The Dialogue
Question:
Should higher education faculty be required
to take faculty development courses?
 Yes, our profession requires that we continually
upgrade our content knowledge and pedagogy.
Stanley Jackson*
If we didn't refine out teaching practice, we could not fulfill our
obligation to our students.
Today, both course content and pedagogy are being driven and dominated by
technology. New tools are being brought to bear on the analysis of ideas,
principles, and data, as well as on how these materials are being presented.
All of this requires rethinking the ways we understand and integrate ideas,
present to, respond to, and interact with our students.
Faculty, at both public and private institutions, take pride in being
current in their respective disciplines, and most make a valiant attempt to
respond to and incorporate technological changes into their teaching practices.
The issue for most faculty is not a resistance to change or a lack of
understanding of the necessity for change, but the format and execution of the
faculty development requirement.
The requirement to engage in faculty development should not be predicated
upon political or ideological trends, but rather upon the individual needs of
instructors and the changes within a particular discipline.
In conjunction with a mandate for faculty development, administrative bodies
must ensure that the opportunity and funding to attend meetings and
conferences, take seminars and classes, and purchase books and other materials
are readily available.
Administrators must also make available periodic reductions in load and the
opportunity for sabbaticals, so that faculty may interact with their colleagues
and expand and refresh their knowledge base and skills.
These conditions being met, a requirement would be in order.
* Stanley Jackson is an associate professor of psychology at
Westfield State College in Massachusetts. He is active at every
level—local, state, and national—of NEA and is a member of the
executive committee of the National Council for Higher Education.
 No, faculty development is an essential
component of an academic career, but silly workshops aren't.
James G. Ryan *
Most college students can tell the difference between the many teachers who
keep abreast of the latest scholarship and the relatively few who assign
obsolete readings and lecture from old graduate school notes.
Faculty members generally display pride in their craft. If given adequate
time and financial support, they will stay current by reading the latest books
and articles in their fields, visiting archival collections, conducting
controlled experiments, and publishing in referred journals.
But faculty development workshops are too often mind-numbing feel-good
sessions conceived by administrators that aim at boosting campus morale. Such
mandatory meetings frequently involve presentations by expensive, pro-business
consultants who preach the "virtues" of making academia more like
corporate America.
In fact, most administrators can't help teachers stay current because they
themselves publish seldom, if ever. As a result, these required faculty
development gatherings become yet another means of regulating faculty activity
and soaking up some of the "excessive free time" that teachers
allegedly enjoy.
By contrast, colleges truly interested in bringing the classroom into the
21st Century will pay faculty members to attend annual professional meeting of
their own academic disciplines—to deliver papers or, perhaps, just listen
to and interact with the leading scholars in their fields.
Subsidizing subscriptions to the top academic journals would also encourage
teachers to remain life-long learners.
Coordinating these activities would be a more productive use of
administrators efforts than organizing workshops.
*James G. Ryan is an associate professor of histor at Texas
A & M University at Galveston. He is on the executive committee of the
NEA-affiliated Texas Faculty Association and a member of the National Writers
Union, UAW Local 1981.
Where Do You Stand? Send comments to CLehane@nea.org. You can also discuss the
issue on the NEA higher ed Web site at www.nea.org/he.
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