Disciplinary leadership in preparing future faculty: the humanities & social sciences. (Featured Topic).

A GREEK PHILOSOPHER ONCE SAID that there are only two types of people in the world, foxes and hedgehogs. The hedgehog knows and cares a lot about one thing and examines it in depth: the specialist, if you will. The fox learns a little bit about a lot of things, the generalist. One might argue that a well-prepared faculty member in this, the twenty-first century, needs to be a bit of both: part hedgehog, well educated in the particulars of a discipline; and part fox, a generalist familiar with a wide gamut of roles and responsibilities as they unfold in a multiplicity of academic environments and at an array of different types of institutions. The academic disciplines and their collegial associations are essential to preparing future faculty with such multiple personalities.

This article speaks to the role of the disciplines in graduate and undergraduate education, summarizes conditions favorable to institutionalizing future faculty development as a natural part of graduate department responsibilities, and illustrates how disciplinary societies can promote the preparation of future faculty.

Disciplines in the Context of Graduate Education

Academic disciplines are at the core of graduate education. The academic department is the locus for disciplinary discussions about faculty work, even for those with multiple appointments on or off campus in specialized, often interdisciplinary centers for research, professional service, public policy, or other university functions. As a forum for faculty and graduate student exchange, academic departments are the discipline's principal stewards, interpreting its history and preparing for its future. It is from this context that college and university faculty come as they enter the profession of the professoriate.

Yet how different this profession is from other professions. To be sure, the professoriate has many of the characteristics common to professions. There is a body of knowledge about the professoriate in general, its history and functions as well as shared methodologies and skills, quite apart from those specific to academic disciplines of faculty. There is a body of ethical principles, and there are national professional organizations representing the professonate. In contrast to most other professions whose academic boundaries and curricula are defined by professional schools, however, little if any, attention is given by academic departments of the disciplines to broad professional issues of the professoriate. In addition, whereas most professions emphasize breadth of entry level preparation, graduate education in the disciplines tends to be highly specialized, especially at the doctoral level with irs primary focus on research. Indeed, notwithstanding the root meaning of "doctor" being "teacher," the Ph.D. is defined as a research degree (Council of Graduate Schools 1990). Traditionally, it has been assumed that what students need to know about the profession of the professoriate, other than their scholarly research, they will learn on the job.

Today, that assumption is increasingly challenged. The lead article in this issue of Liberal Education addresses the disconnect between graduate education and the realities of faculty work, a premise that nearly a decade ago served as the basis for the national initiative, Preparing Future Faculty (Gaff, et al. 2000). As a (future) faculty development and socialization initiative, PFF advances a broader understanding of scholarship and the work of faculty than that traditionally gained by most graduate students in their doctoral education, including those who serve as teaching assistants (Boice 1992, Boyer 1990, Gaff and Lambert 1996, LaPidus 2000, Rice 1991). The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE Web 2002) puts it this way:

Graduate students who aspire to faculty positions should be regarded as "colleagues-in-training" and have opportunities to see the full spectrum of faculty roles.

In this context, the phrase "colleagues-in-training" implies that graduate students have faculty role models and mentors in addressing professional issues of the professoriate just as they have in their focused areas of scholarship. That this relationship be evident and valued in graduate departments is crucial.

Disciplines in the Context of Preparing Future Faculty

The following account was written (and shared by permission for this article) by the team leader of a PFF4 research university following the first site visit of that team's PFF faculty and graduate students to one of its cluster partner institutions, a liberal arts college.

In talking with the students afterwards, they all emphasized how important it was for them to visit the college in person. They thought that seeing what the place was like and talking with the faculty in their specific context was "indispensable" and they could not have gained the same information in other ways. Of great interest ... were the conversations we had on the drive home. ... the students interrogated us about our roles and responsibilities at [university]. They had never thought about many of the issues that had been raised that day and they were eager to hear how the schools compared. [The other faculty member and I] were amazed that the students were so unaware of what we do, and that we had never thought to discuss those issues with them!

The visit had been replete with opportunities for exchange between faculty and students of the PFF sponsor university and those of the partner college, an exchange that occurred within the culture of a particular discipline as well. While anecdotal, the narrative captures what is probably a common experience of those participating in discipline-based PFF programs. The experience attests to previously unspoken assumptions and lack of communication about the nature of faculty work. It provided the foundation for scholarly reflection among students and their departmental faculty, as well as partner institution faculty, in subsequent discussions and visits to the partner institution. While such a revelation might have come from a professional issues seminar at the research university, the contrast effect of comparing faculty work at the university with that of faculty in the same discipline at a liberal arts (or other type) college would not have been as powerful.

