement should carry a good deal of weight in decisions made by
departments. It is very easy for teachers to get set in their ways and simply regurgitate the
same material over and over again year after year. As a teacher it is always important to
stay active in your field; REMEMBER "always keep a beginner's mind!" As for importance in
hiring it should be important to some degree especially with experienced teachers.
However, there are some young, bright minds out there who have not had the opportunity
as of yet to demonstrate professional achievement; so let's keep our eyes and minds open!
Sufficient current recognition. Shifting towards too much emphasis in RTP. It should mater
in hiring but not to the point that we are hiring people without a strong focus on their
teaching quality. I dont know if this is true but I have the impression that there are more
hires on campus of faculty with only limited teaching responsibilites. I think this is
problematic - it sets up a group of faculty who have no committment to and understanding
of the teaching mission of the University. And it divides faculty.
ORSP has been highly supportive of creative work in the last few years. Providing
opportunity to share work completed or in progress has made creative efforts more visible
to the rest of the community. Scholarly work does have at least one-third weight in RTP
decisions. The weight should be about the same in hiring decisions.
The recent focus on academic publishing and external review for RTP seems at odds with
both the mission and working conditions of SFSU (especially in GCOE, with a 4 course per
semester teaching load). I say this as someone with an active research agenda and adequate
publications who did not encounter any problems with achieving tenure. I do think there
should be expectations for scholarly productivity, but the move toward having more
research 1 type expectations seems misguided.
The Univeristy recognize and reward scholarship, however, the definition of scholarship is
narrowly defined. For example, the ORSP only funds "original research" which focuses more
on quantatitive, large-scaled, grant-based projects than qualitative ones.
My department and college values professional achievement greatly. RTP and hiring
decisions hinge significantly on the scholarly performance of the individual in question.
However, the university does not seem to value research activities and does not provide
sufficient support, in comparison to other institutions.
I think this is a huge problem area. I personally feel completely unrewarded,
uncompensated, and unrecognized for my scholarship and research. Despite having a lot of
recognition in my field outside of the school, there is virtually no support/recognition for
this within my department or within the university. (And certainly no monetary
compensation, which is extremely disheartening and frustrating. Raises should be merit
based to some degree.) I feel completely invisible in this way, and it makes me seriously
consider looking for other jobs.
We are a school where our contract is four courses a semester, and most of us teach three.
To teach that much and to be expected to excell in other areas is to expect more than a
person can do, especially if that person has a family or a life outside the university. If we
want people who sleep six hours a night and devote the other 18 to the university, we can
do it. But not if faculty have any kind of balance in their lives.
The university is doing much better, yet not enough, in supporting SCA excellence. SCA,
once better defined in faculty disciplines, shall be heavily weighted in RTP consideration.
Applicant's current SCR and ability to continue carrying out SCA excellence at SFSU is
essential for faculty hiring process.
Professional achievement should carry some weight in RTP and hiring, but it should be
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prioritized below teaching. Again, please consult the CSU mission.
The University supports different pay scales and faculty teaching loads for different Colleges
and deparments and the faculty they hire. When and if this is equalized, then these
questions may be answered.
Professional achievement should carry weight, but only to the extent that the university can
support it.
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10. 10. Support for professional achievement.Here are some questions to
consider: What are we doing now to support innovation and excellence in
scholarship and creative activities? Are we doing enough to sustain excellence
in professional achievement? What kinds of resources would be needed to
improve your scholarship and creative activities? (Facilities, technology,
faculty development, etc.?)
Text Response
More money, obviously. Duh.
Very, very little. Demands for professional achievement abound, but resources for
achieving it are rare. More time. More money for travel, project development, etc.
xxxxxx
It's tough, because we are running out of money to support activities such as attendance at
conferences. That said, I honestly think most conferences are an excuse to hobnob in exotic
locations with other faculty. But given OracleWorld has an orgy of horny developers
heading North every evening to the Broadway strip clubs and as various agencies of our
supposedly august Federal Government has funded Las Vegas boondoggles (strippers either
included or excluded depending on the degree of egregiousness) at least our past excesses
have been somewhat limited. So in short, as long as people recognize that the conference
presentation is no longer funded nor accepted as an academic contribution, we should be
fine.
Why are you focusing so much on scholarship and creative activities. this is a bit troubling.
Additional funding for travel related to conferences would be great.
Again what is excellence? In my field, to truly be productive, you need to be at a doctoral
granting institution and the productivity is a consequence of having doc students to
collaborate with. Support for research was one of the first things to go during the annual
budget crises that have been the hallmark of my tenure here. There are two ways to boost
productivity - providing support (financial support translates into research assistance,
access to data, conferences) beforehand hoping productivity will result - and giving rewards
(recognition and money) after the fact to those who are productive. We do a mediocre job
of providing support. Other than the faculty of the year award, there is no reward for those
who are productive except at tenure and promotion time (Is productivity an issue for senior
faculty? Could this be a reason?). To be effective, rewards need to be immediate and
common - the faculty of the year award is more of a lifetime achievement thingie. Here are
some suggestions for incremental awards: This would require maintaining a current list of
publications and achievements. In our college we are asked to post our achievements in an
electronic database - digital measures - This could provide the information for a recognition
program without the individual having to apply for an "attagirl" a recognition program
might also encourage faculty to keep their files current. -A note of congratulation from the
president or the provost for a publication or significant creative work -Posting the full text
of new publications (along with a picture of the author) in a prominent location in the
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college for one or two months. -A listing of faculty achievements as part of the weekly
university bulletin (right before the part where they list grants received) including name
and a brief abstract -A listing of all faculty achievements for the previous year in the
program for the opening convocation (I'd bet attendance would increase). -Lunch in the
Vista room -A celebratory basket - wine or fruit - delivered to the office of faculty who have
a second achievement in the same academic year -A congratulatory note sent to the
household of the achiever - thanking the partner for their support in making this
achievement possible (my research suggests thanking the partner has a huge payoff) -Small
monetary rewards - equivalent to a dinner fo two?
The small grants awarded by ORSP are extremely helpful as are the professional
development awards available for junior faculty. Given the labor intensive nature of our
teaching, we require additional course buyout to set up and sustain a productive research
agenda. Lack of lab space, lack of technical support personnel, and lack of grad
students/post docs really hurt productivity.
The ORSP office has on line and in person sessions to advance scholarly growth.
Better travel funding is critical.
Clearly not enough. A chance to apply for a possible leave every 5 years or a possible shot at
a marginal research grant is not support. Also, the fact that one cannot have both at the
same time limits what kind of research one can realistically perform. For example, to travel
to another place to do research requires BOTH leave with pay AND a grant to off-set travel
costs.
What I know is that I don't see/feel support for research. When all the discourse is about
teaching, how can you expect research practice? If there is no discourse, there is no practice.
All these faculty showcases, research group ideas etc are futile and are only good on paper
to be used on sayings like "we support research". Seriously. I wish there was something
more subtle in the way we see and talk about the meaning of research and not rely on the
just-on-the-surface activities.
We could always invest more resources here. Infrastructure is aging and poor for the most
part. Many of us are working in out-dated buildings which do not adequately support the
activities that are needed to achieve high end scholarship.
It is hard to keep some excellent faculty once they achieve national or even international
prominence. This should be addressed.
Very little. No. Much better IT facilities, significant improvement in time and quality of
secreterial support, better and more professional support from grant management,
attracting better quality students, allocating more time to faculty for research/knowledge
creation
Leadership for this must come from the department chairs. Then again, if you have faculty
that do not want to integrate technology into their courses, appropriately etc.... Than what
can you do? As I see it, those that will, will and those that won't, won't, so what can we do?
More lab space, more office space. Our faculty share offices and don't have research labs.
The former forces them to work at home much of the time, and the latter limits what they
can do.
No, in answer to the first question. I don't think technology is the key. Financial support of
faculty in any and every way to facilitate research is crucial.
See #9 above. An allocation or resources that favors support for research at the expense of
university resources for teaching is counter-productive. More support fore research should
come from outside sources, not from the general fund, since the maintenance of excellence
in teaching should be the top criterion in the allocation of general fund resources.
Sorry to say, I believe we are a long way from getting a genuine handle on this area. See my
response to #2 above.
Not enough. More support for travel and course release is critical, as I mentioned earlier.
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And the benefits of single occupancy offices should not be underestimated.
Faculty find their own way to develop innovation, creative activities and scholarship. The
current opportunities and expectations are fine.
TIME AWAY FROM TEACHING.
In my particular case, much more travel money would be needed to really truly be able to
pursue my professional projects. The application process is long & cumbersome, and the
categories do not fit what I am doing.
With respect to resources, I would suggest, in addition to improving the state of graduate
education at SFSU, providing course releases for faculty engaged in research with clear and
demonstrable outcomes. We should expand the expertise base in ORSP to include more
staff support for faculty seeking to develop and manage external funded projects in the
creative arts and humanities.
The ORSP awards and resources are extremely helpful. They are not enough. The university
needs more research funding to permit release time, travel for research and presentation of
research.
We need more support for this. A strong survey tool that doesn't cap out so quickly would
be very valuable. More support for administrative costs of research would also be useful.
This is the University's biggest problem. There is not enough money to support research,
travel, conferences, and we are given too little for professional development.
so little support. Faculty who have books are able to get release time from the classroom
whether they do it legitimately or they use some other mechanism to trigger it. Thought
requires singular focus. Faculty who don't have release time don't need extra workshops, or
more facilities. They need compensated time and it should be automatic and not contingent
on the Provost or the Dean of Faculty Affairs.
I would like to see the university do the following: 1.work with csu to bring back the RSCA
awards in some form. 2. Allow faculty members with a strong research vision and plan some
release time to prepare a competitive grant proposal, such as to a federal agency. 3.
Recognize a select number of outstanding teachers and outstanding research or creative
projects at the end of each academic year by means of a letter from the dean of that college
and a small token gift. A little recognition and thanks goes a LONG way. 4. Insupportable
and encourage scholarship on teaching and learning so that faculty can combine excellent
teaching with research, 5. Recognize that achievements in the creative arts and humanities,
while less lucrative than the sciences, generate a great deal of goodwill for our university in
the public eye. 6. Increase the amount of money available for people to travel to present at
and participate in conferences. It is financially very difficult to participate at present, 7. Use
excellence in teaching ad a major marketing aspect of our school. For example, five
professors from different disciplines could be interviewed on video about their passion for
teaching, and this cut into a short movie which could be put on the web and/or youtube.
This will help,prospective students to understand the importance of and passion for great
teaching at sf state.
Lots of workshops to apply for grants...
We are very underinvested in faculty development. We need more ways to reduce teaching
loads and service loads at times for faculty members. We need more physical spaces for
faculty members to meet and collaborate. We need much more encouragement for
collaboration across disciplinary lines. The big problems in my field are all
interdisciplinary, but it is hard to engage with others across college boundaries. This may
sound simplistic, replacing the old faculty club could make a huge difference. There's no
comfortable place on campus to meet spontaneously for breakfast or lunch with a colleague.
We need to do much more to make casual interaction possible. That is probably a
necessary, but not sufficient approach, but it could go a long way.
No, not much is done to support faculty research
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The university's sabbatical policy and presidential leave policies are very helpful. The dean
of our college has been very mindful of the publication needs of tenure-track faculty and
gives teaching load relief in the first semester in order to ease the transition of new faculty
into full-time teaching
Expectations are high for innovation and excellence in scholarship, yet there is very little
support for it. Smaller class sizes, reduced teaching loads and travel funding would go a
long way
Some faculty are receiving support...and more support...and more support still. While others
are not. There needs to be more equity and transparency in the decision making with regard
to awards and support. There should be faculty development and support for those whose
proposals get rejected--there should at least be some constructive criticism, not just a pro
forma rejection response. When a faculty member asks for support, they should at the
very least receive a response. I asked for very small amount to support a creative activity-and that request did not even get acknowledged. By the way, that creative activity went on
to receive national attention--without any acknowledgments to SFSU. I was repeatedly
asked why my own University did not support me in my project.
Better facilities, lower teaching loads (1 class per semester if the university is serious about
our being competitive in professional arenas), and better ORSP support.
I think there is very little done by the university in support of innovation and excellence in
scholarship. There are few incentives, and the incentives that are offered (e.g., from ORSP)
are not a good fit across the faculty. Faculty need time to be creative. Give us time,
please.
We simply aren't doing enough to sustain excellence in professional achievement. We have
one opportunity for internal funding (ORSP internal grants) and absolutely no college or
department support for research projects (besides limited conference travel). Our library is
out-of-date in many fields and librarians seem slow to act one's research requests. Our own
research grants are limited so we often cannot avail of the materials we need to conduct
research and participate in activities that would support our professional achievements.
See above. Look at more research-oriented schools--it's commitment, not rocket science.
Sabbaticals must be granted to all that are research active, and should not be on competitive
basis. I took a 1-semester with full pay, which was quite short, but without that, I would not
have my current funding. It is IMPERATIVE that we get some time to devote our minds to
creative work, and again, it should not be competitive.
See answers above for comments on this. In addition, the most important support that the
institution can provide is to give faculty time to carry out work. More buy-outs for teaching,
more sabbaticals, more individual grants.
Not enough. Triage, triage, triage: release time; more department and college staffing; more
supplies; cost of living adjustments (what a concept, hasn't occurred in years!), etc.
We are making great strides in this area, but we don't have the lab facilities or faculty offices
to support this. Sharing offices leaves no alone time to think or work on research. With 2-3
people in an office you have students constantly coming in. Not conducive to research,
sharing a very small lab with 3 other faculty is also not conducive to research. Not allowing
us to put the software we need on our home computers is not conducive to research. We
could increase mini-grants and provide more support for tenured faculty who want to
continue to do research, but since there are so few funds they go to new faculty. The ORSP
retreats are good. The high IDC makes it difficult to work with small providers and
agencies. Maybe there could be a section of ORSP that could work with small grants, lower
IDC, so faculty can get funds for students and release time without tripling the actual cost.
Or maybe faculty can be allowed to pursue these low-cost opportunities without ORSP
involved.
See above.
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Of course we are not doing enough. We all know that there are just not the resources for
this.
We are encouraging a lot of grant seeking, without providing the appropriate support that it
takes to do that, nor the support for faculty PI's once grants have been won.
The primary resource needed to improve my scholarship is time. Even a course release
would make a world of difference. My advice: Fund course releases for faculty who are
productive in the realm of scholarship and creative acrivities.
Our research facilities our in a word PATHETIC. Our teaching and research labs are falling
apart, and its only a matter of time before we are fined for safety violation
Time given to faculty to devote exclusively to researching & writing is of the utmost
importance. A semester off every 3 years and not every 6 years would be more realistic.
Mentorship or peer support workshops where small groups read each other's writing and
discuss it might also be of help.
The ORSP special project grants are excellent and provide an opportunity to gather data
toward external grant funding. The faculty assigned time / summer salary awards need to
be brought back for the same reasons -- we need small grants or teaching releases to make
it possible to succeed in our scholarly pursuits. There should also be funding available for
open access publishing. Our colleagues at research-dominated institutions have this, and it
makes their research more accessible. If we want to raise our reputation we need to have
our research products available in equal measure to our competitors at other institutions.
All of the above. Right now the department won't even pay for people to go to conferences
when they have a paper to present.
An inversion of the standard advice in real estate (pace Einstein): time, time, time. Hard to
do research when overworked on all other fronts.
What are we doing now to support innovation and excellence in scholarship and creative
activities. This is a question that I am not in a position to answer at this time. I do know that
excellence in scholarship and creative activities are a reward in themselves. At my school,
the Academy of Tae Kwon Do, I recently had a chance to work with an educational
organization called INTRAX. They bring in foreign students, teach them English and get
them internships working in the industry that they are interested in. I was offered an intern,
a 27 year old Korean Taekwondo master, who worked at my school for about three months
and did a great job. I would like to see more opportunities for teachers here to work for a
semester or more in other countries to share their knowledge, obtain more knowledge and
experience other cultures up close and personal.
ORSP is doing an excellent job in this area.
The overall goal to support scholarship is good, but the details occasionally get bogged
down. The administrative hoops to jump through to get a purchase order approved and an
invoice paid present a burden to grant administrators and researchers alike.
In my college, virtually nothing is done to support these things. High teaching loads, no
research infrastructure, extremely limited technology all conspire to make this a very
difficuly place to do research.
Faculty in the Graduate College of Education are still on a 4-4 teaching load, while other
colleges are 3-3.
Better facilities and infrastructure, more release time, and enhanced administrative support
(such as streamlining the hiring of research staff and more responsive assistance from
Human Resources) would be needed to support scholarship. More financial support for
graduate students, such as reduced tuition for conducting research, would also improve the
speed of research.
The Tenure-Track faculty research support is quite good (the presidential grant, etc.)
There is not enough funding for travel to professional conferences, or for the many things
that fall outside of a "peer-reviewed" talk. I realize the danger that faculty will use funding
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for frivolous things, but research support and travel funding should be assessed on a case
by case basis, rather than using arbitrary criteria, like "peer-reviewed talk," which is NOT
the gold standard in every field, especially outside of the sciences.
I would like some dedicated TIME to write, and some money to support the short-term
study abroad program that I have developed and that I run.
The university not provides enough support and resources for professional achievements.
More SCR minigrants to new and innovative programs, transitional proessional supports
and leadership training to senior faculty's SCR, and much enhanced grant writing workshop
and ORSP grant management supports.
My college (Science and Engineering) has an exceptional support system for professional
achievement. Probably the model for the campus.
Travel money.
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11. 11. Is there anything else you would like to add about professional
achievement at SF State?
Text Response
d
xxxxxxxx
I thought this theme was supposed to be about the "Academic Master Plan." As far as I can
tell, there isn't any master plan. Why aren't you asking questions like what majors we
should be offering? Why aren't deans required to submit strategic plans that are
transparent with regard to what they expect their colleges to look like in 5 - 10 years. That
would be a master plan.
We need to be clear about who we are and not try to be what we are not.
It should not be defined in terms of publication counts.
The university is a teaching institution. There is thus very little institutional support for any
kind of research.
I am very dissappointed. If people wants everything to be about teaching, then SFSU should
not bother try to get accreditated, should maybe turn itself into a Community College
(nothing against community colleges), and shouldn't hire people with PhDs, shouldn't hire
people with strong academic identities if it is not going to offer a space to sustain and enrich
those identities.
Insufficient support at many levels
We need to cast a wider net!.... People who are elected to national or state level boards,
councils, committees should also be recognized.
no
Again, it is weird that the Academic Senate appears to think that 25 minutes is more or less
enough to deal with all these questions. But here is a comment: This university, and that
includes the Academic Senate, does not listen to its faculty. It does not even try, not in a
way that I have ever felt is meaningful. I'd be happy to formulate what I think is needed,
but only if I'd ever get a sense that this would have any effect.
The criteria of the faculty with respect to professional and achievement and teaching should
be accurately reflected in the criteria of the administration in regard to RT and P. The
Provost should follow the lead of the faculty in these matters, not vice versa.
Enough said.
Just that professional achievement of prefessors at SF State is vital to everyone - to
stimulate faculty and keep them current, plus it is a great model for our students to hear
about. They respect faculty more when they know they are actually connected to the field in
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a professional way, no matter how small.
I have been struck by the number of scholarly books that began in a graduate seminar then
moved to an undergraduate classroom. Professors were directing the research of their
graduate students, then presenting ideas to undergrads. This is a way that teaching and
research can work together, allowing faculty to work on their research in the classroom
without a course release. The university could encourage that kind of collaboration with
incentives or at least make it possible by allowing departments to have "current topics"
courses that change every time they are offered.
no
It is very hard to sustain a high level of professional achievement within a very challenging
workload. I believe the use of paid graduate teaching assistants could help professors to
make better use of their precious time by handing off of some of the less difficult but
nonetheless necessary administrative tasks to paid teaching assistants who would also be
benefiting from exposure to teaching. The teaching assts would NOT be a substitute for the
teacher, but they could perform tasks such as attendance, checking of assignments, xeroxing
papers and/or distributing them over the web, gathering resources, and answering simple
practical questions for students.
We've seen slow, steady progress in my department. My colleagues are starting to
collaborate more. I'm encouraged by the trend.
No.
Just that it is too highly valued.
