A Ron Simpson Presentation
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
DISTINGUISHED TEACHING ACADEMY
April 4, 2006
DEFINING MOMENTS: CHANGING THE CULTURE OF
TEACHING AT A MAJOR RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Ronald D. Simpson
I bring you greetings from the University of Georgia Teaching Academy. I am honored to be a part of this important milestone for Arizona State University. It is wonderful to be among those who believe that living the life of the mind—and sharing that ideal with students—is the premier professional enterprise in life.
Renowned psychologist Alfred Adler observed many years ago that a relatively small number of critical events in our lives usually define how we see ourselves and make choices. I would like for us to think for a few minutes about the concept of “defining moments.” How have these moments not only influenced our individual careers, but how have they served as catalysts for changing the culture of teaching at our respective institutions of higher learning.
Here is a first hand account of a “defining moment” by Professor Peter Giordano, a clinical psychologist educated at the University of North Carolina:
While an undergraduate student at Chapel Hill I had a political science professor who encouraged me to consider a graduate program at Yale University. Whether I could have actually gained admission to this program is certifiably debatable, however, the point is that a professor I held in high esteem thought I should consider it. My parents were not college graduates and one of my brothers had flunked out by the time I got there. When I arrived on campus I was intimidated by the academic game. But, this somewhat off-handed comment by a teacher, stuck with me and altered how I saw myself as a student from that day on.
Peter Giordano went on to earn a MA and PhD in clinical psychology at the Chapel Hill campus. I’m sure many of you can recall something you have experienced, as a student or a teacher, that served as a turning point in your life.
There has been research on what we call “teachable moments,” “critical events,” or what I am calling this morning—“defining moments.” What we know, based on research in this area about these potentially life-altering events, is this:
They are specific and precise moments remembered clearly by the learner.
They are rare (in the sense that people report few of them).
They are personal in nature.
They almost always possess a strong emotional dimension. In other words, a change in self-perception occurs rather than a shift in cognitive learning.
It usually takes time for the learner to realize the significance of such an event.
They are serendipitous—that is, difficult to predict.
They are transformative and
Tteachers seldom remember their role in these events.
What is amazing about this phenomenon is that a five second remark, one not even remembered by a teacher, can change a life. Fortunately, from the research reported, most of these events are positive—but not all. A careless negative remark from a professor can reverberate in a person’s memory for many years. Sometimes a negative comment can motivate a person to overcome the alleged weakness, while on other occasions the outcome remains negative.
So, do we always know when we are teaching? Do we fully realize how much our students’ beliefs about themselves and their academic disciplines impact their learning? Do we realize how many seemingly “innocuous” remarks we make in a day could become “defining moments” in the lives of our students—and, in equally important ways, in the lives of our colleagues? As an example, a vice president on our campus told me only recently that he recalls with clarity his first month, as a new faculty member, when a kind and wise senior professor told him: “Think first of whom the students are and then consider how to reach them in your teaching.” This freshly minted PhD out of Berkeley (tooled up to do ground-breaking, research in cellular biology) remembers that most of his students were non-majors and that this advice saved him from many impending disconnects. What is even more important today is the fact that this person, now an esteemed scholar in his field (in addition to being a vice president), remembers so vividly the caring manner of this wise professor. Furthermore, I know personally that he has impacted many of our younger faculty members over the years with the same advice he received from his older colleague.
This line of thinking should not suggest that cognition is unimportant. It also does not suggest that teachers should become indulgent with praise. There is already too much of that in our society today. What it does say is that providing honest feedback and authentic support is a big part of teaching; both can take place outside, as well as inside, the classroom.
So, what does all this have to do with an institution like Arizona State University? Well, the phenomenon of “critical events” or “defining moments” has a parallel at the institutional level as well. Twenty five years ago at the University of Georgia three separate faculty committees reported to then Vice President Virginia Trotter that the rapid progress of the University’s research and public service missions was, by comparison, outstripping current efforts to promote excellent instruction. To be blunt: at that time in history, many large state universities like ours harbored (appropriately so) an ambition to become first-class (or even “world class”) research universities. These aspirations led to such a rapid shift in institutional goals and rewards that many faculty members believed undergraduate education was not only being neglected, but was not respected.
