Teaching to Teach

Research universities are stepping up their efforts to prepare future faculty Learning to teach is becoming part of the graduate school curriculum at a number of major research universities. Teaching's importance has often gotten a good deal of lip service at such institutions, but now graduate students can formally get instruction in teaching from mentors, attend seminars on pedagogy, and teach at small colleges that have partner relationships with research- oriented universities. Some of these programs are very much home-grown, driven by the efforts of dedicated faculty. For instance, three University of Wisconsin faculty members in life sciences-- Robert Goodman and Jo Handelsman, both professors of plant pathology, and Alan Attie, professor of biochemistry--began the Wisconsin Teaching Scholars in the Life Sciences Program two years ago. Another such program, at North Carolina State University, grew out of the efforts of Karen Johnston, professor of physics. The Preparing Future Faculty program (PFF), in which each of 15 research universities works with clusters of teaching-oriented liberal arts or junior colleges, is funded nationally by the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia. At Syracuse University, the Pew program is one component of a locally originated effort to train teachers. The push behind such programs comes from a number of sources. In part, faculty members simply want to ease the way into the classroom for future generations of college instructors. "Here I was on the faculty at age 25. I had no clue as to what I was doing, organizing classes, planning curriculums, writing exams, writing lectures. It was just a completely foreign experience," Handelsman recalls of her early days in front of a classroom. Margaret King "Graduate students are given in-depth instruction in their field, and then, of course, they're supposed to be magically able to convey it to students," says Margaret King, associate dean of the graduate school at North Carolina State University. Goodman notes that, particularly at publicly funded universities such as Wisconsin, there is growing concern about the nature of undergraduate education. And in graduate school, students are asking for something more than training to be top-of-the-line researchers. David Secord, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Washington, Tacoma, earned his Ph.D. at the university's much larger Seattle campus. There, some of his fellow students would "secretly, in private" talk about their desires to teach at a small college. The PFF program at the Seattle campus allowed them to admit these interests to their advisers. "That was kind of a taboo thing to do," he says. PFF, a joint project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Council of Graduate Schools, is now in a three-year $1.9 million second phase, after a pilot phase ran from 1993 to 1996. The overall goal is to allow graduate students at doctoral institutions to learn what being a member of the professoriate is like, notes PFF program manager Ric Weibl. Graduate students who are part of a PFF program become familiar with the range of tasks of a faculty member--not just teaching, or doing research, but also understanding what's involved in committee work, reviewing applications of prospective faculty members, and advising students. The specifics of a PFF program, however, are left to the members of a cluster, he points out. For instance, at the University of Nebraska, efforts are made to prepare doctoral students to deal with a racial diversity of students, Weibl notes. "There just aren't historically black institutions in the neighborhood, so they have established a relationship with Grambling [State University, in Louisiana]. They will take a van load of graduate students down for an extended visit once a semester. They will sit in classrooms, they will have a series of seminars with faculty at Grambling to learn what it's like at an historically black institution as a career option," he says. At Duke University, doctoral students participate in "graduate school night" with a cluster of surrounding institutions. "Guilford College brings the PFF students on campus as part of such a program, to talk about their experience," says Weibl. This shows the graduate students that giving such information will be part of their faculty responsibilities, he adds. Secord learned about faculty committee work in a more informal way, in discussions with his faculty mentor at Western Washington State University, as they conducted research together. "She'd talk about a committee she was in, or the fact that she was on a panel to design a new science lab building. So I got a flavor of it from that," he says. He also notes that at his home institution, graduate students are treated as junior colleagues and are involved in activities such as faculty searches. " That is an enlightened PFF-y sort of attitude," he comments. The program at the University of Wisconsin is currently restricted to the summer, because of a lack of funding for the entire academic year. The program includes instruction in teaching techniques that emphasize cooperative learning and other methods of avoiding the traditional lecture. Handelsman says studies show that students retain little information from lectures. Students in the program also write descriptions of their teaching philosophy and practice their techniques. "Outside of the regular meeting hours, we have teaching practicum sessions three times during the summer, at which students form small groups and teach biology to their peers and receive constructive