Changes in undergraduate education at Michigan and nationwide are
stimulating wide curiosity, interest, criticism and debate---most of it helpful but some of it uninformed. Edie N. Goldenberg, dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, discussed how Michigan is handling some of the major issues in higher education with John Woodford, Michigan Today executive editor. If readers have questions or comments about any of the programs described in the interview or wish to know about others, please let us know and we'll get them answered.
Michigan Today: Do undergraduates get many chances to be instructed by professors during their first two years, or is their contact predominantly with graduate student instructors?
Edie Goldenberg: I think the amount of contact with faculty, especially for beginning students---those in their first two years---has been an issue for all large academic institutions, and it was one of the first issues we examined when we launched the Planning Committee on Undergraduate Education seven years ago.
In those fields where contact had decreased, we have reconnected our senior faculty with beginning students. In some fields---my field of political science, for example---the introductory courses have always been taught by senior faculty and the most distinguished faculty, and that's true of a number of other fields as well, such as history, economics and physics. But in others there had been a drift toward having graduate student instructors teach introductory courses.
Even though many outsiders---including our alumni and alumnae and those who did not attend Michigan---get the impression that graduate students are teaching most of our undergraduate courses, as things stand now, fewer than 30 percent of our undergraduate student credit hours are taught by graduate student instructors or "GSIs," as our teaching assistants are now known.
MT: What is the trend in this area?
EG: We are focusing on broadening the contacts between beginning students and senior faculty. One way is through our University Research Opportunity Program (UROP), which unites first- and second-year students---usually in a group of one to four---who are interested in working with a professor on a real research problem. Sometimes graduate students are also on the team. A lot of learning goes on in UROP groups. When we started UROP in 1988, it involved 14 students. Now more than 700 participate in the program with 450 faculty members throughout all of the schools and colleges of the University.
I should also point out that since many of the professional schools do not enroll undergraduates, UROP is a way of opening up learning about professional education to first- and second-year students. The faculty volunteer to participate in UROP, and over 90 percent re-volunteer. And they receive no extra compensation for this. Studies of the effect of UROP and similar programs are showing positive consequences: the students tend to express greater interest in their studies, to have higher grade point averages and to graduate at higher rates than do their peers who are not in the program. As for the faculty, they report that being questioned by students with fresh perspectives on their academic fields is quite stimulating intellectually. The contact motivates both groups. It's a winning combination.
MT: In view of the advantages of such programs, it would seem important to make sure more students can benefit from them.
EG: And we're doing just that. Our seminars for first-year students have grown from 30 taught by emeritus faculty a few years ago to 150 or 160 now, most of them taught by active faculty. Former president Robben Fleming offered one, for example, and we're hoping Jim Duderstadt will sign on once he's returned to the faculty. Our goal is that every student entering the University will be able to enroll in a seminar if he or she wishes to do so. That would be a great achievement for a large university like ours and we are very close to achieving it. In fact, we offer more places right now than the number of incoming LS&A students, but there are many students from outside LS&A who want to take these courses.
MT: What is the major teaching role of graduate students?
EG: We think there are advantages to small-classroom settings in certain fields, and most lecture courses continue to include discussion sections for small groups of students. These sections are sometimes taught by faculty but more often they are taught by graduate students working under faculty supervision. Not only is the opportunity for discussion and personal attention valuable for the students, but this is also a way of training our graduate students.
We do not put teaching assistants in the classroom before they are ready for it. The University provides a variety of services to develop the teaching skills of our GSIs, and we have improved those services a great deal as part of our Undergraduate Initiative. It's unfortunate that some people have the impression that GSIs are not talented teachers; in fact, most of them are truly outstanding in the classroom. As a large institution, part of our role is to train the faculty of tomorrow.
Undergraduates recognize the value of having young, exciting instructors who are just a few years older than they are. I know of many wonderful stories in which beginning students report how inspirational or just plain helpful a graduate instructor has been for them. We give teaching awards to our top graduate instructors every year, and I invite anyone interested to ask us for the citations that describe the achievements that earn those awards. The University of Michigan attracts very strong graduate students, and those who plan to teach have a tremendous commitment to the profession and tend to be deeply informed about all of the latest debated perspectives and issues in their fields.
MT: There is a persistent belief that some courses are taught by graduate students who understand English so poorly, students can't learn from them.
EG: We substantially raised the standards required by our teaching assistants whose first language is not English. We've removed those with serious problems and now I receive almost no complaints of this sort. All new GSIs who aren't native speakers of English come to Ann Arbor before the teaching year begins in order to attend a special seminar and to be tested for proficiency in English. To ensure that international GSIs, as we call them, can do this without hardship, we are now providing them with special fellowships to help support them before they begin teaching. That doesn't mean all of our international GSIs speak without an accent. But this is an international world, and our students have to be open to understanding people who speak English very well but with an accent.