While those faculty reports were well-conceived, and communicated clearly, it was Virginia Trotter’s personal commitment—a belief that things needed to change—that prompted her decision to establish a central unit—reporting directly to her—to provide increased leadership for instruction on campus. While serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Nebraska during the late 60s and early 70s, she oversaw the successful establishment of a similar unit there. It should be noted that she was the first woman to hold an office at that level at a major state university. During her years of service as Commissioner of Education in the Ford Administration, she became even more convinced that excellence in teaching should be the foundation of all educational enterprises. This became her highest priority. The beliefs and values she acquired at Nebraska and in Washington gave her the emotional strength needed to overcome resistance by some on our campus when it came to allocating additional resources for instruction and faculty support. At her funeral one of the speakers, a colleague who knew her well, made it clear that this was her proudest accomplishment as an administrator at the University of Georgia.
During the early years of developing this central unit on campus, I tumbled by accident into an opportunity, that I believe today represents the single most profound force on our campus in terms of influencing a cultural change in teaching. While attending a professional conference in Washington, D.C., I heard about a teaching fellows program that the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis was sponsoring at that time. We applied for this program and received $50,000 per annum for three years—the normal funding cycle and amount for those institutions receiving such a grant. [Unfortunately, the Lilly Endowment only funded institutions east of the Mississippi River, and the program was eliminated in the 1990s after a great 25-year run.]
The Lilly Teaching Fellows grant provided funding for 8 to 10 young faculty members each year to meet regularly as a group to discuss their teaching responsibilities. Each Fellow also received a stipend of $3500 for an instructional improvement project. We began each year with a two-day retreat in the mountains of north Georgia, and ended the year with a similar retreat on one of the beautiful barrier islands of coastal Georgia. Each Lilly Fellow also selected a mentor—a more experienced faculty member from within or outside his or her department. The impact of this program was immediate and profound, but we became increasingly anxious and sad as the end of the third and final year of funding approached.
And now I’ll share with you a beautiful example of a “defining moment”- by the definition being used here today- that occurred at the institutional level:
It was the mid 80s and a new president for the University of Georgia—Dr. Charles Knapp from Tulane University— had just been appointed. At that time each spring our Alumni Society sponsored an elaborate two-day seminar that attracted key citizens and supporter from across the state and region. That year the theme for this conference was “undergraduate teaching,” the first time the topic of teaching had been the focal point during this two-decade-long tradition. During the first day of the alumni seminar we assembled a panel of four Lilly Teaching Fellows to present and discuss with the audience how important teaching was to them as young faculty members, and how valuable the Lilly program was in providing the solid emotional and practical support needed at this critical juncture in their professional development.
Unbeknownst to us, at this panel presentation was president-elect Knapp—on his first visit to the campus since being appointed our chief academic officer. Each presentation was heart-warming and informative. As the last panelist finished her remarks, she spoke of the fact that the Lilly Teaching Fellows was in its last year of funding and, therefore, would be ending. Dr. Knapp was sitting next to our vice president for academic affairs and within seconds after this young enthusiastic assistant professor of romance languages had spoken, he leaned over and said: “I want that program continued.” That was his first fiscal decision as our new president. Over the years we have laughed many times at the following quip—“No amount of careful planning can replace good dumb luck.”
We applied for and received a three-year grant from the U.S. Office of Education (through the FIPSE program) to establish a Senior Teaching Fellows program—patterned after the Lilly program and, as before, its success led to sustained funding from the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
I cannot overemphasize the influence these two programs have had on our campus. Using the Lilly program as an example, the bonding and “spirit de corps” that has emerged each year is magical. To this day, when I run across one of the Lilly Fellows from a past year it is like meeting a best friend and realizing that the relationship is as strong as ever. The Lilly program is in its 23rd year and if you do the math you can see that we are talking about a core of about 200 faculty members who have been inoculated with the “something” that empowers them to “go public” at the drop of a hat when discussions on the importance of good teaching emerge. When you add the Senior Teaching Fellows to this group we are talking about close to 350 faculty members who comprise the substrate on which significant institutional changes in attitude toward teaching continues to evolve. This is in stark contrast to the ethos on our campus a quarter century ago. I am not exaggerating when I say that 25 years ago if you believed strongly that excellence in teaching was as important as excellence in research you kept it to yourself—for fear of being perceived as an intellectual lightweight. Today many of those who have participated in these instructional improvement activities are now vice presidents, deans, department heads, chaired research professors, mentors, and a National Academy of Science member.
