editorially speakinq Chemistry and Education: Faculty Considerations Faculty at postsecondary institutions are facing future shock, an idea developed in Alvin Toffler's book of the same name published in 1970. 'Ibffler argued that many segments of society would have extreme difficulty coping with the rapid changes occurring in everyday life as a result of the rapid rate of technological advances. The future shock facing the faculty is not so much the result of technological changes, hut rather the impact of rapidly changing expectations on their professional lifestyles. Large numbers of faculty were hired in the late 1970's and 1980's with the understanding that they were to strive to bewme "great researchers", and academic institutions attempted to maximize their efforts in attaining that goal. During this period a surfeit of resources, mostly derived from Federal sources, created a departmental amhiance that encouraged entrepreneurial research activities at the expense of classroom teaching. Departments increased undergraduate class sizes and hired less expensive, temporary instructors to accommodate to this diversion of faculty from the classroom to the pursuit of research. The current slack economy, which several indicators suggest has taken a heavier toll on public than on private institutions, has produced unprecedented financial pressures on higher education. For the first time in more than a decade, total state funding for universities declined last year. On the national level, Congress is on the verge of approving budgets for the NSF and the NIH, the two agencies that provide the bulk of the financial support for academic research, that will not keep pace with inflation. At the same time the Federal government is threatening to change the ground rules for reimbursement of research costs. The latter is a critical issue because many institutions have come to depend on the overhead from research grants to offset declining state funding in noninstructional areas. In addition, congressional hearings have started on the advisability of incorporating industrial "interests", i.e., in the form of technology transfer, into the NSF funding pa& terns. University administrators have tried, for the most part, to protect their science departments from the realities of these financial stresses. However, as the knife cuts closer to the hone, even faculty in the "protected" science departments can expect to feel the pinch. These pressures coupled with the general decline of faculty attitudes regarding institutional loyalty could portend a period of flux as faculty move among institutions trying to find the research-oriented environment that they perceive they were promised when they entered the academic arena. Faculty hired in the heyday of research have, for the most part, had little meaningful input on curricular matters and teaching activities in most institutions, yet they are now tenured and in a position officially to shape policy regarding the allocation of increasingly scarce departmental resources. These faculty generally have little sensitivity to either the need for or the unique problems related to entrylevel hasic science courses; they have often avoided teaching in such courses and, for the most part, can bring little to discussions of such topics other than opinion or hearsay. Administrative efforts to improve teaching a t the undergraduate level may not ly ground in this environment to bring find ~ ~ c i e n tfertile about meaningful changes. Indeed, a research-oriented faculty that has heen more-or-less shielded from the demands of teaching and administration, which is always more sensitive to the winds of change, could easily and quickly establish an adversarial relationship that would do no one any good.
Research-oriented faculty, in an attempt to keep up their productivity, can easily he led to make decisions that are not in the hest interests of their research students For example, there is the temptation to k e e eraduate ~ students on research projects longer than is optimal?or their professional development. Indeed. extant data indicate that the time required to D on average, gradually increased with complete the P ~ has, time. It has also become increasingly common to find that students who have been awarded doctoral degrees are hired as postdoctoral fellows to continue to work in the same researeh &nup. Such activities-keeping graduate students doing research longer or hiring them as postdoctoral fellows to continue the same work-are obviously ways to maintain a high level of expertise in a research p u p . Thus, the objective of doing academic research is shiftingfrom heing a vehicle for the production of trained scientists to the production of tangible results (~uhlications. new erants. etc.). This shift in . natents. . emphasis, in t u r n . plays directly into the hands of thure who would broaden tho traditional role of the NSF and the NIH to include funding the transfer of knowledge into practically useful activities and ~roducts,not just the acquisition of new knowledge. ~echnoiogytransfer "sed to he the purview of industrial laboratories hut they gradually began to eliminate such activities. The ultimate value of research to society lies in its applications, but the unpredictahility of the payback has caused profit-oriented industries to shy away from these critical activities. 'Ib fill this void, the NSF and the N M are hoth heing pressured to consider technology transfer as part of their funding patterns. If this change in funding patterns occurs without significant increases in the total dollars awarded by the NSF and the NIH, competition for the support of traditional academic research will become even keener than i t is now. Faculty hired in the ambiance of the late 1970's and 1980's, or with the promise that the emphasis on research would wntinue, could be hard pressed to adjust to an environment where they will he expected to make their way along the more traditional academic path of undergraduate teaching and advising. These faculty will also have to deal with a different framework of values to obtain their rewards. manv of which will probably not be financial. It may well prove difficult for faculty and the administration to engage in a discussion of values because hoth groups may discover how few values they share. Many young scholars feel that they were held to more rigorous and unforgiving research-oriented standards of achievement than were those who preceded them. Without a commitment to articulating the wmmon goals that hind faculty together, the professoriate can only continue to drift further apart into separate orbits that are unrelated and, indeed, often hostile, to others in their own departments and their institutions as a whole. Facultv are clearlv enterina a ~ e r i o dof chanee as institutions he& to addrkss curri&la; matters a n d t h e needs of their students, especially the varied needs of an increasindy diverse undergraduate &dent body. Common goals that &ervone can support must he established. Systems for evaluating and rewarding teaching and research activities in this changing environment must he formulated. New incentives and enforcement procedures will have to be developed. Constructive, thoughtful dialog among- all parties will be essential as departmen& and theirfaculty grapple with these potentially devise problems. These are complex, far-reaching problems. And, the stakes arehigh. JJL
Volume 69 Number 11 November 1992
861
