as published in COLLEGE TEACHING Volume
40/Number 1 (Winter 1992) pages 33-36
Is Good Teaching Rewarded at Berkeley?
Charles Schwartz
(a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley)
The Distinguished Teaching Award is given each year to
five or six faculty members who have been nominated by the departments
and selected for this honor by the Senate Committee on Teaching.
The award, based on guidelines and criteria for the competition,
encourages and rewards "excellence in teaching on the Berkeley
campus." Each winner receives $3,000 and a gift from the Alumni
Association.
My interest focused on the fifty-seven faculty awardees in
the years 1980-1989. In the first phase of my study, I inspected
the personnel records, which are publicly accessible. I wanted to
see if there was an objective correlation between the award and actual
advancement, such as promotion or merit increase in salary. In
the second phase, I solicited personal observations and opinions of
each of the award recipients.
At the outset, I had the notion that perhaps the
Distinguished Teaching Award was in effect, if not in design, more an
exercise in public relations - to show students, their parents,
legislators, and the general public that this institution is dedicated
to good teaching - than a program actually to encourage better
teaching. This simplistic hypothesis was neither proved nor
disproved by the results of this study. Instead, a much more
complex and interesting set of data was gathered about and from these
award winners. Perhaps the most interesting results of this study
are the observations of the award winners themselves. Among the
many people who have opinions about the status of teaching within this
university, the awardees' views are noteworthy. I believe that
what will have an effect upon faculty members' behavior is their perception about the awards for
good teaching, rather than the pronouncements of officials.
Top-Heavy
Awards
Of the fifty-seven award winners during the years
1980-1989, personnel files could be found for only fifty-five.
These files formed the basis of the first phase of the study. The
heaviest concentration of winners was at the top of the academic ladder
in terms of rank and salary. Approximately three-quarters of
those chosen were full professors, and many of them were in a special
(above-scale) salary range. This is not evidence of an upward
bias in the selection of awards because the composition of the Berkeley
faculty as a whole is top-heavy: professors (65%), associate professors
(15%), assistant professors (11%), and lecturers (9%). (Data are for
Fall 1989, counting only those lecturers with appointments at 50% or
more for a year or more.) Nevertheless, one should ask: Is giving so
many of the awards to so many senior people an efficient way to
encourage higher performance in teaching?
The data show no existence of a general policy or practice
that would give an automatic salary increase to winners of the
Distinguished Teaching Award.
The awards are announced in April of each year, and
advancements are recorded as of July 1. Therefore, it may be that there
is no time for the award to be considered in the review process during
the same year.
In the second phase of this study, I sent a one-page
inquiry to each of fifty-five award winners. After two follow-up
requests, I had responses from forty of them (a return rate of 73%).
The first question asked was, "In your perception, how has the
Distinguished Teaching Award affected your rate of advancement or merit
increase in salary?" Five options for the answer were given; and
the results are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. - Recipients' Perception of
How the Award Affected Their Advancement
Perception
|
Percentage
|
N
recipients
|
Negatively
|
2
|
x
|
Not at all
|
23
|
xxxxxxxxx
|
Very little
|
25
|
xxxxxxxxxx
|
Moderately
|
23
|
xxxxxxxxx
|
Very much
|
7
|
xxx
|
No answer
|
20
|
xxxxxxxx
|
This is important data because the perception of the award
winners determines the way they talk about it with faculty
colleagues. I am sure that each winner was delighted and honored
at receiving the award. However, if, as Table 1 shows, more than
half of the recipients believe that the award had very little or no
positive effect on their advancement, their colleagues may well
conclude that it is in their own best interests - at least financially
- to devote their energies more to research than to teaching.
Finally, my inquiry asked the award winners, "Please write
freely on your observations and opinions concerning the relationship
between the award and future advancement." Out of the forty
respondents, twenty-eight wrote some comments, and I have selected the
quotations that I found most interesting. Anonymity was promised
with regard to my use of all responses. Several of the opinions
appeared more than once, and I have skipped some repetitions.