MT: How important is the new instructional technology that is attracting so much attention?
EG: The new technology is very significant; recognition of this is increasing exponentially throughout the faculty. Some people think that science and engineering dominate these applications, but half of our projects have been in the humanities. The technologies can make images, texts and other primary resources available that previously would have been unavailable for anyone who couldn't travel to them.
Some of the new technologies have let faculty turn their jobs into more of a coaching experience than a one-way-delivery. Typically, faculty approach the new technology as if it will be an add-on---perhaps like a better form of a slide projector. But once they are exposed to instructional technology, it turns out that many faculty are led to redo their whole course to take advantage of the new opportunities. Exciting efforts are under way in the classics, art history, biology, chemistry, English, economics, psychology and history---indeed, in every liberal arts field. The challenge is to help faculty develop their ideas for new courses or new ways of teaching, to provide them with the space, environment and equipment, and then to maintain it.
This is not to say that those who stick to old ways are now ineffective. The lecture format with small-class discussion is still extremely effective with certain material. Nor would I argue that instructional technology is the answer to every teaching challenge that faculty face. But I think it does have to be one of the arrows in their quiver, something they need to know how to use when it is appropriate.
MT: Are "core" requirements being abandoned or watered down, as some critics of higher education contend, so that students today are graduating without being sufficiently educated?
EG: Actually, the trend here on requirements is in the other direction. We've added some requirements and stiffened others. We have a new quantitative reasoning requirement and a race and ethnicity requirement. We've raised the foreign language requirement for admission to LS&A, and are deciding right now how to raise writing skills. The foreign language requirement [for undergraduates] is as strong as it's ever been, perhaps stronger since we recently eliminated the pass/fail option in the fourth term of foreign language courses. And we have just made the admissions requirement stronger: beginning in 2000, we will require at least two years of a foreign language at the high school level and recommend four.
All of these actions are taken with an emphasis on conceptual development, not by requiring that students pass any one course in each area. The faculty are busy thinking about what it means to be an educated person, but we are not defining it narrowly, as it might have been defined in the past when knowledge of a particular set of Greek and Roman classics and "great books" earned one the designation of being "educated." There are simply not enough hours in the day for students to read all of the great works of our civilization before they graduate.
But more to the point, being educated is a life-long process. The undergraduate years should constitute a major step in launching that process, but we can't teach undergraduates everything they will ever need to know. We need to help them develop skills, to think critically, to introduce them to the field of concentration of their choice. They are going to work and to continue to learn and develop after they leave. This must not be the end of their education.
Some people have a notion of education that goes back to the last century, when higher education was driven by classical education and training in certain religious principles. But knowledge has exploded since then. The classics are still important---and I'm pleased to say that U-M has one of the finest classics departments in the world, which testifies to how much we value that field. But think of the explosion of knowledge in biology, economics, political science, psychology, literature, philosophy and so on. It's difficult---probably destructive---to come to an agreement as to what constitutes an educated person in four years of college. What students need is a good foundation and the inspiration to continue to educate themselves throughout their lives.
MT: Do you think secular institutions of higher education have abandoned the responsibility for moral or ethical education of their students?
EG: We are blessed with having one of the finest philosophy departments in the world, one with great strength in ethics. And we also have outstanding programs in the study of religions and the history of religions, as well as Judaic studies and Buddhist studies programs. There are many ways students can be exposed to studies in religion
and ethics. These programs do not aim to proselytize or propagandize, but to help students analyze and understand the history of religions and systems of ethical and moral principles that guide different traditions.
Also, much more than in the past, students are increasingly engaged in community service both for credit and as volunteers. Everyone who is here is privileged to be a Michigan student, and we hope they will feel an obligation to give back to our society. Thousands do so every year, and we are expanding these opportunities. We think community service is part of becoming a full citizen of this society.
MT: Which of the goals of the Undergraduate Education initiative announced in 1990 still requires the most effort to reach?
EG: We still have important business to do in the area of writing. We need to raise the levels of student performance there and in their mastery of foreign languages. Also, despite recent major changes in how we teach psychology, the classics, physics, chemistry, math and some economics courses, we think we can achieve something better than we're doing even though what we're doing is quite good. We're always looking at how well we're teaching. This is always unfinished business. You can never declare victory and go home.
. . . June 1996
Dean Edie Goldenberg gives a progress report on the first six years of the LS&A initiative to improve undergraduate education