Overall, I feel that I am able to be as creative and scholarly as I would like, but that the pace
of scholarly activity is dramatically lessened by our high teaching load each and every
semester.
There are some really interesting and capable people here--too bad we don't have an
intellectual community.
The impression on campus is that professional achievement is secondary to teaching.
Please make this new administration rise to a meaningful opportunity. There is a brass ring
here, ready to be grabbed and polished. But the demoralization issue must be addressed.
Again, from MARAT/SADE, with a morbid comedy that I know resonates with my
colleagues: We've got new generals our leaders are new They sit and they argue and all
that they do is sell their own colleagues And ride upon their backs Or jail them Or break
them Or give them all the ax Screaming in language that no one understands Seriously,
this is not what we want; we've "been there, done that." Professional achievement is
impressive at SFSU; with appropriate support, it would be world-renowned.
See above.
I believe I have addressed my most serious concerns.
I've had good experiences, people in professional development are dedicated.
There is a high level of professional achievement at SF State and I thoroughly enjoy teaching
here! From Dr. Wong to Gary Lynch, the gentleman who runs the men's locker room,
everyone is professional and dedicated to their work and the University. Peace.
Graduate students that provide the backbone of scholarly activities, particularly in the
scientific fields, usually receive much more financial support at other institutions. They
need to be able to perform the research activities without having to worry about taking on
debt or getting a job to support their research.
Cut teaching, and you'll see more professional achievement.
The university needs to take initiatives and real actions to support faculty's professional
achievement. Recognize unsound heros in additional to highly publicized ones.
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12. 12. Defining Service. In your experience, what are the varieties of work
involved in “service”? What role does “service” play in the academic life at
SFSU? How important is this role?
Text Response
I think you changed this question, but I like it this way.
From departmental committee work to governance. There's a lot of service demands at
SFSU - -for instance, the heinous amounts of labor involved in RTP evaluation etc.
xxxxxxxx
The vast majority of us sign up for some sort of service role until we get to Full professor.
After that, only people in love with the sound of their own voice run for Senate or otherwise
involve themselves in University level committees. (see Professor D. Lee for a classic
example of the type). Luckily there are enough faculty on campus that a single 3-year
Senate term should suffice to fill the seats, assuming an average 30-year career at SFSU.
And I sure as h*&$ am never serving a second Senate term until all the lazy faculty who've
never wasted their Tuesday afternoons have ponied their fat behinds up to sit at Seven Hills
on said Tuesdays.
Finally! Service should include departmental committee service and service at the
institutional level such as senate committee service and RTP evaluation. This role should be
30% of the RTP evaluation. We might also include service to the community, but I think this
goes more in the category of professional activities.
It's very important, but in terms of counting towarts RTP, its role should be reasonably
counted as less in terms of weight. It's unlikely that a teacher would be able to excel at all
three areas in exactly the same degree. Waiting for Superman?
I think we should all serve at the departmental, colleges and nviersity level,s without
forgetting the greater community. Iti s not valued much in RTP so once agin there is not
enough of it
There are two types of service. Service to the academic process (department, college,
university) and service to the community (including professional societies). There is no
reward or incentive for academic service, and in fact junior faculty are penalized for being
involved on committees at the expense of research. The benefit to the participant is
institutional knowledge and social capitol that make can lubricate administrative matters.
In my tenure the availability of course releases for certain committees has been
discontinued. When it comes to tenure and promotion decisions, low productivity is a deal
killer. Low academic service is the norm. The cynic says that the senate is for fifth year
faculty who are looking to fill out their vita for promotion. The lack of active participation
on committees would support this. Ironically, academic service is what sets us apart from
the for-profit online universities. It is the introspection, peer-level controls and review that
separates us from those selling what we are creating. All of this depends on the active
participation of faculty on committees. Professional and community service supports
teaching and research.
Service plays a vital role in academic life.
Often service is focused on supporting University, College and Department needs. Service
also related to supporting the development and existence of the field.
Service is expected, but service outside the college/university in one's professional
community/field and in the larger community is not as visible or appreciated. For some
people it's not valued enough. On campus service is dominated by people with egos and
ambitions that make it difficult for someone who's not buying into the conventional wisdom
and not political enough to become part of the power structure to be an agent for change.
Service seems to be unevenly experienced. Smaller departments cannot protect their faculty
from service duties in the same way as larger departments. This should be very consciously
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taken into consideration in assessing tenure and promotion.
Service is needed to make a university work. It is definitely an altruistic activity that is
usually not rewarded enough.
A very large role--it is essential to career planning and human engagement to get students
"conversing" with their communities and work milieus in socially active and responsible
ways.
Service is extremely important. However, in teacher preparation, the work a faculty
members does in the field in being a change agent needs to be recognized more than it is
currently. We need to tie our teacher preparation research, scholarship, and services to the
schools and children our teachers serve.
This must vary greatly among faculty. Fortunately now community and university service
comprise one category, so this allows for different models.
For teachers, one aspect emerges in the classroom itself: encouraging students from
underrepresented groups to develop their public voice and confidence, so that they can
advocate on their own behalf. Second is to role-model citizenship through the way we act as
public citizens. Since Urban Studies is a pre-professional program in which the faculty
engage in public planning, it may be easier for us.
The current RT and P policies reflect the importance of service to the university.
Since my concerns involve teacher preparation, “service” means putting quality time into
the schools. Our professors of education need to have solid and current experience in the
field.
Service is important - faculty ought to contribute to the life of the university and to
whatever extent possible and reasonable, the larger community. However, the university
ought to have some kind of centralized or structured role itself in the life of San Francisco
and the Bay Area. Resources should be devoted to help establish SFSU as an active
participant (at the institutional level) in this regard. And there should be structures,
programs, centers, institutes etc. that act like incubators for faculty/community
connections. As of now, it seems to be, mostly, an individual faculty , catch as catch can
thing.
Service on the Department, College, University and nationally/internationally are very
important for faculty. Service opportunities at SFSU offer faculty to get to know others in
different department and to share organisation of programs etc. on Committees. Campus
Service allows faculty to get out of their comfort zone at times to better understand how the
university and advising etc. works. It behooves faculty to get to know such things. Ignorance
about how students earn their degree - required courses, segment I, II etc, grading options
and ramifications, etc help faculty become part of the university and this knowledge also
helps them contribute more meaningfully in department meetings. Ignorance of the former
points is annoying to others at the department meeting.
Service is a wide area, reaching from departmental, campus-wide, and system-wide
committees and related work to outreach, collaborations, etc. In my experience, we spend
far too much time on projects in this area.
There's a bit too much committee "busy work" here at State. For example, the curricular
process -- approving courses, programs, G.E., etc. -- is excessively byzantine. The attitude
seems, in part, to be born out of the late 1960s, with committees often seeing themselves as
a "check and balance" to administration and thus, ironically, as administrators. This is
nearsighted in my view. Of course we need to maintain a healthy balance between the
responsibilities of administrators and the responsibilities of faculty. A healthy culture of
shared governance is key to achieving excellence. But we also have to look at it as a
partnership, recognizing that committee process can lead toward mediocrity in the same
way a top-down administration can lead to corporatization. We should resist the urge to
fetishize process at the expense of innovation, but I think I'm ranting here a bit. Maybe it is
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because it took me four or so passes to get a G.E. course approved after it had been
approved by my department and college.
A wide variety of activities are encompassed in service, and all are essential to the
university. The university would not run without service on committees, advising of student
organizations, uncompensated administrative tasks. Without service to the community, the
university could hardly teach community involvement. Service to the academy in editing
journals and participating in organizations contributes to the presitge question mentioned
earlier.
I think it is expected, but it varies across the university. Some people do very little while
others do a lot.
Service is big, however, there is a contradiction in terms of the mission of social justice and
how it relates to service. I have been very involved in community service, and have
actively worked with many local SF area non-profits, however, that service is ignored. It is
too much to want faculty to be involved in community service, in addition to campus
service. We should be able to select one or the other, or, at least have community service
valued. Again, my department values this, but the Dean's level and the level higher up do
not. Service to our community is very important to meeting our mission of social justice,
unless it is just lip service for those who do not teach and interactive with students daily.
extensive committee work, departmental work loads, overextending junior faculty so that
senior faculty can take it easy
I think service includes committee work, hiring committee work, student organizations, and
outreach. I thinkers important but it sometimes cuts into other areas of development.
Service is important -- and I do serve on committees. The reality is that certain people carry
the bulk of the service load while others are happy to evade their responsibilities. There are
no repercussions for not serving...
Service means three things to me. first, it means making sure that faculty run the academic
affairs of the university. Second, it means that we playing meaningful roles in our own
professional communities. Third, it means that we engage in the communities in which we
live. It is very hard to have time for all three, but all three are critically important.
Minimally important.
Service is important, however service needs to be broken down To service to the
department, college, university and the Professional organization's faculty are affiliated
with. Being a reviewer for journal articles is as important as Serving in committee in the
department.
Service means working on behalf of the department, the college, the university as a whole,
and the community at large. Faculty must be responsible at all four levels.
Service frequently juxtaposes university service (e.g. committee work) with professional
service (e.g. editing a discipline journal) along with community work (e.g. applying
discipline knowledge to address a community defined problem.) Service invariably is
relegated to a lower stature than teaching or research. However, community service that is
discipline based can be as profound and enaging an activity as any traditional form of
research or publication. We have yet to define criteria for how to measure quality in this
area.
Shared governance through the academic senate is one form of service. Department
committees are another form. Serving the California Faculty Association is service. In
order for "service" to play an important role at SFSU, people "serving" have to believe their
efforts are meaningful. No one enjoys serving on a committee (except maybe the chair). If
one has the feeling that one's committee is accomplishing something and making a tangible
difference, then service can be exhilarating. If one works on a piece of policy in the
academic senate for a semester, gets it through the academic senate with one "nay" vote,
and then sees the president veto the policy, one can come to see service as a waste of time.
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Unfortunately service is not valued at all at SFSU. While I see the value in making sure
tenure-track faculty can perform at an acceptable level in all three areas of evaluation, once
a faculty member is at the Associate level, it should be okay to focus on one of the three.
Since we went from the individual evaluation of research, teaching and service to one
overall "score" it has become incredibly easy to focus on just research/scholarly activities.
Serving on committees at the department, college and university-level. Participating in
student activities such as graduation. I am expected to perform service, and I do so.
Through this service, I can make the university a better place.
I think any role which assist in the greater University work. Certainly examples would be
the Academic Senate, committees related to technology and of course any work that
furthers the mission of the University within the community.
Service is being available at different levels to participate in the maintenance and
development of campus and community circuits. In the best case situation, service helps to
blur the line between campus and community so that the university is integrated into both
without having to think about it.
I've done some at the univ. and coll. level, but most has been at the dept. level. Hiring and
RTP are the most important and time-consuming. Service is very important, especially in
small depts.
I see service as chipping in to make the SFSU community function smoothly. It is very
important, and we all need to do it, but I don't think it should be a major component of one's
responsibility.
Service includes contribution to the management, planning and monitoring of the workings
of department, college and university. In addition it is the contribution to one's professional
community and to the larger public community in which we live and work. Service is
central to the academic life of the university.
Service. It is important. At present, it is philanthropic, provided by faculty to make our
programs run, since they are undersupported.
I think it's very important. I admire the tenure-track and tenured faculty who devote so
much time to making SFSU such a powerful place.
I think service is important but it plays a low role in my department . I am often punished
for being involved in university service, by snide comments about caring about the
university and not the department, lack of accommodation when it comes to scheduling. so I
can continue to serve. In RTP it is given lip service, that is about it and newer faculty as
discouraged from serving on any committee outside of the department and often are
discouraged from pursuing community service. The emphasis is on writing grants and
publishing.
Undertaking some sort of service is necessary at different levels: program/ dept., college
and university.
From my point of view service includes the expectation to participate within the university,
service within professional organizations, and community service. In education the latter
two may be interwoven with scholarly work. For example, NSF funds proposals to work
with local schools and teachers to improve science and math education. Part of this is
community service and part is scholarly research. The role of community service is
extremely important in education.
This has almost NO recognition in COSE, thanks to Dr. Axler
It is complex and frequently confused -- involving the campus as well as the community that
surrounds us.
In my teaching profile and administrative assignment, community service is of the utmost
since my respective community has helped our program towards the establishment of an
endowed chair. Their expectation is that I give back something to the community by way of
curriculum, an oral history project and building a community archive for prospective
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researchers, sponsored lectures & workshops, readings, cultural events and the like. While
my profile is not the typical profile at our university, it looks to me that there will be more
reliance on raising funds from similar communities and a clearer sense of what community
service entails and how it is recognized might be needed for the RTP process.
Service is important, for sure. But on some of the committees on which I have served, there
is an important role for support staff that is not being fully utilized, making more work for
faculty. I chaired a university-wide committee recently in which there were so many
administrative errors that I spent countless hours just trying to figure out who was on the
committee and how the committee was supposed to be formed. Faculty need to contribute
to commitee work but should need better support to do so.
committee work, working in the community,
The place wouldn't run without huge amounts of service. Luckily, almost every unit and
dept has at least one service oriented individual, oftentimes many, who do a lot of the
volunteer heavy lifting on committees and other campus endeavors. You often find the same
names appearing over and over again around campus, the folks who do the bulk of the dirty
or behind the scenes work. It would be nice if this aspect of our professional lives were
more recognised, but that would be a luxury rather than a necessity.
Service involves committee work, administrative roles, shared governance, work with
community organizations If we are to truly value the role of faculty in shared governance,
service should play an important role in the academic life of the university.
Service plays a very important role in all academic institutions and this is extremely
important at SF State. We are preparing the next generation to step up and take over and
hopefully do as good a job or better than we did. This is an important service that we
provide for the current and future generations and we must take this responsibility very
seriously. We are doing what we love and we need to pass on that passion to the next
generation. We doing this because we love it because it is certainly not for the money!
Service is key in my academic life at SFSU. Some of most satisfying work, and key to my
teaching. Two types of service - one to the community and one to the university.
Service includes professional work other than assigned teaching or research, that benefits
the department, campus, community, or profession. Service is important to the academic life
because many tasks would not get done otherwise.
Service expectations are reasonable and I have served on several particularly interesting
and effective committees.
Service usually involves some kind of committee work. I equate it with household chores.
Service equals activities that need to be performed to make sure that the university keeps
running. Some of the chores seem self-generated and unnecessary. Any kind of service
needs to have a specific objective in mind, with a set timeline and a defined deliverable at
the end.
It's important. I find service (committee work, mainly) extremely fulfilling and important at
the department level. On the university level, it can be deadening, really, really bad. Some
University committees truly feel like a waste of one's time. Frustrating when there is such
little time to begin with.
Committee work within the university. Some of the committee work I like and find useful.
As a tenured full professor, I have the luxury of getting off of committees that do not seem
productive. To the extent that "service" means "community service," it is central to my
service and to my teaching.I spend the first 6 months of the year engaged with my students
in a local and international service project.
advising and mentoring, committee works, external collaborations for research and student
training, mentoring to junior faculty
I think service is very important if it allows the faculty member to apply his/her expertise to
a campus or community issue. In my experience, that is highly rewarding for the faculty
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member and is a win/win situation. These experiences can also be brought into the
classroom. The "committee" aspect of service is of minimal utility, in my opinion. Committee
work is a part of the RTP criteria. Tenure track faculty need committee experiences to get
promoted, Therefore, there are committees. Many, many committees. It's as simple as that.
Someone told me there is a Committee on Committees on campus. I sincerely hope that is an
urban legend. If true, in addition to being an embarrassment, it would prove my point.
Service is extremely important and quantity and expectations vary considerably by the size
and needs of the department and colleges.
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
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13. Service and Mission. At SFSU, to what extent is “service” integrated with
goals such as globalization, social justice, and community engagement?
Text Response
Individually - a great deal. Collectively - not a lot.
No.
xxxxxxx
No so much.
Very integrated.
Professional and community service can be integrated witht hese goals. Academic service,
less so.
That varies from college to college, though, on the whole, I would say that service is well
integrated with social justice and community engagement.
A funny antecdote regarding the school's goal of social justice. I was recently discussing
distributive and procedural justice concepts to a class and I made reference to the school's
goal of social justice. I asked the class if anyone could explain what "social justice" was
prior to the lecture (as a new TT faculty, I have heard quite a bit about social justice being
integral to SFSU's mission and how many of the university's decisions are based on the ideal
of social justice). No one (not one student out of 93) could answer the question. So, I ask, is
the social justice ideal a legacy of SFSU or a driving force? Should we honor it or strive for
it?
Not at all. But you'll hear these words said a lot.
The focus of their service varies from faculty to faculty.
It is and should be and also should be rewarded for students and faculty who participate.
These are direct and positive ways for the university to gain recognition.
Again, community engagement is something we do in Secondary Education. We have some
50 plus schools that we work with, some closer with than others. We need to improve on
this and are making plans to do so.
Depends on the faculty/departmental specialties. There is no one single model, and trying
to force one is counter-productive.
Globalization: we need to engage more in fighting human trafficking in the metro Bay Area.
Social Justice: integrating this with environmental justice in critiquing the geography of
pollution, jobs, and decent K-12 education in the Bay Area. Community Engagement:
promoting public awareness of the two issues above. How? Perhaps a better integration
with KQED's Forum or other general-interest programs.
Each department should be encouraged to develop a statement of the value of service in RT
and P. Each department should follow these criteria in retention and promotion, and these
criteria should be made plain at hiring, so that there is no misunderstanding about what is
expected of faculty members in the department. At the time of retention and tenure
decisions, the department's criteria should be paramount in the decion-making, not the
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imposed value of an administrator who is not part of the department.
Too much. Again, if service is a necessary element of our RTP, we should at least be free in
our choices and unbound by mission-related regulations.
I think we do a darn good job at integrating service with our mission. This is thanks in large
part to a faculty dedicated to making a difference, and a university administration
committed to devoting resources toward that end.
This varies with thefaculty member. Many colleagues in Ethnic Studies have examplary
community engagement activites that aredirectly integrated into their classes. Some
colleagues in International Relations are known for their commitments to human rights and
others have supported renovations in university programs abroad, contributing to
globalization.
Not too much.
I can't speak for the campus, but I integrate service in my teaching and professional
development to realize social justice and community engagement in a globalize world. But,
again, I have not been recognized for it.
none. We talk about it with our students, but nothing is done at the level of faculty
I cannot answer this question well because I don't really understand it, as the question is
worded,
On paper it is, to what degree each department practices it is something that needs to be
shown.
I think we have been very uneven in our approach to service. We expect it, but we don't
recognize it. We don't include community engagement in the daily life of the university in
any meaningful way for the great majority of the faculty members I know.
Not sure what is meant by these goals
Service needs to be weighed as secondary to professional Growth and achievement and
Teaching. The latter Are 2 areas that faculty have to develop on their own, and Service
Hinges on the cooperation of other people
I've already responded to this question earlier in the survey.
Completely.
I think that service is most clearly integrated with these goals, as opposed to the other areas
of RTP evaluation. Which makes it ironic that it is the least valued on campus.
Very little.
I think it is an important element. When we had the Child Study Center (CSC) for example
we provided a affordable preschool option for SF families. However with the elimination of
this service and the development of the Children's Campus--we still offer these services but
it is not really affordable like the CSC was. So I do not think we do as good a job as we could.
One of my children attended a University (albeit private) in an urban Texas city which
hosted what they called The Big Event. This was a campus wide day of service (on a
Saturday). They volunteered at non profits, in neighborhoods near the school where elderly
and or disabled could be assisted with home projects and other community projects. I think
SFSU could do a similar event--it would be great.
Highly integrated depending on where one looks
When there's time. Mostly we're very busy doing all the basics.
Service is integrated to the extent that individuals take their work and their teaching into
the community. Most faculty do this; some do not.
Well integrated, but these are not the only goals. The idea of a university--what it does;
what it offers; what it fosters--ought to be part of our mission--and NOT purely in terms of
productivity, but in terms of values of reason, measured judgment, and life wisdom.
It could be and I think there are many faculty trying to do this inspite of being pushed in
other directions. It is why many came here in the first place, we need to help accommodate
them. It may mean less pressure on getting large grants that the university profits from.
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Only a few can get those, while many can get smaller grants, work with communities to help
them get grants to succeed. There needs to be room at SFSU for both and recognition of the
importance of both to the university and society.
I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if this is an important consideration to make.