One final example of how the gradual change in the culture of teaching among our faculty influenced bold administrative leadership in instruction on campus came a year after President Knapp arrived. Our vice president for academic affairs retired and a search began for her replacement. The chair of this committee was a current Senior Teaching Fellow and some of the other members of this committee had, likewise, participated in one of these two programs I just described. Unlike senior-level administrative searches in the immediate past, there was an open sense among the committee members that the next vice president in this key position needed to be someone who believed that a strong and balanced university should embody a concept of scholarship that included student learning as a central core, and one who had a record of supporting instruction—genuinely and seriously. As the four finalists made their way to the campus, one person stood out as one of balance and maturity. He was Dr. William Prokasy, a highly respected scholar in psychology who at that time was Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois.
During Dr. Prokasy’s ten years as vice president, he continued to support the initiatives of the Office of Instructional Development and added many new programs such as a study in a second discipline, large technology grants for instructional innovation, an annual campus-wide symposium that focused each year on a specific topic relating to instruction and faculty development, and an eloquent Faculty Recognition Banquet each May that honored both faculty members and teaching assistants who had distinguished records as teachers and mentors. This had been done for years in research and public service, but never for instruction.
Prior to 1981 there was no university-wide award or prize for superior teaching at the University of Georgia. There were several such awards for research and public service, some with sizeable monetary attachments. The first thing we did in the Office of Instructional Development under Dr. Trotter’s leadership was to create a campus-wide award that included a $1000 cash prize. Two such awards were given each year. After Bill Prokasy arrived he said to me one day “I want to increase the significance of this award and use it as an incentive for faculty members, particularly young faculty, to work hard, build a convincing record, and hopefully aspire some day to be eligible for the award.” He then said, “I want us to give up to five of these awards a year (at that time we had about 2,200 tenure track faculty members) and in addition to the $1000 stipend, I want to provide a permanent $5000 increase in their base pay—on top of any regular raise they receive that year. I used to love to mention this at conferences I attended and watch colleagues from other institutions turn their head. This salary adjustment is currently $6000 and may soon go to $7000. I can tell you that the Josiah Meigs Award for Excellence in Teaching is clearly one of the most coveted awards on campus. In fact, just one year ago our current provost pushed for and received the authority to name all recipients of this award “Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professors,” a lifetime special professorship designation.
To summarize the message that I trust will emerge from these remarks, I’d like to go back quickly to some of the characteristics of defining moments as revealed from research and practice in the fields of psychology and education.
First, many key turning points in our personal lives, as well as in the lives of our institutions, happen because of beliefs and convictions held firmly by individuals. We like to give the impression in academe that we operate almost solely on the basis of logic and rational thinking. Those of us who have been around awhile know this to be an exaggeration. (I always feel guilty when I occasionally have to confess this to a younger colleague.) Most “defining moments” happen because of a strong emotional component that is connected in some way to self-concept, self-worth and a value system responsible for producing the core goals and desires that individuals and organizations inherently possess. In other words, feelings, egos, attitudes, values and closely held opinions often play a more critical role in decision-making than does cognition or “objective thinking.” This is consistent with my experience that the courage of academic leaders, the care and concern of individual faculty members, and the hopes and dreams of our students, all serve as a major catalyst for change in higher education.
Second, “defining moments” tend to be random, unpredictable and fairly rare. It is hard to tell when such an event will happen. Research results suggest that considerable time (often years) usually passes before the significance of such an event is recognized. What is puzzling, actually scary, is that as teachers, academic leaders, parents or spouses, we tend not to remember things we said or did that end up being moments of great change in the lives of others.
And third, genuine “defining moments”—those rare, unpredictable serendipitous and emotionally-laden events in our lives— are transformative. They produce outcomes that are significant and are lasting. In the end they shape who we are, both as individuals and as institutions. A brief concrete example of this happened on our campus in December of 1983. Just before the winter holidays, Roland Christensen from Harvard University conducted a workshop for us on “teaching by the case method.” This is an instructional approach that is used almost exclusively at the Harvard Business School. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that this marvelous man challenged a group of 60 faculty members for two full days to examine the approaches to learning embedded in this non-traditional teaching method, something foreign to practically everyone on our campus at that time. Everyone in that workshop left after the second day talking to themselves, saying—“I’m going to make some major changes in the way I teach.” Others said “I can’t believe I’ve been teaching for all these years and have not considered putting more of the responsibility for learning on my students.” It’s been more than two decades since Professor Christensen visited our campus—and people are still talking about him. That’s what I mean by the term “transformative.”