Table 1 summarizes the types of postsecondary education institutions involved in PFF4. In each discipline only four or five universities served as PFF host institutions. Some included among their partners one or two additional research universities as well as two-year and four-year colleges and comprehensive universities. Across PFF4 disciplines, the baccalaureate institutions were evenly divided between liberal arts and general colleges; and among the associate degree colleges were four tribal colleges. The number of partner institutions across all disciplines in PFF4 ranged from two to seven. On the average, each PFF host institution had four or five partner colleges and universities. That 70 percent of the colleges and universities participating in PFF4 are other than doctoral degree granting institutions, mirrors the fact that 64 percent of higher education faculty are employed at non-doctoral institutions (American Council on Education 2001).

Within each discipline, across PFF program clusters, the rich diversity of American higher education institutions is reflected. The significance of institutional diversity among PFF partner institutions lies in the exposure of graduate students to quite different institutional histories, missions, and campus cultures, reflected also in the diversity of student demographics and goals, and faculty work under strikingly different expectations about roles and rewards of the professoriate. Common to these diverse institutions, however, is that undergraduates constitute the largest if not the only body of students requiring faculty attention.

Disciplines in the Context of Undergraduate Education

Through PFF, graduate students have opportunities to teach, mentor, and observe as they "shadow" a faculty member or otherwise participate as junior professoriate colleagues in their own university or in a partner institution. In doing so, they are challenged to reflect as scholars about their disciplines and about their own area of scholarship in new ways in working with undergraduate students. They are likely to discover that what is exciting and powerful to them is boring and irrelevant to life from the student's perspective. By observing faculty meetings, they may be challenged for the first time to reflect upon historic questions about the goals and current state of undergraduate education, e.g., Boyer and Levine (1981) or Greenberg (2002).

They will learn why it is important to ask such questions as: Who are my students, what are their goals, how do they learn, and what's most important for them to learn about my discipline at their present stage of education? How can I tell whether the students have learned anything of value at all? What is problem-based learning or service learning, and how might the goals of each be advanced through my discipline and area of scholarship? How might I integrate my research interests as a scholar with my teaching and service in this institution? These types of questions have been the subject of reflection among senior faculty scholars from various disciplines participating in The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Huber and Morreale 2002). They should be among the questions discussed by graduate students preparing for the professoriate.

The humanities and social sciences are foundation disciplines in undergraduate education. Consequently, most future faculty in these disciplines will devote a significant portion of their academic careers to teaching, mentoring, and advising undergraduate students, of whom most will not themselves pursue careers in the disciplines. They will, however, be the future leaders of our nation and communities in whatever careers they pursue. This outcome is recognized in a public information news release by the Association of American Colleges and Universities launching a campaign for the advancement of liberal learning (AAC&U 2002). The ultimate question for the faculty responsible for tomorrow's students might very well be the following: "How can we make a difference in preparing these students for life and whatever civic leadership roles they assume?" Preparing future faculty to reflect on this question is a daunting challenge--beyond the challenge of the doctoral dissertation, published or unpublished.

Institutionalizing PFF through the Disciplines

Although the PFF4 program models vary within as well as between disciplines in terms of how they are implemented, each functions in a way consistent with the academic culture of its host university and in a manner that also reflects the culture of its discipline. However PFF programs are designed and implemented, lessons learned from PFF4 suggest that institutionalization of discipline-based PFF programs is enhanced by the following conditions:

a. Climate and resources of support for PFF from host university administration.

b. Commitment of the department chair and multiple graduate faculty to PFF goals.

c. Commitment of partner institution faculty and administration to PFF goals.

d. Involvement of graduate students and partner faculty in program planning.

e. Use of existing campus resources to augment department resources.

f. Integration of the program into departmental curriculum and planning.

g. Departmental recognition and support for PFF faculty leaders through assigned time.

h. Learning to teach in one's discipline as a major but not exclusive focus of PFF.

i. Flexibility of scheduling to allow for different graduate student needs and interests.

j. Assessment of PFF as a special case of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

While these conditions refer to the department's relationship to its campus environment, or partner institution campus environments, making PFF a natural part of graduate education in doctoral programs can be facilitated as well through the commitment, support, and recognition by national disciplinary associations, external reference groups for academic departments.

To summarize, the disciplines have collaborated successfully with one another and with the academic community in general to discover the very best ways to prepare future faculty. They look forward to yet more opportunities to collaborate with other stakeholders who can enhance and enrich a shared vision of preparing faculty who are both foxes and hedgehogs-prepared and ready to address the excitement, the challenges, and the opportunities of the twenty-first century academy.

