Strategic Plan
To become the premier institution for undergraduate studies in Natural Sciences in the United States both in substance and in reputation by:
Let us begin by noting that our primary goal, that of providing the nationally-recognized premier scientific education, is entirely within our grasp. We already provide a science education widely recognized as excellent, with our graduates continuing on to graduate and professional study at the top universities in the land, and acquitting themselves well at those places. We now draw from a very talented pool of high school students, the pool has grown rapidly from a regional to a national base, and our admissions department understands the importance of admitting excellent science and engineering students.
Let us also begin by observing that excellence in this direction never ever comes cheap: while we can improve some aspects of our situation by simply communicating better with each other, making some easy decisions, and rearranging some of our priorities for funding, it is clear that in order to really advance, or even to maintain our present status, we will need additional resources, both in faculty and staff and in facilities and equipment. Below, we will lay out the most effective ways that we could use new funds to dramatically change the quality of science education at Rice University.
There are several principal challenges we presently face. First, our labs are crowded, and even the portion of the equipment which is in good repair is long overdue for an upgrade. Moreover, although the computer has developed from a research tool to an instructional device, that transition is not reflected in the facilities generally available in our classrooms or to the faculty.
Second, of the 30% of the freshman class that arrive at Rice with a declared interest in a science major, more than half have left that interest behind eighteen months later (for minorities, the dropout rate is two-thirds). Clearly some of those who leave science do so because they have found an interest in other subjects, and some pre-meds maintain a strong interest in science while pursuing other majors in college. In regard to the latter point, it should be noted that despite the loss of students from science majors, the enrollments in the science classes even at the advanced level have not substantially decreased over the past decade and, in fact, have increased in many cases. Frankly, some students may just not have a sufficiently strong interest to persevere with a major in science, but our interviews with students and others last semester lead us to think that at least some of those people who leave have done so because of the way the freshman science courses are taught. In making the transition from the pace, scope and depth of high school science courses to those of college in their freshman year, some of our students get overwhelmed by the size and anonymity of the introductory classes. While the faculty intends to systematically build a foundation for later studies in these courses, the lack of personal attention in these courses seems to alienate some students, particularly the underprepared ones, from the science which excites them.
There is no solution for this problem other than to increase the size of the faculty. The first few new positions should be allocated to named finite-term instructorships, modeled along the Huxley Fellows in Biology and the Evans Instructorships in Mathematics, and to long-term, non-tenure track laboratory coordinator positions. We are ardently opposed to establishing teaching-only or teaching-intensive faculty positions, as these are clearly steps in the direction of mediocrity. We are similarly opposed to increasing the present teaching load of the current faculty, as this will surely lead to a drain away from Rice of our best talent, and a dilution of the current efforts. Some of the new courses this new faculty would teach, along with additional sections of the current freshman offerings, would be some new freshman and sophomore (and later in some departments) seminars; these would serve to introduce the problems and approaches of a scientific discipline in a more personalized way to prospective majors.
Third, we need to pay particular attention to our underprepared students: the university does a great social good by admitting students from diverse backgrounds, so it is important to follow this up by proper advising, tutoring, and additional curricular offerings (perhaps including a summer session) to ensure that students who want to major in science are able to major in science.
Fourth, most other schools with which we compete offer their science students a B.S. degree for achievement that is commensurate with what we presently require for a B.A. degree. We propose establishing a B.S. degree for our science majors, while restructuring the B.A. degree to provide more flexibility in our offerings.
Fifth, it is surprising how little communication there is between the various departments in the Natural Sciences Division regarding the content of courses, the assumed prerequisites, the scheduling of classes, and the process of curricular revision. This lack of communication inevitably and regularly leads to problems of coordination for our students and faculty. This situation can easily be improved immediately, and we will recommend some ways to do so.
Our report is organized as follows. In section II, we summarize the data which have led us to our view of the current state of the undergraduate program. In section III, we discuss our principal strategic recommendations: that of enhancing the faculty and improving the facilities. In section IV we put forth some operational reforms which could be implemented readily with little cost. In section VI we give more details of our discussions with faculty and students.
