RE: Question 2: Postsec teaching-What's in the Plan

Dear colleagues,

I sent the following message regarding the retention of both students and faculty from underrepresented groups to the Master Plan committee:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before your important committee.  As you know, I am a full professor at San Diego State University (one of only two Latinas), a member of the San Diego Community College Board of Trustees, the chair of the San Diego Convention Center Board of Directors and a long time community volunteer.   I wish to address your committee regarding the critical issue of faculty retention, tenure and promotion in the California State University.

Available data show the gap between social classes increasing in California. Many communities have desperate needs that can best be alleviated by a better-educated populace.  The young people in these communities, however, tend to be less academically successful.   They are more likely to go to prison than to college.  Their younger siblings and parents suffer from health problems.  Gangs, drugs, and violence are a part of daily life.

Within its faculty, the California State University has many of the best-educated individuals in our state (most of whom were educated at public expense). Yet, the university largely remains an "ivory tower", removed from its environment.  The knowledge, talents and skills of these professors tend to be directed within the academic world, and not the world at large.

The CSU has three criteria for retention, tenure and promotion: Teaching, Professional Growth [Research] and Service to the University and Community. Increasingly, Professional Growth is the only one emphasized.  Teaching is said to be primary.  However, in practice, promotions are mostly based on research, publications in refereed journals and success in obtaining grants.  Service is almost totally irrelevant in promotion and tenure considerations.   This has disastrous consequences.

A small percentage of faculty members, comprised largely of faculty of color and women, do significantly more mentoring and more university and community service than do the rest. [Fall, 1991 NEA Journal].  They spend more time counseling, advising and mentoring students.   They also serve on more University, College and Department committees (in large part because they are so few).   They are also more likely to be called on by the community to talk to parents and students, to serve on advisory boards, and to do volunteer work in agencies and organizations.

Faculty members from underrepresented groups are asked to serve as role models in local public schools in order to encourage children of color to stay in school and go on to higher education.  At a time when many UC and CSU campuses are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain these students, such outreach by faculty role models is essential. 

The University clearly benefits from the efforts of all service-oriented faculty.   When they are visible in the community they attract students and funds to our campuses. Their mentoring helps the University retain students who are frequently at risk of dropping out.  (Research indicates that the single most important factor in student retention is the quality of contact between faculty and students outside the classroom yet faculty are discouraged from having such contact.)  Faculty service on university committees helps keep the system functioning and makes the institution better able to respond to an increasingly multi-cultural world.

However, instead of being rewarded when it is time for tenure and promotion, faculty are penalized for their Service work by not receiving credit for it toward their promotion and tenure.  The reality is that the time devoted to this work is time away from research and writing.   Therefore, many faculty of color fail to achieve promotion and tenure.  Others remain at junior ranks within their institutions because of their devotion to serve students and their communities. The absence of faculty of color results in fewer students of color succeeding at the university and pursing the graduate degrees they need to become future faculty and administrators in our system.

Scholarship is clearly an essential component of academic life.  It is vital to the progress of our society.  However, scholarship needs to be balanced by concern for our own students' success and concern for the welfare of the neediest members of the communities within which we reside.  The CSU is increasingly recognizing the value of service learning for students.  In many institutions it is a requirement for graduation.  Therefore, it is even more ironic that these same institutions place so little value on the service of faculty. 

It is argued that effective service is difficult to accurately measure.  However, this argument also applies to effective teaching and it has not prevented the academy from requiring faculty to be effective teachers and from developing means for evaluating teaching effectiveness.  In addition, prominent universities in other states are recognizing the significance of effective faculty service and are developing ways to evaluate it.

We need to make university promotion and tenure criteria more flexible.  One approach is to allow faculty the option of focusing on various combinations of teaching, scholarship, mentoring and service during different phases of their academic careers.  Another is to design individualized faculty contracts that meet the needs of a specific department, its students, the university as a whole and the outside community.  But these specifics can be worked out within the institution.  We just need a mandate from your committee to begin doing so.

Thank you so much for hearing my concerns.   I believe that the CSU is hurting its ability to recruit and retain students and faculty of color with these policies and thus abdicating its responsibility to the citizens of California to help resolve the grave disparities in income and lifestyle that currently exist.

While I recognize the definition of faculty roles as being within the purview of the Faculty Senate, I believe that the Joint Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education can make a significant impact by affirming the importance of faculty Teaching and Service.  Meanwhile, I have and will continue to work to modify the system from within.  

If you or any members of you committee would like to speak with me personally, I will be delighted to meet with you.  I can be reached at (619) 594-7729.

Sincerely,



Maria Nieto Senour, Ph.D
Professor