Observations and Opinions by Award Winners
"I would imagine that the award has only
influenced advancement or merit increase in a minor way. . . My own
take is that if someone is a bad teacher, it will hurt them more than
being a good teacher will help them"
"During the same year when I received the
Distinguished Teacher Award I did get an advancement, but it is my
impression that it had nothing to do with the award. . . Nothing was
said about the teaching award in the letter in the letter which I
received, and which described my other achievements in glowing terms."
"I think it would be useful to think of a broader range of
rewards than just salary and administrative posts. Good teaching
could be rewarded by getting relief from other duties (e.g., committee
service) or additional sabbatical leave or seed money for new research
and for teaching projects. . . The definition of teaching also needs attention - for
example, it should include ore emphasis on mentoring/advising, at both
grad and undergrad levels."
"By the time I received the Distinguished Teaching Award I was
probably 'too far along' for it to have much influence on my
advancement. But I think the award should
make a difference - say an automatic advancement of one step (or two if
the person concerned was due for an advancement anyway)."
"I find almost negative correlation. Research is rewarded,
not teaching, and one is well advised not to become known as a
'brilliant' teacher unless one already has tenure. This sounds cynical,
but I think that it's realistic."
"Formerly, as chair of _____, I tried to screen applicants for
faculty positions on the basis of teaching potential as well as
research strengths. Just recently the departmental faculty has
been discussing the perceived changes in the campus' upper echelons
regarding the bases for tenure and promotion cases. There is a
noticeable awareness that publication no longer drives the entire
decision-making process, but there is a lingering doubt about the
actual weight given other criteria, especially teaching."
"There are many good teachers I know who have never gotten the
award, so its function as a reward for good teaching is sporadic. . .
This sounds sanctimonious - but teaching is and does create its own
rewards. I think good teaching gets (slightly) rewarded
materially. I also feel sure that bad teaching - particularly
aggressive and self-aggrandizing teaching - goes unpenalized here."
"After receiving the award and starting a quite successful term
as chair, I requested: (1) an acceleration; (2) a computer; (3)
supplementary support for my sabbatical. All three were
refused. When I complained about the last, the dean informed me
that teaching and service do not
count at all on such decisions."
"I received the award the same year I was granted tenure, which
means the award came too late to be used in my tenure case. By the time
of my next major promotion (to professor, four years later), the award
was probably 'old news' and not a big factor. On the other hand,
I think my overall high teaching ratings have been a significant factor
in various promotion cases."
"I received a chair and a substantial salary increase in the
year of the award. But it would be naive to attribute that largely or
even partially to the award. (There was an outside offer that
triggered the change,) This is an instance in which there is an
apparent "objective correlation" between the award and
advancement. But the appearance is an illusion."
"My perception about the recognition of good teaching stems from
my stint as chairman (about ten years ago). Superior teaching is
certainly used in my department as an argument in making a case for
advancement, not the only, or even most important, argument, of course.
The university officially bases advancement on performance in the triad
of teaching, research, and public/professional service. . . In my
department there are cases of refusal of advancement because of
continued poor teaching performance, even though the research record
was
superior."
"Teaching has not been considered as important for advancement
as research. However, I found that 'bad' teaching is a
considerable impediment for promotion (at least in our department). It
would be also important to reward good teaching in addition to
'punishing' bad teaching."
"I am not sure that there should be any link between salaries
and this award. It is a once-in-a-lifetime award given to a very
small number of people selected in ways that are not entirely clear to
all faculty. If good teaching is to be rewarded (I don't think it
is), I would think that a system that rates every faculty member every
year would be much more relevant."
I asked whether each
individual had served as an academic administrator, department chair or
other position. My purpose was to see if administrative experience
might correlate with the general cast of opinions given - whether fully
satisfied with the status quo or expressing some criticism. It seems
not to.
