UC Panel Urges Less Emphasis on Research : Education: Report calls for professors to focus more on teaching, public service and attempts to solve real-life problems.

In the latest shot at the research obsession in American higher education, a UC faculty panel has called for increased emphasis on teaching, public service and attempts to solve real-life problems.

UC professors are too caught up in “the vicious circle” of obtaining research grants and publishing research papers, declared the Universitywide Task Force on Faculty Rewards.

“The evidence for this is strong, particularly among junior faculty who find insufficient time and little encouragement to engage fully in the scholarship of teaching and in university and public service,” said the committee, which was appointed by the UC system administration.

Colleges and universities throughout the nation are debating similar issues. Stanford University instituted pay bonuses and other programs last year to encourage good teaching at the research-oriented school. Experts predict that changes in UC’s faculty promotion policies may be imitated at many other universities.

Karl S. Pister, UC Santa Cruz interim chancellor and task force chairman, said Monday that the panel’s report calls for “a modest change in the culture of the university, but a very, very important change.” He and other faculty leaders said there is already opposition from some professors whose careers have been mainly based on research and who may fear additional scrutiny of their teaching skills by colleagues.

Copies of the report were sent this week to the nearly 11,000 UC faculty members who either have tenure or are candidates for permanent appointments. Its recommendations will be debated over the next few months by the faculty senates on all nine UC campuses and the systemwide faculty governing group.

UC President David P. Gardner has final say over whether the proposals will be implemented. A spokesman said Gardner had no comment on the study.

A knowledgeable UC official, who asked not to be identified, said: “I am virtually certain the administration is very happy with this report. After all, they commissioned it. I think this is in essence the direction (in which) the administration is trying to move the university, just as Stanford is trying to move in a new direction.”

The 13-member task force recommended that faculty be encouraged to become mentors to minority students, help reform curricula, and serve “in a public agency that enhances the quality of the social product,” instead of solely concentrating on the so-called scholarship of discovery--whether hunting for a molecular structure or a new interpretation of a poem.

While stressing that public service should not replace pure research, the task force urged the UC system to broaden its criteria for awarding faculty pay raises and promotions. In addition, the committee urged that evaluations by a professor’s peers of his teaching should be given the same weight now given to research evaluation.

Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, described the Pister report as “a very commendable piece of work that brings balance to these issues.” Boyer released his own study this year, calling for increased attention to university teaching nationwide; the UC report referred to his work frequently.

If UC does institute changes, other schools will follow, Boyer said. “In university life, there are the pacesetters. What the University of California does sends dramatic signals to other institutions that faculty have different kinds of roles to fill.”

Pister said some faculty view his report as “an attack on research in the university and that is certainly not the intention.” The amount of pure research may decline if professors sense approval to spend more time with students or consulting with government agencies, he said. But, Pister, formerly the engineering dean at UC Berkeley, stressed: “I’m not sure the change would be as dramatic as the critics would think.”

Martin Trow, the UC Berkeley professor who is chairman of the UC systemwide faculty senate, compared the proposed changes to an effort to steer a battleship into a slightly different direction. “It’s an effort to turn it 5, 10 or 15 degrees,” not turn around it completely, said Trow, who supports the proposals.