I know that I really mean what I say, but others are skeptical because they fail to see actions that confirm my commitment. And neither they nor I know why there is a gap between what I say and what I do. Since that spring evening, unveiling and closing the gap between talk and action has become my mission. Based on my own efforts and on phone interviews conducted with twenty-five academic administrators during the summer of 1994, I pose these two challenges. We need to give teaching greater visibility, and we need to develop better assessments of teaching quality.
Teaching is an inherently private act, an exchange among consenting adults behind closed doors.
Scholarship, on the other hand, is public, available at any hour, stackable, countable, shiny, visible. Grants are trophies in our reputation rooms, evidence of our intellectual prowess. Even service activities are performed in the presence of peers and are easily counted and evaluated, if one has a mind to do so. Meanwhile our campuses have become addicted to this kind of visibility and external evidence of success. State college campuses especially have gradually modified their missions from serving local clients and needs to competing in a global marketplace.