Provost outlines ways to improve teaching

and Lisa Levenson In the keynote address of a University-wide conference focused on helping students learn, Provost Stanley Chodorow yesterday outlined broad ideas for improving teaching at the University. Following a brief introduction by conference planning committee chairperson and Associate English Professor Alice Kelley, the provost said he wants University faculty and staff to "devote more energy, more attention and more time to teaching." Chodorow said he realizes this goal is not easily achieved at a large research institution like the University. For this reason, though, he said teaching should be made "a greater part of University life," enlivening the University's intellectual culture by engaging a faculty "worthy of the students we admit." He urged the more than 80 graduate students, staff and faculty members in attendance to emphasize teaching as much as research and other scholarly pursuits, and to make their courses as challenging as their other endeavors. Chodorow also encouraged students to do creative work and to stretch the limits of their ability. "Hold students to the highest standards that they are capable," he said. "Judgment is thine -- use it." Chodorow cautioned faculty members, though, to maintain formal relationships with their students, in order to give them "fair and true assessments" of their work. "Treat students not only as learners, but as people," he said. "Friendship is not a model of the teacher-student relationship. "[Faculty should] hold students at an arm's length," he added. "Teaching is essential to our stature and self-esteem." The provost suggested that to have maximal impact, the faculty needs to act as one community, leaning on each other as parts of a whole. Improving the intra- and inter-departmental communication process regarding courses will make faculty members more effective teachers, he added. "We need to balance individual academic freedom with the responsibilities of the enterprise, to create consensus," he said. To strike such a balance, the responsibility for determining a department's curriculum should come from an annual meeting of the professors in that department, he added. Following his prepared remarks, Chodorow was peppered with questions from the academic audience. In response to concerns raised about the assessment of faculty members' contributions to University life, Chodorow said teaching does not occur only in the classroom. He encouraged faculty members to become involved in activities like undergraduate advising, and said he plans to issue a memorandum to aid departments in determining "what a good record of teaching looks like." To maintain a standard of academic quality in all courses, Chodorow said teachers should be required to tell exactly what is taught in their classrooms -- especially for required courses and courses taught in study-abroad programs. The provost mentioned that many professors doubt their colleagues' curricular integrity and that a regulation on each professor's curriculum would alleviate such distrust. "Every time I see a course where everybody gets an A, I think somebody's not doing their job," he said. Chodorow emphasized the value of cross-department communication, and said, in an interview following his speech, that the current state of communication between professors within departments is "inadequate." Although professors and administrators blame the lack of linkages between University schools and departments on responsibility-centered budgeting -- the University's fiscal management strategy -- Chodorow said only the application of the system is flawed. "I am not entirely persuaded that the concept is bad," he said. "I want to deal with it as I recognize that it becomes an obstacle?to come at it indirectly." He told the audience that he is working with University President Judith Rodin to review and reform undergraduate education. He added that he will oversee these new efforts at the University. Mathematics Professor and Undergraduate Department Chairperson Dennis DeTurck said he was "encouraged" by the ideas the provost expressed relating to programs that look across disciplines. "Departments should work together, as partners, toward the general education of students," he said. "It's starting to happen, but it's hard."

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