1. Modify the Existing Reward System

1A. Individual teaching portfolios: We recommend that faculty members prepare a teaching portfolio describing the educational activities in which they have engaged in the last year. Preparing the portfolio would give faculty members an opportunity to reflect on their practice of teaching, identify goals, and describe the methods used to reach them. In assembling the portfolio, teaching should be broadly construed to include all activities that contribute to the intellectual growth of members of the University community. In addition to classroom teaching, this could include:

· supervision of student research and honors theses.

· academic advising.

· participation in or advising of student organizations.

· participation in enrichment activities such as the Johnston Scholars program or freshman orientation.

· informal contact with students (in residence halls or elsewhere).

· mentoring of graduate teaching assistants.

· supervision of internships.

· participation in interdisciplinary programs and curricula.

Faculty members should report various actions taken to enhance the intellectual climate and the educational experience of students, and assess the success of those actions. These might include:

· the use of innovative teaching methods.

· participation in activities intended to improve teaching skills, such as workshops or "teaching circles."

· efforts to integrate out-of-classroom activities and events into the syllabus.

· involvement of students, especially undergraduates, in research.

· development of service learning opportunities for students.

· contact with the larger community, such as public lectures or visits to elementary and secondary schools.

The portfolio would be considered by the department Chair, salary committee, or other unit head when distributing rewards such as salary increases, leave time, reduced course load, nominations for endowed chairs and other awards, individual recognition, and other resources. The aggregate portfolio over several years would also be used to assess faculty members' teaching when promotion decisions are made, and would form an important part of the post-tenure review process now under consideration by the General Administration.

Particular weight should be placed on mentoring interactions such as supervision of research, theses and internships, as these are both time-consuming for faculty members and highly significant for students. The portfolio should include concrete measures of faculty members' effectiveness as teachers, as well as records of their efforts. Student and peer evaluations of classroom teaching would certainly be a part of the portfolio, but additional measures should be included to evaluate non-classroom teaching. Each unit would devise appropriate and creative methods of assessment, such as:

· results of student research and prizes or distinctions won by students supervised.

· results of departmental surveys of graduating seniors inquiring about which professors were most influential or with whom they had the most meaningful contacts.

· surveys of advisees to gauge effectiveness as an advisor.

In evaluating the contents of the portfolio to determine the distribution of rewards, Chairs should remember the "faculty life cycle;" that is, expectations for participation in a wide variety of student contact activities should normally be lower for untenured junior faculty than for senior full professors. However, it is crucial that all such activities be regarded as important parts of teaching. A faculty member who is heavily engaged in time-consuming mentoring, such as effective advising and thesis supervision, should whenever possible be compensated by a reduced classroom load or reduction in other departmental demands (such as weighty committee assignments). Faculty members not so engaged should be expected to take up the slack as necessary. In order for the portfolios to serve their intended purpose, it is crucial that they become an organic part of the faculty's professional practice. They must not be an additional bureaucratic burden that takes time away from teaching, research, and other interaction with students, but rather a tool for enhancing and evaluating such activities. All faculty members have had experience with reporting systems that are ends in themselves. Nothing will be gained, and much time will be wasted, if preparation and scrutiny of the portfolios becomes a pro forma administrative exercise. The portfolio itself is not the important product, but rather the reflection and feedback that the act of preparing and assessing it will produce. It is up to the faculty and the department Chairs to find creative ways to use the portfolios, and open discussion within the unit will be a critical part of the implementation process. Care must be exercised in the scrutiny of faculty members' descriptions of their activities so that rewards do not go disproportionately to those inclined to be immodest about their accomplishments.

These challenges have already been addressed in various departments in our peer institutions. On our own campus, the experience of the schools of Public Health and Education will undoubtedly prove valuable in constructing a system that serves the intended purpose without imposing an undue bureaucratic burden. Guidance in the constructive uses of teaching portfolios can be had in available publications and from our own Center for Teaching and Learning.

