Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 07:13:13 PDT From: Michael Pavelich Subject: any final thoughts? Welcome to the final two days of the ACS - ASEE Conference Faculty Rewards: Can We Implement the Scholarship of Teaching? At this point we open the electrons to general discussion and concluding thoughts. We co-chairs have found the papers and discussion to be thought provoking and useful. At the very least we have helped each other get a far better handle on the issues and the data. We will thus be able to contribute more effectively to such discussions/decisions on our individual campuses. We invite each of you to share your final thoughts with the whole group. Possible approaches are: > What were some of the ideas, insights that caught your interest? > What issues were clarified for you? > What issues remain undiscussed? > What would be your answer to the Title Question? Reasoning? The paper authors are invited to contribute their summary thoughts on Friday about mid-day. The Chairs will distribute a conference evaluation form late Friday or early Monday. P.S. We do have another awesome sunrise working in downtown Golden Mike Pavelich - CSM Arlene Russell - UCLA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 09:05:52 -0500 From: "Dr. Jose Lage" Subject: Re: COPY OF PAPERS > > In response to the following, I have tried to forward copies of the four > papers to Professor Lage. Professor, if they arrive safely, let us know so > we don't open the flood gates!! > > Mark B. Freilich, Ph.D. Off. Ph. (901) 678 4445 > Department of Chemistry Off. Fax (901) 678 3447 > The University of Memphis freilichm@cc.memphis.edu > Memphis, TN 38152-0001 > Yes, I got all of them! Thank you very much. I really enjoyed this conference. I learned a lot (that's is teaching!!). Thanks for the authors of the papers, outstanding contributions! By the way: you guys have done an excellent work! Congratulations to the "chairs"!! -- Jose' L. Lage ph.(214) 768-4172 J. L. Embrey Assistant Professor fax(214) 768-1473 Mechanical Engineering Department email: JLL@SEAS.SMU.EDU Southern Methodist University www: http://www.seas.smu.edu/~jll 3160 SMU Blvd. Dallas, TX 75275-0337 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 11:04:36 -0400 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: remarks Dear Colleagues, I have some thoughts to share about the conference These are interspersed with the text below. > Faculty Rewards: Can We Implement the Scholarship of > Teaching? > I did not see a clear discussion of how we could implement the scholarship of teaching. Several examples of scholarship of teaching were proposed but none generated a consensus of agreement as to its usefulness as a widely applied recognizable sign of scholarship. My impression is that teaching has the same rewards as other occupations associated with the distaff side of an enterprise. Teaching is like raising children. It needs to be done and it is one of the most important activities that humans do and yet it is considered a lesser activity in the journals of men and women. As long as teachers say with great humility, "I am only a teacher" the way that women used to say "I am only a housewife" we will be stuck with the delema of how to reward teaching vis a vie research. The person who brings in money to an institution will always have a higher presteige that one whose sole activity is nurturing the young of a discipline even by engaging them in research at an appropriate level for their development stage. > > What were some of the ideas, insights that caught your interest? I was amazed that some faculty are under heavier teaching loads than I. I was also intrigued by how some faculty seem to be able to do it all. They are truly Renaissance professors. I think more of us are in the other mode. We do different things at different times in our career. Some do the same thing for a life time. I don't think we need to all be the same. I liked the article in C&ENews that dealt with tenure in the Oct. 23 1995 issue. > > What issues were clarified for you? I am more aware that the rewards that I seek for my efforts will not come from an administration or other external source close to home. The trusted colleague who says "nice job" may be the only external evaluation that is possible for most of us. A few will get awards at national meetings etc. and we should celebrate this time when great teaching is acknowledged. Another issue is that collegial support is ever more important. How we respond to each other as teachers in our struggles to learn and create teaching environmnets is very important. Without collegial support this would indeed be a bare wasteland. There was too much energy spent discussing the research/teaching dichotomy. This issue is unresolved and the discussion is not likely to have significant impact. > > > What issues remain undiscussed? Faculty rewards. Implimenting the scholarship of teaching. As long as publication in discipline specific education journals is not considered appropriate for tenure (and this was said in my department in a teaching institution) then implimenting scholarship of teaching will be difficult. > > What would be your answer to the Title Question? Reasoning? > I think we can and we do implement the scholarship of teaching. The degree to which this is done is not assessed effectively. Little pieces of the job are being done on many campuses. Programs are written, exercises prepared, cooperative learning and group activty strategies are being created. Assessment of student learning is being evaluated to test the value of new teaching approaches etc. Faculty rewards are another matter. Each campus is a kingdom onto itself and it is difficult to make changes. We have yet to devise a merit system on my campus. Must treat everyone fairly. So we go in lock step with a union