Restructuring Academia For The Next Century

While it can be argued that the fruits of a successful education can have a long ripening time, it is nevertheless important that our universities and colleges examine potential new operating structures that could improve effectiveness. Such structures should have as performance criteria: (1) to increase the impact of universities and colleges in education, research/scholarship, and outreach (for land-grant institutions); and (2) to raise satisfaction among faculty and staff over the extent to which their efforts bear societal fruits. Recently, a chasm has developed between current faculty expertise and its potential applications for societal benefit and the restrictive academic boundaries within which our faculty and staff must perform. Yet, potential changes in academia could help colleges and universities meet the highest expectations of a currently skeptical public. The need for academic reform has been evident in recent curricular changes. In many universities, traditional department- based curricula have been folded into more integrated approaches to learning. Such changes reflect the need to educate students using a different curricular organization. In some cases, these changes in curriculum are indicative of the routes that universities can take to enhance relevance. For example, many institutions have developed cross-disciplinary core curricula that draw faculty from several departments to provide students with an integrated educational base. Such training can enhance the effectiveness of subsequent academic specialization that a student may pursue. These courses also provide opportunities for students to learn "team" approaches to problem solving, the type of challenges they will face later in their careers. Likewise, some professional degree programs, such as the Cornell University veterinary program, have developed strategies to allow students to learn in a case-based multidisciplinary mode. Academic commitment to cross-department efforts is generally rare and can occur only with major administrative commitment. Our "academic challenge" is best illustrated by graduate education and the current battle of modern scholarship and its use for public good vs. historic academic structure. As new disciplines emerged over the past century (such as biochemistry, immunology, toxicology, and public policy), a schism developed. This occurred between the societal need for rapidly evolving training of doctoral students and the subsequent application of their expertise in novel settings, in contrast to the relatively static capacity of traditional academic departments to fulfill this need. The problem was recognized early on at Cornell and led to the separation of graduate training and its organization from that of the slower-evolving department structure. This permitted timely adjustments in graduate training programs, enabling current complex issues, such as AIDS and environmental sustainability, to be addressed. However, such useful approaches to graduate training have not altered the basic dilemma that many traditional academic departments are based on, and still defined by, societal needs of prior centuries. Given this reality, it is important for colleges and universities to develop strategies that will enable a more rapid evolution of academic structure to serve all missions within academia. Such strategies, while providing for a continuation of vital services from traditional departments, should permit faculty the freedom to utilize their expertise in cross-department and cross-college endeavors. To facilitate an academic climate change, it is necessary for deans, department chairs, and central university administrators to give multidepartment and multicollege endeavors the same priority as parochial initiatives. This means that deans, for example, must be willing to commit hard-won college resources to multicollege programs. In academic turf terms, this borders on heresy. Yet, this is precisely the sort of reform that is required. Our constituents outside the university will applaud academic changes that facilitate the full and unimpeded mobilization of faculty expertise to address real-world challenges; this can occur only with greater adaptability of academic structure. One piece of the academic evolutionary puzzle is the commitment of college resources by deans to cross-college, university-wide initiatives. These initiatives could range from modest curricular efforts to entire degree programs, and encompass either program research opportunities or coordinated outreach projects. The dedication of faculty time and resources by deans could be considered as a tithe from individual colleges to support the university as a whole. In the end, both colleges and departments would reap significant benefits as faculty based in their academic structures gain previously unrealized attention for contributions to major multidisciplinary endeavors. Rather than view this tithe as a drain on the individual college, deans should perceive this as the vehicle for attracting faculty across the university to programs that the public expects and, in some cases, demands. The litmus-test question that every dean should ask is: "Do the solutions to specific societal challenges fall exclusively within the boundaries of the specific college or department?" If the answer is no, then the tithe not only is warranted but also is likely to be increasingly expected by our constituents in the future. Those universities that deliver on such programs will have a deserved competitive edge in the next century. In addition to the need for deans and department chairs to embrace multidisciplinary initiatives as a mandate and a paradigm of operation, it is also necessary to approach faculty staffing from a new perspective. Traditionally, colleges and departments have tended to examine the relative value of filling faculty positions only in the context of department need. For the academic climate to change in the future, it is important that staffing priorities be considered from the standpoint of a balance between parochial (department) necessities and potential university-wide impact. Under a so-called value-added concept, one faculty line, in which the faculty member teaches an important course in one department but could also contribute to a special cross-college degree program or program research project, would have added value over a second faculty vacancy in which the contributions did not extend beyond the respective department. Use of this priority system for filling faculty vacancies would result in both an enhanced commitment to real-world multidisciplinary initiatives and a more rapid evolution of the university's ability to meet societal needs. Another vital element in academic restructuring is the need to ensure that faculty contributions are appropriately credited without regard to the university setting. Although this is a potential problem confronting all faculty, junior faculty may face the greatest jeopardy in devoting even a portion of their academic effort toward college- or university-wide programs. If faculty cannot achieve the same credit and performance recognition for cross-department endeavors as for core department initiatives, then universities should change their process for faculty review. It is also important to recognize that education and scholarly endeavors spanning several disciplines are not necessarily the easiest route for faculty to pursue. Normal benchmarks of performance--such as publications and awards through scientific societies--may be achieved with greater difficulty through cross- college team efforts than when faculty pursue more provincial endeavors. Regardless of societal impact, multidisciplinary team efforts are not likely to be viewed as major contributions to any single discipline. There is no more obvious societal problem than the challenge of identifying environmentally sustainable processes through which environmental conservation, continued economic vitality, and enhanced quality of life can all be met. It is a dilemma that universities are uniquely suited to address. Expertise is required from the disciplines of economics, engineering, ecology, earth sciences, law, public policy, natural resources, toxicology, biomedical areas, and other disciplines. While many universities have the faculty expertise required to address complex environmental issues, few universities utilize that expertise for this purpose. Recently, Cornell faced this challenge by developing a novel approach to academic structure. The university established the Center for the Environment (CfE) in 1991. The center, with more than 200 faculty and programmatic activity involving all 10 Cornell colleges, includes stand-alone, environmentally related institutes, such as the Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology, as well as faculty-based programs (in areas such as biodiversity). CfE serves as an institutional incubator for the development of new research, curricula, and outreach related to environmental topics. Most important, it represents the needed vehicle for faculty participation in broad- based environmental initiatives. Most faculty participate in CfE on a voluntary or brokered basis, although several positions are actually shared with specific departments. The willingness of departments and colleges to allow faculty participation in center initiatives is crucial to its success. The CfE operates one doctoral degree program (environmental toxicology) and is developing a professional master's degree in environmental management. It also has the benefit of a full-time government-affairs representative to ensure that the breadth of faculty expertise contributes positively to state and national public policy and legislation on the environment. The strength of this type of academic structure is that it provides a conduit for all of Cornell's environmental initiatives with impact that extends well beyond single college efforts. The ultimate success of this type of umbrella academic structure will fall on the three elements (tithing, priority staffing, and faculty credit) necessary for multidisciplinary progress. While the final grade is not yet in, the Cornell model offers a type of academic revolution. Fortunately, it is the type of restructuring revolution that could be transferred to many institutions across the country with few academic casualties. Rodney R. Dietert is a professor of immunogenetics at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine; director of the Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology; and senior fellow at the Cornell Center for the Environment. (The Scientist, Vol:9, #13, pg.10, June 26, 1995) (Copyright, The Scientist, Inc.)

Restructuring Academia For The Next Century

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