Chairs' success in distributing rewards in accordance to the contents of faculty members' portfolios would be evaluated by their Deans. This would be done in part through the departmental teaching portfolio (see 1B in this section); but such assessment should also form part of the periodic review of the Chairs' performance and the annual review of the performance of the department. The cautions about careful scrutiny are even more important at this level, since the Dean is less likely to be directly aware of faculty members' actual contributions.

Although much of the preceding has been devoted to the distribution of concrete rewards such as salary, we would encourage Chairs to remember that faculty also value recognition of their efforts even if that recognition has no tangible value. Simply acknowledging that faculty members are engaged in important work, and thanking them publicly or even privately, can encourage them to continue such efforts or even to expand them.

1B. Departmental Teaching Portfolios: We recommend that a portion of the budget granted each unit be determined by the contents of its departmental teaching portfolio, which would form part of the unit's Annual Report. In this portfolio, the unit would describe the activities it has undertaken to enhance the intellectual growth of students. These would include actions by individual faculty members (reported in individual teaching portfolios) as well as efforts undertaken by the unit as a whole. As for individual faculty, concrete measures of the effectiveness of these efforts should be included. Examples of unit efforts might be:

· reducing class size to teach more effectively.

· improvements to student advising.

· development and nurturing of student groups devoted to intellectual activities (such as majors' clubs or public service groups).

· participation in interdisciplinary course offerings (particularly courses team-taught by faculty from more than one unit).

· support of undergraduate research.

· offering of new freshman seminars, honors courses, and other high-quality educational opportunities.

· mentoring of junior faculty and graduate teaching assistants to enhance their teaching skills.

· contact with past graduates to assess the currency and usefulness of the training offered to majors, and modifications of the unit's curriculum as appropriate.

· public outreach.

The departmental teaching portfolio should be evaluated not only annually by the appropriate Dean but also at intervals by an independent body charged with advising on educational matters, such as the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars (see section II1A., and 2B in this section). Consideration should also be given to the unit's effective use of its resources and to the constraints, such as limited personnel, under which it operates. Units that have used their resources effectively to enhance the educational experience for their students should be rewarded with additional resources, which might include lapsed salary funds or even additional faculty budget lines, as well as other increases to the unit operating budget. Particular attention should be paid to matching the budget to the needs of the unit to accomplish its educational goals. Examples might include:

· lapsed salary funds to support the teaching of smaller classes.

· supply money to support photocopying of student essays for class distribution.

· equipment money to make use of information technology to enhance teaching.

· travel funds for students to present their research at conferences.

· operating funds for public service and outreach activities.

Departments should also be rewarded if their members contribute to the broader goals of the University by serving on important pan-University committees and engaging in other activities that are important to the University's intellectual environment but benefit the unit only indirectly. This evaluation of the portfolio should not be viewed as an invitation for micromanagement, as Chairs and faculty are the most informed about the activities in their own units. However, if a shift in the distribution of resources is to be made with the intent of enhancing the intellectual climate, it will be necessary to identify and encourage those units which are most engaged in such activities.

In creating the departmental teaching portfolio, we seek not to increase the unit's pro forma reporting burden but to tie that reporting directly to the allocation of resources to the unit. To the degree possible, the total effort involved in preparing the unit's Annual Report should not be increased; rather, the departmental teaching portfolio should replace a portion of the current report. This portfolio is a way to identify the real contributions a unit makes to the intellectual climate of the University. To be useful, it must therefore have a concrete and direct influence on the unit's budget. The availability of resources for activities that enhance the intellectual climate will serve as an incentive to the unit and will motivate the Chair and the faculty to increase their efforts in this direction. Resources granted to a department on the strength of its teaching portfolio should be used to encourage faculty to engage in activities that enhance the intellectual life of students; thus, to the degree that they flow to individual faculty, they should flow to faculty heavily engaged in such activities. Accountability is crucial to this process. Deans must hold Chairs accountable and praise and reward them for their success in enhancing the intellectual climate, not only for the scholarly reputation of their department. Care must also be taken to assure that units that are already making substantial efforts to improve the intellectual climate are not penalized for failing to improve upon greatness. Once again, open discussion among Chairs and Deans regarding the best and most creative uses of the portfolio will be necessary. Deans should be held accountable in the same way, and this should be a part of their review process. A firm and lasting commitment by senior administrators is therefore vital if the departmental teaching portfolio is not to be simply an additional burden on Chairs and faculty.

