Reversing the Telescope: Viewing Individual Activities within a Collective Context

Abstract

Academic institutions, and especially metropolitan universities, must increasingly view the work of faculty members within a collective .framework so as to ensure that each contributes optimally to the multiple and complex institutional mission. In order to set and carry out institutional priorities, the university must have the flexibility to assign different tasks to different units. In turn, there is a need for different profiles of activity for individual faculty members within the unit. This flexibility requires equivalence of recognition and rewards, which in turn is possible only with the assurance of equivalence of standard and achievement among the triad of teaching, professional service, and research. Such equivalences can exist because all three can constitute scholarship. Demonstrating this scholarship requires adequate documentation so as to subject all dimensions of faculty work to peer review.