From The Faculty Chair

I have just finished reading "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities," the recently released report by the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. Much of what it says is congruent with findings from our own Task Force on Student Life and Learning and from the Student Advisory Committee to the Task Force, which has just published its final report, showing that our problems are not unique.

One of the key recommendations of the Boyer Report is the provision of research opportunities for undergraduates. There MIT is ahead of many. But on some of their other recommendations, like their call for a freshman year that is inquiry-based and intellectually integrated, we fall back into the pack. Of course we rightly value the solid science basis on which our freshman curriculum is based, but while the freshman year is intellectually powerful, for many it is a discouraging year. Their call to rethink the freshman curriculum reinforces our own efforts in this direction.

And what about the Boyer Report’s call for a "student-centered research university" – is that useful for MIT? The Student Advisory Group seems to go along with this idea. They want faculty to "play a more prominent role in the community," and to "apportion more resources toward excellence in teaching, both inside and beyond the confines of the classroom." But, as Jesus Del Alamo made clear in his criticism of the Boyer Report (Tech Talk, April 29), the issue of resources to support their ideas has not been addressed. I would add, though, that in introducing the section entitled "Ten Ways to Change Undergraduate Education" (p. 14), the Report does provide some hints as to how financial resources could be found. More important, however, is the scarcity of time.

In some ways, the changes being suggested seem to imply a "super faculty" role: men and women who can do their classroom teaching, their research, fulfill their outside professional and personal commitments, and still have time and energy to interact informally with students outside of the classroom or the research lab. This reminds me of the "super mom" of the last decade who was supposed to be tops in all areas: career, care taking, community involvement. We now know that such a role is not easy to fulfill and so we are rethinking how men and women should allocate their involvements over a lifetime.

In the same way, we may need to disaggregate the "super faculty" idea and allow for "serial specialization." Yes, do all of these things, but not necessarily all at the same time. The notion of temporary "teaching" or "community" chairs that provide recognition and support for informal interactions with students, as suggested in the Student Advisory Committee Report, is an interesting approach.

Changes such as these are not trivial. They would certainly require a creative look at many aspects of Institute life, from incentives for faculty to the basic way the Institute is organized. From this point of view, it is telling that the Boyer Report echoes the Task Force’s identification of the structure of the university around strict disciplinary departmental lines as an underlying problem. It urges interdisciplinary and intergenerational (undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty) intellectual communities. It reinforces the Student Advisory Committee’s call for housing that mixes undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, and urges a widening of graduate education to include emphasis on communication (both written and oral), training in the principles underlying pedagogy, and opportunities for crossing disciplinary lines. The Report is consistent with the Student Committee’s recommendation of a minor field in the graduate program. And though I suspect that this may not be the right vehicle to reach the breadth they seek, it emphasizes the need for graduate education to broaden out, so that the role that graduate students play in undergraduate education as TAs and as future faculty can be better met. (On this latter point, incidentally, it is discouraging to note that the percentage of PhDs going into the academy, as into government, has dropped since 1975, with industry showing an increase (Boyer Report, p. 30).)

There are lots of ideas in this report that add to those already coming from the faculty, the students, and the administration. Our challenge now is to sort all this out, select specific targets for action, and do something creative in following through.