Author: Diane Baird

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT)

Keywords: Carnegie Foundation, scholarship, teaching, research

Article style and source: Interview. Original ultiBASE publication.

Contents

• Introduction
• Visit to Australia by Dr Charles Glassick

Introduction

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of University Teaching is a major force behind a reconsideration of scholarship. The Foundation, based in Princeton, New Jersey, was endowed by Andrew Carnegie in 1904. This nonprofit corporation `conducts studies and publishes reports intended to shape public debate regarding education'. As a policy centre, the Carnegie Foundation has contributed many research studies, policy reports, and publications to inform debate about education.

In 1990 under President Ernest Boyer, The Foundation published Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The goal of Scholarship Reconsidered was:

...to move beyond the debate about `teaching versus research' as faculty priorities, and to give scholarship a broader, more efficacious meaning...we propose a new paradigm of scholarship, one with four separate yet interlocking parts: the discovery of knowledge, the integration of knowledge, the application of knowledge, and the scholarship of teaching.

In Scholarship Assessed, first, we identify certain qualities of character that should be expected of all scholars. Second, we propose a set of six standards which can guide the evaluation and documentation of scholarship, whatever its field or form. Third, we suggest that all scholarly work be subject to peer review and that the sources and types of evidence be rich and varied. Fourth, we note that faculty members must have confidence in the evaluation procedures and suggest attributes of a trustworthy process.

Visit to Australia by Dr Charles Glassick

Dr. Charles Glassick is Interim President of The Carnegie Foundation. On March 12, 1997 Dr. Glassick visited RMIT. He met with Vice Chancellor David Beanland and senior academic staff to discuss change in higher education. He also gave a public lecture entitled `What Hope for Scholarship'. During his visit, Dr. Glassick talked with ultiBASE. Qualities of belief and trust underlie Dr. Glassick's commitment to the vision of The Carnegie Foundation. There is a belief in the need and possibility for change, and a trust that individuals can effect this change. Dr. Glassick says:

What we believe is that our formulation will simply shape the debate, provide a simple enough statement of things for the discussion to occur, and to reconsider scholarship means to take maybe our formulation and talk on your own campus about what it means. We clearly have learned that the second step after we decide what that means on our campuses is to decide how we can measure the quality...to prove to our colleagues that we still can measure quality, even if we re-define scholarship.

We have our own methodology called Scholarship Assessed, which we think...starts the debate, gives us a vocabulary for discussing the quality of different communities of scholars. There are several institutions in the United States that have adopted this formulation as the methodology for their promotion and tenure committees, for their hiring and retention committees.

Although change is possible, it is also slow. Glassick and The Foundation acknowledge the delay but encourage the process that makes change occur:

Higher education changes slowly and this is a very fundamental change and very fundamental area. Was it Machiavelli who said that those who have prospered under the old system aren't too likely to endorse any new system...So it's been slow. Again, we're finding institutions that have adopted it...Many are looking at it and taking these [ideas] and modifying it slightly. But it is introducing change in higher education in the United States; I think there's no doubt about it...I truly believe that in the next decade, higher education in the United States will be characterised by faculty moving towards the `scholarship of application'.

This type of scholarship, defined by Ernest Boyer, focuses on engagement. Boyer cites three questions that structure the concerns of the scholarship of application: `How can knowledge be responsibly applied to consequential problems? How can it be helpful to individuals as well as institutions? Can social problems themselves define an agenda for scholarly investigation?'

All types of scholarship centre around time. Boyer says that faculty time is `the single concern around which all others pivot.' Glassick agrees completely with this view:

...faculty time or academic staff time is the most valuable asset we have on our campuses and we do tend to squander it. We ask for another report that might take hours to gather, or suddenly appoint a new committee and put a lot of people on it. Maybe you don't do that in Australia, but we surely do in the United States; just squander the time, and yet it is the most valuable asset. We don't have a proposal that saves faculty time, but I think we do have proposals that focus it. This is what is important; this is what you should be working on. We think that's a helpful thing to be talking about. Particularly with new scholars that come into our community: `What's expected of me? What should I do? ` Well, here is...a definition of scholarship and here are the criteria that we consider related to their excellence. It focuses the conversation and I think that's helpful.

