American colleges are redesigning the ways in which they offer remedial courses, including mainstreaming students into college-level courses and making greater use of learning-technology to tailor the curriculum to students' specific academic needs. Exploiting a statewide cutoff on a remediation placement exam along with data on student outcomes…

Research often considers vertical stratification between U.S. higher education institutions. Yet differences also exist within higher education institutions, which we term "organizational segmentation." We understand organizational segmentation as a consequence of the external "prestige economy," which favors research revenues…

In this article, I assert that the work of colleges and universities forms a social action system. I array the critical positions represented in this issue according to the four functional imperatives of social action systems: adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance. I discuss the role of normative structures for these…

In this paper, the authors introduce the "Targeted Assessment Rubric for Interdisciplinary Writing," an empirically-tested instrument designed to assess interdisciplinary writing at the collegiate level. Interdisciplinary writing presents unique challenges to students, calling upon them to mediate the rhetorical, theoretical, and…

Advances a broad compatibility thesis that asserts that research activity can and does serve as an important mode of teaching and a valuable means of learning at the undergraduate and graduate level. Instead of a dichotomous distinction between research and teaching, it distinguishes types of institutions and educational levels in which research,…

Four exemplary college teachers were interviewed, videotaped in class, and rated by students on a list of effective classroom behaviors. Findings suggested that each teacher achieved excellence using a different set of effective teaching dimensions and strategies but also that they all share a small number of teaching dimensions and strategies.…

Instructional innovation is seen as an evolutionary, personal process; innovations are frequently discontinued but occasionally are adopted collectively and institutionalized. The implications of this process for instructional improvement are discussed. (Author/MLW)

A review of literature pertaining to feedback in the fields of education, psychology, and organizational behavior identified 32 practices that may be effective in helping postsecondary teachers improve teaching. Three additional practices were noted by the author, based on personal experience. A model feedback process is outlined. (MSE)

The literature on the characteristics of excellent university teaching is reviewed, and it is suggested that cognitive psychology may contain clues about how teaching excellence is developed. (MSE)

A study investigated the appearance and development of the office of the dean in colleges of arts and sciences in America since 1860. A survey of 32 diverse institutions looked at the date the position was established, relationship to other administrative offices, and deans' teaching responsibilities, educational background, and length of tenure.…

A principal belief embedded in promotion and tenure and in annual review decisions is that faculty members should and can be simultaneously productive in teaching and research. This study used national survey data to estimate by discipline and type of institution the percentage of faculty who meet this standard. (Author)

Analysis of data from the 1993 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty showed that faculty value teaching over research. At the same time, the explicit reward structure of academe favors research and publication, rewarding "productivity" in these arenas with money and status. Implications of this disconnect between values and rewards…

In 1990, Ernest Boyer argued in Scholarship Reconsidered for a renewed commitment to college teaching by recasting instruction as a form of scholarship. He intended to enhance the visibility of teaching on college campuses and to reduce what he saw as an overemphasis on traditional faculty scholarly publication (scholarship of discovery). Boyer's…