scale. Anyway I thank you all for putting up with this long message. Best regards, Theresa Theresa Julia Zielinski Niagara University FCHEZIELI@NIAGARA.edu Chemistry Department 716-286-8257 (campus office) Niagara University NY 14109 716-639-0762 (home office) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 09:53:16 MDT From: Reed Howald Subject: Rewards >The trusted colleague who says "nice job" may be the only >external evaluation that is possible for most of us. I agree with Theresa 100% on this. The internet provides an easy and either private or semi-public way to do this. I am moved to do it here and now! Great job Theresa Zielinski. >A few will get awards at national meetings etc. and we should >celebrate this time when great teaching is acknowledged. I will also take this opportunity to comment on some of her other points. It would not take much effort on our part as the American Chemical Society to change this to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands. >Another issue is that collegial support is ever more important. >How we respond to each other as teachers in our struggles to learn and >create teaching environmnets is very important. Without collegial >support this would indeed be a bare wasteland. Yes! >There was too much energy spent discussing the research/teaching >dichotomy. This issue is unresolved and the discussion is >not likely to have significant impact. > > > What issues remain undiscussed? >Faculty rewards. Implementing the scholarship of teaching. >As long as publication in discipline specific education journals >is not considered appropriate for tenure (and this was said in my >department in a teaching institution) then implementing >scholarship of teaching will be difficult. This is all worth repeating with improved spelling. As we are now summarizing this conference, I would like to comment on a point Theresa emphasized in the 1993 CHEMCONF but has omitted here: The need for quantitative measures of successful teaching. Dr. Logan right now on another list is looking for quantitative results showing the improved learning from a cooperative education approach to convince a principal (at the high school level, I think) that discussions of this between his faculty and community college faculty is not a waste of time. It is easy to teach students who are already self motivated and eager to learn. We have all seen chemistry teachers who have given up on the bottom third of their classes. But it is at that level that truly inspired teaching pays great dividends. I think that in the current climate we should give and keep records of final examinations given at the beginning as well as at the end of all our courses. Sincerely, Reed Howald Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Montana State University Bozeman, MT 59717 "uchrh@earth.oscs.montana.edu" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 16:10:49 GMT From: Zvi Grauer Subject: Re: any final thoughts? >At this point we open the electrons to general discussion and >concluding thoughts. I was wondering how we can fit the increasing use of adjunct professors with our ideals about teaching and research. Using adjuncts is becoming a popular way to cut costs, since their pay is 75-35% that of tenure track faculty, they do not get benefits, and they are disposable, allowing flexibility in staffing according to enrollment level. Due to the low pay, the adjuncts either teach 4-6 courses a semester to make ends meet, or teach for "pocket money" in addition to social security or wages from a full time job. They have little time and incentive to improve teaching and practically no option to do research. I would appreciate comments from the distinguished presenters in this conference and their learned colleagues who were so active at the first days of the conference. Zvi Grauer. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 16:40:35 GMT From: Zvi Grauer Subject: Re: remarks Another isuue I am facing now that is hampering the advancement of good teaching is that of fragemntation. I have been teaching in two colleges for 3 years and in that time used 3 books and 4 syllabi to teach the same course. If we could come to an agreement on the material we need to teach at the courses common to all institutions) we will be able to form a database of questions, demonstrations, analogies, tests, etc that can be used as the foundation to teach from, with each institute adding its own flavor and personal touch (I am refering to courses like preparatory chemistry, chemistry for non scientist, general chemistry for allied health students, not advanced courses.) As it is right now, every teacher is spending time perfecting his class without benefitting people outside his department, and this process of reinventig the wheel is very inefficient. Perhaps we could use this forum as a means to improve communication and reduce duplicity of efforts, and a the same time standardize requirements so that transfer students will benefit as well. Zvi. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 11:03:41 -0700 From: Kevin Karplus Subject: Re: any final thoughts? Zvi Grauer asked about non-tenure track faculty (he said "adjunct professors", but in many places that title is still used sparingly, with "instructors", "lecturers", or other less prestigious titles being used for the part-time or non-ladder rank faculty). There is certainly a lot of concern by faculty about the trend in many institutions towards using "disposable faculty". The American Association of University Professors has been gathering statistics, preparing statements, and trying to fight the trend for years, without notable success. I have no particular citations, but browsing through the last year's copies of "Academe" should find you some information fairly quickly about the scope of the problem, as well as discussions about why it is a problem. In my department (Computer Engineering at University of California, Santa Cruz), we do hire instructors. The combined Computer Engineering and Computer and Information Sciences departments have 26 tenure track faculty, 2 emeriti recalled for part-time teaching or research, and up to 9 instructors or visitors. Several of the faculty take fairly frequent sabbatical leave or unpaid leaves of absence, so the available ladder-rank teaching staff is often only 22 (this quarter, for example). Some of the instructors are full-time University employees, whose teaching for our department is only part of their duties (for example, a writing instructor who co-teaches the technical writing course with an engineering professor, or a multi-media expert who is teaching a class on developing WWW sites). Others are visiting faculty from other departments or other universities. A few fall into the category of temporary or part-time employees. These are usually hired because they have expertise in some field that we feel needs teaching, but which none of our ladder-rank faculty are expert in (such as software engineering). A very few are hired from industry to teach the low-level design and lab courses that the full-time faculty burn out on too often. The temporary faculty who teach graduate or upper-division courses are selected because of their outstanding expertise, and have not caused any quality-control problem (at least, no more so than any other research-oriented faculty). In fact, since they are teaching strictly in their main interest area, they may actually do a better job than ladder-rank faculty who are forced to teach outside their main expertise. The success rate for the lower-level non-tenure-track faculty varies enormously. Some of them have been inspiring teachers whose real-world engineering experience has been a great asset to the students. Others have been complete turkeys. We do evaluate the instructors carefully, through several mechanisms: end-quarter student evaluations informal feedback from the teaching assistants comments from the faculty who see the students in follow-on courses evaluation by co-teachers (for team-taught courses) The temporary teachers who do a poor job are not re-hired, while the ones who do a good job get rehired frequently. If we rehire someone often enough, the union rules require us to start offering multi-year contracts. This review and re-hire process has meant that the students have not had that many really bad teachers, and the instructors do have incentive to improve both their own teaching and the content of the courses. The full-time faculty also spend a fair amount of time on determining the content of the courses that temporary teachers teach (it has to be updated every three or four years in computer engineering anyway), and we keep full files of all handouts and exams used in the courses, as resources for new teachers. (The course files are required for all classes for ABET accreditation anyway.) Overall, I'd say that the use of temporary faculty in our departments has been fairly successful, allowing us to teach a broad range of courses with fairly small departments. With only 26 permanent faculty, we offer 46 undergrad courses (not counting the associated lab courses) and 42 grad courses (not counting 2-unit seminars or the 2-unit teaching/research training for new grads). Many of the undergrad courses are taught 2 or 3 times a year, but several of the grad courses are only taught alternate years. Since many of the participants in this discussion are chemists, I'll included what little information I have on the Chemistry and Biochemistry department. They have 21 faculty and 2 active emeriti and teach 27 undergrad courses and 39 grad courses (counting the proseminars, but not counting labs). Only 4 of their courses are offered twice a year---none are offered 3 times. I've no idea how many instructors the chem department hires---relatively few, I think. Chemistry does have a somewhat larger number of lab courses than computer engineering (16 undergrad labs vs 8), but this affects TA assignments more than it does instructor assignments. One of the assistant professors in chemistry (Bakthan Singaram) won a teaching award last year (selected by the Academic Senate's Committee on Teaching based on nominations that had to be signed by at least 5 faculty, students, or alumni), so they must be doing some things right. The other four awardees were in Literature, Spanish Language, Environmental Studies, and Music. All were either lecturers or assistant professors. Bottom-line: non-tenure track faculty can be either good or bad for students' education. Over-reliance on them is a warning sign of insufficient commitment to teaching (at either the departmental or institutional level), but judicious use of non-tenure track faculty can greatly expand the variety of courses available to students. Kevin Karplus karplus@cse.ucsc.edu http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus Due to budgetary constraints the light at the end of the tunnel is being turned off. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 14:27:28 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: final discussion Colleagues: I too have been disappointed in this discussion. Dr. Zielinski voiced many of my concerns, however there are other aspects of our new reality which have gone without comment. This era of shrinking budgets has and continues to affect every aspect of academic life. During this conference we have a unique opportunity to begin to set the agenda for the needed changes in the description of academic institutions, in the ways that we want to be described and evaluated. Given the Federal (United States, especially) budget quagmire, it is unrealistic to expect increased funding for research, decreases are to be expected in fact. At present fewer than one in five proposals are being funded by the National Institutes of Health. With this ratio becoming more unfavorable, how realistic is it to task new faculty with unproved research track records to bring in funds, do modern, competitive research? Aren t they being set up for failure? What about us? How long can we continue to ignore this reality? Secondly, all too many university administrators have abandoned their faculty when faced with hostile state legislatures. They have wholeheartedly caved in (agreed actually) to the charges and allegations lodged against the professoriate, lending these charges a validity that is without foundation and leading to their wider acceptance. Nevertheless, these same administrators return to campus and conduct faculty evaluations (tenure, promotion, merit pay increases ) as if we were still in the glory days of the 1960 s. If we are to survive, with any vestiges of the academic ideal that we brought to this profession, we need to get our heads out of the sand. We need to recognize these new challenges and deal with them. A valuable contribution can be made by this conference. Are we up to it? Mary Mary L. Swift Voice: 202-806-6289 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Fax : 202-806-5784 College of Medicine Howard University E-mail: mswift@umd5.umd.edu Washington DC 20059-0001 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 14:47:14 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: remarks >Another isuue I am facing now that is hampering the advancement of good >teaching is that of fragemntation. I have been teaching in two colleges for >3 years and in that time used 3 books and 4 syllabi to teach the same course. > >If we could come to an agreement on the material we need to teach at the >courses common to all institutions) we will be able to form a database of >questions, demonstrations, analogies, tests, etc that can be used as the >foundation to teach from, with each institute adding its own flavor and >personal touch (I am refering to courses like preparatory chemistry, >chemistry for non scientist, general chemistry for allied health students, >not advanced courses.) > While this sounds all very simple in theory, practice is something else again since the curriculum in each institution draws on the strengths and weaknesses of the faculty, staff, equipment, background of the student body, ultimate career goal of the students, etc. Depending on the institution these parameters may be stable or in continual flux, classes homo- or heterogeneous etc. If your chair teaches the course for which yours is prerequisite and he/she wishes something taught -- you teach it, especially if junior and untenured -- chair changes, or instructor of the next course changes, and what you teach changes - sometimes quite drastically. Or the state med-schools change their admissions requirments and up or down goes the organic content. >As it is right now, every teacher is spending time perfecting his class >without benefitting people outside his department, and this process of >reinventig the wheel is very inefficient. Perhaps we could use this forum >as a means to improve communication and reduce duplicity of efforts, and a >the same time standardize requirements so that transfer students will >benefit as well. > >Zvi. Part of the problem is that most first year books have become encylopaedic and impossible to cover in the totality. Which chapters to choose --- they are all there sicne at one instituion or another someone demands them and the publishers want as wide an audience as possible --- up goes the size and price and the readability barrier. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 14:27:45 -0600 From: Charles Sundin 608-342-1651 Subject: Re: remarks - reduce duplicity of efforts >As it is right now, every teacher is spending time perfecting his class >without benefitting people outside his department, and this process of >reinventig the wheel is very inefficient. Perhaps we could use this forum >as a means to improve communication and reduce duplicity of efforts, > >Zvi. I agree. We all can share so much with each other. I have been spending considerable amount of time placing old quizzes and exams on the WEB. If they can help your students, let them know. They contain quite a bit of graphics so will take some time to load. http://www.ems.uwplatt.edu/sci/chem/fac/sundin/353/353plcy5.htm Charles Sundin UW-Platteville http://vms.www.uwplatt.edu/~sundin/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 14:39:52 -0500 From: "P.C. Wankat" Subject: Re: any final thoughts? Zvi Grauer has raised the interesting question of adjunct professors which is easily extended to instructors, part-timers etc. I see both sides of the story as professor of chem. engr. and Head of Freshman Engineering. As Head I have hired and kept part-time (but permanent positions with benefits and job security) instructors for supplemental instruction courses in chemistry and mathematics at the freshman level and as academic advisors. None of the people I have hired over the years has had a PhD. They have BS or MS degrees in counseling, chemistry, mathematics or engineering. The majority of them have been spouses of professors who wanted a part-time job and wanted flexibility. Their student ratings in class or as advisors have varied from adequate to outstanding. There have been no bummers in the group. Several of these employees have told me they did not want to be part of the tenure track rat-race they saw their spouses involved in. I pay them less than the going industrial rate, but provide instead extended flexibility. We arrange hours to fit their schedules, provide leaves of absence when the spouse has sabbatical, allow extended vacations (up to 2 months) and in general accomodate their needs as long as the teaching