Martin J. Finkelstein and Jack H. Schuster have teamed up to continue tracing the changes taking place in faculty work with their Project on the American Faculty. They have published The New Academic Generation: A Profession in Transformation (1998), co-authored with Robert Seal, and are preparing a new manuscript to appear in 2004 with a working…

Short essays on the professoriate are presented, accompanied by pictures by the winners of the CASE Faculty Photo Contest. (MLW)

Proposes: (1) teaching is a human endeavor that does not and cannot improve over time; (2) human beings are fantastic learners and they learn all the time; and (3) humans don't learn well in the teaching-focused classroom. Concludes the need for more and better higher education won't be met until professors become designers of learning experiences…

Faculty morale doesn't coincide with actual or perceived status. Expected to teach well, publish often, and keep the institution running besides, conscientious faculty members in a competitive university may be low in energy, as well as morale. (MLW)

Five faculty members were interviewed about the impact of campus assessment activities on their roles and responsibilities. Three areas of concern were students (what they need to know and what can be expected of them); teaching (how classroom methods follow from higher expectations of students); and faculty roles and responsibilities. (MLW)

Teaching is seen as having been buffeted by social crosswinds including the racial revolution, student rebellions, and the women's movement. The traditional distinction between scholarship and teaching is discussed, and characteristics of great teaching are identified: knowledge of subject matter, passion for one's subject, clarity of…

The ways that educators talk about teaching, borrowing from other disciplines such as business and psychology, reflect a need to create a reassuring world structured to assure results. They describe art as if it were science, but also seek to bring confidence and esteem to an undervalued profession. (MSE)

A roundtable discussion of faculty commitment and revitalization was conducted by Russell Edgerton, president of the American Association for Higher Education, with Clara Lovett and R. Eugene Rice. (MLW)

Dossiers presented for awarding the AAHE Faculty Salute honors are discussed. The common characteristic in the faculty singled out for "making a difference" was a love of teaching. These professors were heavily involved in assisting student learning in various ways. (MLW)

It is proposed that the institutionalization of instruction has brought with it a reduction in the pleasure of teaching itself and also in the excitement of learning. Common doubts and conflicts for college faculty are discussed. (MSE)

While the number of students will decline in the next 20 years, their variety in age, background, and ability will increase. The challenge of the 1980s is less to teach these students subject matter than to teach them to use the tools available to find their own paths in a changing society. (MSE)

Current college faculty have little internal motivation to learn how to teach, their interests and rewards lying in the other domains for which their personalities, education, and training have prepared them. Students who have the potential to be good teachers do not see teaching as a feasible career, while good researchers do. (MLW)

A representative of a New York public service union discusses the role of his union in the education of workers. Focus is on the union's provisions for the educational needs of members, and changes in the workplace, particularly the trend away from industrial jobs to service occupations, for which union members must be prepared. (JMD)

People on the tenure track complain that evaluation criteria are inexplicit. The second problem is the allocation of energies between teaching and publication. Administrators must be informed about anything that explains exactly what the faculty member's work means. (MLW)

Institutions employ too few Latino faculty and employ too many statistical tricks in their reporting. The problems Latinos face in entering the teaching of law mirror the problems of minorities in the academy at large: exceedingly small numbers, arbitrarily employed hiring criteria, and prejudice. (MLW)