Community service is clearly integrated (almost defined to be integrated) with the goals of
globalization, social justice and community engagement.
Not as much as it should be -- often rhetorically.
Again, it is on a case by case basis. I think faculty in specific departments and colleges
devoted to these important issues might be a better position to answer this question. In my
case, I deal with issues of social justice in a course that deals with early immigration to the
U.S. in the late 19th & early 20th centuries.
Lots of community engagement and some social justice
Lot of people do very well with this. I am totally impressed, most of the time.
To the extent that faculty service integrates with community organizations, it can serve
social justice and community engagement roles well.
From what I have seen at SFSU service is deeply integrated with globalization, social justice
and community engagement. Myself, I teach self-defense seminars for the community
including programs for the visually impaired as well as the community as a whole. Club
Taekwondo at SFSU has taught a self-defense seminar for young homeless kids at a City
shelter. I have had students at SF State who are now working with the Environmental
Protective Agency and other such community service organizations and don't forget the
young woman helping educate females in Afghanistan.
I think fairly well.
Sometimes; many times service is more isolated or insular than that, depending on the tasks
required.
Some of the service activities I have encountered include community service: providing
needed manpower to local and regional affairs.
This seems to be part of the mission, but I honestly have no idea how this takes place
concretely.
In terms of committee work, not at all. In terms of my own engagement with students for
the first 6 months of the calendar year, it is central and integral.
Not so much in my own discplinary.
Depends on the academic discipline. In our department, these issues are fundamental
aspects of the discipline, and are therefore totally integrated into the service experiences I
discussed above. Typical campus committee work, however, rarely incorporates these
issues.
We are quite fortunate in that we can choose to be on committies that support these
missions and integrate them within.
Statistic
Total Responses
Value
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14. 14. Recognition of Service.Here are some questions to consider: How is
service recognized and supported at SF State? What role does “service” play in
RTP? Are there better ways to recognize and reward service?
Text Response
How long can one write in one of these boxes? Can we write 100 words or more? 800
characters? Is there no limit?
It's not - -at all. Plays a minimal role in RTP. Assigned time for regular service duties.
Understanding the time service plays in workload and adjusting.
xxxxxxxx
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Service factors as a distant third into tenure and promotion-to-full considerations. I hear
that in some departments (not mine) faculty are encouraged to avoid service. IF (magic IF)
we had more money as a university we could give a 1-term course release for a full 3-year
Senate term. But given the realities, we should just continue to do as we are doing (or
should be doing) defacto: threaten to sink the promotion-to-full of any faculty who hasn't
yet served time on the Senate or other University level committee. Serving on the Senate is
a shit job, but we need to spread this shit around.
Right now, not very much. It should be a part of the RTP.
There could be "official" and recognized programs that routinely involve "every" teacher in
some kind of service. Possibly coupled with release time, maybe every few semester, so that
the burden of "covering" service is not entirely on the teacher.
see question 12/
Academic service is not recognized and sometimes punished. Volunteering for a committe
can mean you are volunteering for related committees that you didn't know you were
signing on for. Service is a box that needs to be checked off before going up for tenure and
promotion.
It is barely recognized at all, despite the important role it plays in RTP. More release time
should be available for the most important and time consuming service activities.
Service makes some people campus stars and gets them in line for admin jobs. Other than
that, it's not much valued. Again, having a single person given an award each year is
counter-productive.
Let faculty accrue "credit" for service so that if they perform more service duties (because
they are in smaller departments, or because they choose to do so or are called on to do so by
peers), so that such "credits" can eventually accumulate into paid leave or course relief.
Currently, course relief for service seems very unevenly practiced across campus. For
example, some larger departments can offer course relief for their graduate coordinators,
but smaller departments cannot. Why not create a system across campus that would more
evenly account for service duties so that any duty (on some pre-agreed to list) counts as
credit that at some point can be traded in for a course relief?
Service does not play a major role in RTP. However, it should be better recognized. Awards
and recognition would be great.
Service needs to be more specific to each faculty member and move away from the
traditional model of high points if a senator, bla, bla, ...... Department RTP criteria needs to
spell this out.
It should always be less than teaching and professional achievement for faculty who are not
yet tenured, and can carry higher weight especially for senior faculty, but this depends on
the specialty.
I don't know.
See #13
Not a huge role, and the level of importance may (and perhaps should) vary depending on
the field. There are certainly better ways to recognize service - through overload pay,
reduced course load etc.
Service is very important in the RTP, however, it seems to be a 'gray area' where some
departments or colleagues say it is not very important, therefore, it's importance should be
decided on by the university - and followed by all colleges/departments.
Too much emphasis on service for RTP. Recognition is adequate, if not too important.
I think we're doing fine in this respect.
These are actually questions I have been wondering about myself. I will look forward to
seeing how colleagues with more insights into this answer.
I don't believe it is particularly valued for RTP.
There is not enough recognition for this. Again, only 1 award each year. It plays a role in
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RTP, but problematic re: what I wrote in #12. In addition, it is understood that non-tenure
TTK faculty that we are not required to do it, but yet, in reality, we must do it. This
contradiction must be resolved.... as it is unfair to TTK faculty.
The administration tends to overlook service entirely in the RTP. They refer to it as
"adequate or acceptable" and that doesn't seem to really describe what is required at the
level of service. Junior faculty are increasingly asked to write reports that chairs normally
should be doing. Furthermore, the administration also has taken away leave time for service
assignments so that faculty find themselves doing much more service without any
consideration of when these assignments can be fulfilled.
I think that service should be the tertiary concern in rtp decisions.
I do not believe service is rewarded much -- up there with teaching.... I think research is
what is rewarded most.
Service to the community was greatly undervalued in my progress toward tenure. I spent
nearly a decade in a community organization directly related to my field, starting a few
years before I joined SF State. Colleagues and I helped launch a major non-profit, raise
funds, hire a succession of executive directors, put on major conferences in Silicon Valley.
My efforts merited one sentence in my tenure report, and about the same in my pre-tenure
reports. The clear message was that community engagement as for after tenure!
Usually is not adequately recognized in the RTP process. Extraordinary service is not
properly compensated beyond the "baseline" 3 of 15 WTU's.
Not too much
Service is a vital aspect of academic employment; there's no need to offer further incentives.
See my answer above to #12.
It isn't. It doesn't. Let faculty who want to focus on service do so. Don't hold everyone up to
a UC level of research and give them no time or energy to focus on teaching or service. Bring
back assigned time to recognize that some service is very time intensive and goes above and
beyond the 3-WTUs faculty are expected to minimally spend on it. Make faculty who do
little or no service teach more.
I think it depends on the teaching and the scholarly record. I think as long as you do a little
bit of service to balance a strong scholarly record and teaching record, this is perceived
adequate. If someone focused mainly on service, relieving colleagues of that burden, but did
not have a strong scholarly record, then I would worry that we wasted the talent of a
faculty member on something that a less capable staff member could have done.
I think service is recognized as important (at least there is lip service) when it comes to
RTP. However I think that many faculty feel if they serve on committees they have "given".
I think they have but I think we need to open to more than committee work.
I believe this is department specific. But at this point I don't have enough clarity on what
counts as service or what is recognized and rewarded as such.
See my previous answers re: RTP and balance.
Service would be easier if we had sufficient staff. Most of the staff people in the depts. and
coll. office in LCA are incredibly competent--they are what keeps the univ. running.
Especially since LCA was formed, they are also incredibly stressed out, though they rarely
complain. The supposed money-saving of that merger was achieved on the backs of these
low-paid and underrecognized staff. Social justice, indeed!
There is little or no support for service at SFSU. No course releases. No financial reward.
Having said that service is a major factor in RTP cases.
Again. I sound like a broken record. A demoralized, downtrodden faculty often has no time
to write the letters and forms in multiplicate that recognize service. Individual recognition
is nice; why stop there? Why not support service?
One award, once a year. That is it. There is no recognition of it that I have seen in
evaluating RTP, at least not in my college. ICCE does a good job with what they have and
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recognizing service, we could do more of that.
Service is generally under recognized at SFSU.
No where near enough. In COSE. stop counting grant $ and publications and truly recognize
service to the university and the community
Usually through meaningless letters in RTP files that demonstrate that one served on
committees. There must be better ways to recognize service. Certainly some committee
service is inordinately time-consuming and quite important, and other service is incredibly
boring and worthless. Sometimes it is hard to know from the paper trails that show up in
RTP files.
I don't think SF State is lacking in recognition necessarily. To use myself as an example, it
had been amply recognized in the RTP process when I went up but that was a very long
time ago (1999). I am not entirely sure what the case might be now. It is worth looking into,
conducting more conversation over this question and then making a few recommendations.
Surely, service is not taken very seriously at other research-oriented institutions and for
that reason I am happy to say that I do not find State lacking on this point.
I am not sure how it is rewarded. I know it is expected. I also know that there are faculty
who do very little service while others are constantly stepping up. Does not appear to be
assigned as fairly as it could be.
Service is seen as a check off the list. Nobody cared about my service work.
See Q 12. At the moment at least, people aren't being 'dinged' for overemphais on service in
their RTP efforts.
Service is under-recognized in RTP and at the university. In particular, the current
administration does not seem to value faculty service highly.
Again since I am not certain what RTP stand for I am not going to comment on this except to
say that there are always better way to reward and recognize service. With the salaries
teachers get paid and the cost of living in the Bay Area these days, money would be a great
place to start! For example, provide free parking passes for faculty and staff; SF State is one
of the only places I know where you have to pay to park in order to work!
Two types of service - one to the community and one to the university. The Univeristy tends
to recognize the first and not so much the second. Maybe the service category should be
formally split into these two areas so that the univesity service receives due recognition and
is not always overshadowed the "cooler" community service.
service is supposed to play a one-third role in RTP, but it feels like it is a smaller third than
teaching and scholarship get.
Service plays a relatively smaller role in RTP. It is not recognized as well, partly because the
amount of work involved is often difficult to measure and to compare.
Service should play a much less substantial role in the RTP than research and teaching.
University service, unless it is unusual, is more or less a set of "brownie points" in the RTP
process. Community service, both local and international, is the kind of thing the
university talks about a lot, but when push comes to shove, it gets almost no recognition.
It is the part usually got 'dismissed' in RTP process. There are no clear definitions and
efective assessment rubrics for university service.
Community engagement and service is part of SFSU's core mission. This type of service is
supported and encouraged on campus, meaning there are many opportunities to get
involved in community service. Our students are also encouraged to participate, and there
are many ways to earn academic credit for service. As for RTP, it's very clear that it carries
little to no weight in promotional decisions. The RTP letters I receive from our Dean and
Provost typically are 1-2 pages in length and usually contain 1-2 sentences about service.
I'm not complaining, just communicating a clear fact. We advise our junior faculty
accordingly when we meet with them to discuss RTP.
What is service and how is it defined?? Is service holding office hours? Is service advising
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students each semester within your department as to courses to meet for a timely
graduation? How about a listing of all of the various manners in which service is conducted
by faculty on our campus.
We get less credit for service than any other RTP criteria.
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15. 15. Governance. Do our current campus governance structures work
sufficiently well? How could they be improved?
Text Response
No space.
They work very well.
Xxxxxxxxx
Honestly, it seems like we spend most (80%) of our time in the Senate listening to Senators
in love with the sound of their own voices (again, see Prof. D Lee) and approving various
proclamations or listening to poetry. Only 20% seems to be resolved for serious business.
Thank god for the copious coffee and the witty speakers (Handley, Getz, etc.) that keeps us
from falling asleep. On a more serious note, it seems like the real decisions (such as
switching the SFSU Bookstore to management by Folletts, or the reduction of the Colleges)
seems to happen outside of the academic term. My first year in Senate was spent listening
to people whine about said restructuring, without anything actually concrete going on. And
I hear that various bills that the Senate passed in AY2012-3 apparently got rejected with
little feedback. If real governance is just a window dressing, then why bother?
No, not enough people are willing to participate in governance. This is weakening the
university's governance structure.
All good
The campus committees that work well usually are focused on a critical issue and involve
cooperation and interaction with the appropriate administrative personnel. These people
have the history, background and understand the implications of decisions and can inform
the process as deliberations occur. Anothe important factor for the success of a committee
is the skill and/or commitment of the leader. In large bodies, the chair needs to be able to
allow those who need to be heard to have their say while still eliciting the sentiment of the
majority. In smaller bodies, many times the chair ends up doing the majority of the work
either because the committee members aren't engaged or because the chair doesn't know
how to coordinate the work of others. Some kind of recognition event or reward for chairs
would be a nice idea.
I like shared governance, but I think we have created an enormous workload for ourselves
by insisting that we play a role in so many of the decisions that are made on campus.
Honestly it seems as if it takes too long to implement any change.
No. The Academic Senate is nightmare of inefficiency, one-upmanship, and bad
decisionmaking by committee. ExComm has too much power and too many toadies.
Not sure how well it represents the campus community. It seems that it is dominated by
certain voices and specific agendas that may not benefit everyone.
By making every aspect of the adminstration of the university responsible to students and
faculty and recognizing individuality as much as "fairness," which can be a default for
autocratic and/or insensitive decision-making.
Faculty governance of the academic programs must be maintained! We are an academy of
scholars!... Destiny is and should be in the hands of the faculty. If we are doing all that is
right, College level, provost and president level to support the Departments in their
mission.... Work with department chair.... They know their faculty... Provide the
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resources and support.... And then if the change that is wanted is not happening.... We have
a clear road and can see why or why not!
Unfortunately, the Senate self-selects for individuals with agendas, who in some cases
would rather legislate than do their jobs. I know there are exceptions.
Don't know.
No, it does not -- not even close. I realize that this survey appears to provide a counter
example, but as faculty I essentially never sense that I am asked my opinion about
important, practical issues.
Again, this survey asks us to spend some 25 minutes to
respond to a set of questions that has been organized in some spefific format. I'd be willing
spend much more than 25 minutes, if I had the feeling that it might have any effect. So far,
my experience is that faculty is not asked for input when it really counts, and I yet have to
see any sign that this might change. Let me give just two examples, one "big picture," and
one "down in the trenches": - Faculty was asked to vote about college restructuring, a few
years back. This was a rigged election, in which limited options, all flawed, were
presented. I send a very long, carefully worded e-mail to the president, asking many
questions about those options. I was simply blown off, there's no other words for it. I felt
insulted by the process, and the Academic Senate did not do a thing to fix the process. Despite the fact that our whole department was against it, all the blackboards in rooms we
teach in were replaced by whiteboards. Why? Do we count for anything at all? It seems a
small issue, but it is on those boards that we actually teach, every day! Since I don't like
this survey, and am very critical of the whole governance structure of this university, I don't
want the few responses I gave to be anonymous. Maarten Golterman
Regular meetings between senators and their constituents should be held in each College,
so that faculty and staff recognize the usefulness of the Academic Senate in expressing their
concerns.
Not particularly, and this is not the format for tackling this question.
Our campus governance is slow, ineffective. Too many people debate for too long - many
times about things that do not even directly concern/affect them. At the same time, people
affected by those decisions often do not get included. Maybe, dissolving the union(s) might
actually help this situation. At least, we would move away from the currently wide-spread
faculty-paradigm of "me and my rights first"...
No! See above. Another suggestion I have, and I have a few more to give since I just finished
my third cup of coffee, is to give more weight to the responsibilities of chairs while reducing
the governance hurdles they must traverse in the course of their daily work and strategic
planning.
The structures are fine. They would work better if we elected more independent colleagues
to office.
I do not know how to address this question as i do not know what you mean by
"governance". If it is the Dean's level, then "NO" not in my college. If it is higher than the
Dean's level, again, "NO" from my experience because recognition is to faculty who are able
to balance all three in a stellar manner is not given. I think taking seriously, early tenure,
is one step to recognize TTK faculty who have demonstrated stellar performance in all three
areas of teaching, professional development and service. Currently administration seems to
be against this, and do not seriously take candidates achievement and merit into serious
consideration, while other institutions, R1s, do.
We seem to be paying thousands of dollars to administrators: it's become the real business
of this university. We keep hiring more and more of them for every kind of function.
Campus governance is a joke. Faculty complain, but the administration ignores faculty
concerns. Faculty need to have the ability to really set the agenda for the institution; it can't
be solely under the purview of the Provost and her dean of faculty affairs.
No comment,
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I give us pretty good marks for campus governance. The Senate does a remarkable job,
given the enormity of their responsibilities.
Academic Senate does not seem to communicate adequately with the rest of the campus,
and some huge time sinks for the Senate (like the GE program) appear to baffle just about
everyone.
No comments
More faculty involvement in decision-making at the higher level. We will soon be finding a
new dean in Creative & Liberal Arts and the faculty should have a strong voice in the
decision.
The Academic Senate has lost significance over the past few years as workload and a change
in the focus of the campus mission toward research has become more important. It may
take a generation before faculty governance regains lost ground.
Allow a 2/3rds or even 3/4 vote of the senate to override a presidential veto. Or allow a
committee made up of the faculty and the administration to "confer" and work out a
compromise that can satisfy both parties.
Yes, and no. Communication between groups on campus is incredibly poor. Short of
someone at the higher levels being willing to make communication a priority, I don't see
things changing.
To be honest, keeping up with teaching, scholarly activities and service leaves no time to
even consider this.
The provost has not honored the involvement of faculty in creating each department's
criteria for retnetion and especially not for tenure. Not every college is the same and one
model does not fit all. Administrators need to colloborate with faculty not undermine
faculty visions of productivity and contribution to teaching and service areas.
I think they do. I think with President Wong there seems to be a new sense of purpose.
Colleagues have also remarked that there seems to be more progress toward change.
Not well enough informed to answer.
Our campus governance works well. Our current Academic Senate President is one of the
very best we've ever had. But we need to consider that, technically, all campus governance
is advisory, and, campus governance is populated to a significant extent with the same
administrators who will then make decisions on these advisory recommendations! With no
release time for campus governance, it often falls to the province of junior faculty, who "go
along to get along," reluctant to speak their minds. For example, program discontinuance or
college reorganization, in some cases, they have been recommended by Academic Affairs,
whose representatives sit on the committees that "consider" these discontinuances, vote on
the committees, and then are senators, who vote on the committee recommendations,
which are then forwarded to the Academic Affairs administrators, who "decide" on what
they have initially recommended! Indeed, when such matters transpire (as they have in the
past decade), one ironically might recommend that the campus governance be provided
with whigs, so that they are able to feel as if they are members of the impotent English
House of Lords.
I didn't understand why, when the whole university was against the changes and mergers
among the colleges, it went through anyhow. And I'm still waiting for the budget report
showing all the money that was saved by the process. I mean pleasse someone do a case
study of a university behaving insanely for no reason but to made people anxious and waste
money. Was it supposed to distract us from something else? What?
If Administration can continue to work with Senate and CFA in governance it would work
sufficiently. Senate needs to be given more recognition, faculty serving on Senate and other
committees that require 3-6 hours a week work should be given release time to do so.
Time is the currency in this field and anything that is not given time is deemed not worthy.
When administration starts recognizing Senate policy in their manuals and decisions and
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stops trying to push forward their agendas we will know that there is shared governance;
until then the jury is still out.
No. Campus governance does not work well. Too often faculty input is ignored by the
university.
I don't see them working well at all. As far as I can see the academic senate is full of people
who like to pretend to debate, and then go along with whatever has been predetermined to
please the powers that be.
They are surely time-consuming yet should be made more inclusive and need to
communicate their purposes and accomplishments better to all faculty members.
I feel that faculty-based governance is not what it was on this campus. Faculty are afraid to
speak up on very important issues. It is very hard to speak up in the academic senate,
college-wide meetings or town hall meetings. The recent 3 college merger is a case in point.
Faculty were afraid to oppose it and the outcome has generated many problems regarding
workload fairness for administrators and staff, for example. Now, there is an implicit push
to merge departments and the results may be much the same. Perhaps this survey can be a
launching pad for those of us who have raised issues to put them forth to the other faculty
as a warm-up and to encourage realistic dialogue and debate.