1C. Evaluation of Scholarship: As is appropriate in a major research university, the quality of faculty members' scholarship and their scholarly productivity are among the primary determinants of the rewards they receive. However, it is important that a balance be maintained among the various aspects of the University's mission, including the maintenance of a high-quality intellectual and educational environment. We therefore recommend that each unit be required to examine the ways in which scholarship is evaluated in promotion and tenure and salary decisions. In particular, emphasis should be placed on quality rather than quantity. The nature of scholarship and its evaluation varies among disciplines, but some possibilities include:

· limiting the number of publications that can be considered for promotion and tenure.

· placing greater weight on the distinction of an article or book.

· determining the influence of a publication in a way appropriate to the discipline, e.g., by citations of the work by other authors (although care must be taken that numerous citations do not indicate a work refuted by many authors!).

· considering a variety of kinds of scholarship that contribute to enhanced teaching and other goals.

The generation and dissemination of new knowledge is one of the fundamental missions of a research university, but maintaining a scholarly effort of the highest quality does not require the production of a large number of unread publications. While the involvement of undergraduates in faculty members' scholarly research may reduce their productivity in the traditional sense, it greatly enhances the intellectual growth of the student -- and, often, that of the faculty member. This should be given greater weight in promotion, tenure and salary decisions than is presently the case.

2. Establish New Incentive Structures.

2A. Intellectual Climate Fund: We recommend that a fund administered by the Provost's office be established to support faculty initiatives that would enhance the intellectual climate. Requests for proposals would be issued periodically, inviting individual faculty and small groups to apply. The precise nature of the projects solicited would not be specified, but the following criteria would be used in evaluating proposals for funding:

· Impact on Undergraduate Education: Preference would be given to proposals that promise to have a substantial influence on improving the quality of undergraduate education.

· Interdisciplinary Nature: Preference would be given to proposals that would enhance connections among disciplines, as such projects are less likely to receive support from individual units. Projects that would help students see the connections among various facets of the liberal arts, or between the liberal arts and the professions, would be favored, as would projects that bring together participants from both Academic Affairs and Health Affairs. Projects to develop new areas of interdisciplinary scholarship, especially those that involve participation by graduate and undergraduate students, would be encouraged. The development of new cross-disciplinary courses to address the goals of the General Education Program would also be sought.

· Model programs: Preference would be given to projects that could serve as models for other areas of the University and beyond. New approaches to classroom teaching (especially those involving team- or peer-teaching), new ways of using information technology for education, methods to integrate service learning and out-of-the-classroom activities into the curriculum, collaborative ways to enhance research and graduate instruction, and other kinds of broadly applicable efforts would be favored.

· Assessment: Proposals would be expected to incorporate clear goals for the project and methods to assess the degree to which the goals are met.

Whenever new resources are made available, the creativity of the faculty at UNC leads to an explosion of proposed projects. It would therefore be inappropriate to try to describe the various kinds of projects that might be supported by the Intellectual Climate Fund. However, the existing a.p.p.l.e.s. program would certainly have fit these criteria.

The fund would make between twenty and forty grants per year, with typical project periods of one to two years. Matching funds from departments or external sources should be encouraged, including in-kind matches such as release time for faculty. Grants would normally range from $500 to $25,000. The fund should total approximately $300,000 per year. In procuring these funds, care must be taken that the resources necessary to maintain strong departments (upon which high-quality interdisciplinary projects would rest) are not unduly diminished.

Since the fund is to be available to all portions of the academic community, it must be administered from the Provost's office. The selection of proposals to be funded should be made by a committee of faculty which would include representatives from a wide variety of units and disciplines. A final report would be submitted for each project, assessing its success in meeting its goals and outlining how the results are to be disseminated. The report would also include material that could be used to publicize the successful projects as part of the University's efforts toward public awareness, and enhanced public support, of its activities.