Changing
the Reward System
How well, then, does the present system serve to encourage
faculty members to improve their teaching? The critical question
is one of motivation because once faculty members decide to invest some
additional time and energy on their teaching, there are excellent
resources available on this campus - and at most colleges. With
many competing demands upon their time and energy, each faculty member
must set some priorities, by careful analysis or by simply following
the crowd; and it is here that we should focus our attention. How
the reward system works, and how it is perceived to work, are both
central factors in leading each faculty member to set priorities.
The following recommendations - based upon the data and
comments reported above as well as my own thoughts - are offered.
The first two (A, B) focus narrowly on improving the Distinguished
Teaching Award; the next one (C) proposes an alternative to the
competitive award; and the last has much broader applications and
implications. None of these is a revolutionary proposal; nor is
this list supposed to be complete.
Recommendation A:
The Distinguished Teaching Award should carry an automatic one-step
increase in salary, independent of any other advancement considerations
for the individual. This was explicitly suggested by two of the
winners. Its purpose is to make the award more real than
symbolic.
Recommendation B:
The Distinguished Teaching Award should, as a general rule, be given
only to faculty members in the lower range of the salary scale, with an
additional preference for younger members.
If the purpose is to encourage faculty to devote more
energy to better teaching - by holding award winners up as models to be
emulated - then giving it to people already at the top of the academic
ladder or to those near retirement seems to be a waste.
In addition, I would recommend that one particular component of
teaching - the supervision of graduate students engaged in research
work - should be greatly diminished or even eliminated as a criterion
from the competition for the award. This particular component is
closely tied to the faculty member's own research work and already is,
I believe, given lots of weight and reward in evaluation and
advancement.
Recommendation C:
The Distinguished Teaching Award should be abolished; in its place the
regular faculty advancement process should allow for a special one-step
merit
increase for any faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding work
as a teacher.
The competitive nature of the award may have more negative
consequences than positive ones. Many excellent teachers have probably
felt frustrated that their entry into the competition ended in failure.
The entire business of academic "prizes" is fraught with parochial
boosterism; and much of this competitive activity produces more image
than substance.
Recommendation D: In
every case for faculty advancement there should be mush more feedback -
both analytical and constructive - from the administrative review
process to the individual concerned.
Several of the award winners' comments noted the
difficulty in knowing how and why certain decisions about their
advancement were made. Praise, or criticism, is most helpful to
faculty members in seeking to improve their performance, whether in
teaching or in any other aspect of their work. That this is not
regularly done may be a habit left over from the antique social
convention that "gentlemen" do not tell one another how to behave.
Several quotations above refer to "punishing" poor
teaching performance, but friendly and constructive criticism can be
much more productive than just a bureaucratic slap in the face. A
senior faculty member who is denied a merit increase for poor teaching,
while being praised for research accomplishments, might well react with
frustration and bitterness that could lead to even worse
teaching. Remedial education, not punishment, is the better
route; and the Berkeley campus has developed admirable resources to
provide help in teaching, once a faculty member chooses to seek this
help. Much here depends upon how the department chair handles
such cases; and this, in turn, depends greatly upon what guidance the
administration and the Senate give to the chairs.
In the quotation in the box from the chairman who cites
cases of poor teaching preventing advancement, one sees a startling
break with convention. The canonical incantation by leaders of the
university is that research and teaching are the twin duties of faculty
members, that excellence in one is inextricably tied to excellence in
the other, and that the faculty review and promotion system pays close
attention to evaluating and rewarding both. From this all-too-common
formulation an uninitiated listener would imagine that research and
teaching are given equal weights in evaluating performance; but, of
course, this is not true at our university.
According to the experience of one author (who chaired one
of the major departments on campus and is an individual widely
respected for accomplishments in research and teaching and service),
teaching counts for at most 25 percent in the whole faculty evaluation
process. Others may guess a different figure; but I think we owe
it to ourselves, our colleagues, our students, and our public to be
more candid about this question.
With the widespread concern about better teaching, I
believe that this is a fertile time to go beyond the unfortunate
superficiality of the Distinguished Teaching Award. We can
replace it with a merit increase and with new administrative
encouragement for and recognition of good teaching.