In the school of education, the department chairs have too much power and the deans don't
know what is going on. From what I can see nothing get done. The dean talks to the
department chairs and they all talk as if they talk for the entire faculty and they do not talk
for the entire faculty. The dean needs to talk with the entire faculty, not just with the 4 or 5
department chairs. There are only 60 faculty, the dean should know all of us well and we
should meet more often. The department chairs fight to keep their own turfs so they can
stay in power, when many of the departments should be integrated. As far as beyond the
deans, I was once given a whiteboard marker with a note wrapped around it. It said that I
should keep this marker because it was the only one I would get that year. I can't make any
copies in my department. Half my job is administration, which in my last academic job was
done by student assistance and now I am a full professor (pretty expensive). So, if faculty
and students are so poor, why are there so many vice presidents, and associate vice
presidents and provosts and associate vice provosts and assistance vice provosts, and
assistant to the assistant vice presidents. It seems a bit out of hand. At the last university I
went to, they had deans, one provost and one president. They didn't even have department
chairs. They had a very flat administration. And, the number of students was the same in
that university as that. And, every time I want to talk to a person about my benefits, or a
person in human resources, or a person in faculty affairs, everyone is too busy to actually
meet with me. PLEASE! I wish I could tell my 100 student advisees I am too busy to meet
with them.
The senate for some time, for many faculty, has a reputation for being tuned to more
administrative than faculty sound tracks. I am not sure this is a fair assessment, as many
faculty don't have a good idea of the balancing act the senate has to do. But this is always a
problem, and depends a lot on both leadership and senate membership. I am not sure many
know how important a strong acdemic senate it, and life is always better when folks with
not only good rhetorical skills/analytic abilities but also backbones are present. It is cyclic,
and goes up and down. Senate/union collaborations always a plus, and improve
effectiveness/leverage of both.
I do think that our current campus governance structures work well and I have not
experienced a problem in this area over the past eight years.
There is a ridiculous reliance on paper over electronic. I'm still in disbelief that I would
often have to commute down to campus to take a piece of paper from one department and
deliver it to another. It was a wasted 2 hours of my time. The bureaucratic part of SFSU
could certainly stand to be improved with a digital system of record-keeping that was
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shared across departments.
Is there a way for someone who wants to be on a university committee to get on the ballot?
I'm not sure of the continuity of some campus committees in our current system of voting.
I think they work pretty well.
In my opinion, the majority of faculty members are not aware of the campus governance
structures or choose to ignore them. There is insufficient transparency and training
regarding governance.
I have no idea. I know very little about this.
I guess . . .
From my perspective, there is not enough 'downward' communication from decision
makers in administration down to the department and faculty levels. The hierarchy at SFSU
seems to have become more rigid in recent years, with administrators and faculty only
communicating with those directly above or below themselves. There's little sense of
community, but instead authority and rigid silos. It's quite demoralizing for faculty.
Not really, but we just went through college reorganization process. Need to balance topdown and botton-up approaches.
I haven't participated in Academic Senate, so I don't feel qualified to answer this questions. I
do think the idea of shared governance in academia is a good one. By design, it sometimes
leads to decision making processes that are far too lengthy and cumbersome. The flip side is
that everyone has a voice and is allowed to participate in decision making.
The Senate is an excellent forum for facutly to understand and take part in understanding
the dynamics of our campus.
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16. 16. Lecturer Faculty and Service.What role do lecturers play in “service”
at SFSU? How should this role be supported?
Text Response
They could do more if they were reworded somehow?
I dont' know.
Xxxxxxx xx
This is a challenge as it brings to mind whether working as a full-time lecturer is truly a
valid long term career path. Call me politically incorrect, but I haven't seen much evidence
that it is.
No idea.
Pay them more money.
Some volunteer but how can we expect service from people who have to either teach 4
classes or work 2-3 jobs to do any form of service?
In our college, lecturers have no obligation to engage in academic service. Some choose to
be involved.
We play no role unless we're willing to work for free. Some are.
None from what I see. They should be expected to complete service requirements to
support the university (particularly if they are carrying full time teaching loads).
They are expected to do it and not be paid for it. Disgraceful.
We do not pay them for service, and they should not be expected or asked to do this work. It
is also unfair given that many lecturers do not have job security and therefore cannot be
counted on to be back semester to semester. SErvice requires continuity and job security.
Full-time lecturers should be involved in the campus discussions. In many cases they teach
more students than a typical faculty member.
Lecturer should be support as do TT faculty. At the .60 level about.
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They are not payed enough to expect this.
Lecturers are especially important. Many (not me) are permanent adjuncts because they
have other careers which are very much service-careers. They need to be actively
supported.
See #13
See my responses above. Thanks.
Not sure I understand what this question is really getting at.
In our department, we have more lecturers than tenure-track faculty. They play too large of
a role in votes, etc.
With respect to service, our full-time lecturers play the basic same service role that tenureline fac play (with the obvious exceptions of RTP and tenure-line hiring). They chair
committees. They manage thesis projects, independent studies, etc. For this we ensure they
have the same basic teaching load as tenure-line faculty. We have found that doing so
ensures our full-time lecturers feel like they're a full partner in the health and future of the
department. We benefit from their ideas, experiences and judgements. In short, a full-time
lecturer in Cinema is treated in almost the same way as a tenure line professor. I
understand this is not the case in other departments, but I don't have enough direct
experience to be sure.
It is unfair to expect lecturers to be involved in service. Someone comitted enough to the
university tobe involved in service should have a job that includes services in the job
description. If they are involved, they should be compensated.
They are paid so little, I don't believe it is reasonable to expect service from them.
They should not have to play any role, since they are not paid for it.
lecturers shouldn't be assigned service unless they're paid for it. Without compensation,
we're effectively setting up a subaltern class.
I have addressed this in an earlier question.
Lecturers should be invited but not required to participate in service. They do not get paid
enough.
They are "serving" our students with the curriculum that they develop. They are supporting
the tenured and tenure-track faculty in their research goals. They should be supported with
consistent work loads and pay. Despite putting in 35 hours/week to teach one class, I earn
in one month what I earned in 4 days in the private sector. Lecturers can not support
themselves on what they are paid. In our department, no lecturer teaches more than 2
classes/semester. That equals approximately $20,000/year.
I have not seen instances of lecturers playing any role in service in my college.
Lecturers should have some choice in the service activities in which they get involved, and
they should be compensated for their involvement.
See comments on contingent faculty
I don't believe that lecturers should be called on to serve on committees.
There are many who engage in advising, committee work, and many forms of community
service. Workload is determined at the departmental level for the most part.
Contingent faculty, especially those that have been at SFSU for a long time, have a great deal
to offer. Unfortunately, "service" has no rewards beyond a hearty handshake. How about
every lecturer who does "service" gets a new desktop computer and a permanent office?
Maybe the academic senate could loan out laptops for every lecturer who serves in the AS.
It seems like there should be ways to support lecturers who want to make SFSU a better
place.
Little to none at present. Other than allowing service to be counted in place of a teaching
assignment, I don't see how it can be.
None. I think that's fine...unless they are also paid for their time providing service, as long
as that service doesn't require the involvement of a tenured faculty member who has a lot
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more invested in SFSU.
Lecturers should be supported to do more advising by being giving time and payment for
this role.
I can tell you that in our department the lecturers contribute a great deal. We do committee
work, forge relationships and opportunities for students that extend beyond the classroom.
Any service that we do is not seemingly acknowledged as beyond the scope of our jobs.
As a lecturer, I am am very much engaged in community partnerships and service -trying to
better integrate my students with various service opportunities in the Bay Area. However, I
am not very engaged in bureaucratic service. It seems lecturers are paid to teach, and in my
case advise students, but are not paid enough to spend significant time serving on
administrative committees.
Some do it out of the goodness of their hearts and the wish to have a say. I'd ask them how
to support it.
I know of few lecturers who play any role in service at SFSU. They do not see it as part of
their contract with the university and faculty do not feel it is correct to ask lecturers to
contribute work for which they are not compensated.
Officially, none. In reality, it is unpaid labor.
Lecturers should be paid their hourly rate whenever they participate in service, of course.
Very little, which puts the burden on limited TTrack faculty. Lecturers don't get paid for
service and many have to teach 4-5 classes to make ends meet so there is no time for
service. Lecturers should get paid to be on committees and serve on senate.
Given that lecturers are paid so little, I don't think that they should be required to
contribute serivce to the university.
Very little, unless they are in Education. Our lecturers in Secondary Education perform
their jobs as a community service, not to mention all the volunteer hours they give.
Practically none - what do you expect when there is ZERO reward for this.
Unclear.
I do not think they should play a role in service since they are not compensated properly
even for teaching. If they are asked to contribute towards service, they should be
compensated.
I have seen them provide very littel service, but then again they aren't paid for service as far
as I know.
None in our program. They don't advise, they don't serve on search committees, they don't
even go to faculty meetings. Some out of the goodness of their hearts meet with faculty
about their classes, but that is not required.
Many lecturers are engaged in community service with activities within their communities
that support civil rights and social justice and work with other institutions and nonprofit/NGOs in the US and abroad, yet they receive no support, recognition or reward for
their service. Lecturers should be able to advance in their professional careers based, in
part, on their service in the same way that T/TT faculty do.
I am not familiar, but would like to know.
I am impressed with how much lecturers do, and my hat is off to them. Much depends on
the receptiveness/hostility of dept chairs and deans for this, but likely self-initiative is
primary. Around the CSU in comparison, I think we do remarkably well.
Being a lecturer myself I am probably biased but I do think that lecturers play a big role in
service at SFSU. How should this role be supported? Look at what you can do to help them
financially and well as academically. Allow lecturers to audit classes they might be
interested in would be one way.
Lecturers are not paid for "service." It would purely be volunteer work. Therefore,
contingent faculty should have minimal roles in service activities.
Interesting question. Currently in my department they don't play any role.
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They aren't paid to do service. My hat is off to any lecturer who gives time beyond teaching
time to the university.
Long-term lectures can play more active roles in university service, - this shall be
encouraged and supportived by release time, rewards, etc.
I have not spoken to any lecturers about this issue.
Lecturers do service if expected or required for them to meet their personal goals or the
goals set out for them by their department. Lecturers are an integral part of our campus.
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17. 17. Is there anything else you would like to add about service at SF State?
Text Response
It's important.
Xxxxxxxx
Service is like broccoli. A side of it is good for you, but if you find yourself making a whole
meal/career out of it, you need to get your head examined.
Everybody says we should be giving more weight to service in tenure an promotions
decisions, but nobody does.
We specialize in toothless committees wasting time instead of smart use of electronic
communications for idea sharing and polling.
We need to do a. Enter job of defining services and encouraging faculty to engage. With
proper rewards. Also a wat to deal with faculty who do nothing or no engagement at all?
no.
Service learning has been a very motivating program for students at SF State, and should
continue to be supported.
This is not a 25 minute survey!
Just keep it as an important part of the RTP. It keeps faculty involved in campus and is a way
of getting to know colleagues and contributing to the workings of the university, whether by
speaking or presenting or committees.
These questions just makes me tired even to think about. Service is quite field specific so
general answers are not useful.
no
We need to find a more meaningful way to build service into the learning environment for
the university. I don't have easy answers. But we need to listen to each other about how to
make this a more meaningful part of our experience. Unfortunately, the top-leadership
focus on research has led many of my colleagues to think of service as something to do in
small enough doses not to interfere with the research, which is what really seems to be
valued.
No
No.
The division of teaching, scholarship, and service into the triumvirate of faculty roles and
responsibilities does not capure nor encourage the integration of this work across
categories. The Boyer model of scholarship is one approach to integration. With sufficient
will, SF State could create its own model that would be envy of similar institutions across
the nation.
Nope.
I think that departments should all have a staff advisor who the students see for initial
advising. Students should see faculty when they need the faculty's experience, wisdom and
perspective. Not when they need to know whether their community college units will
satisfy a requirement in their major; a staff person could handle that.
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Perhaps instituting a system to pay lecturers to perform service duties?
From MARAT/SADE, offered in somber, morbid humor, reflecting our moods when we
become demoralized: Why do they have the gold Why do they have the power why why
why why why Do they have the friends at the top Why do they have the jobs at the top
We've got nothing always had nothing Nothing but holes and millions of them Living in
holes Dying in holes Holes in our bellies and Holes in our clothes Marat we're poor And
the poor stay poor Marat don't make us wait any more We want our rights and we don't
care how We want a revolution Now
Either recognize it, reward it and fund it, or stop pretending.
It's definitely underrated and is also clearly one of the pillars of SFSU's reputation.
It is a confusing area.
No
Highly underrated aspect of our professional lives.
I have found among faculty and staff service is an important part of their contribution to the
community and that their service is given willingly and happily I might add. Peace.
I would like to see community engagement a/o service valued as much as is committee
work.
The university needs to reach out to more SFSU talented (yet silent) faculty for service.
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1.2 Website submissions
I'm looking forward to having a really constructive conversation on many of these
questions. One of the most important part of the process may be finding ways to
elicit contributions from faculty around campus who have good ideas about building
academic programs. We see the opportunities on the ground, we have ideas, we
identify possible solutions and opportunities. Of course, it's a little bit hard to put
one's self forward, but we have to take this opportunity.
I have a few ideas myself, just going into this project. One is that we should look for
ways to extend academic programs outside of the classroom into exciting facultystudent ventures like "incubators" or additional internship and other relationships
with both private companies and public bodies in the bay area.
I also think, if we're going to be relying so much on lecturers, that we should all have
a collective rethink about what it means to be a lecturer. I read an interesting
Northwestern U. study recently showing that lecturers are very effective teachers
(no surprise there), and we need to think of ways to enhance these members of our
community.
It's also important that we set up clear messaging as to how importance service (in
particular) is to the RTP process. We can't run this university without shared
governance, yet clearly the importance of teaching and research means that service
seems to take third place.
Also, I'm interested in looking at synergies in grad programs. Can we construct
multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary grad programs -- "cultural studies" spanning
several disciplines comes to mind. I'd like to also look at exploring the idea of
making some grad programs more project-oriented rather than thesis-oriented.
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Finally, I think we need to pool our resources to identify academic programs that
have a great impact on student success -- including but not only Metro Academy.
These are just a few thoughts with which I'm starting.
***
Because SFSU is in a desirable part of the country, it has had the opportunity to hire
a t-t faculty that is more research oriented in the past. I think the university needs to
think about how it can support those agendas (now that the budget is in recovery)
through funding opportunities and course releases. The lecturer/t-t balance is too
weighted towards lecturers whose opportunities to do research are severely
limited. We need both to increase t-t hiring (and encourage present lecturers to
apply for those positions) and think about ways to support lecturers. In terms of
undergrad/grad balance in programs, departments with strong graduate programs
should be given the resources (including increased funding opportunities for
students) to keep them strong.
***
These are all important questions to be asking and for us to be discussing. I hope the
Strategic Planning Group will keep APC informed as they are currently constructing
a process for 7th cycle review and imagining program standards and guidelines. It
would be helpful if there was interaction between the two groups. I would also like
to see a discussion on what constrains faculty in their teaching, in terms of physical
and bureaucratic infrastructure. For example, a 50 minute class MWF might
constrict a faculty’s ability to provide content and incorporate interaction with
students, while a 75 minute cycle 2 days a week might be better able to facilitate
learning in some cases. What are the constraints put on faculty by scheduling? Can
we imagine other models for classroom time? Faculty are doing it and making do,
could we better use our classroom spaces that allows for flexibility and varied
teaching strategies? The way large lecture halls are constructed without middle
aisles or the ability for students to move around in there seats for small group
discussions or pair sharing. Can we envision better spaces, perhaps even some
outdoor learning spaces to take advantage of our environment? Are varied ways of
teaching and learning being constricted by arcane physical and bureaucratic
infrastructure? Would envisioning the future allow us to envision these changes as
well?
***
We need to define 'rigor' in flexible ways that account for colleagues to be
approaching scholarly achievement using multiple paths that may vary over the
course of an academic career - some times we're throwing ourselves into teaching,
others into research, others into service both on and off campus. Most immediately,
measuring success purely in quantitative terms can be problematic, a kind of
'publishing/teaching to the test.' It would be great to understand scholarship in
terms of research and publishing yes, but what about research that has leads to
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measurable outcomes in community service or devising courses that really light a
spark for our students. Ideally, it must be some combination of these because at a
place like State they should feed one another. Wouldn't it be great to be known as a
place that had high, valued standards in all three areas, and that this really meant
something.... I've focused on the faculty side, realizing that this is only part of the
issue - it's where my mind is as I'm starting to review RTP files and writing tenure
and promotion letters for colleagues elsewhere.
***
The American Language Institute
SF State College of Extended Learning and
International Affairs
Response to Strategic Plan Draft Fall 2013
Theme 3: The
Academic Master Plan
• ALI has a 52 year reputation for teaching and curriculum excellence. The ALI
provides the campus with well-prepared international students who can handle not
only their course content but also the diverse methods of teaching and learning they
engage in. ALI also prepares these eventual SF State students by exposing them to
important aspects of campus culture: diversity, openness, and social justice.
We feel there is an opportunity for the campus to offer faculty some training in
understanding their international students and their particular challenges. This
does not mean teaching differently, but instead becoming aware that some aspects
of the American university classroom are unfamiliar and thus challenging for some
international students.
• The ALI is strongly connected to the 50 year old MA Program in TESOL (Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages) in the English Department. We feel strongly
that is an extremely important Signature Program. Every year, it prepares hundreds
of serious, thoughtful, and distinguished English teachers for teaching positions in
the local area, including in this university’s Composition for Multilingual Students,
the country, and overseas.
This university’s MATESOL program is internationally recognized, well-respected,
and sought after by future teachers. However, the program and faculty have been
decimated by multiple faculty retirements whose positions have not been filled.
Currently, not all courses are offered every semester, forcing some students to leave
the program prematurely or postpone their graduation. This reduction of course
offerings and simultaneous increase in class size is doing great damage to this
Signature program and its national and international reputation.
***
College of Extended Learning and International Affairs’ (CELIA) Leadership Team’s
Responses to the Strategic Planning Coordinating Committee Themes
Theme 3 – The Academic Master Plan
What academic reputation do we aspire to have and in what ways can we cultivate
it?
ice
equity
– this should be incorporated at all
levels, from tenure and retention to student support
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What is the appropriate emphasis of teaching, research and scholarly activity, and
service within the retention, tenure and promotion process?
--Is a standard
3/3 teaching load appropriate for all faculty or should we consider workload
alternative that are more adaptable?
--What is the ideal proportion of
Tenure/Tenure-Track and lecturer faculty?
a
Are current departmental configurations and degree programs serving us well and
likely to continue to do so in the future?
-supporting degree
programs
What areas might be developed as SF State signature programs and what programs
might we consider transitioning away from?
Paralegal Studies, American Language Institute, media, music/recording industry
and clinical trial design programs
How might we make the most effective and strategic use of new tenure-track
lines?
How many students can SF State effectively serve?
dorms, enhanced student services and updated infrastructure are in place
What is the appropriate balance between undergraduate and graduate
programming?
for undergraduates
Are existing governance structures and practices serving us well and can they be
improved?
nd review
and assess, i.e., track whether the change was successful or not
participant pool for ad hoc committees
***
1Continue to be a leader in accessible info and facilities.
2Look at impact of
classes on T/TH and available space for students. Peak load T/TH mid-day affects
everything -- classes, parking, traffic, etc. Is this the case at other CSU campuses?
How can we get better utilization of campus on MWF, especially F?
3Can we
develop more revenue-generating programs? CEL programs? more international
students?
4There is a need to investigate whether the RTP requirements create a
conflict of interest between pedagogical excellence & development and research; is
the RTP appropriate given the student population we serve and the special needs
they present?
5Explore multi-pathed approach to RTP-whereby various
requirements could offer alternatives.
***
Academic Technology Staff Strategic Planning Notes
(compiled from four separate
listening sessions held in October with all AT staff, facilitated by AVP Brian Beatty
and AT Director Maggie Beers)
Theme 3: Academic Master Plan
•At SF State we are five miles away from really
good jobs in Computer Science and we are not really prepared for the industry. The
reason is that grad and undergrad courses are paired and the only difference is that
the grad gives an extra presentation.
•How do we keep up with a fast changing
field? In many departments the field has transformed because of technology
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(museum studies, computer science, etc.) but the curriculum and resources have not
necessarily done right by their students in keeping up to date. The technology
strategic plan needs to ask how we, as a central technology unit, can support those
types of discipline specific activities in addition to supporting infrastructure.