and advising schedules are met or covered. This procedure has worked out very well, and I do not feel it is exploitive. I have also on occassion hired temporaries when I had non-reccurring funds. Several of these employees were later hired into permanent positions when openings occurred. A few were leaving the country as soon as their spouses graduated and they only wanted temporary work. One took a permanent position teaching high school chemistry instead of waiting until a position opened up in Freshman Engineering. Again, we have had no bad experiences in either advising or teaching with the temporaries. Hiring temporaries could easily become exploitive (no benefits, lower pay, no job security, often no office and so forth). I think we have avoided this but the potential is very real. I know colleagues in tenure-track positions who were exploited at other universities. And a few of the correspondents at this conference may well fit into this category. There are two points to this ramble. First, the non-tenure track positions may be what the employee wants (I know they often are not, but sometimes they are.) And second, Any system can be exploitive or nonexploitive depending on how the boss and the institution uses it. Phil Wankat ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 16:41:34 -0400 From: reeves Subject: Re: Doyle paper The issue of undergraduate research in chemical education is being given the credit it deserves for the education of junior and senior chemistry majors. There is no question in my mind that this experience is as effective as any at preparing chemistry majors for the worlds of industry and especially graduate school. Most of our successful graduates who have done research bear witness to that fact. Our faculty who engage undergraduates in research are given little credit for their efforts, which, as was pointed out, often bear little fruit in the area of published results since so much effort is required in training students that may only be working on the project for a semester or two. What concerns me, however, is that this not be seen as the answer to the research vs. teaching credit debate, because these arguments are not relevant to the vast majority of students who take chemistry, namely, those "serviced" by our introductory general and organic courses. Indeed, it is their experiences in these courses that will either inspire or sour students to careers in chemistry, and the development of a working knowledge of science. The educational efforts that work with these students generally don't involve traditional research. In these areas, instructors involved in producing and evaluating new educational materials that make use of current models for effective learning (the learning cycle, to replace "verification" labs with "discovery" labs, cooperative learning, introduction of technology into the lab experience, etc.) are likely to make the biggest contribution to student understanding and enthusiasm for science. The general lack of support for the efforts of these faculty is the key issue for me, since even when they publish textbooks, software, laboratory manuals and educational research articles, they are given little or no real credit for these efforts when decisions about promotion and tenure are made. (Incidentally, I've found that the "peer review" process for authors of textbooks and other materials from major publishing houses is often far tougher than I ever faced when I submitted a paper for the traditional literature.) With this in mind, I'd like to suggest a mechanism for evaluation of faculty. Each year, the chair and/or senior faculty meets with each member of the department and discusses his/her role and objectives for the next year. As much as possible, the meeting should strive to reach a consensus between the faculty member's desires and departmental needs. Teaching and committee assignments would be made based on these discussions. More importantly, rewards would be based on the degree to which the faculty member met the expectations set forth in the meeting. It is the faculty's job to identify those areas that need attention, and the chair's job to try to allocate resources to meet the needs. Departments who "service" a large number of students through introductory courses would have an obligation to assign resources to providing the best educational experience possible for these students. Winning over the faculty to this idea is, of course, the problem, but to deny the need is to defy logic and the overwhelming body of evidence that these courses need more attention. They are, after all, the primary source of the FTE's (Full time equivalents or credit hours) that administrators use to decide the number of faculty and the level of resources that a department will receive. Some faculty may choose to devote part of their career to that pursuit, or faculty might be hired specifically with that goal in mind. In either event, faculty who had the mission of teaching and improving the introductory experience would receive the same rewards/promotions as any other faculty member. Am I dreaming? Jimmy Reeves, Director The Center for Teaching Excellence University of North Carolina at Wilmington 601 S. College Rd. Wilmington, NC 28403 910-395-3034 910-350-4000 fax http:\\cte.uncwil.edu reeves@uncwil.