The more time you get involved with students - in fact the more freedom you give students in their education - the more time it takes to work it through. However, faculty respond to what is valued in their environment, and [what is ] useful. If the institution says `We truly mean that we value your interaction with students', then they'll do it. Our studies of faculty satisfaction show that faculty satisfaction is more closely related to being appreciated, being valued, than it is related to salary. If you're clear about what is expected, faculty will respond.

One reality of academic work is survival by specialisation. Across disciplines, academics tend to define increasingly small areas of concentration in their work. Dr. Glassick was asked whether this trend might work against a `scholarship of integration':

That's one of the problems with defining and talking about the scholarship of integration: we get socialised in our graduate schools to focus more narrowly, rather than the scholarship of integration which is a synthesising of scholarly work. I think what's happened...in the United States is a perceived irrelevance: that higher education isn't worrying about things that we're worrying about. They're off here in this tiny little niche, caught up in some sub-, sub-speciality, while we're out here struggling with all these huge problems in the environment. However, one of the places where scholarship of integration is prospering is at the work of intersection of fields. You can still have a speciality there, and working with another scholar: bio-engineering, psycholinguistics, things like that...There is room for the scholarship of integration, but clearly it is impeded by sub-specialisation.

Pressure of time and increasing specialisation combine to influence research projects. Glassick notes that the nature of research is being affected:

We noted [a lack of collaboration] in those areas where people developed quantitative measures for promotion and tenure; that is, ten points for a book and so on. The scholars told us that this led to short, safe research projects. They weren't willing to take any chances and they certainly didn't want to mess around with other people; they wanted to get on with it themselves...Short, safe research projects. It is very scary. I like to quote some longitudinal studies on the effect of education on undergraduates, and I noted all of them had stopped. They're not doing them any more. They're fearful they won't find anything and they can't run the risk!

Charles Glassick did not begin his career as a teacher, although he had had a continuing involvement in education. It was the result of his work as a chemist that led him into teaching:

I have been a chemist...I was a researcher; I hold several patents (they've probably expired by now)...I discovered a chemical that cured a disease on a certain crop. Because this gets unpleasant, I don't want to identify the company. It was highly successful and did it wonderfully well, but the government wouldn't approve it because if cows ate this, it tended to get into the milk and then the chemical would get into babies. That was unacceptable and I understood that. So the company couldn't sell it in the United States, so they began to sell it overseas. So I resigned. I wouldn't stay with them for that [reason]...Somebody then offered me a job in teaching...and it turned out to be exactly the right thing and a wonderful thing! I had been teaching part time in the evenings at Temple University and I'd come home from work and be excited about going out and teaching in the evening. I thought, I've got this backwards!

I went into teaching and I taught for about sixteen years. Then I was given an opportunity to study administration to see if I liked it or not...and I did and I did. Then eventually I became a college president. After that, when you are a college president for twelve years as I was, and offered a job to come to an academic think tank [The Carnegie Foundation], it is like dying and going to heaven. I snapped that up and went to work with Ernie Boyer...

As a college president, Glassick continued teaching, but with reservations:

I think it may have been a selfish thing. It's hard enough for a freshman to get up the courage to go knock on a professor's door to ask [questions], but they never knocked on the president's door.

I finally gave it up because I thought I may not be treating the students as well and properly as I should be: my own unavailability, my own schedule, the differences, [student reluctance] to come in and spend half an hour in the president's office working on a chemistry problem, so I gave it up. I never felt good about that. I still miss teaching and I still miss the students...their attitudes, their values, they're always sort of challenging, always thoughtful. I just miss that in my life.

Glassick's own teaching was modelled on one of the teachers who was an inspiration to him:

It was a man named Dick Hill...He taught the subject [chemistry] in the way it was discovered. He would teach the subject as if we were all researchers unfolding this topic area. He led us through the discovery of the material that finally was to be presented to us. I think it was there that I learned the beauty of deductive reasoning, of critical thinking, of analytical thinking, of perhaps the sense of discovery, the joy of moving to the next level of complexity. He is a person who has just stayed with me, and now we happen to live only about an hour apart, which is a great joy in my life.