So, here we are today, a group of scholars who have come together to celebrate the establishment of a teaching academy at this outstanding university. Behind the visible ceremonies of yesterday and today exist some defining moments, personal accounts, and a few institutional twists and turns that have significantly influenced what we are about on this April morning of 2006. The launching of your Teaching Academy has been as much about your hearts and it has been about your heads.
Modern-day research universities like Arizona State have to compete in the global market. That means: vigorous efforts to obtain funding, building expensive laboratories, purchasing powerful computing systems, doing things to enhance your national reputation, enforcing a rigorous promotion system that often rewards the more “objective” and quantifiable products of research at the possible expense of the less tangible and more qualitative outcomes associated with instruction and public service. Sometimes, big-time science is a job for gladiators; it often is fueled by political force and market-driven power—something we are seeing all over the country—and something that is leading us down a path to becoming more corporate-like in the way we operate.
Lest we lose our soul in higher education, institutions like yours and mine need to preserve and celebrate the “softer side” of our enterprise as well. We need to never forget that our sponsoring public sends to us their most precious resources—their daughters and sons to be educated.
Your Teaching Academy is not about administrative influence, but about scholars working together to create a stronger sense of community. The Teaching Academy is not about authority or power, but about servant leadership, portrayed by those among us today who have worked hard to make this a reality. The Teaching Academy is not about money and budgets, but about the precious nature of the human beings who comprise this academic community. The Teaching Academy is not about strategic planning or benchmarking, but doing what is right for students. The Teaching Academy is not a physical place abundantly equipped with the latest technology, but a sanctuary where ideas are shared and differing viewpoints can be respected. The Teaching Academy is not about annual reports or enhancing national rankings; rather you comprise a collection of individuals whose “defining moments” in the past fuel a serious desire to assist those who come here to discover how they can make a difference with their lives.
The Teaching Academy at Arizona State University is in a position to be the Fort Knox of the institution—primed as the guardian of the core values associated with the scholarship of teaching and the enterprise of learning—by students, faculty, staff and administrators.
I close by saying this: Because of your presence, when the question is asked: “Is Arizona State University a publish or perish institution?”—you can proudly say—No. “It is worse than that—you also have to teach well!”
DISTINGUISHED TEACHING ACADEMY
April 4, 2006
DEFINING MOMENTS: CHANGING THE CULTURE OF
TEACHING AT A MAJOR RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Ronald D. Simpson
I bring you greetings from the University of Georgia Teaching Academy. I am honored to be a part of this important milestone for Arizona State University. It is wonderful to be among those who believe that living the life of the mind—and sharing that ideal with students—is the premier professional enterprise in life.
Renowned psychologist Alfred Adler observed many years ago that a relatively small number of critical events in our lives usually define how we see ourselves and make choices. I would like for us to think for a few minutes about the concept of “defining moments.” How have these moments not only influenced our individual careers, but how have they served as catalysts for changing the culture of teaching at our respective institutions of higher learning.
Here is a first hand account of a “defining moment” by Professor Peter Giordano, a clinical psychologist educated at the University of North Carolina:
While an undergraduate student at Chapel Hill I had a political science professor who encouraged me to consider a graduate program at Yale University. Whether I could have actually gained admission to this program is certifiably debatable, however, the point is that a professor I held in high esteem thought I should consider it. My parents were not college graduates and one of my brothers had flunked out by the time I got there. When I arrived on campus I was intimidated by the academic game. But, this somewhat off-handed comment by a teacher, stuck with me and altered how I saw myself as a student from that day on.
Peter Giordano went on to earn a MA and PhD in clinical psychology at the Chapel Hill campus. I’m sure many of you can recall something you have experienced, as a student or a teacher, that served as a turning point in your life.
There has been research on what we call “teachable moments,” “critical events,” or what I am calling this morning—“defining moments.” What we know, based on research in this area about these potentially life-altering events, is this:
They are specific and precise moments remembered clearly by the learner.
They are rare (in the sense that people report few of them).
They are personal in nature.
They almost always possess a strong emotional dimension. In other words, a change in self-perception occurs rather than a shift in cognitive learning.
It usually takes time for the learner to realize the significance of such an event.
They are serendipitous—that is, difficult to predict.
They are transformative and
Tteachers seldom remember their role in these events.