The national disciplinary associations have actively disseminated information about PFF to their disciplines through their Web sites, association publications, conferences, and workshops. As one example of Web site information provided, the American Political Science Association highlights research on doctoral students' concerns about the academic workplace. PFF faculty leaders of the American Historical Association worked with their disciplinary association in a grant-supported study of the history of graduate education in the discipline. In other PFF4 disciplines, e.g., the American Sociological Association, "Friends of PFF" networks have been e stablished to share experiences among faculty and graduate students, a practice also adopted by the National Council of Teachers of English. The National Communication Association developed a handbook on how to start a PFF program in communication departments, and along similar lines the American Psychological Association is developing workshop and Web site modules for the same use by psychology departments.

TABLE 1

Frequency distribution by discipline * of colleges and universities
involved in PFF4

Type of Institution  AHA  APA  APSA  ASA  NCA  NCTE  TOTAL #

Doctoral              5    7    7     8    8     6      41

Master's              7    5    7    17    9     4      49

Baccalaureate         1    6    4     2    1     1      15

Associate             6    1    5     1    7     6      28

Specialized           1    1    1     1    0     1       5

Total                20   20    24   29   25    20     138


* AHA, American Historical Association; APA, American Psychological
Association; APSA, American Political Science Association; ASA, American
Sociological Association; NCA, National Communication Association; NCTE,
National Council of Teachers of English.

WORKS CITED

American Council on Education. 2001. Facts in brief. Higher Education and National Affairs, October 22,3.

Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2002. College presidents mobilize to promote liberal education for all students. News and Information from AAC&U, April 2.

Boice, R. 1992. The new faculty member. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Boyer, E.L. 1990. Scholarship reconsidered. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation.

Boyer, E.L. and A. Levine. 1981. A quest for common learning: The aims of general education. Washington, DC: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Council of Graduate Schools. 1990. A policy statement: The Doctor of Philosophy degree. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools.

Gaff, J.G. and L.M. Lambert. 1996. Socializing future faculty to the values of undergraduate education. Change, July/August, 38-45.

Gaff, J.G., A.S.Pruitt-Logan, R.A.Weibl, and Participants in PFF. 2000. Building the faculty we need. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities and Council of Graduate Schools.

Greenberg, M. 2002. It's time to require liberal arts accreditation: Why we can no longer ignore "general education." AAHE Bulletin, 54: 8, 3-5.

Huber, M.T. and S.P. Morreale, eds. 2002. Disciplinary styles in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Washington, DC: American Association of Higher Education in collaboration with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

LaPidus, J.B. 2000. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. In J.A. Hamblin, ed. A walk through graduate education; Selected papers and speeches of Jules B. LaPidus, 95-102. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools.

NCTE PFF Web. 2002. NCTE's Preparing Future Faculty Program. www.ncte.org/pff/. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

PFFWeb. 2002. Preparing Future Faculty: Who's involved in PFF? www.preparing-faculty.org/PFFWeb.History.htm. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities and Council of Graduate Schools.

Rice, R.E. 1991. The new American scholar: Scholarship and the purposes of the university. Metropolitan Universities, 7-18.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE DUKE UNIVERSITY BIOLOGY PFF PROGRAM

Duke University has been a leader in the PFF movement. Its Certificate in Teaching College Biology offers a model to institutions seeking to weave together the complex expertise needed by future faculty in any field.

From the earliest days of the movement, Duke University has been actively involved in Preparing Future Faculty. Starting with a general institutional grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts (Phasel), the Duke program was expanded with additional funding from Pew to the Graduate School (Phase 2) in an effort to institutionalize the program at that level. Most recently Duke was awarded PFF 3 funding from the National Science Foundation to focus on a specific discipline, in this case, biology.

Duke's college teaching certificate program in biology has built a community of learning that focuses on long-term mentoring of graduate students by faculty. The Duke PFF cluster has included Guilford College, Meredith College, North Carolina Central University, Durham Technical Community College, Elon University, and UNC-Greensboro. The Certificate in Teaching College Biology is noteworthy for its innovative approach in training scientists to become teachers while addressing broader issues such as different kinds of institutions and faculty life. Its curriculum focuses on four areas that are flexible enough to complement the students' professional studies without overwhelming them. These areas include courses in pedagogy, faculty mentoring, practical experience in teaching, and teaching evaluation. Before graduating, the student submits a teaching portfolio containing a reflective commentary focusing on the four areas covered by the program. Other items in the portfolio include a statement of teaching philos ophy, samples of curriculum materials devised by the student, samples of syllabi for courses taught by the student, a videotape showing the student teaching, and a set of teaching evaluations.

Faculty mentors are drawn from the partner institutions and also from the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science. In addition, Duke graduate students and cluster faculty can seek university support in the form of curriculum development mini-grants, for the design of innovative curricula in the biological sciences.

PAUL D. NELSON is deputy executive director for education and director of graduate education and training of the education directorate in the American Psychological Association. SHERWYN P. MORREALE is associate director of the National Communication Association.