criticism from their peers," says Chin Sun, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the university's plant pathology department and coordinator of the teaching scholars' summer course. During class sessions, students work to discover their strengths and weaknesses as teachers, he says. The underlying philosophy of the course is, "Discover the teacher within you," Sun adds. One of the originators of the Wisconsin program notes that improving teaching and communication skills has an impact beyond the classroom. When Goodman was an executive at Calgene, a biotechnology firm in Thousand Oaks, Calif., he saw that many Ph.D.s failed to communicate well. Such communication is extremely important in industry, he emphasizes. At North Carolina State University, the year-long Preparing the Professoriate program is competitive, with students vying for only 10 slots. Each student in the program works with a faculty mentor. During the first semester, King explains, the student sits in on a class, observing that teacher's style and methods. The student may also observe other faculty members in the same discipline. "They begin to develop in their discipline what seem to be the most successful methods," she says. "They may also work with their mentor to develop a new course, or a revision of an existing course. They also begin to develop a portfolio of materials they will use in the semester they will actually teach." During the second semester, they teach and are evaluated by their mentor and by students in their class. Ric Weibl Program Manager Preparing Future Faculty Association of American Colleges and Universities 1818 R St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009-1604 Phone: (202) 887-3760 Fax: (202) 265-9532 E-mail:weibl@aacu.nw.dc.us www.preparing-faculty.org Stacey Lane Tice Assistant Dean, Graduate School Syracuse University 303 Bowne Hall Syracuse, NY 13210 (315) 443-5012 Fax: (315) 443-3787 E-mail: stice@summon.syr.edu Chin Sun Department of Plant Pathology University of Wisconsin 1630 Linden Dr. Madison, WI 53706 (608) 262-1410 Fax: (608) 263-2626 E-mail: c1s@plantpath.wisc.edu Margaret King Associate Dean, Graduate School North Carolina State University Box 7102 Raleigh, NC 27695-7102 (919) 515-4391 Fax: (919) 515-2873 E-mail: margaret_king@ncsu.edu www2.acs.ncsu.edu/grad/prethepr/prethepr.htm At Syracuse University, besides a PFF program, each of 26 academic departments has developed programs in a Future Professoriate Project, to give graduate students directed experience in teaching and in balancing the varied responsibilities of a faculty member, says Stacey Lane Tice, assistant dean of the graduate school. Each student, she says, comes away with a teaching portfolio, "the capstone" of the program. It includes students' statements on teaching philosophy, sample assignments, exams and related course materials, and sometimes even a videotape of them teaching. The portfolio can play an important role in the job search, notes Tice. Marvin Druger, professor of biology at Syracuse University, says the department has a required course in teaching college science, in which graduate students learn teaching strategies and methodologies. "They must also develop a syllabus for a course they would like to teach in the future. It's handed in and graded," he says. These students often teach this course to selected groups of freshmen. Students at Syracuse who complete this and other teaching programs receive certificates. Does such preparation help in the job market? According to one study of Ph.D. graduates from an unnamed Midwestern research university, "a mere six percent took jobs at other research universities" (J.G. Gaff, L. Lambert, Change, 28:38-45, 1996). The reality, says Secord, is that there simply aren't enough jobs at such institutions. But having PFF-type experience may help in getting jobs at other sorts of institutions. "The kinds of experiences I had with PFF made me able to say the right kinds of things about integrating teaching, research, and service in a faculty career in my cover letters," he says. In a recently completed survey, Tice found that over half of the 90 students who participated in the Syracuse program "used part or all of their portfolio in their job search. Virtually all of them said the portfolio helped prepare them for questions related to teaching during the job interview." Currently, Tice is querying hiring committees to determine if the teaching experience made a difference in selecting these students for jobs. Not all the data are in, she notes, "but the 10 we've heard from felt that it favorably impacted the candidate." Weibl characterizes the evidence as anecdotal that students with PFF experience have an advantage on the academic job market. But he notes that colleges looking for faculty members want to be on mailing lists that go to PFF participants. "I'm getting diverse institutions signing up, saying, 'We do want to promote our programs to your folks,'" he comments. Students who have been through PFF and similar programs appear enthusiastic and excited by the experience. Whether or not what they bring to the classrooms-at the level of junior college, liberal arts college, or even research university-will make their students better learners remains to be determined. But it seems clear that a renewed regard for the importance of communication and teaching is starting to take hold in bastions of academe. Harvey Black, a freelance science writer in Madison, Wis., can be reached online at 73773.2227@compuserve.com.

Teaching to Teach

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