What is amazing about this phenomenon is that a five second remark, one not even remembered by a teacher, can change a life. Fortunately, from the research reported, most of these events are positive—but not all. A careless negative remark from a professor can reverberate in a person’s memory for many years. Sometimes a negative comment can motivate a person to overcome the alleged weakness, while on other occasions the outcome remains negative.
So, do we always know when we are teaching? Do we fully realize how much our students’ beliefs about themselves and their academic disciplines impact their learning? Do we realize how many seemingly “innocuous” remarks we make in a day could become “defining moments” in the lives of our students—and, in equally important ways, in the lives of our colleagues? As an example, a vice president on our campus told me only recently that he recalls with clarity his first month, as a new faculty member, when a kind and wise senior professor told him: “Think first of whom the students are and then consider how to reach them in your teaching.” This freshly minted PhD out of Berkeley (tooled up to do ground-breaking, research in cellular biology) remembers that most of his students were non-majors and that this advice saved him from many impending disconnects. What is even more important today is the fact that this person, now an esteemed scholar in his field (in addition to being a vice president), remembers so vividly the caring manner of this wise professor. Furthermore, I know personally that he has impacted many of our younger faculty members over the years with the same advice he received from his older colleague.
This line of thinking should not suggest that cognition is unimportant. It also does not suggest that teachers should become indulgent with praise. There is already too much of that in our society today. What it does say is that providing honest feedback and authentic support is a big part of teaching; both can take place outside, as well as inside, the classroom.
So, what does all this have to do with an institution like Arizona State University? Well, the phenomenon of “critical events” or “defining moments” has a parallel at the institutional level as well. Twenty five years ago at the University of Georgia three separate faculty committees reported to then Vice President Virginia Trotter that the rapid progress of the University’s research and public service missions was, by comparison, outstripping current efforts to promote excellent instruction. To be blunt: at that time in history, many large state universities like ours harbored (appropriately so) an ambition to become first-class (or even “world class”) research universities. These aspirations led to such a rapid shift in institutional goals and rewards that many faculty members believed undergraduate education was not only being neglected, but was not respected.
While those faculty reports were well-conceived, and communicated clearly, it was Virginia Trotter’s personal commitment—a belief that things needed to change—that prompted her decision to establish a central unit—reporting directly to her—to provide increased leadership for instruction on campus. While serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Nebraska during the late 60s and early 70s, she oversaw the successful establishment of a similar unit there. It should be noted that she was the first woman to hold an office at that level at a major state university. During her years of service as Commissioner of Education in the Ford Administration, she became even more convinced that excellence in teaching should be the foundation of all educational enterprises. This became her highest priority. The beliefs and values she acquired at Nebraska and in Washington gave her the emotional strength needed to overcome resistance by some on our campus when it came to allocating additional resources for instruction and faculty support. At her funeral one of the speakers, a colleague who knew her well, made it clear that this was her proudest accomplishment as an administrator at the University of Georgia.
During the early years of developing this central unit on campus, I tumbled by accident into an opportunity, that I believe today represents the single most profound force on our campus in terms of influencing a cultural change in teaching. While attending a professional conference in Washington, D.C., I heard about a teaching fellows program that the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis was sponsoring at that time. We applied for this program and received $50,000 per annum for three years—the normal funding cycle and amount for those institutions receiving such a grant. [Unfortunately, the Lilly Endowment only funded institutions east of the Mississippi River, and the program was eliminated in the 1990s after a great 25-year run.]
The Lilly Teaching Fellows grant provided funding for 8 to 10 young faculty members each year to meet regularly as a group to discuss their teaching responsibilities. Each Fellow also received a stipend of $3500 for an instructional improvement project. We began each year with a two-day retreat in the mountains of north Georgia, and ended the year with a similar retreat on one of the beautiful barrier islands of coastal Georgia. Each Lilly Fellow also selected a mentor—a more experienced faculty member from within or outside his or her department. The impact of this program was immediate and profound, but we became increasingly anxious and sad as the end of the third and final year of funding approached.
And now I’ll share with you a beautiful example of a “defining moment”- by the definition being used here today- that occurred at the institutional level:
It was the mid 80s and a new president for the University of Georgia—Dr. Charles Knapp from Tulane University— had just been appointed. At that time each spring our Alumni Society sponsored an elaborate two-day seminar that attracted key citizens and supporter from across the state and region. That year the theme for this conference was “undergraduate teaching,” the first time the topic of teaching had been the focal point during this two-decade-long tradition. During the first day of the alumni seminar we assembled a panel of four Lilly Teaching Fellows to present and discuss with the audience how important teaching was to them as young faculty members, and how valuable the Lilly program was in providing the solid emotional and practical support needed at this critical juncture in their professional development.