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 18:19:25 -0400 From: Phil Labonte Subject: Re: remarks unsubsrcibe me from this please!!!! how do I get out of this mail group!!!! Help ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 19:13:05 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: Reeves comments Dr. Reeves has set out a schema for change, and one that would allow for the faculty to define its' role. It could be flexible, adjusting to the changing demands on academe. I hope we can pick up this thread and develop it. Mary Mary L. Swift Voice: 202-806-6289 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Fax : 202-806-5784 College of Medicine Howard University E-mail: mswift@umd5.umd.edu Washington DC 20059-0001 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 19:41:41 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: any final thoughts? >Zvi Grauer has raised the interesting question of adjunct professors which >is easily extended to instructors, part-timers etc. > We are in the unfortunate position of not being able to have ongoing "part-time" people, no matter how good, if they teach more than one and a half courses --- otherwise if they do it for two years it is taken as meaning that there is need for a full time position and the position must be converted to full time. The Faculty Association and the University used to agree to waive this regulation but as a result of acourt case they now stricly apply it -- if some one wants a significant ammount of part time work on a continuing basis, they can't have it - the job gets rotated to someone else so that a case isn't established for a tenure track position. This causes problems in fine Arts where positions of Visiting Artists are hard to fill since they would often like the position for more than one year. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 22:29:44 -0500 From: Joseph Bellina Subject: Teaching and Research (long) Reading Teresa's remarks of this morning reminded me a a letter our Vice-president of academic affairs wrote some time ago to JChemEd, having to do with issues of teaching and research. I thought you might like to read it. In spring 1992, the chair of our chemistry department sent me a copy of "Research and Scholarly Work in Chemical Education* an outline of activities to be considered appropriate scholarly work in the field of chemical education. Although the delay in my response may render it unproductive, I still have the need to address a specific concern. Before I identify that concern, let me note that I am a chemist. Although I presently serve as the chief academic officer of this institution, for about twenty years I was a*member of the chemistry faculty at this college, serving as chair of the department for almost a decade. I have no disagreement at all with the premise that the activities listed in the task force outline are valuable and significant and should be considered assets in evaluations of chemistry faculty members being considered for tenure or promotion. Assuming that the areas in which performance will be judged include teaching, research/scholarship, and service, I object to the items under 1. (Development of New Courses and or Curricula...) and 5. (Contributions Toward Instructional Improvement) being categorized as research and scholarly work. Activities shown under 1. and 5. are teaching. Design of new courses or new course content is teaching. Teaching is not walking into a room and interacting with students or correcting their papers, period. It is the extended creative, intellectual engagement of a faculty member that results in an affective student/teacher interaction. As any true teacher will confirm, a major part of the process of teaching lies in the preparation for what will happen in the classroom or laboratory setting. It seems to me that the categorization that you propose attempts to give weight and value to these activities by declaring them research/scholarship. Why not recognize them as teaching and give them the same weight and value and reward they would get if they were considered scholarship? You might consider a rule I've come to recognize as useful. Faculty activity with students as the target audience is teaching. Faculty activity with peers as the target audience is scholarship/research. Thus, developing a new course and offering it to students is teaching and, assuming a good job is done, it is or should be among the most notable and reward-worthy achievements possible for a faculty member being judged as one "whose emphasis is in the area of chemical education". If the same new course development is presented to peers (through a workshop or a paper at a meeting of chemical educators or publication in a suitable journal) and offers new insights or new ideas of demonstrated success at reaching students, then that is scholarship/research and should be recognized and rewarded as such. To me, the publication of a textbook seems appropriate as scholarship/research because, although the ultimate target is the student, the proximate beneficiaries are peers who gain access to another tool which may assist them in accomplishing their task as teachers. The same "text" prepared for use solely by one*s own classes is teaching. The act of teaching must be seen and addressed as a creative, intellectually challenging, demanding and complex activity carried on by professionals who are just as skilled in their specialty as research faculty are in theirs. Teaching scholarship is a natural extension of teaching and the transition from one to the other is not knife-sharp; in my view the task force*s boundary marker underestimates the domain of teaching and, therefore, unintentionally devalues teaching. I suspect the only real solution to this is to stop placing activities in categories and, instead, to judge the individual*s contribution as a seamless whole. In contrast to the impression left by the main thrust of the letter, my general reaction to the division*s and the task force*s work is extremely positive. You reinforce my long-held conviction that the American Chemical Society, in general, is much more sensitive to the individual missions of its various component constituencies that are many other professional organizations. It is this characteristic that has kept me a member of the ACS for all these years. Any comments? ------------------------------