Had the impetus for the reform been left to curriculum committees, universally notorious for their defense of the status quo, the effort would almost certainly have languished and died of inertia or been killed off early on by vested interests. The task force's composition of influential leaders from both the administration and faculty gave the project a credibility it almost certainly would not otherwise have had. That kind of success comes when the right people work collaboratively in a supportive campus environment. One of the best ways to achieve a campus environment supportive of teacher education is through the creation of a comprehensive program of incentives and rewards. Because professionals respond best to positive inducements, universities should demonstrate extraordinary creativity in fashioning systems to stimulate and reward efforts to elevate teacher education programs.
Incentives can be as broad as a university's imagination.
They include released time assignments for faculty members, special stipends and fellowship awards, commendations and citations, conference attendance, equipment grants, service on blue ribbon task forces, special travel, recognition awards, collaborative research, encouragement for interdisciplinary team teaching, specialized training, university matching for selected grant applications, the creation of endowed chairs, the provision of discretionary funds for new or experimental activities, and service credit for faculty retention, promotion, and tenure. Another special incentive for many faculty could be the awareness that their involvement in improving the education of teachers would result ultimately in future students being better prepared for university study. Although the emphasis should be on positive incentives, university leaders ought not refrain from cautioning campus colleagues that failure to produce better teachers will almost certainly result in further intervention by legislatures and state departments of education and in possible punitive actions such as reduced fiscal support for higher education. Finally, it is imperative that universities bring to teacher education a level of creativity, not achieved before, which is possible only by harnessing the collective talent of the entire university. Since the American school setting is changing so dramatically, universities must keep pace by facilitating far greater innovation in the education of teachers than ever before.