Unbeknownst to us, at this panel presentation was president-elect Knapp—on his first visit to the campus since being appointed our chief academic officer. Each presentation was heart-warming and informative. As the last panelist finished her remarks, she spoke of the fact that the Lilly Teaching Fellows was in its last year of funding and, therefore, would be ending. Dr. Knapp was sitting next to our vice president for academic affairs and within seconds after this young enthusiastic assistant professor of romance languages had spoken, he leaned over and said: “I want that program continued.” That was his first fiscal decision as our new president. Over the years we have laughed many times at the following quip—“No amount of careful planning can replace good dumb luck.”
We applied for and received a three-year grant from the U.S. Office of Education (through the FIPSE program) to establish a Senior Teaching Fellows program—patterned after the Lilly program and, as before, its success led to sustained funding from the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
I cannot overemphasize the influence these two programs have had on our campus. Using the Lilly program as an example, the bonding and “spirit de corps” that has emerged each year is magical. To this day, when I run across one of the Lilly Fellows from a past year it is like meeting a best friend and realizing that the relationship is as strong as ever. The Lilly program is in its 23rd year and if you do the math you can see that we are talking about a core of about 200 faculty members who have been inoculated with the “something” that empowers them to “go public” at the drop of a hat when discussions on the importance of good teaching emerge. When you add the Senior Teaching Fellows to this group we are talking about close to 350 faculty members who comprise the substrate on which significant institutional changes in attitude toward teaching continues to evolve. This is in stark contrast to the ethos on our campus a quarter century ago. I am not exaggerating when I say that 25 years ago if you believed strongly that excellence in teaching was as important as excellence in research you kept it to yourself—for fear of being perceived as an intellectual lightweight. Today many of those who have participated in these instructional improvement activities are now vice presidents, deans, department heads, chaired research professors, mentors, and a National Academy of Science member.
One final example of how the gradual change in the culture of teaching among our faculty influenced bold administrative leadership in instruction on campus came a year after President Knapp arrived. Our vice president for academic affairs retired and a search began for her replacement. The chair of this committee was a current Senior Teaching Fellow and some of the other members of this committee had, likewise, participated in one of these two programs I just described. Unlike senior-level administrative searches in the immediate past, there was an open sense among the committee members that the next vice president in this key position needed to be someone who believed that a strong and balanced university should embody a concept of scholarship that included student learning as a central core, and one who had a record of supporting instruction—genuinely and seriously. As the four finalists made their way to the campus, one person stood out as one of balance and maturity. He was Dr. William Prokasy, a highly respected scholar in psychology who at that time was Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois.
During Dr. Prokasy’s ten years as vice president, he continued to support the initiatives of the Office of Instructional Development and added many new programs such as a study in a second discipline, large technology grants for instructional innovation, an annual campus-wide symposium that focused each year on a specific topic relating to instruction and faculty development, and an eloquent Faculty Recognition Banquet each May that honored both faculty members and teaching assistants who had distinguished records as teachers and mentors. This had been done for years in research and public service, but never for instruction.
Prior to 1981 there was no university-wide award or prize for superior teaching at the University of Georgia. There were several such awards for research and public service, some with sizeable monetary attachments. The first thing we did in the Office of Instructional Development under Dr. Trotter’s leadership was to create a campus-wide award that included a $1000 cash prize. Two such awards were given each year. After Bill Prokasy arrived he said to me one day “I want to increase the significance of this award and use it as an incentive for faculty members, particularly young faculty, to work hard, build a convincing record, and hopefully aspire some day to be eligible for the award.” He then said, “I want us to give up to five of these awards a year (at that time we had about 2,200 tenure track faculty members) and in addition to the $1000 stipend, I want to provide a permanent $5000 increase in their base pay—on top of any regular raise they receive that year. I used to love to mention this at conferences I attended and watch colleagues from other institutions turn their head. This salary adjustment is currently $6000 and may soon go to $7000. I can tell you that the Josiah Meigs Award for Excellence in Teaching is clearly one of the most coveted awards on campus. In fact, just one year ago our current provost pushed for and received the authority to name all recipients of this award “Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professors,” a lifetime special professorship designation.