•Staff
members feel disenfranchised since the university removed their ability to teach
courses a few years ago. When staff were denied the ability to teach, they felt left out
and no longer valued as part of the teaching community. Teaching allows staff,
especially Academic Technology staff, to share a campus perspective and gain an
understanding of the business of the university.
•Staff and administrators should
be allowed, encouraged, or even obliged to teach. This allows us to be on the inside
conversation, “eating our own dog food” in terms of the services we provide.
•It’s
important to be able to hang on to the teachers who are great in the classroom. We
need to look at the balance of the teaching load and research activities. Does the
university want them to focus on research or on their passion for teaching?
•How
can we support incubator spaces and innovative teaching? There is a lot of policy
regarding enrollments, scheduling, etc. It goes back to the student success issue. If
students are successful, but not employable, then that is not success. We need
project based, real life teaching approaches that excite the students and make the
content seem relevant.
•21st century contexts. Digital Literacies.
•The campus
needs to focus more on multi-literacies. Literacies take many forms and modalities
in the 21st century. We need to cut through the buzz of text, image, video,
expression and get to the core message and see the connections.
•We need to allow
options for expression and representation. If one faculty member wants to express
themselves through research, another through teaching, another through
paragraphs or video, they should be allowed to do that. There are options, and
students and faculty need a choice to express themselves.
•The campus needs to
address the “either-or” message on our campus. There is unilateral, blanket thinking
across campus, such as “I don’t allow any computers in my classroom.” “Online
learning doesn’t work for our students.”
•Why are faculty threatened or
discouraging people from using computers? We need to look at why they are drawn
to their computers, why they don’t feel connected to the moment in class.
•One of
the key pieces is the ubiquitous connection. It’s difficult to disconnect, which isn’t
such a bad thing. If I give some time during class to take care of a family text, I’m also
giving back some of my family time to the university when I take care of some work
during off hours. Faculty need to understand that, and not try to control the student
experience so much.
•All of our tools are self-contained, one thing that could help
support this type of learner could include a Twitter Feed or Facebook.
•Would like
staff to be able to teach and do research. When the opportunity for staff to teach in
regular courses was unilaterally rescinded a few years ago, that was a big loss to the
academic program and to the staff morale; felt deeply by many. It helps people stay
connected to the community. You walk across campus and there are your students,
you work with fellow faculty, it provides a common experience to share with faculty
and students.
•Digital WPAF files and ways to help capture their experiences in
iLearn.
•Need to be aware of the challenges of 3/3, 4/4 and 5/5 course teaching
loads.
•The campus could further the connections between feeder schools and
sister schools. How can we facilitate transfer from these schools? We could look to
the Metro Academies work and other outreach programs here on campus.
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***
Statement on Strategic Planning from the Women and Gender Studies Department:
San Francisco State University has a long and impressive history as an academic and
cultural center for our city and as an intellectual and activist catalyst for the nation.
This history includes the leadership demonstrated by students, faculty and staff
during the Third World Strike of 1968 and continues today through our community
partnerships, student organizing, faculty innovations, alumni accomplishments,
transnational connections, and the unique character of our campus body. As an
institution and a community, we are at our strongest and our best when the
administration honors the collective governance of students, staff and faculty. We
urge the President and the strategic planning committee to build on these strengths.
A primary historic strength is our campus’s shared mission of social justice. When
we reference SFSU’s commitment to “social justice” we are not satisfied with simple
rhetorics of diversity, but insist upon a lively intellectual and political engagement
with concepts such as citizenship, community, redistribution, equity, and identity.
As scholars of women and gender studies, we understand social justice as a project
steeped in histories of uneven power relations on local, national and global scales.
We understand the importance of historical perspectives, coalitions, and
collaborative, strategic decision-making in efforts to move institutions forward,
even while under economic or political pressures. In the spirit of our campus
mission of social justice and critical participation, the Women and Gender Studies
Department offers the following observations and suggestions to the strategic
planning effort.
While we understand the logic of dividing such an effort into seven themes, the
intersecting issues among the themes required a single response to the critical
issues facing our campus today.
Maximizing student success cannot be divorced from issues of institutional support
and economic justice: the most pressing concern for our students’ ability to succeed
is not only affordability or streamlining academic programs, but fostering the
economic conditions that enable students to focus on their studies and not on their
subsistence. Student success is not defined by the speed at which students can race
through their studies, but by the quality of the education they experience while at
SFSU. It is impossible for students to graduate in a timely manner when they are
working 20-40 hours per week.
Instead of focusing on increasing philanthropic support we suggest focusing on
increasing public support as an institution of public education. This would mean, to
start, turning our focus to demanding increased state support; lobbying for
increased student grants rather than loans; reducing tuition to levels previous to the
budget crisis; and rethinking the full-time requirement for student scholarships and
tuition waivers.
The Women and Gender Studies Department supports community partnerships that
advocate for economic justice: these include campaigns to increase the minimum
wage and to support immigrant rights. When wages are stagnant (locally, statewide,
and on campus), students, staff, and faculty cannot excel educationally and
professionally. We advocate for the working conditions of and professional respect
for SFSU lecturers. We applaud the university’s commitment to undocumented
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students through its commitment to the DREAM Act and administrative and
curricular support for all our students, documented and undocumented. We urge
the university’s continuing advocacy for all of our students and the ongoing efforts
on campus to make the pathways to both citizenship and residency meaningful by
ensuring they are safe, accessible and affordable.
Similarly, the academic master plan is intimately tied to the achievement of our
institutional goals and our impact on the community. Every day, SF State faculty,
administrators, staff, alumni, and students are doing amazing work. We do not need
to reinvent academic programs, but rather support and promote the outstanding
work already being done at SF State. Community impact should be measured not
only through “economic impact” and “morale” but also through the production of
knowledge generated by the research and creative projects of faculty. The
contributions of our alumni to their community are meaningful and substantial in
not just fiscal terms but also non-monetary terms, including creative art, political
leadership, community involvement, and engaged professional development.
Faculty research is crucial to the health of a university environment. After years of
diminished resources and loss of CSU grants for research and professional
development, faculty morale and student success would be improved not through
superficial changes (such as the promotion of university songs or color days), but by
the reinstallation of assigned time for research, the replacement of lost library
books and cancelled scholarly journal subscriptions, smaller class sizes, and
increased numbers of tenure-track faculty positions. Our students will succeed with
excellent teachers who are professionally supported, not bureaucratically overtaxed, and when they can study and work in a physical environment which supports
their studies, and when they receive consistent advising from faculty who are not
working other jobs to pay their bills and keep their dependents afloat. Faculty
professional activities are not simply the means by which to increase university
“prestige,” but rather provide vital connections to intellectual, creative, cultural, and
political projects that also makes SFSU faculty more inspired and inspiring teachers.
The reshuffling of departments and programs in the recent past has neither saved
money, nor served our students, nor increased the academic reputation of our
institution. Creating conditions in which our outstanding faculty, students, and staff
can do their jobs less encumbered by unnecessary obstructions will strengthen our
university by facilitating the knowledge-production and cultural work of faculty and
the quality education provided to our students. Such supports will undoubtedly
positively impact our students’ success rates and the reputation of SFSU as an
outstanding institution of higher education.
We are proud to be members of the SF State community and to carry its mission of
social justice forward. In this commitment, we look forward to continuing to build
our institution in partnership with President Wong, our students, the SF State
alumni, and our colleagues.
Nan Alamilla Boyd, Professor
Deborah Cohler, Associate Professor and
Chair
Julietta Hua, Associate Professor
AJ Jaimes Guerrero, Professor
Kasturi Ray,
Assistant Professor
Jillian Sandell, Associate Professor
Evren Savci, Assistant
Professor
Lisa Tresca, Office Manager
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1.3 Whiteboard Transcriptions
Theme 3 - What can we do to make sure we have excellent academic
programs? Tell us.
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An advising center that helps you pick a major and classes, even if you aren't a
freshman
Greater emphasis on writing skills
More classes so grad rate isn't 6+ years & not to discourage students
Green job education; invest in Urban Studies and Planning Program; more faculty
and design classes
Stronger grad studies and more grad students
Accessible tutoring--advertise it
More interactive learning, less lecture format
Maintain small class size to enhance faculty and student interaction and
participation
Take advantage of staff skills and expertise
New forms of classes, highlight talent of faculty
Have a diverse faculty, innovative thought provoking, people of color, professor,
community based education
Work together, more international programs
Continued forefront support for College of Ethnic Studies the only one in the world,
please and thanks
To hear from potential employers
Stronger emphasis on advising
Heavy emphasis on internships and career preparation in major programs
Stronger emphasis on advising
Learning to be globalized at SF State
More classes, more hands-on learning
More formalized tutorials for students who need extra help
Support/encourage special majors
Connect classroom learning with practical grad assistantships
No general education requirement
Funding in smaller departments
More advisors
Less impacted majors, more classes, more professors dedicated to teaching, more
major outreach events
More thinking about digital humanities
More hands on learning
Classes to better connect class content to real experiences and life
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Community engaged scholarship
Hire more faculty
More professors
Develop comprehensive classroom and lab renovation update plan, all classrooms
More emphasis community engaged scholarship
Remote library database access for alumni
A larger student voice in admin decision making
More training ops for instructors teach
Tutoring services by colleges/departments
Cut down on ridiculous rules to make less impacted class [acting 301 protest] -can't get in/gotta change your major
Consider feedback for faculty seriously
More academic counselors
Hire more T/TT faculty
Fix 19th & Holloway so we don't have to cross the street
Put all incoming freshman and transfer students in small (25) learning community
and take a themed class together
More spirit, better transportation (free MUNI pass) better WiFi, better sense of
community
All staff to teach again
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2. Submissions from campus units and committees
2.1 Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
New Faculty Hiring:
 Promote hiring around high priority thematic clusters that encourage
collaboration across departments and colleges to facilitate scholarly
achievement and student opportunities.
 Expand the use of Visiting Scholars within priority areas identified by the
Colleges.
 Extend the concept of game changers to include soft-funded researchers to
galvanize interdisciplinary or cluster areas of research. (These can be
temporary or part-year appointments.)
 Re-evaluate and expand the use of joint appointments across departments.
 Accelerate hiring of new faculty to reduce faculty: student ratios.
2.2 Academic Senate Plenary session
Teaching:
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Agree that “experience teaches” is a key advantage for us and
should continue to be a focus.
Like to see more development opportunities and support for growth in
pedagogy (similar to what is provided for professional
achievement/research).
We need the questions in advance to think about this more.
We should ask the students, not us.
What’s the difference between CSU & UC teaching
Curricula & Teaching aligned with global, just & tech sophistication:
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Service learning is an important component.
Need more conversation and experience with colleagues to help develop our
“bag of tricks” that make us better teachers.
We are overworked with teaching content and writing – we need more
resources.
Curriculum should reflect more globalization.
Need increase in interdiscipinarity.
Create a rigorous faculty mentor program focused on teaching.
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Research informs my teaching – the more I have a chance to be at the cutting
edge of research and can share with my students the better.
We need to be more relevant to our students (connect students to employers,
networking etc.)
Tech can help extend and help the teaching experience
Too much emphasis on technology can be too challenging a task for faculty to
keep up on – sticking with critical thinking gives students the tools to
navigate changing technology.
Teaching and research are connected – key to creating excitement and
curiousity.
Recognition for teaching
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Recognition for innovative teaching needs a mechanism to assess the outside
of classroom part of teaching.
We’ve lost the importance of teaching here – lost the CTFD. It was a great
feature in support of teaching. AT is very helpful and stimulates good
teaching, but it is not the same as the work of CTFD.
Are we asking about status quo or what we’d like to see in the future?
Class-size increases make it clear that we have lost value of importance of
teaching.
We shouldn’t commodify teaching as many business models of higher ed
would have us do.
Teaching is our central mission.
What’s the definition of quality teaching? Defined by TEEFs, student
engagement, meeting learning outcomes etc?
RTP – probationary faculty need two years before being reviewed on
teaching in 3rd year (would allow people to get up to speed).
Refer to HERI faculty survey.
Support for teaching:
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Need CTFD return
Very difficult to team-teach here – streamlining that process would help.
Rigor can be inversely related to TEEF scores.
Faculty club.
Lots of support for research, nothing provided to help faculty improve
teaching.
Need more TA’s to help, especially in large classes.
Faculty don’t know what resources and support are available.
Should be basic level of familiarity with iLearn etc. required.
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Contingent faculty:
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No resources for lecturer professional growth.
Some staff would like to supplement income and teach – used to be able to do
that but not anymore.
Compensation
Wide gap in quality – long-term better than temporary.
2.3 University Chairs’ Council
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Was stunned when she saw the questions because she’s had experience with
academic master plans. (Needs of communities/business, needs of students,
etc).
People are confused about where we are in the process
On q#2: the question is strange, because it assumes there is a global, just, and
technologically sophisticated workplace. Would prefer to see it in terms of
“how would we help students to create….”
On q#1: asks about the quality of effective teaching, because our definition is
changing as we speak. Our role as teachers is changing. One piece we should
focus on: our role in helping students to discover and deliver content rather
then our role as deliverers of content ourselves. That has repercussions for
the kind of post-PhD training we as teachers need. Once we get into talking
about “online education”, what people seem to miss is that the choice to go
online is a choice about whom we teach as well as what we teach. Hopes we
get some clarity on this as well.
Some of us are walking around with this fear we’re all dinosaurs: is there a
mismatch between the skills we have and the skills we need going forward.
As looking in the question, thinking about the language of the university.
Many of these questions seem to be asking for emotional responses and how
we feel about being at SF State. Some of these questions are really for the
“administration to tell us”, and the frame of these questions is realizing the
frame we’re really in and trying to get what we can.
Many questions are somewhat easy and answerable, but the first two are
very difficult. #2 is a two-part question, and the second part seems to add a
lot of weight to the first part. One important concept that is missing from the
three-part list is “informed”.
Some of this is going to be very discipline specific. For example in Physics,
the APA has put out specific guidelines regarding undergraduate research,
etc. It’s important that things specific to one discipline, but not others, don’t
get buried.
Online: very concerned about online education because the Admin seems to
suggest that online = cheap, but if you do it properly, it really isn’t. That
message needs to be communicated clearly.
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Getting underrepresented groups to engage is connected to this issue as well.
Spending time convincing people they CAN do the work and mentoring them
is NOT cheap.
The question of discipline-specific issues is really important. Don’t think the
university has ever successfully negotiated the place of its arts disciplines
within the broader structure. We see this within the RTP process, for
example. The university isn’t set up to understand our processes and peerreview structures. Yet we have large public programs, serve as an entryway
to the university, yet this gets missed. Can’t think of an American city more
invested in its arts than SF, and this is also important.
LH - Important that we be shown the variety, what we’re hoping for in
responses.
Learning outside the classroom and outside the campus is so important:
engaging with the community is a major part of what we should be doing,
and community service learning should in fact be expanded. Field trip
policies should not get in the way.
I think q#11 should discuss balancing teaching, research, and service. (For
now mentions only two)
I think we should just straight out ask the question about online teaching.
We need to think about the ways in which we talk about community
engagement. CE is not the same as public-private partnerships, the drive of
professionalization, the devaluation of the liberal arts, etc. When we have
these conversations, we often don’t clearly define, and then it moves to other
levels where they do not understand necessarily the value of the practices in
community engagement that we have identified. Therefore, let us be
cautious, and be sure we are also talking about service in the service of
building strong and independent thinkers! [In doing strategic planning: Who
is doing this labor, and for whom]
In terms of integration of teaching, scholarship, and service…. There should
actually be a question about that that brings together all three (supporting
point above).
Echoing a couple of important themes: Not qualified to answer all of the
questions as written, some overarching issues won’t necessarily be
addressed by these questions – “what is the role of XXXX in this”.
Online: Would really agree that we want to find a consensus about where we
are. Right now doesn’t understand why or how it is economical to work with
our own students with online education.
As pertains to q #2, is it valuable to have this conversation with the new GE
structure, or might that bring in new ideas we didn’t even know is there.
In terms of reputation, we’re known on the West Coast, but not elsewhere.
How do we change that?
How does community engagement benefit students
Q#10: A hole in our university is the absence of NSF/NIH senior faculty who
can act as mentors for junior faculty and can write them into grants. Hiring
such senior faculty might be useful.
Q#11: Must be faster. Slows down research right now.
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Q#16: Our WPAF process is way too long and cumbersome right now.
We have a generation of students who were teenagers in ‘08, and rates of
unemployment are still high. Our students are so scared of not getting a job,
and so they ask us for “training”, rather than education per se. If we want to
be good educators, and give them something they can take with them, we
have to find ways to connect them and mentor them…. But we need more
time, space, and resource to do this.
In most of my time at this university, department chairs working together
has been a strength. Recently, I’ve heard that some people see chairs only as
being oppositional. I’d rather we be used, working together, than seen as
oppositional. Most chairs are good technicians and can do this.
The other thing about AMP, is that somebody has to make decisions
regarding big issues. I’ve heard that we’re already trying to reduce the
number of students, before a strategic planning issue. The other thing is
about where we get our students. Two CUSPs ago, we made a decision to try
to recruit outside as well as inside our service area.
Lecturers do not have access to university technology programs, IT support,
etc., yet they teach over 40% of our courses. They need this.
2.4 Dean of Faculty Affairs
My comments are based on the following:
“Happy faculty” means “happy students” (and vice versa)
“Engaged faculty” leads to “engaged students” (and vice versa)
Quality teaching is a basis for meaningful learning
Faculty help students achieve
Faculty are a key variable in the equation of student success
I. Reinvigorate/reconceptualize faculty professional development
Current situation:
Faculty development is offered piece meal, without apparent guiding principles
 Professional development in the area of teaching is not coorindated, not
connected to student success, not incentivized
 Professoinal development in the area of scholarship has been developing and
expanding, but is not sufficient to address the need across disciplines
 Professional development in the area of career development, (e.g., leadership
development, mentoring) is virtually non existent, except through informal
avenues
Some ideas:
Faculty professional development seems to fall in three main areas:
 Career (tenure and promotion; leadership; service to university; mentoring)
 Teaching (faculty as teachers/instructors inside and outside the classroom)
 Scholarship and creative works (faculty as scholars and creative artists)
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Each of these could be articulated more clearly, should have leadership at Dean or
AVP level, be expanded in terms of service provided, but also in terms of how to
creatively support the larger efforts. E.g., we could institute an awards program,
overseen by a body/group (adminstrators and faculty??) that would put out RFPs
for multiyear projects that focus on specific types of supports. Faculty would
propose ideas and mechanisms to help develop these efforts. The principle would
be to encourage whenever possible (with financial support/appropriate assigned
time) a faculty-to-faculty approach to faculty development in all three areas.
Career - Faculty Affairs
Conceptually we need more support for and emphasis on the development piece –
Leadership development, mentoring, etc.
 Currently career development covers guidance, education, consultation for
tenure and promotion related processes; Orientations – new faculty, new
department chairs (quite limited)
 Need for online lecturer orientation, and more robust new chairs orientation
 Expand to develop more training of hiring committees, RTP committees
 Expand to include leadership development, department chair development
(current and future), development for current and future committee chairs,
mentoring programs, etc
Teaching -- Currently AT, CTFD
 Need for consolidating and expanding our support for faculty as intructors.
 Continue AT services and support, but consolidate CTFD and AT functions to
provide a more coordinated service including both pedagogy and technology
aspects of support for instructors
 Especially for pedagogy, rather than a center-based approach with experts,
facilitate a faculty-to-faculty aproach, led by faculty, maybe through an award
program for which faculty teams can submit ideas and proposal for multiyear projects (with release time) that bring peer faculty development for
teaching to their departments, or units, Colleges etc. Award program would
be guided by an overall vision and articualteion of goals and desired
outcomes.
Scholarship and Creative Works -- ORSP
 ORSP has done an increasingly effective job of expanding and invigorating
support for scholarship (see all services provided by ORSP). There is still lots
of room to develop supports for faculty who are in fields that are not
traditionally funded by federal or other major soures of funding – creative
arts, humanities, etc.
II. Articulate a teacher-scholar model
 that fits SF State and its mission;
 that drives how we approach and support faculty development;
 that supports both faculty and student success
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Current situation:
The current model for a career at SF State is largely defined by the Tenure and
Promotion criteria and process, with criteria in three areas that need to be met:
teaching, PAG and service. On paper the three areas are described as three dinstinct
categories, with not much synergy among them. In practice many faculty are
developing or would like to develop their careers with much more fluidity and
synergy among these three components of their career/ job, but they find
themselves constrained by the way RTP criteria are defined.
