Introduction:  The University of New Mexico provides an undergraduate educational experience typical of that offered by most large, state-assisted, research universities, an experience fully characterized by the Carnegie Foundation’s National Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. While the Commission found problems and opportunities on the national level, UNM faces a challenge which is present at only a very few research universities in the United States: our students are significantly more likely to be low-income, first-generation college students, deficient in pre-college coursework, living off campus, working 30 or more hours a week, and notably under-achieving in national entrance exams. UNM is a developing research university, in a transitional phase in its history, inadequately funded and simultaneously expected to provide a first-class, challenging, and advanced educational experience to a student body  who must overcome difficult social, academic, and financial obstacles on the road to a degree. Understandably, the faculty, students, and the administration of the University all feel the tension generated by this unique dilemma, but this committee feels that through re-valuing and honoring teaching on this campus and through the modernizing, enlivening, and restructuring of the educational experience in the lower division at UNM, we can distinguish ourselves as an outstanding Doctoral/Research university, one that admits, retains, and graduates students who might not otherwise have been given the chance to succeed academically.
 

Our Current Situation: The Problem of UNM’s Divided Identity

UNM aspires to be a well-respected research university with sponsored, external funding and internationally prominent programs.  But its mission to provide access to higher education for New Mexico citizens makes it also what Vincent Tinto, an expert in higher education, describes as “New Mexico’s largest community college.”  The traditional ways we have thought about these two apparently contradictory missions have not enabled us in the past to resolve the dilemma we face today.  We have not discovered a means of reconciling the conflict of values inherent in these two different expectations. Until we do, the citizens of the state will fault us for inviting many of our beginning students to fail, and the institution will never improve its rankings in retention and graduation rates.  Should we meet this challenge, we will justly be ranked among the leading undergraduate state universities.

In the research university, the faculty reward system encourages those who dedicate their energy to research, and particularly those who garner significant external funding.  Under this system, junior faculty are encouraged to protect their time from the demands of teaching and service in order to present a compelling record of research accomplishment at tenure time.  The most highly regarded and rewarded senior faculty are those whose research programs enable them to teach few or no courses or to teach only upper division and graduate students.  Often, faculty deeply engaged in their research programs complain that the demands of teaching impair their professional progress, while faculty devoted to teaching undergraduates often worry about their prospects for tenure and promotion.

On the other hand, UNM is a very large provider of first- and second- year courses to students whose preparation for college work varies widely.  In each of the last three years, we have admitted on average 2500 Freshmen, all of whom need the full range of regular first-year courses and forty percent of whom need developmental coursework.  The regular courses are typically offered in one of two formats: large lectures by tenured faculty, sometimes (infrequently) with TA-led discussion or laboratory sections: or large numbers of small sections taught entirely by TAs and lecturers under the (distant) supervision of a tenured faculty member or administrator.  Students report that the large lower division lecture classes, with a few exceptions, are alienating, boring and impersonal, leaving them feeling adrift and unnoticed.  Faculty report that student attendance and performance in such classes is generally low and that students have unrealistically low expectations of the demands of college work.  In courses such as first-year Math and English, where smaller sections are the rule, tenure track faculty rarely teach, and those who have to regard it as an imposition.  It is in these courses that we see the troubling increase in the use of non-tenure-track faculty, who by and large teach well, (though on occasion have no experience or aptitude to teach) but whose role among the faculty is ambiguous.

Faculty are trapped in this conflict of roles.  Faculty know what they need to do to earn tenure and promotion, and the university values their research for the opportunities it provides them to learn and to create new knowledge.  Yet faculty are aware that to meet the imperatives of providing access to higher education for New Mexico’s students, and to help those students succeed in their academic programs, we all need to work directly with more students, as classroom teachers, as mentors, as advisors.  That takes time, and time is finite.  And the reward system says that time spent teaching undergraduates, or teaching others to teach undergraduates, is generally time wasted.

Can UNM revise the ways it defines faculty accomplishment so that the crucial work of teaching our lower division students is valued equally with the crucial work of research?
 

The Re-Valuing and Honoring of Teaching at UNM

Given that UNM privileges research (and, to some extent, graduate teaching) over undergraduate teaching in its system of faculty rewards, what might our committee suggest as ways for the University to acknowledge its undergraduate teaching mission, and the reality of the contribution of faculty (and others) who teach, support, tutor, or advise  undergraduates?
 