To summarize the message that I trust will emerge from these remarks, I’d like to go back quickly to some of the characteristics of defining moments as revealed from research and practice in the fields of psychology and education.
First, many key turning points in our personal lives, as well as in the lives of our institutions, happen because of beliefs and convictions held firmly by individuals. We like to give the impression in academe that we operate almost solely on the basis of logic and rational thinking. Those of us who have been around awhile know this to be an exaggeration. (I always feel guilty when I occasionally have to confess this to a younger colleague.) Most “defining moments” happen because of a strong emotional component that is connected in some way to self-concept, self-worth and a value system responsible for producing the core goals and desires that individuals and organizations inherently possess. In other words, feelings, egos, attitudes, values and closely held opinions often play a more critical role in decision-making than does cognition or “objective thinking.” This is consistent with my experience that the courage of academic leaders, the care and concern of individual faculty members, and the hopes and dreams of our students, all serve as a major catalyst for change in higher education.
Second, “defining moments” tend to be random, unpredictable and fairly rare. It is hard to tell when such an event will happen. Research results suggest that considerable time (often years) usually passes before the significance of such an event is recognized. What is puzzling, actually scary, is that as teachers, academic leaders, parents or spouses, we tend not to remember things we said or did that end up being moments of great change in the lives of others.
And third, genuine “defining moments”—those rare, unpredictable serendipitous and emotionally-laden events in our lives— are transformative. They produce outcomes that are significant and are lasting. In the end they shape who we are, both as individuals and as institutions. A brief concrete example of this happened on our campus in December of 1983. Just before the winter holidays, Roland Christensen from Harvard University conducted a workshop for us on “teaching by the case method.” This is an instructional approach that is used almost exclusively at the Harvard Business School. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that this marvelous man challenged a group of 60 faculty members for two full days to examine the approaches to learning embedded in this non-traditional teaching method, something foreign to practically everyone on our campus at that time. Everyone in that workshop left after the second day talking to themselves, saying—“I’m going to make some major changes in the way I teach.” Others said “I can’t believe I’ve been teaching for all these years and have not considered putting more of the responsibility for learning on my students.” It’s been more than two decades since Professor Christensen visited our campus—and people are still talking about him. That’s what I mean by the term “transformative.”
So, here we are today, a group of scholars who have come together to celebrate the establishment of a teaching academy at this outstanding university. Behind the visible ceremonies of yesterday and today exist some defining moments, personal accounts, and a few institutional twists and turns that have significantly influenced what we are about on this April morning of 2006. The launching of your Teaching Academy has been as much about your hearts and it has been about your heads.
Modern-day research universities like Arizona State have to compete in the global market. That means: vigorous efforts to obtain funding, building expensive laboratories, purchasing powerful computing systems, doing things to enhance your national reputation, enforcing a rigorous promotion system that often rewards the more “objective” and quantifiable products of research at the possible expense of the less tangible and more qualitative outcomes associated with instruction and public service. Sometimes, big-time science is a job for gladiators; it often is fueled by political force and market-driven power—something we are seeing all over the country—and something that is leading us down a path to becoming more corporate-like in the way we operate.
Lest we lose our soul in higher education, institutions like yours and mine need to preserve and celebrate the “softer side” of our enterprise as well. We need to never forget that our sponsoring public sends to us their most precious resources—their daughters and sons to be educated.
Your Teaching Academy is not about administrative influence, but about scholars working together to create a stronger sense of community. The Teaching Academy is not about authority or power, but about servant leadership, portrayed by those among us today who have worked hard to make this a reality. The Teaching Academy is not about money and budgets, but about the precious nature of the human beings who comprise this academic community. The Teaching Academy is not about strategic planning or benchmarking, but doing what is right for students. The Teaching Academy is not a physical place abundantly equipped with the latest technology, but a sanctuary where ideas are shared and differing viewpoints can be respected. The Teaching Academy is not about annual reports or enhancing national rankings; rather you comprise a collection of individuals whose “defining moments” in the past fuel a serious desire to assist those who come here to discover how they can make a difference with their lives.
The Teaching Academy at Arizona State University is in a position to be the Fort Knox of the institution—primed as the guardian of the core values associated with the scholarship of teaching and the enterprise of learning—by students, faculty, staff and administrators.
I close by saying this: Because of your presence, when the question is asked: “Is Arizona State University a publish or perish institution?”—you can proudly say—No. “It is worse than that—you also have to teach well!”
posted by Margaret Holt | 4:11 AM
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