Assessment of Current Status and Needs
We assessed the opinions of Rice undergraduates about the current status of undergraduate education in the Wiess School of Natural Sciences by conducting meetings with both science majors and non-majors in each of the colleges and with departmental majors in each of the science departments. Each meeting was attended by two or more members of the subcommittee; student attendance ranged from five to thirty. In each case, the students were encouraged to speak openly and to address any issues they felt were important. In addition to the concrete information obtained by this process and summarized below, we learned that allowing students this kind of access to interested faculty is good for student morale. Issues of concern to this subcommittee also surfaced in both the Undergraduate Education Workshop and the Faculty Issues Workshop as well as in meetings with faculty on a departmental basis conducted by the Strategic Planning Committee.
We found that many students who changed from Science to Academic majors were turned off by the Big Three, both by low grades on early classes and by crowded labs. Among the majors, we uncovered a strongly held view that our B.A. degree is equivalent to a B.S. elsewhere and that many students feel disadvantaged by not having a B.S. option and that in general the number of required courses was much too large, allowing very little free time to explore non-major courses or the many interesting lecture series on campus. These concerns are given in more detail in Section VI.
Early in the fact-finding process, questions arose as to whether some of the above-mentioned problems could be attributed to changes in student demographics arising primarily from the admissions process. To address these issues the Subcommittee met with Dean Stabell and Leona Urbish to discuss the admissions process for science students and the statistical information regarding science graduates. The discussion regarding admission policies allayed most of our concerns about Rice seeking only breadth in its students and perhaps neglecting the potentially most gifted science students. Student demographics and interests have indeed changed over the past decade, but these trends appear nationwide and are not peculiar to Rice University. It is clear that Rice is competing for the best science students with the top universities in the country; however, we could be more successful in matriculating those students we admit.
We also discussed the issues related to the admission and retention of underrepresented group students in the Wiess School of Natural Sciences. The problem is enormous, and few, if any, of the approaches that have been tried have proven successful. We found that there is little statistical information available that can address questions about how many students change majors (either in or out of science) at Rice and why. Most faculty have opinions on this topic that are based solely on anecdotal information. Similarly, it is not possible to identify how many of our students are first generation collegians and how well they are retained in science majors.
In order to achieve the stated strategic goals in undergraduate education and to enhance the faculty's mission providing that education, we have identified the f ollowing most critical items which will require a significant enhancement of resources:
The faculty should be enhanced by a combination of the following:
The facilities of the university should be improved by:
We have also identified a number of structural, curricular, and advising improvements that can be implemented essentially immediately without requiring substantial additional resources.
The curriculum in Natural Sciences should be enhanced as follows:
The students, both majors and non-majors, should be supported in the learning process in natural sciences by:
The facilities of the university should be improved by:
We are pleased that essentially all of our most critical recommendations have been assimilated into the overall Natural Sciences Strategic Plan as key goals. Some are essentially identical in content if not in title to the listings presented here. For example, #1: Attract and retain world-class faculty in both research and teaching; #4: Provide resources for effective teaching in the sciences; # 5: Develop better and broader criteria for judging teaching performance, #12: Expand faculty to improve undergraduate science curriculum; #14: Enhance support for students, both majors and non-majors, in learning science; and #15: Improve facilities for undergraduate instruction in the sciences. One of the key goals, #13: Establish a Curriculum Committee for Natural Sciences that includes representatives from Engineering, grew naturally from our recommendations for curriculum review and reform above, and consolidates several of our key recommendations under a single new committee. Although we are loath to add new committees to our overburdened faculty, the time is right for this one (and we hope to use this opportunity to disband other less-useful committees!).