The Teacher-Scholar model has been referred to lately in a variety of setting
(Chancelor White, President Wong). The Professional Devlopment Council (PDC)
has been discussing some of the literature on teacher-scholar model and has been
developing ideas for a particular version of a model that fits SF State.
A well articulted teacher-scholar model would allow us:
1. To expand and improve our definition of teaching effectiveness
 To develop ways of defining and measuring teaching effectiveness that is
more connected to student outcome/learning
 To develop, articulate, and integrate the practice of scholary teaching
 To better articulate the scholarship of teaching and learning
2. To expand our language and understanding of scholarship and creative activity so
that:
 Across campus, faculty can recognize how they fit in and how they contribute
to the university wide teacher-scholar endeavor, e.g., to facilitate a better
understanding of community engaged scholarship, of the scholarship of the
creative arts, of creative works as professional development
 We can develop and coordinate faculty development approaches that reach
disciplines across campus more effectively
3. To start including service (contribution to campus and community) as an area of
professional acitivity that deserves recognition, acknowledgement and professional
development
III. Some ideas about expanding our approach to teaching and learning,
teaching effectiveness and student success
Faculty Professional Development (for teaching, scholarship, creative activity) could
be more closely connected to student success. Plans/programs/opportunities for
faculty development could demonstrate that they are connected to student success
defined broadly (inside and/or outside of the classroom).

For example, the new GE program has lots of student learning outcomes.
Faculty will be key in helping students achieve these student learning
outcomes. In a number of committees (UAAAC; undergraduate and graduate
studies; Metro Academies) we are starting to talk about how to measure
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

these student learning outomes; how will we engage faculty to be
accountable for helping studetns meet/reach the student learning outcomes.
We could rethink how we define, and measure teaching effectiveness to be
more connected to student outcome in our teaching effectiveness tools
(SETE), in the way we measure teaching effectiveness for RTP purposes.
Scholarship or creative activity could be recognized for its facilitation of
student learning outside the classroom
IV. Service could be linked to personal and professional (leadership)
development for faculty (not just busy work)
V. Observations/ideas related to implementation of change
Communication across campus
Our current means for communicating across campus are not effective. The lack of
an effective comminciation system is the main obstacle I keep on running into with
everything I do in Faculty Affairs. For a new strategic plan or new direction to be
implemented successfully, a much more effective communication system is going to
be key. Ideas to consider: a version of a university calendar that works, is engaging,
compelling and user friendly, easy to post, easy to access; a multi dimensional
approach to communication that is easy to use and easy to access; buy-in from
faculty; etc.
Small groups as change agents -- Small groups make things happen.
The complexity of our campus makes that any one person or any one unit can not be
very effective in implementing any new idea or change. Over the past 2 ½ years in
my experience as Dean of FA, the most effective efforts of implementing a new
project or change have come about when a small group of invested individuals work
together. Often these have been small groups where Dean or AVP level individuls
from different units have been involved and have collaorated. In these small groups
one person does take the lead, but the others are equally invested in the success of
the project. They are not a committee, or a preexisting group, but bring together
different parts of the campus that are relevant for that particular effort or project.
People working together in new ways enlivens the process and promotes a sense of
community and collegiality.
Some examples of implentations of new projects that I have been involved in these
past few years:
Online teaching evalations implementation –
AVP Academic Affairs Operations
Chair Academic Senate
Director Academic Technology
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Dean of Faculty Affairs
Faculty Retreats (2013; 2014)
AVP Research and Sponsored Programs
Director Academic Techonolgy
University Librarian
Associate Dean Creative Arts
Dean Faculty Affairs
Professional Development Conversation Groups (2011-2012)
Dean Faculty Affairs with team of invited faculty
Chair Professional Development Council and PDC members
Chair CTFD Advisory Board and CTFD Advisory Board memebrs
Sacha Bunge invited a team of nine faculty with some assigned time for two faculty
members to give the effort momentum and facilitated close collaboration between
the Faculty Team, the Professional Development Council (the chair of the PDC was
part of the faculty team working on this project), and the CTFD Advisory Board; to
implenet faculty focus groups about Scholarship at the university; the Faculty Team,
PDC, and CTFD Advisory Board all effectively served as promoters and facilitators of
the conversation groups.
Mentoring Program for Associate Professors
Dean Faculty Affairs
Director Academic Technology
President CFA
CTFD Faculty Consultant
Academic Senate Facutly Representative
Inititally initiated by Dean of FA and conceptualized by this small group, we now
have a small and informal mentoring program for newly tenured associate
professors, currently facilitated by the Dean of Faculty Affairs on a yearly basis.
Multi-year projects/programs
We tend to think in one-semester or two-semester time periods, rather than in a
multi-year plans or approaches. Our campus is too complex for one-time/one
semester/one year projects/interventions/efforts to have a meaningful impact.
Multi-year efforts/interventions are going to be much more effecitive in the long
run.
For example, implementing anything that has to do with leadership development,
mentoring, training in teaching effectiveness, etc. could look something like this:
1st year – training; developing buy in of a small group; engaging faculty;
2nd year – implementing practice with a small group of invested, committed faculty;
continues training
3rd year – continued practice, but also expansion to include and affect a larger group;
planning for next step of engaging/reaching a larger group in a meaningful way;
planning for institutionalization
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Take advantage of a cohort approach
We don’t do this very much. Developing a project or experience with a cohort (e.g.,
new faculty; newly tenured associate professors, etc.) builds community, fosters
collegiality and offers opportunities for collaboration.
Change how we measure teaching effectiveness in courses/in the curriculum
Connect student learning outcomes to faculty development.
Include new ways of measuring teaching effectiveness into RTP Process/criteria.
Expand how we measure and acknowledge teaching outside of the classroom
We pride ourselves on doing this well, and there is lots of anecdotal evidence that
our faculty have an important impact on students outside of the classroom.
However, we have not articulated this part of the faculty teaching role very well and
we certainly do not have a way of “measuring” or acknowledging this part of
faculty’s contribution to student learning. And it is so crucial for student success!!!
Incentivize (in new ways??) the elements of faculty engagement/performance
that we want to foster; incentivize those aspect of faculty contributions and
efforts that support the university’s vision.
Well-placed incentives will make all the difference.
2.5 Lecturer focus group
Nationwide, lecturers are a grotesque adaptation to a maladaptive situation.
Because of our commitment to social justice and equity, the university is taking a
leadership position on this issue.
- doing social justice rather than just talking about it – ‘achieving on the back
of an exploited workforce’
- serving our students better by leveraging the teaching ability and knowledge
base of lecturers
Communication issues – most T/T faculty don’t know how lecturers
work/experience and vice-versa. [ It’s the same with staff!]
*We should be exploring new ways to help create lecturers as having career paths.
*It’s partly a matter of reversing the attitude towards lecturers – as if we are a
necessary evil rather than a key component of the university. Changing the culture
towards lecturers so that they’re not a disposable commodity.
- The university should be committed in principle to converting lecture
appointments to tenure-track appointments.
- The university need to commit to not dead-ending lecturers.
- Commitment to dignity.
*We should endorse the ‘best practices’ document for lecturers
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It’s important just to treat lecturers as faculty, with faculty intellectual rights, as
much as possible
*The entitlement system needs to be reformed – often department chairs are told to
reduce the number of courses taught the semester before a lecturer’s entitlements
are calculated (by DFA?)
Permanent offices for long-term lecturers
Lecturers should be compensated for service.
Lecturers should be able to access pools of development money to do research.
Student reviews (how should they be counted) – we should investigate more widely
The university needs to enforce the review policy so that lecturers actually get
reviewed – rehiring should not be based on student reviews alone.
Ombudsperson? Informal conflict resolution process?
Dean of lecturers or something like that?
*Support for teaching – faculty should get it as well.
- orientation for lecturers
Technology teaching report
Assignment of classes
- augments/suppressed classes should be eliminated. There should be more
intentionality in planning.
- Augments affect students, faculty, department chairs etc…. highly negative.
Plus they make it more difficult to evaluate and to plan. Also bookstore. If an
instructor doesn’t know if they have a class they can’t order the books. This
affects the whole class. Plus, the end result is the channeling at-risk students
into particular classes. This is bad for students PLUS it makes it much more
difficult for faculty. Ghettoization.
Transparency of hiring. Chairs should meet with lecturers every semester.
-
Basically, T/T faculty get a 3/3 on the backs of lecturers, who teach doublesized surveys (in many cases)….
Fund-raising: it should be a priority in the university plan to get funding/donations
to advance support for lecturers to help them better.
- direct this money to conversion of lecturers to T/T faculty.
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2.6 University Professional Development Council
As the committee that is charged with advising various units of the university about
the professional development needs of the faculty, the PDC urges the Strategic Plan
Coordinating Committee (SPCC) of San Francisco State University to build upon the
institution’s rich history of supporting faculty needs in developing their scholarly
abilities. The PDC recommends that the Strategic Planning Committee accord high
priority to integrating scholarship as part of the Strategic Plan because of its broad
and profound impact on student education. Scholarship, as we define it, includes a
range of research-based and creative activities that inform, and sometimes
incorporate faculty teaching and service. That definition is rooted in the belief that
strong, impactful research can inform good teaching and vice versa.
With this premise, in the last year this committee has been working on articulating a
teacher-scholar (Boyer, 1999)1 that captures the intellectual and creative diversity
of SF State and perhaps define an identity to the type of research that happens at SF
State. The strength of the model is that it provides opportunities for expanding how
we think about teaching and learning; scholarship; and service. In the past year, the
PDC focused its discussions on the scholarship aspects of the model; we have
recently starting discussions about the teaching and learning components of the
model. In this memo we do two things: highlight findings and insights from the
committee’s recent work and make a few recommendations to the SPCC.
Findings from the PDC work in 2010-2011
In the academic year 2010-2011, the committee conducted several town hall style
meetings to identify university practices that supported scholarship and university
practices that discourage scholarship. We attach the executive summary page of
this report as Appendix I of this Memo. We urge the SPCC to read this summary.
Creating synergies among research, teaching and service
SF State is well known for embracing diversity at many levels. The faculty at SF
State (as opposed to the University of California and Community colleges) are also
uniquely intellectually diverse in that their scholarship spans the entire spectrum
from discovery (at one end of the scholarship spectrum) to application (at the other
end of the spectrum), with the explicit recognition that the areas of teaching and
learning and creative works often distinctly articulate the spectrum’s
endpoints. Given the wide diversity in scholarship that occurs at the University, the
measurable outcomes of scholarship have historically had varied definitions. While
this flexibility is important because faculty in different fields exercise different
forms of scholarship/research, a uniform set of standards is necessary for reasons
that include the granting of tenure and promotion. In fact, one of the
recommendations of the report mentioned above was to develop “a more consistent
yet flexible criterion of what constitutes strong scholarship at SF State.”
1
Boyer, Ernest L. 1990. Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, N.J.: The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
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In order to help define this more flexible and yet clear criteria, the PDC in the last
year and half has explored what is called the Teacher Scholar Model (c.f. Boyer
1999), how it applies to SF State, and what its implications are to teaching, research,
and service at SF State are. The idea is to be inclusive about every type of
scholarship (teaching-based or research-based or service-based) but at the same
time be clear that peer-review outcomes (e.g., publications, grants, peer-reviewed
art shows) to be the ultimate indicator of scholarship. Appendix II at the back of this
memo shows scholarship of teaching, research, service can all lead to peer reviewed
outcomes. Traditionally, the activities of teaching, research, and service are
considered to be mutually exclusive activities that compete for a faculty’s
time. However, as the teacher scholar-model articulates and as many of SF State
faculty demonstrate, creating synergies between these activities is indeed possible.
In Appendix III, we provide examples of faculty at all levels (Professors, Associate
Professors and Assistant Professors) who have been able to create synergies among
these activities to produce more scholarly output. In this way, we want to be clear
that faculty have the academic freedom to engage in discovery of knowledge,
integration of knowledge, application of knowledge, or transmission of knowledge
but also highlight more efficient ways of producing scholarly work. However, no
matter how their work contributes to knowledge, for the purposes of tenure and
promotion, the indicators of scholarly productivity should be peer-reviewed
outcomes (the specific nature and volume of which should still be determined at the
departmental level). The PDC will be taking many initiatives to engage the faculty in
discussion surrounding the teacher-scholar model and what constitutes scholarship
in the next year and beyond and in particular emphasizing peer-reviewed
outcomes. We urge the SPCC to support an initiative to more clearly define what
constitutes scholarship while at the same time integrate into its agenda the need to
support faculty scholarship and intellectual diversity.
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Appendix II: Teacher Scholar model
Teacher-Scholar Model (Boyer’s Model applied to SF State)
Teaching and Learning
Professional Achievement and Growth/Scholarship
Service to Campus and
Community
Facilitate Student Learning
(Inside and outside the classroom)
· Expose students to cutting edge
· Inspire students to learn
Moving the field forward (broad impact/significant contributions to field)
·
Content of study
·
Communications to the discipline
·
Peer review
Contributions to professional,
university, and local
communities
Type of scholarship
Teaching Effectiveness
Evaluations of
· Curriculum/Courses
· Delivery
Question addressed
Communication
venue
Type of review
What is true?
Journal
publications
Books
Grants
Peer review
Department citizenship
Integration
What do the findings
mean?
Review papers
Grants
Peer review
University service
Application
How to use knowledge?
Position papers
Data sets
White papers
Grants
Use by others
Peer review
Professional service
At State, National or
International
Teaching and Learning
How to increase
knowledge of others?
Student papers
Journal
publications
Text books
Grants
Peer review
Use by others
Community service
At Local, State, National
Creative Works
How to
illuminate/contribute
to the human
experience/existence
Performances;
productions;
shows; exhibits;
screenings; etc.
Adjudications;
critiques; reviews;
awards; distributions;
commissions
Teaching Effectiveness Discovery
Evaluations by
·
Students
·
Peers
Scholarly Teaching
Evidenced based
· Teaching
· Curriculum/course development
Focus
Added value for students, impact on student
learning, success in student outcome, course
level development
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2.7 Committee on Written English Proficiency
Re: Where WAC Could Be in Five Years; What We Know about Faculty Development
From Where We’ve Been
i. WASC Visiting Team: WAC is an Exemplar for Teaching & Learning
In their report, the WASC Visiting Team (March 2013) concludes that WAC is a
“notable success” as evidenced by the National Survey of Student Engagement
(NSSE) results and internal assessments (detailed in Soliday’s reports to WASC,
March 2011 and June 2012). WASC cites GWAR courses as exemplars for “engaged
learning” (42), “outcomes assessment” (34), and “for identifying a teaching /
learning priority” (60). They commend WAC (#10, p. 60) and further note: “the
work on improving student writing could serve as a model for other efforts to adopt
or expand high impact practices and to expand faculty use of pedagogical strategies
that have been shown to improve student success, especially for at-risk and
underrepresented minority students” (added emphasis 32-33).
This memo builds on WASC’s observation that WAC serves as a model for a campus
that “continues to face challenges” in creating a rich culture of assessment-based
teaching and learning (55). The “pathways” we suggest for achieving this goal are
based on our experience, but they also build on the specific recommendations made
by the Writing Task Force Report (see timeline, below).
ii. Where We’ve Been
• Rapid Growth of WAC and Writing Policy at SF State
2004-05:
Writing Task Force Recommended WAC and specific reforms for lower
division program and graduate programs SF State Strategic Plan:
Writing is Goal II
2008:
Formerly, students had to pass the Junior English Proficiency Test, or
JEPET, to fulfill the CSU-mandated, upper division Graduation Writing
Assessment Requirement, or GWAR. The Academic Senate approved an
extensive new writing policy, which included mandating that all
students take and pass a course designated GWAR with a C or higher.
Passing a GWAR course replaces passing the JEPET at SF State. Ninety
faculty from all the colleges attended a University Colloquium where
they created criteria for GWAR courses that CWEP distilled into
the 7 criteria we use to approve a course for GWAR. Graduate Policy
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revised for Level 1 Writing Proficiency.
2009:
14 courses approved by CWEP for GWAR. Senate approves revising
GWAR criteria in response to specific departmental needs.
Professional development opportunities begin with “boot
camp” workshops for designing syllabi for GWAR classes 3 times a
year and shorter workshops through CTFD. Students surveyed.
2010:
Tutoring Centers develop flexible menus for GWAR students and,
including GE and developmental courses, offer 4,000 sessions
annually. University subject librarians tailor workshops for GWAR
classes that (41 sections of 15 classes in S 12 alone). CWEP
recommends Graduate Writing Proficiency in English Checklist for
Level 1 and 2. CWEP surveys Chairs. Interviews with students in 25
disciplines begin.
2011-12:
70 courses approved. Senate commends & affirms WAC in
light of budget cuts. Lower division writing courses revise their
outcomes and curriculum to better prepare students for their GWAR
courses. Roundtables convened where faculty describe their best
practices. Half-day colloquia are held based on specific topics, some
drawn from assessment. 5 studies of student writing conducted.
2012-13:
94 courses approved and available for every major. JEPET
discontinued. Senate approves policy that all newly admitted
undergraduate students will be placed into lower division writing
using Self-Directed Placement (DSP). Tutoring Centers give thousands
of sessions to GWAR students. Focus group interviews held with
GWAR students and faculty; CWEP surveys department Chairs;
5 studies of student writing conducted. Faculty interviewed. Over past
3 years, 14,700 sessions offered by Tutoring Centers.
2013-14:
WASC commends WAC at SF State. Composition for Multilingual
Students program offers concurrent support course for GWAR
students. SF State co-presents the Northern CA WAC Conference with
UC Davis & CSUS.
III. WAC’s History of Success Is Based on Core Principles
WAC’s history of success has depended so far on building partnerships and
community based on these core principles:
• build on existing structures;
• build on assessment;
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• use WAC pedagogy to engage faculty: learn by doing and by engagement;
encourage reflection; draw from expertise rather than “giving” knowledge; promote
WAC as an intellectual, reflective endeavor, not a “tips” or rule-driven approach to
pedagogy;
• recognize that there is no “one” model but a flexible menu of options for
faculty and for students in the Tutoring Centers; and
• recognize that, while we draw from a core set of principles, personal,
disciplinary, and departmental situations shape the culture of teaching and learning--just as core rhetorical principles shape all acts of writing (e.g., audience cuts across
situations), all writing is also particular to its situation or occasion.
IV. Sustaining WAC: Suggested Pathways
To sustain WAC and to promote a rich assessment-based culture of teaching and
learning on this campus, we envision a series of flexible virtual and physical Writing
/ Teaching & Learning Commons that can promote community, partnership, and
identity through the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning. The concrete pathways we
envision here are informed both by the principles described above and by our
experience in faculty development, which began, for GWAR courses, in winter 2008
when the faculty developed GWAR course criteria.
(1) University Learning Center (ULC): Drawing from the Writing Task Force
Report’s recommendation for expanded tutorial support, we envision the expansion
of the DUS Tutoring Centers into a University Learning Center. This centralized and
inviting space (with a stable budget) can sustain community with undergraduates,
graduate students, and faculty. It can continue to provide individual and group
tutoring for thousands of students----from developmental English and math to
business courses to GWAR----while also expanding some of the activities that the
Centers additionally provide: consultation with faculty; a small Writing Fellows
program; in-class workshops; and units of credit for multilingual students from
first-year composition through GWAR classes. For graduate students, whom the
Tutoring Centers do not currently serve, a University Learning Center could expand
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the Fellows program already offered by CARP, building on the model partnership
that exists between LAC tutors trained in English and a graduate course in Biology.
A University Learning Center would allow private tutoring (tutors now conduct
sessions simultaneously in open spaces) and establish Writers’ Workshops or
Writing Groups targeted towards undergraduates who are writing job
applications; graduate students who are writing longer papers or theses; and faculty
who want to hold writing groups.
Most robust WAC programs at other institutions (e.g., George Mason University, the
University of Illinois) are centered in thriving tutoring centers that support literacy
activities for everyone on campus----they are places to build community and to
foster a shared identity based on a commitment to teaching and learning.