 

Personnel and the Value of Teaching

1. Hiring: The single most important factor in developing expertise in research at UNM is making careful, informed hiring decisions.  This is also true for developing teaching expertise, yet evaluation of the teaching skills of faculty job applicants receives much less attention than evaluation of their research skills.  Developing sound ways to identify good teachers and consistently focusing on teaching potential across departments will  improve the quality of faculty teaching skills.  Where appropriate, departments should include lower division teaching as a regular responsibility for a new hire.
 
2. Tenure and Promotion: The UNM Faculty Handbook states that a successful candidate for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor will have “strong” records in both research and teaching, displaying “excellence” in at least one of those two areas. This provision of the faculty handbook should be taken literally.  Our committee supports the formulation that excellence in all teaching (but especially in 100 and 200 level classes) should be rewarded at tenure and promotion time on par with an excellent research record, as measured at the departmental and college level.  We also strongly urge that the emerging unit on campus called the “Center for Teaching and Learning” be financially supported by the central administration and be made to play an important role in the development of an effective teaching faculty at UNM.

3. Promotion to Full Professor: The recent revisions of the Policy on Academic Freedom and Tenure, section 2.2.3, detail the criteria for promotion to Full Professor, and one of the major changes is the substantially diminished role played by the candidate’s teaching record. Our committee strongly protests this revision and calls for an addendum that would acknowledge excellent undergraduate classroom performance, just as that performance is acknowledged in the criteria for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. We recommend that teaching be raised to equal status with research in the criteria for promotion to full professor, and not that research be denigrated.

4. Recognition: Our committee suggests that award-winning teachers be publicly rewarded and regarded by the central administration of the university. Teachers could, for example, be invited to a reception with Regents, Deans, alumni and others; high-ranking administrators should preside over awards ceremonies; a yearly lecture should be presented by an award-winning teacher, along the line of the annual Research Lecture; Public Affairs publications should highlight excellence in teaching and yearly award winners. The Regents Scholars and Lecturers should be frequently visible to the university community and should be asked to help the administration further the aims of excellence in all teaching, especially in the lower division. We suggest this public attention because we believe it sends a signal to the campus and especially to junior faculty that teaching is important and will be recognized and rewarded by the university.

The only campus teaching award which offers a permanent salary increase is the Presidential Teaching Fellowship. Our committee recommends that all campus teaching awards, including the Teacher of the Year Awards, carry permanent salary bonuses; this would be in line with the procedure at our peer institutions. Also, if research awards carry salary increments (and reduction in teaching and other workloads),  the same should hold for teaching awards.  We further recommend that some salary awards be specifically made for teaching excellence in the lower division classes, and we endorse University College’s plan to appoint faculty fellows to advise the university about improving education in the lower division.

5. Merit Pay: When/if raises are allotted, units around campus devise their own systems of merit points. Often excellence in teaching is regarded as a kind of service, and is not rewarded at the same level as excellence in research. Our committee recommends that units be encouraged to acknowledge with merit pay excellence in teaching. Awards, outstanding evaluations, curriculum development, textbook authorship, and other achievements should be included as evidence of meritorious teaching service to the university. Departments should develop multiple ways of evaluating, recognizing, and rewarding teaching.

6. Recognition to Departments: Within UNM the primary identification of the faculty member is with his or her academic department, not the central administration.  Changes in the undergraduate mission of the university will be most effectively communicated and implemented when embraced by the academic departments for both individual and collective teaching achievements. Academic departments need to be recognized and rewarded in meaningful ways for achieving excellence in undergraduate education, not only for generating credit hours.  One possibility is the explicit acknowledgment that the quality of undergraduate education (in part measured by formal assessments) represents one important factor contributing to decisions about which departments get new faculty lines and other real considerations from the Dean, Provost, and central administration.

7. Full-time Instructors: Because it is not likely that lower level education at UNM will be conducted on a large scale by tenured faculty, a good part of the undergraduate teaching load should be handled by full-time instructors (who would have a relatively heavy course load) rather than part-time instructors. To avoid some of the problems typically associated with this notion, we might define such full-time positions as (1) being evaluated solely on teaching skills, (2) receiving salaries commensurate with tenure track faculty of an equivalent length of service, and, (3) receiving renewable three year contracts after an initial probationary year.  This could possibly attract a number of gifted teachers to UNM.  However, individual departments may be reluctant to seek such individuals unless they are recognized in meaningful ways for enhancing undergraduate education.