[Teaching like Hill] is very difficult! It requires a lot of work and I never forgave him for it! [The method] is generalizable, but not completely so, nor ever completely appropriate. So no one should ever advocate one particular form. But I do believe it's a methodology that people should be thoughtful about...It brings in original literature on the topic, helps the student get back into the library and the fundamental learning in that way. I think it's at least partly generalizable...It's more than the transmission of knowledge. It's sort of the sense of, okay, this is scholarship. This is what a scholar did to arrive at the point that I want to tell you about, and I think I became a scholar because of that.

When asked to define excellence in teaching and learning, Glassick explains his ideas in terms of those developed at The Carnegie Foundation:

Well, I would define it by our criteria in the assessment of scholarship...The actual , careful definition of it varies so much from discipline to discipline that I think you have to talk about the standards for scholarly excellence. The scholarship of teaching is the most difficult form of scholarship. Partly because it is very difficult, but also partly because you have to do it day after day, week after week, month after month, whereas in research, you can kind of set your own pace...

First of all, I'll just say that the scholar when he or she goes into the classroom must have clear goals. Now I understand that your institution is very good on that, but sometimes when the individual walks into the classroom, too often it's simply information transfer. A thoughtful scholar in the classroom will have many goals: the development of critical thinking, development of deductive reasoning, clarification of civic values, a whole series of goals. Secondly, the scholar must be prepared and that relates back to...faculty time. You have to keep up with the literature, you have to prepare for this lecture. You can prepare for teaching eternally; you can never quite be ready, so preparation is a very difficult aspect...Then you must use the appropriate methods once you get there and we are very poorly trained in methods...Once we use the appropriate methods...then we have to measure whether we have achieved those goals, so we have to have evaluation techniques...to really measure what we said we were going to, and then maybe as a learning experience in itself. Then of course all of scholarship must have effective communication, especially in teaching...Finally, when the scholar is done with that hour in the classroom, he or she must reflectively critique it...What went right, what went wrong, how can I do it better; all of that is part of the scholar's responsibility.

Those attributes that I've just defined I think sort of define good teaching. But you'll note that I focussed on scholarly attributes in teaching. I got into a nice debate today with someone who wanted to talk about the personal attributes of teaching: that sense of vitality and liveliness; that sense of creating interest and of creating an attractiveness for the ideas and for the concepts. All those are also part of the human dynamic of teaching, but I was just talking about the scholarly ones.

Charles Glassick is an enthusiastic person, and has praise for the academic initiatives he has observed in Australia:

...you know what really is significant to me here? To come to Australia and find out just how dedicated you are about teaching and how far ahead of our country you are on that. To come to the realisation that we in the United States had better stop this thinking that we know what's going on and go out and find out what's going on. This has been a real revelation to me. You work very hard. You're not doing it perfectly, and you wouldn't say you were, but you are really working harder at teaching and at a reward for teaching than we have.

I think your institutions are organised to care about that. The very fact that you have these groups on professional development, groups on teaching; it's all so much a part of your vocabulary and your discussion here. And still you struggle with the idea that it is perceived that research is what is rewarded and not teaching. From the Vice-Chancellor on down, everyone is saying the same thing about the importance of teaching.

Looking to the future, Glassick is clear about the priorities for The Carnegie Foundation:

First of all, we will immediately begin to survey those institutions that have undertaken Scholarship Reconsidered and Scholarship Assessed. We will pull them together in a conference...to share [their experiences]...We will invite those Australian institutions who are interested to make a contribution and also to learn. That's an immediate, pragmatic priority. Then, beyond that of course, the future of the Foundation will be set by its new president, Lee Shulman, who will focus on learning and teaching. As I get involved and can work with him, I would move now to looking at the graduate schools...We need to think about a broader model for the preparation of the future faculty in terms of a broader sense of what scholarship is and a broader sense of what teaching is, a more rigorous preparation for going into the academy.

Interview recorded on 12 March 1997.

Additional resources

Michael Jackson's review of Scholarship Reconsidered.

Bibliography of articles and books by Lee Shulman.

About the author