(2) Virtual Writing Commons: The lower division writing program envisions
developing a Writing Commons where students can build e-portfolios throughout
their careers and share their work across classes. Similarly, a Virtual Writing
Commons could expand the current WAC/WID website which is maintained by one
person who posts innovative work and broadcasts updates involving WAC. A
Commons, however, would allow faculty to share their work with one another, and
it might also, following the lower division writing program, include spaces where
faculty could engage their students in commenting on the work of students in other
GWAR classes.
(3) Physical Commons: CWEP sponsors a range of faculty development
opportunities---we’ve tried university colloquia on specific topics and “boot camp”
day-long syllabus design workshops; brown bag lunches; roundtables; workshops
tailored to specific departments or colleges; and, this year, a regional conference.
One of the most successful attempts was Academic Affairs’ sponsorship (spring
2009) of 6 faculty (including a lecturer) who received re-assigned time to design
courses and then publicize GWAR in some way in their departments and colleges.
We envision an annual Summer Institute that would invite pairs of lecturerstenure-line faculty to work together from departments and/or colleges over a few
days and then themselves find ways to share their work in their particular
departments, disciplines, and colleges. Pairs would allow lecturers to work with
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tenure-line faculty to publicize their creative but often overlooked efforts at
innovative course design. The work of pairs could include building materials in a
virtual commons; presentations at department meetings; and convening college
roundtables and focus group interviews, two forums CWEP has used that have
proved remarkably successful.
(4) Advisory Group: CWEP currently oversees WAC but, following a
recommendation from the Writing Task Force, we suggest that an Advisory Group
from Academic Affairs and the Colleges convene once a semester or annually with
CWEP to discuss how to integrate WAC with other efforts on campus that also
involve teaching and learning. For example, ORSP and AT hold workshops that
overlap with WAC workshops. An Advisory Group that includes college deans, or
relevant AVPs and AT would enable us to integrate these separate strands. A
dialogue with the Dean of Graduate Studies would also---again, as suggested in the
Writing Task Force Report----bring graduate programs into dialogue with WAC and
the Tutoring Centers, both housed in DUS.
(5) Professional Development Hours or Days Within the Semester: In the past 2
years, AT, ORSP, and WAC have crammed professional development opportunities
into 1 or 2 days before a semester begins (AT also holds a summer institute). These
opportunities often clash with department meetings or events. Some institutions
(e.g., the University of Pittsburgh or many of the CUNY campuses) address this
difficulty by establishing hours during the week where no classes are held and
faculty can meet; others designate a day during the semester when no classes are
held. Some time needs to be built into the university calendar that would enable
both lecturers and tenure-line faculty to engage in professional development
opportunities.
(6) Extending WAC to Graduate Programs: Since 2010, when CWEP recommended
the Graduate Writing Proficiency in English Checklist for Levels 1 and 2, departments
have attempted to meet the needs of conditionally admitted graduate students
(those who have not demonstrated Level 1 writing proficiency on admission) in a
variety of ways. These have included requiring graduate students to enroll through
CEL in 514/614 courses, requiring them to enroll in undergraduate GWAR courses,
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or providing assistance idiosyncratic to the respective department in which the
student is enrolled. A systematic effort to support graduate-level writing-intensive
courses parallel to the WAC undergraduate initiative would strengthen the writing
of both conditionally admitted and regularly admitted graduate students.
V. What We Know About Faculty Development
Our experiences with faculty development tell us that professors engage in
opportunities
• When faculty share knowledge rather than receive it;
• When faculty perceive they can modify principles to suit their local
situations;
• When talk about teaching is intellectualized, new, creative, or challenging;
• When the menu contains many options: university colloquia attract some
faculty, while others prefer department roundtables or virtual meeting spaces;
• Leadership, especially from Chairs, affects how professors perceive faculty
development efforts; and
• When opportunity is not just “added on” to the semester’s work but is
paired with specific resources such as tutors, subject librarians, stipends, released
time, and, increasingly, RTP---an alignment that the WASC Visiting Team promotes.
Professors need both TIME and RECOGNITION for their efforts.
As important, we’ve learned that faculty hesitate to “go public” with their teaching
(e.g., give a workshop, write an article) because they lack experience----and often,
confidence, because sharing teaching takes individuals beyond their disciplinary
training. Only sustained support can address these issues.
VI. The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) Can Be Created & Sustained by
These Pathways: The past several years of WAC professional development have
revealed that some of the most powerful professional learning stems from faculty
“going public” with their teaching. A robust, flexible menu of professional
development should be guided by a larger vision of how, for those who are
interested, professors can turn their innovative teaching into public knowledge—
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into the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). SoTL work encompasses a
wide range of public practice—from “tips and trips” type presentations to rigorous
quasi-experimental investigation of the impact of different interventions on student
learning. A rich number and variety of journals are now available for publishing
disciplinary SoTL, and SoTL presentations are accepted at disciplinary conventions
as well as SoTL-oriented conferences. The pathways we’ve suggested above---a
University Learning Center, which could host Writing Groups where faculty could
share and develop everything from ideas to manuscripts; a Writing / Teaching &
Learning Commons that is both physical (e.g., a Summer Institute) and virtual, and
so on----would all support a culture of SoTL.
Building a culture of inquiry on the SFSU campus can involve both disciplinary
inquiry and disciplined inquiry into teaching practice and student learning, and
creating more campus support for SoTL can serve the dual purpose of improving the
research profile of the university and developing faculty scholarship and teaching.
This dual purpose is strongly supported by the WASC Visiting Team’s Report.
2.8 Undergraduate Writing Program
To: Strategic Planning Committee
From: Undergraduate Writing Program
December 2013
The past two decades have seen remarkable changes in reading and writing
practices. Today’s college students inhabit a discursive reality that is highly
visual, participatory, collaborative, and distributed. Moreover, “success” means
much more than technical know-how or writing “skills.” Students need critical
and rhetorical awareness as they face literacy tasks across a range of digital
environments.
Coinciding with the changes in writing practices ushered in by digital technology
has been a sea change in how the field of Writing Studies conceptualizes the
writing classroom. The field has moved from a skills-based orientation to an
understanding of first year writing courses as foundational for promoting student
engagement and for teaching the habits of mine and discursive practices
necessary for intellectual and civic life.
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The Composition Program at SFSU is built on a recognition of these changes.
Our courses are designed to promote student engagement, and to support
student retention at SFSU. We recognize that our courses must take into account
the dynamic digital literacy environments that students inhabit as “digital natives,”
and that students’ success hinges on their abilities to communicate in rhetorically
sophisticated and highly engaged ways across media and contexts.
We have instituted several initiatives and program revisions aimed at improving
the teaching of writing in ways that promote fluency in multiple literacies and
student engagement. Indeed, as recent research shows, the two are intertwined:
studies suggest that the more writing students do throughout their college career,
the more engaged they are with the intellectual life of the university.
1)
3)
4)
5)
The Composition Program has provided support for WAC/WID, a
program that has successfully integrated writing, and hence engaged
learning, in upper division courses across campus. This program has
allowed us to phase out the JEPET writing exam and English 414, both
of which promoted a view of writing as a skill to be remediated. Instead,
the WAC program has institutionalized a view of writing as central to
intellectual work in the disciplines.
2) We have instituted directed self-placement for our developmental writing
courses: following research-based best practices, our students now play
an active role in determining what kind of writing instruction best fits their
needs as incoming freshman; Research suggests that student “choice
and voice” are crucial aspects of any effort to promote engagement. We
have now institutionalized choice and voice for students at the beginning
of their experience as college writers.
We have significantly revised the learning outcomes for both 114 and
especially 214, which has moved from an "introduction to literature" course
to a second year writing course with a focus on persuasion and rhetoric.
We produced a freshman textbook for 114 students and have implemented a
portfolio assignment for all English 114 students. Research suggests that
writing portfolios, because they encourage reflection and metacognition about
writing and learning, are a crucial aspect of engagement.
We developed an English education track through the English major that
helps
prepare undergraduates who hope to teach at the high school level, and we
substantially revised our graduate program, where most of the teachers in our
program get their training in the teaching of writing.
Our WAC program, our integrated reading and writing program, our directed selfplacement program, and our Masters programs in Composition and
Postsecondary Reading are model programs in California.
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Engaged Learning in the Classroom: Fostering Community, Collaboration,
and Curricular Coherence
The Composition Program’s history of success suggests specific pathways for
the next five years as we continue to foster a culture of engaged learning for
students in their first year courses. We plan to continue our work on curricular
coherence and connection between English 114 and 214. We now have detailed
learning outcomes in place; building on those outcomes, we plan to:

Continue to highlight the distinctions and connections between English
114 and 214. English 114, as one of the first courses students take at
SFSU, focuses on introducing students to the practices and habits of mind
of intellectual inquiry and helps students use writing to forge personal
connections to the practices of academic inquiry; English 214 extends that
focus by helping students think about how to use writing not only to
connect and understand but to communicate and persuade multiple
audiences;
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Name our courses by individual theme so that students can exercise
choice in deciding which writing course is best for them. An example of
this approach can be found in SFSU’s learning communities, such as
Metro Academy. “Metro 214s” in our program are English 214 writing
courses that are organized around the theme of health and science. Most
teachers in our program choose a topic or theme for their writing courses
but currently students don’t discover the theme until the first day of class.
Going forward, we hope to list writing courses by theme so that students
can choose writing courses that fit their interests and academic /
professional plans;
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Create a more visible curricular framework to guide practices in 104/05,
114 and 214 by developing a menu of shared assignments (such as the
portfolio assignment now required of all 114 students). Many writing
programs across the country create curricular coherence in their program
by requiring all students to complete some assignments in common.
These assignments are flexibly designed so that teachers can tailor them
to suit their own objectives and course theme. Assignments might include
a research paper examining writing practices in a student’s major; a genre
transformation assignment asking students to transform writing for
different audiences and purposes; a literacy narrative asking students to
reflect on their previous experiences with writing;
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Create uniform electronic portfolios for students that they can take with
them to each writing course they undertake at SFSU;
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Create an online writing commons that will give students opportunities to
share their writing with the broader SFSU community, give teachers a
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place to access teaching resources and materials; and provide
opportunities for linked courses, facilitating team teaching and
collaboration. Collaboration gives both students and teachers a sense of
purpose. As such, we envision the writing commons as providing a space
for many types of literate activity: showcasing strong student writing,
showcasing innovative or successful lesson plans, providing a “talking
textbook” to be used as a resource by students and teachers. A writing
commons would allow students to write for audiences beyond the teacher
and to get feedback from students beyond their immediate classmates;

Incorporate digital literacies in our learning outcomes and classroom
practices. Many of our instructors are already doing inspired work in this
regard – having students work collaboratively to create SFSU-based
webzines, for example. Going forward, we hope all of our teachers will find
ways to integrate digital literacy practices in their classrooms.
All of these initiatives will require professional development in our own program.
We will need to work with current lecturers, and we will need to work as a faculty
to design courses in our Masters Program that will prepare future teachers in our
program for these projects.
Engagement Beyond the Classroom: Research, Assessment, and
Dissemination
Building on research that faculty in our program are currently involved in,
including a study of former Masters students from SFSU and their experiences
as new writing teachers, and a study of students’ experiences in GWAR courses
and their ability to transfer learning from lower to upper division writing courses,
we hope to build an archive of research investigating students’ and teachers’
perceptions of their experiences in our courses, and a collection of student
writing both within and outside of our courses. Such research would help us
assess the effectiveness of our program, and would provide resources for us as
we teach graduate students to become teachers in our program.
The Composition Program is responsible for lower-division writing, upper division
English Education and GWAR courses, a Masters Program in Composition and
two graduate-level certificate programs in the teaching of reading and writing.
These programs are highly interrelated. Our undergraduate writing program is
intimately connected to and dependent on the quality of our current graduate
program in Writing Studies. Almost all of the teachers in our program go through
our MA in Writing Studies, where they receive a thorough grounding in the field
and training in best practices for the writing classroom. Improving and expanding
both our upper-division offerings and our graduate program would thus directly
impact the quality of our lower-division writing program.
Writing Studies is a rich discipline that includes scholarship on a variety of topics
related to writing, rhetoric, literacy, and pedagogy. Currently, however, we have
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no way to introduce undergraduates to this discipline. Particularly for students
who plan to work in education, this is a gap in our offerings that should be
addressed. Upper-division courses in Writing Studies could serve as a gateway
into our MA program. More undergraduates with experience in Writing Studies
would improve our applicant pool and would eventually improve the overall
quality of writing instruction on campus (since almost all writing instructors on
campus come out of our MA program). Writing Studies courses would also help
us develop a more robust tutoring center, since students who take courses in
Writing Studies could tutor for course credit. Such courses might also help
graduates find employment, as applicants with such a minor would certainly have
improved written communication skills.
Over the past five years, we have significantly revised and updated our graduate
program and certificate programs. Doing so has strengthened our
undergraduate writing program as we now have new teachers with stronger
preparation in current scholarship in the field and who have been exposed to a
wider array of pedagogical approaches in the field. We plan to continue to
explore ways to improve our graduate program and hence the preparation of
writing teachers. We are currently working on finding ways to broaden the
number of courses students take in our MA program (possibly by combining
some courses so that we have room to offer others), and we continue to work
together as a faculty to support our graduate students as they become new
teachers themselves.
As part of our efforts to strengthen our graduate students’ preparation to be
writing teachers, we also plan to explore the possibility of offering a PhD in
Writing Studies for our graduate students who want a deeper knowledge of the
field. Currently, there is only one PhD program in California, at UC Davis, that
prepares new faculty to work in programs like ours. We routinely send our own
masters students to top-notch programs on the East coast or Mid-West. The
growing focus on undergraduate writing necessitates the continued production of
scholars with the necessary training and background to administer writing
programs, to prepare new writing teachers, and to conduct research on how
students learn to write and how we can best facilitate that learning. Thus, over
the next five years, we plan to begin exploring the possibility of offering a PhD in
Writing Studies.
We are excited about our plans for the coming five years, and given how much
we have accomplished in the past five years, we are hopeful that we can make
these plans a reality. The field of Writing Studies has historically been defined in
terms of the services it provides to the campus – teaching freshman writing,
running tutoring centers and WAC programs, and supporting and supervising
new teachers. At SFSU we have embraced that service and hence view our own
scholarship and teaching as intimately tied with the mission of SFSU to maximize
student success by fostering a culture of engaged learning and by advancing
faculty and student community across the campus.
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3. College councils (notes by committee members)
3.1 College of Business
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The mantra at the last meeting of the American Management Association was
“Let’s come out of the closet and admit we are passionate about teaching.”
More emphasis on teaching over research, or at least on par with the
emphasis (unified look at teaching evaluations, and if they are poor, let’s
work with those folks to improve their skills in those areas - leave up to what
we are saying that teaching is important).
Conversely, “I find it hard to get money for research,” and so we should look
at ways to bring in the multimillion dollar research contracts to campus.
Perhaps we should focus on innovative teaching specifically as a means to
differentiate.
Does good research translate to good teaching? Not so much. What’s the
balance between research and teaching that works for SF State.
More money for faculty, because it’s very hard to get new faculty. It’s hard to
watch, but I would rather have good colleagues.
Let’s have a unified look at teaching evaluations. Let’s get teachers help
where needed.
We ARE known as a teaching school.
Provide more incentives/compensation to top faculty teaching and
contributions.
3/3 teaching load? No. good teachers should teach more, good researchers
should do more research.
Can we leverage the academic units in which we excel with so that they
stand out across the state?
Attempt to revise the master plan (currently embedded in the law). If we are
receiving less state funding with more students, it’s a flaw in the fiscal model.
Perhaps we need to shift to a self-support model so that we can retain the
dollars, rather than lose money over the life of a student.
Perhaps we should do a Doctor in Business Administration (DBA) to set
ourselves apart.
How is the money allocated on campus? Resources are not following the flow
of students. We have many international students, who are more work to
service, but as a college, we do not see any additional funding.
How do we get alignment between resources and funding/budget?
Invest more in academic technology.
We’re hearing a very strong sense of insecurity about the role of community
engagement, which we’ve often taken as a given. However, it seems like
signals are coming from the administration that are confusing as to its value.
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Another issue is that we need to say more about our intentions about
teaching and learning. What we appear to hear most from the
administration is about research. Are we missing the other signals, or are
they not coming?
o After one gets through the tenure process, there seems to be very
little discussion of teaching. [Has been thinking about a fund to help
faculty hire graders…. To free up faculty time to teach better, etc.]
o We need to be re-prepping all the time in order to keep up with our
materials, methods, approaches…. This needs to be supported if we’re
going to teach effectively and to keep up with our fields!
o We don’t see that there are financial resources behind the messaging
about the importance of teaching.
o I think of SF State as an extraordinary place in its ability to balance
teaching/research/community engagement, but this balance is
difficult to maintain, and we need to reaffirm that balance.
o These changing signals come through in a variety of ways, including
the fact that retreats don’t include teaching/service generally, etc.
These messages are probably unintentional but they’re clear.
o What can we do to rebalance this?
 CTFD?
We should increase our emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and
learning, and also being more effective.
o Perhaps more of an effort from ORSP on this front. There’s a feeling
that ORSP doesn’t work for us…. That they’re for the sciences, etc.
o We also need to think about how to get support from the university
for funding to allocate time (grading help etc) to release faculty to do
this kind of work. This helps students more.
Online teaching: the college has a great deal of online presence, but we’re not
sure what the campus strategy is as regards online teaching or how we’re
trying to achieve our goals. We’ve had many conversations about this, but
we need a better, more direct sense.
o CSU online doesn’t seem to be working. Business courses offered
through CSU online don’t seem to reach students on other campuses.
The financial questions are part of the problem.
o Online teaching seems to be about saving money, whereas it needs
resources behind it.
General Education: Is it going to fly? Are there going to be issues? Students
also seem to be confused about it.
Faculty being able to spend time advising students – we haven’t been able to
do this as much because of the recent crunch.
Training students:
o It’s important when we train students to do work TAing and
otherwise being engaged at a high level, if we want them to get jobs.
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o We also need more communication as to how we’re doing in student
success.
We have lots of assessment mechanisms, but we don’t use it!! We don't
close the loop.
The uniqueness of business education:
o any interaction with outside organizations is very standard:
standards, outside speakers, etc. Also, many of our faculty are deeply
engaged with outside organizations in our work. The connection to
‘research’ is way less. We don’t have the same opportunities to
connect teaching and research most of the time…. Easier to envision at
the graduate than the undergraduate level. Frankly, much of our
research isn’t necessarily of interest or use to undergraduates [but
this is still significant, no?]
o Research: we have both faculty research (mostly writing for other
colleagues) and student-centered research in the classrooms. We
should showcase student research more often.
Graduate education deserves more attention than it’s getting.
RTP: Consulting work is not really recognized, yet it’s of far more value to my
students if I do consulting work than if we do journal research…. Yet we’re
rewarded the opposite way (more reward for journal publications than
consulting). Also, this kind of consulting isn’t currently ‘supported’ by the
university.
o Other things don’t really fit into the three classifications: getting
engaged in community organizations (which may be professional
development rather than service), developing new classes,
performances, etc.
We need a model to bring in ‘stars’ (from outside academia, in corporate) to
teach etc. This helps with the diversity question as well as building
interaction with the community. (Harvard calls this practice management
faculty).
3.2 College of Health and Social Sciences
Community engagement/service
A - Usually difficult to separate service and learning, because so much of what we
talk about and do is service projects as part of learning. Students are often required
to work with service organizations outside of the classroom, etc. In at least half of
classes, it is highly integrated and “service” is a tool for students to learn that
particular service area.
Q – Are there any frictions in that process?
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A – It’s not difficult to find outside collaborators. It is vitally important that the
credits for community service learning be continued – students often give 40-60
hours in class-related community service learning. Perhaps there could be
additional recognition for students (at a university learning). Perhaps awards for
outstanding service at the college and then university level. [ICCE does something
like this already].
A - It depends how you define service. In terms of a lot of professional programs
with interns out in the community, they are providing labor in return for training in
hospitals, community centers, etc.
A – Dealing with campus requirements and site contracts together can be quite
difficult, also the forms and regulations dealing with field trips etc.
A – Another issue is that every student in the field has a faculty liaison attached who
does all kinds of work coordinating, and there’s no evaluation for faculty for this
work. In many departments, it doesn’t really figure into WPAFs or RTP formally.