8. Advising: We recommend that staff advising on campus needs to be systematically evaluated, that the role and definition of professional, developmental advising be clarified, that the UNM pact classification of advising be reconsidered, that real resources be invested in our advisement system, and that monthly training be continued and intensified. Faculty also educate students through advisement, particularly when they are able to help students choose a career path, prepare for graduate or professional school, provide insights into the trends and directions in a profession, and mentor students as role models and guides.  Faculty Advisors should be carefully chosen, evaluated, and appropriately rewarded.

Restructuring and Administering the Lower Division at UNM

UNM must seriously consider creative options for transforming undergraduate education. If we are going to engage and retain both our students and our faculty we have to change some of the ways we teach and deliver courses.

1.Incorporating Research into the Lower Division: As suggested in the Carnegie Report on Undergraduate Education, research institutions, such as ours, offer many possibilities in the upper division for enhancing the undergraduate experience through early involvement in research related activities. But, more needs to be done to restructure lower division education at UNM so that lower division students can have some of the same, enriching and exciting experiences offered to upper division students. This committee recommends that the university continue to expand the Freshman Seminars (Arts and Sciences 198: An Introduction to Undergraduate Study in the Research University) and the forthcoming Hewlett Learning Communities in the Core Curriculum.  It also encourages the establishment of residential living and learning centers, overseen by tenured faculty, for undergraduates.  Individual departments and faculty need to be rewarded for engaging in any teaching or mentoring activities which bring research into the lower division courses.  Further, we strongly recommend that the university administration study the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement and encourage the learning activities identified as effective educational practice.

2.Learning Communities: In addition to the learning communities mentioned in the first point above, UNM should move toward the greater use of block scheduling for first-year students, and especially students in the developmental classes. The first-year students should be enrolled in two or more classes as a cohort and one class should be English 101. The eventual goal is to have freshman enrolling in all the most frequently requested classes (Math 120/121; English 101; Sociology 101, etc) within a cohort, so that the beginning student would perhaps take as many as four or five classes in a learning community structure.

3. The Intellectual Life on Campus: The Division of Student Affairs should be charged with improving the intellectual life on campus by joining with the faculty and administrators in Academic Affairs to present lecture series, colloquia, dialogues, films, panel discussions, and faculty and student presentations around which serious intellectual, cultural, scientific, and popular issues are discussed and debated. The Office of Institutional Advancement should be charged with raising the funds and providing some of the organizational structure for this to happen.

4. Beyond Affirmative Action: Rethinking the Structure of Higher Education: This committee recommends that the University find a multiplicity of ways to encourage Academic and Student Affairs to work together in rethinking the educational experience for students who come from what Robert Ibarra, expert in education and author of a forthcoming book called Beyond Affirmative Action, calls “high-context” cultures, or those who have a different notion of human interaction, time, space, gender, learning, information, and academic systems.  UNM needs to use the resources in both divisions to find ways to make the “low-context” impersonal and competitive academic culture of the research university more congenial and appropriate for first-generation, low income, and/or minority students.  This might mean instructing faculty, both on the Main campus and the Branches, on different teaching methods, more active and collaborative learning styles, more supplemental instruction, encouraging different methods of evaluation and testing, and other similar accommodations to the ways in which diverse groups think and learn. We further suggest that the university forge as many links as possible with national educational organizations, like HACU, who promote an understanding of the multicultural factors at work in higher education.

5. Use of Teaching Assistants: One way of reaching out to students in large lower-division courses is to provide access to one-on-one discussions/meetings with trained teaching assistants. These assistants may be graduate students who are paid to do the job, who receive special training, and benefit from having such job experience or, as in some departments, these assistants may be advanced undergraduates, interns, or Honors students, who receive Independent Study, Honors credit hours, or pay for mentoring lower-division students.  Our committee recommends that units explore ways to staff and therefore improve their large lecture courses with assistants – graduate and/or advanced undergraduate – to aid the professor in charge. We strongly urge the university to fund graduate assistantships for large, lecture lower division courses as a priority, one which will have a positive effect on both undergraduate and graduate education.  All teaching assistants at UNM should receive university-wide and departmental training to teach lower division courses.  The faculty member who directs the work of TARC should be responsible (and given the authority, compensation, and time) to co-ordinate the training,  development, effective use, and reward system for teaching assistants. We also support the forthcoming program called “Preparing Future Faculty,” which helps graduate students prepare for academic careers, but which also has positive consequences for our own undergraduates.