2B. Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars: We recommend that UNC-CH establish an Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars (ADTS), modeled on the National Academy of Sciences (see Section II1A.). This entity would serve two purposes: recognition of outstanding faculty and enhancement of the quality of education. First, it would recognize and reward members of the faculty who make sustained contributions to the intellectual life of the University. Election to the ADTS, as to the National Academy of Sciences, would be permanent. (We note that UNC-CH has at present no permanent recognition of excellence in teaching). Members would be chosen in recognition of their distinction in teaching, where teaching is broadly construed to include not only classroom teaching but also supervising student research, advising individual students and student organizations, mentoring younger faculty and postdoctoral scholars, and other activities that contribute to the intellectual growth of members of the University community. Faculty chosen for the ADTS should not merely display excellence in the fulfillment of their classroom responsibilities, but should engage in reflective practice and be true campus leaders as scholar-citizens.

Second, members of the ADTS would be expected to contribute to the quality of education at UNC-CH. They would do so by providing advice to the administration on educational issues, organizing and participating in activities to nurture young faculty as teacher-scholars, assessing the efforts of individual units to enhance the educational experiences of their students, speaking publicly on issues in higher education, and generally serving as both the symbol and the embodiment of the University's commitment to excellence in education.

A draft charter for the ADTS can be found in Appendix IIA, which delineates the process of appointment, the stipend, and the expectations for Academy members. In addition to the funds used to supplement the salaries of Academy members as a tangible reward and as compensation for the duties required of them, additional funds would be made available to the ADTS to enhance the educational life of the campus. These funds could be used to offset the expenses of mentoring groups, workshops and the like. They could also be used to bring distinguished teacher-scholars from other institutions to UNC-CH as "Visiting Members" of the ADTS for extended periods (one or two semesters), most likely as a sabbatical leave. Persons chosen for such visits would be expected to interact broadly with faculty and students across the campus, bringing a fresh perspective on various educational issues. The Chancellor and the Development Office would be encouraged to seek private and corporate funds to help support the ADTS as a highly visible aspect of the commitment to high-quality education at UNC-CH.

2C. Expansion of Criteria for Endowed Chairs: We recommend that some of the existing endowed chairs (permanent and term), which are not designated by their donors to a particular unit but are presently awarded for scholarly excellence of any kind, be used to recognize faculty who display excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching. In some cases, this may require an expansion of the selection criteria used, where allowed by the terms of the original donation. Nomination by more than one unit would be required for a faculty member to be chosen for such a chair. We further recommend that as new funds for endowed chairs become available, some be designated as University Professorships to recognize faculty members whose educational leadership extends well beyond the boundaries of their units. Such recognition is made for outstanding faculty members at institutions such as Harvard and M.I.T.

2D. Expansion of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities: In order to encourage and facilitate scholarly and educational activities that enhance the intellectual environment of the University, there must be many opportunities to bring faculty together on common projects. We therefore recommend that the fellowship program of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities be expanded to include faculty from the physical, biological and social sciences, and from the professional schools, who wish to engage in scholarship and teaching that crosses the boundaries between their disciplines and the humanities. This is part of the strategic plan of the Institute, and it has already begun with the selection of a few Fellows from the professional schools. The Fellows Opportunity Fund of the Institute can also be taken as a model for the Intellectual Climate Fund in providing seed money for projects developed by the Fellows.

3. Provide an Orientation for Deans and Chairs.

For these efforts to be successful, Deans and Chairs must be actively involved. For that to occur, they will need comprehensive information about the University's overall approach to improving the intellectual climate. Clear communication from the administration to Deans and Chairs concerning what is expected of them will also be a vital ingredient in the process. Therefore, to implement the recommendations contained in this report, we further recommend that the administration conduct an orientation for Deans and Chairs. This would have two purposes: to provide a comprehensive description of the University's overall approach to improving the intellectual climate, and to clarify for Deans and Chairs their role in achieving its goals.