A – A broader strategic issue is to what extent this university will create an
environment and infrastructure in which service is clearly valued and will send
messages to departments to help them to value and evaluate this service. This
message is not coming from the top.
A – Contingent faculty (lecturers) do get assigned time to do some of this
coordinating work, but they generally don’t count as teaching units towards pay
raises (they count as ‘assigned time units’ rather than ‘teaching units’). [This is
disputed]
A – WE NEED A CLARIFICATION FROM THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL OF WHAT SERVICE
MEANS [BROAD IS BETTER] AND HOW IT IS VALUED.
Scholarship - grants & indirect costs / community-based etc.
A - One of the things I’m concerned about is that we’re a “third way” university… Not
UCs but not community colleges. We teach 3 classes. There is no way to put a
strong infrastructure in place to pull down NIH grants. With the teaching, service,
and emphasis on students we have, if we go too much towards de-emphasizing
grants that don’t come with enough indirect time, we are undermining faculty.
There are many $ 5-15,000 and we should help faculty to pursue these grants that
may or will eventually lead to further research. This isn’t encouraged right now
because it doesn’t come with enough indirect money. This is a huge mistake,
undermines faculty morale, and reduces our ability to produce scholarship.
Moreover we are the place in the higher ed landscape that will be making a change
in graduation rates. The question of how our university can help the city/region in
which we live is difficult to answer if we can’t do these small projects. GRANTS
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THAT FIT THE MISSION OF OUR UNIVERSITY BEING CIVICLY RESPONSIBLE TO
OUR COMMUNITY should be okayed even if they bring in only 1% overhead.
A - Two key points : (1) We must have a diverse definition of scholarship and what
it means – some empirical and some conceptual/theoretical, etc. We must have a
broad and inclusive definition. (2) We must clarify the definition between
scholarship and grants. Grants should be used to support scholarship, but there are
people within this college who are top-notch scholars but who do not necessarily
bring in grants. Sometimes the two are conflated.
Q – Is this a problem beyond the college level or at the college level? Where is this
occurring? In LCA the creative arts people are concerned what they do is not
amenable to what seems to be an emerging boilerplate notion of scholarship.
A – This is very similar. There’s a perception that there’s a narrowing of the
definition of scholarship (and of service as well!). There is a need to have a
CLARIFICATION at the university level.
3.3 College of Science and Engineering
Science is lab-based and, so, values the intimacy of the teacher-student interaction.
Student-centered teaching and learning is especially intensive in STEM - - and we
need to support this more.
There is a blur between teaching and research in science: e.g. the research lab as
classroom; the field experience, which can combine community service, research,
and teaching; project-centered pedagogies - - student research projects.
There are institutional barriers to this kind of teaching-research: a lack of
recognition that these forms don’t fit the “3/3” teaching load; bureaucratic barriers - permission forms etc.
Vide Risk Management: too often we hear the word, “No.” A need to get all parts of
the University working to support the academic mission and activities.
Need to support graduate students. Perhaps via tuition waivers.
Better learning spaces - - labs and classrooms.
Problems with software upgrades - - there are more cost-effective ways to handle
this.
Beefing up general advising to take some of the load off of full-time faculty.
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We either need to break the bucket system down, or at least decentralize the
process….
- Add ‘synergistic activities’ as a fourth bucket, or ‘impact’…. How did your
work change things?
- We spend way too much time dealing with RTP issues.
- The academic master plan can’t be explicitly tied to RTP, but obviously
they’re closely connected.
‘Research and teaching are integrally intertwined’.
- The American physical society has made a point of stressing the importance
of undergraduate research in retention, skills development. Space is a major
issue. However, there are additional issues:
o Bureaucratic requirements in terms of things like field trips. Field
research has become much more difficult, and this is becoming more
and more difficult because of legal issues.
o Running our labs is hard because people are now looking over our
shoulders… we need more freedom to do this kind of work with our
students.
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From the point of view of our college, research is INTEGRAL to our teaching,
but we need resources to be able to do this.
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If we didn’t have the external grants we get in this college, we wouldn’t be
solvent, so we do have to focus on grants. We also must publish high-quality
research work. However, we tell students that papers co-authored with
students essentially counts double (as both research and teaching).
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In broader terms, research is individual work preparing people to have oneon-one relationships with faculty and preparing for the job market. It is NOT
preparing students for PhD.
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Research is a teamwork and project-based set of activities for students.
Students build companies out of their research as well. This can be done with
community members, etc. So for us, research is everything outside of the class
but includes inside the classroom as well – not elitist, it is a kind of service as
well when we work with community members. Students learn things in outside
research that they wouldn’t learn in the classroom. We’d like to see this
added to the ‘definition of research’.
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Community engagement is both research and service, and we need to
redefine service to include the kinds of research projects in the community
that our students do. Conservation biology, etc, are example. We can bring
this component to the community.
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Undergraduate research facilities for undergraduate students are key to this
kind of development/student needs. Example, engineering students working
UCSF medical…. [follow up on this] .
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Perhaps the buckets – research, teaching, service – just don't work! There’s
so much cross-feeding…. We don’t see a tension between teaching and
research… almost all of the research done in this college involves students,
even undergraduates. This increases the rate at which students graduate,
their retention, their future success. Undergraduate and graduate students
both…..
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A lot of things seem to be ‘bucket driven’. From an RTP perspective, it is very
obvious that there is a strong positive correlation between teaching and
service… our best teachers are generally our best researchers as well. It’s
difficult to be a good teacher when individuals are not research active…. We
don’t want our instructors teaching what they learned 20 years ago in
graduate school in any case. Also, if you’re not doing research yourself, how
are you going to have research for your teaching.
o Would ‘student engagement’ thus be a better bucket than, say
‘teaching’?
o Would ‘innovation’ be a better bucket than ‘research’ or ‘professional
development’?
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It falls to the RTP committees to a certain degree to pitch these things….
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Note: the college hires mainly post-docs
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Student interest: We don’t have enough resources to serve all of our
students.
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We’d like more projects across the boundaries of colleges.
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Our research is as good as the best students we can get, but we’re not
competitive in terms of the support we give graduate students. We need
more support for students.
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Lecturers: Almost all of our lower division students are taught by lecturers,
and (given all said above) this is far from ideal. We’re even having trouble
staffing many of our classrooms.
o Should we really have a two-tier system? It’s so hard for lecturers to
stay engaged and productive while they’re so involved with students.
In fact, many lecturers fall out of ability to apply for jobs or to stay
intellectually sophisticated and even to teach well because they’re
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teaching so much…. Perhaps we need to provide some money for
lecturers to do research.
o The UC has a tier called ‘lecturer with security of employment’ and
they need to do a lot of pedagogical development.
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Augments: We’re making it work, but it’s far from ideal.…
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We have amazingly good faculty and they deliver excellent combined
research-and-teaching and we aim to maintain this high quality research.
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We have a capstone requirement for students, but not the resources (Bio has
2200 majors, for example). Capstone courses work as well as projects?
3.4 College of Ethnic Studies
We aspire to fulfilling our mission for social justice. The students we accept and
serve are reflective of our mission in educating underserved populations. We should
eliminate discussions of “high end” versus “low end” students that have been taking
place in committees. These discussions are aimed at reducing “low end” students
when are mission is in fact to serve student populations that these very critics
would label as “low end.” Teaching should be the most important criteria for RTP
with appropriate achievements in research and service to be defined by
departments. We are concerned with departmentally determined criteria which in
recent years seems to have been forcibly revised by upper administration. With
regard to teaching load, we should be flexible depending on departmental needs.
According to a state assembly resolution, 75% of faculty should be tenure/tenure
track. We argue also that rather than evaluate which programs should be phased
out, the university must take into account that well-funded programs serve us well.
In other words, if a program is floundering it may not be an issue of whether it well
serves the university but instead a question of whether it is well funded by the
university. We do note that the College of Ethnic Studies is a signature of SFSU and
recommend the streamlining of duplicational science programs. New tenure track
lines might more effectively or strategically be used by seriously taking into account
departmental needs. There needs to be a healthy balance of student faculty ratio
that is determined by faculty rather than administration. We are an undergraduate
serving institution and thus undergraduate education should be a primary focus.
Currently the governing structure appears too central, focusing on one person
which takes power away from Deans’ ability to meet faculty needs which is in turn
responding to student needs.
3.5 College of Liberal and Creative Arts
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Need to (re)invest in faculty - - numbers, salaries, programs. Lecturers must be
included in this as well. But, not just about money/salary.
Set up a Little Hoover Commission to eliminate boundaries/barriers to faculty and
chair work. Too much micromanaging of students without necessary
support/resources. Chairs and faculty consistently forced to do meaninglesstasks
without any evident purpose or goal. Faculty and faculty expertise are too often
seen as part of the problem.
Feeling that the University is threatened by forces of commodification,
commercialization, privatization. Education as social justice vs. the commodity.
A strategic plan must be linked to results to be authentic, e.g. not simply put up on a
shelf.
3.6 Graduate College of Education
Particularity of graduate college: perceived lack of resources to do “traditional
kinds of things, for instance, offer large enrollment classes. Especially important
where funding is based on undergraduate fte model.
Accreditation work is not appropriately recognized within RTP, nor within
workload.
Prohibition on general fund money to be spend on work in schools - - thus a budget
squeeze on assigning in-school work.
Post tenure: need for more mechanisms to reward post-tenure work - - more
carrots like travel funds for conferences, support for professional development like
keeping up with changes in public education, better classroom resources/learning
spaces.
Desire to rely less on lecturers and for greater t/tt faculty replenishment.
Strong desire, with bigger faculty cohort, to establish robust, comprehensive
community partnerships, for professional from K-12 schools and agencies, to create
and send out whole cadres and create fuller, richer networks of schools/agencies.
Interest in an international education Masters program, linked with doctorate.
Blending disability education into whole of professional development.
Moving toward excellence = going to community.
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A feeling of marginalization - - teaching load, primarily graduate
curricula/programs, evening teaching schedules.
3.7 Library
Discussion of role of library as a building, of library as faculty. Students and faculty
are flocking to the new library, but there is a need for augmented staff.
“We have space, but we have to learn how to make academic community.”
Library is an important academic space, besides obvious, for instance in re
technology - - the place where streaming, archiving and other data-oriented
activities occur.
Need for endowments to cultivate special collections.
Faculty replenishment is crucial. (Last tenure/tenure track hire = 2008)
Strategic needs: maintaining infrastructure over the next five years; developing
Library as more of a space for lectures/academic presentations, etc.; support for
moving toward a more digital model.
Five years on: library will be a physical place for people to choose for informal
learning - - and so, need to maintain and augment physical spaces. New library was
sized for 18K students, we are at 30K.
Librarians as mediators between online and material environments; need to bolster
faculty role to continue to act as mediators between knowledge and users, e.g.
library and library faculty great at adding value to academic enterprise, not just
library as space and librarians as custodians.
Campus needs a collaborative teaching and research facility - - e.g. University should
open a computer lab facility, for instance, so the library doesn’t become one big
computer lab. Too many library folk devoted to simply maintaining computer
infrastructure. Problem of services and products that fall through the cracks: how
do I use a spreadsheet? Citation management. Default tutoring services: help me
with this topic, etc.
The digital realm.
Supporting online courses with online primary/original sources, online exhibits,
curriculum guides - - that reflect unique SFSU social justice mission/values.
Need to bolster digitizing services - - staff and physical media storage.
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CSU needs a unified digital effort; too balkanized; here, we are one system, not 23
systems.
Developing an open repository for faculty research, digitized Masters theses, etc.
RTP
Teaching vs. grant-driven research - - “science model” doesn’t fit library faculty.
Current RTP distant from day-to-day business of library faculty: fitting “teaching”
into librarian role, e.g. what does “teaching” mean in the library context? What is a
“class” for librarians? Research not focused so much on content but on process, e.g.
how to do things better; standardization and centralization of RTP
criteria/expectations don’t correspond to library work/profession.
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4. Departmental submissions and notes
4.1 Creative Writing
> The university needs to continue to conserve the values of a traditional
liberal arts education while adding features that include more students and
address contemporary issues that merit the advanced thinking of we who
do research and scholarship and create works of art in a world full of
pressing and life-altering issues such as climate change, globalization,
poverty, a literacy crisis, etc. We must have resources as faculty to explore
these outlets and understanding from on high of the subtleties and
complexities of our fields and the value of our teaching and research
beyond quantities and narrow definitions. We should not have to educate
our evaluators as to our worth. They should be there to affirm and support
our serious goals and valuable practices. The administration should be as
enlightened as the faculty in order for us all to accomplish our work of
serving students.
>
> This enlightenment should include a broad and compassionate vision of
the values we share and of our place in a diverse, cosmopolitan, arts and
technology-rich locale. Our goals should be tailored to these strengths and
advance the cause of social justice by making our students well-rounded
and aware citizens. We should invest in the student as a human who will
have a career but not as a worker per se. What we can provide is richer
and deeper than that. Our dean points out how many literature students go
on to become deeply effective and compassionate lawyers, doctors,
businessmen and sometimes philanthropists who owe their fullness of
character to what they learned in the liberal arts. We are the heart and soul
of the university.
>
> As for Creative Writing, we are a diverse program that works with a
unique cross-genre model and expands opportunities for our many
undergrad (386) and very fine grad students (140). They succeed as
writers--which we carefully track--and as citizens. Many of our classes
encourage experimentation and social involvement such as Writing in the
Public Context. We have many ties to the literary community and to
agencies that educate children & adults and promote literature. Our recent
students win NEAs and our alums Pulitzers and Guggenheims and other
prizes. Our Poetry Center is now online through DIVA and has had 66000
viewers since it went electronic. Another example of our community
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building is our newsletter that yearly summarizes the successes of
hundreds of our alums.
4.2 Health Education
-
It seems one of the first questions is how can we leverage what we are [
doing so that it has some sense.
What rises to the top of our list.
- Streamlining of HRT!!! So important
-
Much more writing support for students is needed. What we have now is not
adequate.
The potential downside of writing classes is that they have to be small to be
effective. That means that somebody else has to take the burden of FTE.
o Balancing FTE when there are smaller groups of students in
important.
-
In terms of the erosion of support for teaching and the push for online
models, there currently isn’t the support there should be for developing
hybrid and online courses. We really need ongoing support if we’re serious
about online education. AT is great and doesn’t seem to have enough
resources.
-
Students cannot afford to do independent research, because they need to
have a job. Funding to support students doing internships and assistant
positions would be very helpful.
-
From the RTP perspective, the burgeoning number of low-quality journals
online begins to raise the question of how we value publication.
-
RTP and broader issues – we hear about the “three buckets”. It seems like
teaching is getting less and less attention in terms of recognition, and it
seems like research is getting all of the attention. Also, we’re hearing ( real
or imagined) that service is no longer of value.
-
The other thing that’s more important and disturbing is the emphasis on
positivistic and empirical research and a denigration of research that seems
to reflect the arts and humanities…. And a denigration of faculty who do this
kind of research.
-
Among the biggest obstacles at the university is not having ‘support’ –
release time, recognized release for large classes etc. Providing this sort of
support is important, especially in terms of integrating these .
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o This is important throughout, but especially 3rd year sort of period as
one is planning new projects at this time.
-
For full-time lecturers, it’s very hard to do service. This has been recently
highly impacted because of (less release time)?
o It would be nice if lecturers got release time to do some governance.
It’s clear that with fewer T/T faculty we have fewer people to do
governance.
-
Support for the arts at this time becomes incredibly important, especially as
they are under threat.
-
As a lecturer, it is very difficult to find any pathways to bring with previous
experience and to integrate it into the existing university structure,
laboratories, access to technology and resources. … even to know who the
other faculty are who are interested in working on this thing. So it’s very
difficult to create a vision as to how your work should be integrated.
-
External funding and the priorities put on it: what hasn’t kept up with this
goal is the optimization of ORSP. They continue to be unfriendly and to
disregard grants that do not bring large overhead, but also the lack of
capacity to respond in a timely manner.
-
Institutional space is very difficult to get: lab space and office space are
shared, but especially for faculty who teach in the evening. Also for students,
there is very little space and most offices are closed.
-
This university has no common ‘free time’ and no ‘space’ to do so. This is a
major issue. [ Repeated by several people] . This would help us to develop
integrated studies programs, etc. So it’s a major issue in terms of curriculum
as well.
-
We need more opportunities to integrate teaching with research, and
researching about teaching (the scholarship of teaching and learning).
-
It’s unusual to have an AOC really working only at his/her job description,
well-developed advising systems that don’t over-burden faculty, etc. We’re
all largely just operating without the resources we’re supposed: money,
admin release time, etc. It’s silly that we have to all do things that AREN’T
LEGIT in order to get the kinds of coordination that we need to run a highquality academic shop. This all happened when the ‘crunch’ occurred –
everything disappeared.
-
The AUGMENTS are problematic. Half of the curriculum isn’t funded deep
into the winter. This is a major issue, and chairs have huge anxiety about
this. It creates enormous uncertainty. Lecturers are kept in the dark until
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the last minute, and then don’t have enough time to prep. It also forces us to
hire faculty that aren’t properly vetted. It’s enormously inefficient and
unjust.
o Augments are only available for lecturers. Thus Structurally, T/T
faculty can’t teach the augmented courses when they come through,
which often means people can’t teach in their area of expertise. Thus
often these courses can’t be offered, which hurts research and
scholarship, etc.
-
GE only one social science course – at a time when race relations, global
relations, etc is such a big issue? That makes no sense. It doesn’t fit with our
social justice mission.
-
We need methods to make possible Integrated Studies program. It doesn’t
exist in a pragmatic, realistic way. [ multiple comments on this ]
-
Mental health: suicide, drug abuse, sexual abuse – these should be in class
content. Area E (LLD) needs to be to address this.
-
Supporting lecturers – They have no place for professional development or
camaraderie. Again, perhaps make a common time available, etc.
-
It feels like there are some aspirations that research here is going to be
‘Berkeley light’. However, this isn’t realistic given the teaching load etc. This
is somewhat frustrating. It would be nice if the administration knew what
we actually do HERE, because we have amazing models coming out of the
fusion of research and service. It would be great. We have people doing
amazing program and community planning work [that is often refereed] but
that doesn’t count as ‘scholarship’.
-
The same is true of scholarship of teaching and learning, which appears to be
too hybrid to register. We need them to know what OUR models are and how
they matter.
-
Internationalization and how we fit into the world is really important.
4.3 Women and Gender Studies
(Note: the initial submission by Women and Gender Studies was to the strategic
planning website, and is reproduced in full in section 1.2)
Response to question from Larry Hanley and Trevor Getz regarding neoliberalism,
corporatization, and privatization at SFSU
From the Women and Gender Studies Department
December, 2013
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Neoliberalism For scholars of women and gender studies, neoliberal incursions into public
institutions are marked by the increasing pressure to raise private funds rather than demand
public support Neoliberalism is also marked by the rolling of costs onto students and faculty
rather than having an institutional budget that is sufficient to cover the expense of the public
institution. Examples of neoliberal practices at SFSU include not only increased student tuition
and stagnant faculty and staff salaries, but also through incrementalism – we think for example
about the pressures to have students print their syllabi and assigned articles at their own cost
rather than have sufficient budgets for faculty to provide print copies; the proliferation of
student fees; and the pressures on faculty to seek outside funding sources (in the face of cut
programs such as the CSU mini-grants, summer stipends, etc) for professional development
activities that are required to successfully engage in our teaching, research, and service.
Privatization Instead of focusing on increasing philanthropic support, we suggest focusing on
increasing public support as an institution of public education. This would mean, to start, turning
our focus to demanding increased state support; lobbying for increased student grants rather
than loans; reducing tuition to levels previous to the budget crisis; and rethinking the full-time
requirement for student scholarships and tuition waivers. We also note the increased
privatization and corollary loss of student autonomy at the Cesar Chavez Student Union, for
example in the decision to allow University Corp to "partner" with ASI.
Corporatization also occurs at SFSU when we measure our success primarily through indicators
such as the “economic impact” of our programs and the wealth of our alumni rather than the
production of knowledge generated by the research and creative projects of faculty and
students. When alumni are seen primarily as potential donors, then the non-monetary alumni
contributions to our communities – in creative art, political leadership, community involvement,
and engaged professional development, for example – are devalued and subsequently campus
programs which support such outcomes risk marginalization and defunding.
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