6. Use of Technology - classroom and virtual: The use of technology in lower-division courses is a proven way to reach audiences who may be bored and/or disaffected. Imagery-enhanced teaching and web-enhanced courses instill excitement and interest in students who, by and large, are sophisticated consumers of the onscreen image/text.

Online systems offer course delivery options for students at a distance and provide hybrid alternatives for enhancing traditional resident course offerings. Online/internet based solutions can expand students’ access to faculty, peers and resources and online options can provide faculty of large enrollment courses with smaller group oriented activities and with virtual office hours for better student one-on-one access to faculty and/or teaching assistants. Online resources also provide students with expanded opportunities to support systems such as technical help, mentors, tutors, and advisors, and interdisciplinary opportunities for students to communicate with peers and/or external guest experts.
 
Technological innovations can enhance the student and faculty experience only if both are prepared for and have access to the technology tools. This means easy access to the  technologies and a strong foundation in how to use them (i.e. a good support infrastructure). To assure student and faculty success, UNM must provide appropriate resources and proper support for students and faculty with a clear understanding of how to access that support. Students need to be oriented in the use of technology in the research university and all students need to have e-mail accounts starting at the time of summer orientation.

7.Use of Classroom Multimedia: The use of multimedia in the classroom can result in a more engaging environment for both student and faculty. But to expect faculty to integrate these media options into their courses is unacceptable if they are not properly supported with the appropriate technology and the appropriate skills and/or support staff to operate the technology.  It is also critical that faculty be offered support in the production of these 'new media' course materials. Development of this type can be very time consuming and costly. The Teaching Allocation Subcommittee of the Teaching Enhancement Committee reviews proposals from faculty requesting funding to enhance an existing course. Much of the requests over the last few years have been for technology (i.e. laptops and LCD projectors).

8. Strengthening Connections with the Branch Campuses: One of the strongest parts of UNM’s branch campus mission is to provide quality education for the first two years of the undergraduate degree.  The transfer program is one of the largest at the branches, and the faculty at the branch campuses function as an essential part of UNM’s statewide undergraduate effort.  The branches offer the same 100 and 200-level courses and have the same catalog, course descriptions, program requirements, and course prerequisites as the four-year institution.  With regard to undergraduate education, the branches face similar problems to those of Main Campus, only more so.  They tend to face these problems sooner than the larger university and are pushed to take action more quickly.  Some of the solutions formed by the branch campuses could be of use to the Main Campus.  And some of the problems could be alleviated through more shared efforts between the two campuses.  Increased connection between UNM and branch campus departments would be a good way to start an improved exchange of ideas and concerns between campuses.  More faculty connection between campuses would strengthen undergraduate education around the state.

Implementation

Our planning sub-committee suggests that the provost convene an undergraduate committee composed of the Vice President for Student Affairs, the Vice President for Institutional Advancement, the Vice Provost for the Extended University, the Associate Provost for Curriculum and Instruction, Deans, Chairs, representative faculty, and students to prioritize the recommendations in this report, to turn this report into a program for undergraduate students, to find sources to fund these initiatives, and to ensure that improvements are in fact implemented.
Strategic Planning—2000

Undergraduate Education

1.  UNM is an unusual research university in that it has a very high percentage of students not typically provided access to a research university.
2. The University needs, therefore, to honor and re-value teaching and it needs to restructure and modernize undergraduate education, especially in the lower division.
3. We can honor and re-value teaching by doing the following:

# Finding sound ways to identify, recruit, and hire good undergraduate teachers
# Tenuring and Promoting teachers who demonstrate real excellence
# Highlighting teaching excellence and providing rewards similar to those presented to faculty for research achievement, including additions to base salaries.
# Encouraging units and departments to consider and reward teaching excellence with merit pay salary considerations.
# Hiring full-time instructors to staff many of the lower division courses.
# Evaluating, redefining, supporting and organizing advising on campus

# Incorporating research into the lower division
# Supporting and expanding the Learning Community concept
# Improving the intellectual life and climate on campus
# Rethinking the structure of higher education at UNM to accommodate the learning styles of the diverse cultures who attend UNM
# Improving the use of Teaching Assistants and other students in lecture courses
# Expanding and supporting the use of classroom and virtual technology, including multimedia
# Strengthening the communication and connection with the Branch Campuses