All six Bancroft-Rosalie teachers teaching dual credit college courses meet the requirements for all classes they are teaching.
Inside Higher Ed accessed at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/02/accreditors-rules-about-faculty-members-spark-debate-wayne-state-college-and-among?utm_source=Inside%20Higher%20Ed&utm_campaign=50cc6fd192-DNU20170502&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-50cc6fd192-199137489&mc_cid=50cc6fd192&mc_eid=d36e5d3efc
Inside Higher Ed accessed at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/02/accreditors-rules-about-faculty-members-spark-debate-wayne-state-college-and-among?utm_source=Inside%20Higher%20Ed&utm_campaign=50cc6fd192-DNU20170502&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-50cc6fd192-199137489&mc_cid=50cc6fd192&mc_eid=d36e5d3efc
Who Defines Expertise?
Accreditor’s new rules are forcing a professor who has taught philosophy for 50 years
to stop doing so, because her Ph.D. is in English. Many object.
May 2, 2017
Accreditors sometimes adjust their standards to improve educational quality, and that’s what the Higher Learning Commission hoped to achieve by requiring that professors teach only within their fields of expertise, as defined by their advanced degrees. But the recent change raises questions about how to define expertise and how it can be earned -- questions that are at the heart of an ongoing debate at Wayne State College in Nebraska.
“Since I arrived at [the college], I have learned that English and philosophy have much in common. Both disciplines emphasize effective and clear communication, critical thinking, and the analysis and interpretation of texts,” said Rodney Cupp, a trained ethicist who has been teaching English courses since 2006 at Wayne, where he is chair of the joint department of language and literature. “I believe that teaching builds expertise, because preparing to teach a course is a scholarly activity. All of us on the full-time faculty know how to do scholarship, so we know how to build expertise, at least in similar fields.”
Cupp and a fellow philosopher won’t be able to teach English anymore, however, starting in the fall. And two English professors who have been teaching philosophy won’t be able to teach those classes going forward, either -- despite the fact that one of the professors has been teaching philosophy courses for over 50 years.
Seeking to “ensure that students have access to faculty members who are experts in the subject matter they teach and who can communicate knowledge in that subject to their students,” Wayne's accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, in 2015 announced changes to its faculty roles and qualifications standards. Most significant to the situation at Wayne, the commission said that professors teaching outside the field in which they’ve earned a master’s degree or higher “should have completed a minimum of 18 graduate credit hours” in the secondary teaching area.
The guidelines leave some room for exceptions, saying that if a professor hasn’t earned 18 graduate credit hours in their second teaching discipline, “the institution should be able to explain and justify its decision to assign the individual to the courses taught,” subject to commission approval. “Tested experience,” defined as “a breadth and depth of experience outside of the classroom in real-world situations relevant to the discipline” may also substitute for credentials, the commission says.
On its face, the new standard seems somewhat obvious. No self-respecting institution would assign an accounting professor to teach history, for example, or vice versa, unless it had a good reason to do so -- such as if the person in question had dual degrees. But imagine a small, resource-strapped college assigning a philosophy course it wouldn’t otherwise be able to offer to an English professor with a strong background and interest in it -- if not a degree -- and the issue becomes a little more complicated. Think back 50 years, when said college was even smaller and regulations were fewer, and the picture becomes even blurrier.
The 50-year scenario, of course, raises another question: Do decades of teaching a discipline amount to “tested experience,” if not necessarily an accreditor’s definition of it?
Cupp, the professor at Wayne, said yes.