Many aspects of our undergraduate program seem to be working well, with students learning and developing skills to the satisfaction of themselves, the faculty, and the larger academic community. The one area in which there seem to be problems is in the introductory courses, which occasionally act as a barrier to students beginning their undergraduate studies instead of a gateway to science at the college level. The brunt of this obstacle is possibly borne by students with average and below average preparation - the very students who need the most help at this level. A large part of the problem seems to be the size of the classes; students who need some personal attention can end up disconnected from their instructors. Naturally, one could ideally hope for a large increase in the size of the faculty to alleviate this overcrowding, and, while that might be possible in the very long-term, it seems impractical in the near- or intermediate-term. We propose instead the expansion of a program that has worked very well in the Mathematics and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology departments, that of named short-term terminal Instructorships. These instructorships fill several needs at once. First, they are postdoctoral research and teaching positions for early career persons. It is well-understood that many people need some mentoring and postdoctoral education early in their careers, and these positions provide an opportunity for that experience in a structured program. Second, for persons beginning an academic career, these positions provide teaching experience which can be a boon in the later application for a tenure track position. Third, the instructorships are named, providing a level of prestige, and are terminal, so that there is no stigma attached to non-renewal - all future employers know that no one is ever renewed. Fourth, as the positions are short-term, for departments with few new tenure-track appointments to look forward to, these instructors provide a steady stream of new ideas on science and even pedagogy. Finally, from the perspective of undergraduate education, these instructorships provide many new young and enthusiastic instructors of undergraduates for the introductory courses.
In the departments where these programs are now operating, these instructors are typically quite popular among the students (and the positions quite popular among the participants). From the point of view of practical considerations, the cost of these positions is substantially lower than the cost of a tenure-track appointments, particularly in terms of endowment commitment. The effect is that the new dollars that these new positions would require would have a maximum impact on the size of the freshman and sophomore courses. As an aside, the subcommittee strongly believes that almost all of the new sections created by these new instructors should be restricted to the initial course offerings, even if the instructors are given the occasional opportunity to teach more advanced courses. Let us emphasize the effect of this plan: while it may not be possible to reduce the size of say, freshman chemistry, from a class of 350 to a class of 35, an additional two instructors in Chemistry would provide the opportunity to offer two sections of 40 students each, together with a large section of 270 taught by a tenured faculty member. This arrangement means that the 80 students who might most need some personal attention could get it at a relatively minimal cost to the division.
We also support the establishment of sections taught by graduate students, offered at the same time as the faculty sections (so no student would ever be forced to take a graduate student as an instructor). This situation provides a "win" for everyone involved: the student gets teaching experience, and undergraduates who desire small sections with lavish amounts of personal attention can get it. This program is working quite well in the Mathematics department, where the teaching is supported by an internal teacher preparation program.
Finally, no plan is complete without a way to evaluate its success. As pointed out in the Undergraduate Strategic Planning Workshop, a consistent, defensible way to judge our progress is critical. We suggest several possible metrics of our progress:
As a final note, we are generally pleased in the success of the planning process. Many students and faculty are justifiably skeptical of the usefulness of strategic planning, and in particular the Undergraduate Strategic Planning Workshop. Nevertheless, we found the whole exercise to be useful, and an important way to raise concerns and allow a forum for new ideas and approaches to surface. We are hopeful that the financial partners of the University will also agree that reducing class size is a critical goal that will enhance the Rice experience for all and will be enthusiastic in endowing a number of Teaching Fellows.
Summary of universal student issues
Issues noted in meeting with faculty
What then do we conclude from this information?
The issues may be divided into two broad and sometimes indistinct classifications. Some issues may be thought trivial from the standpoint of strategic planning but are nevertheless important to the overall success and reputation of the science program. These relatively minor issues can have a substantial demoralizing affect on faculty and students that should not be overlooked. A number of these issues could be corrected quickly by allocation of resources and better management. Such issues include the availability of audio-visual equipment in classrooms, the creation of larger numbers of classrooms as well as the availability of sufficient modern equipment in laboratories. We also include in this list improvements to student advising procedures, administration of tutorial programs, better use of electronic media such as Web sites for dissemination of information regarding classes, curriculum, scheduling, registration, faculty and departments. Better communication to students by faculty and departments concerning the expectations in particular classes and the goals of major curricula could be easily accomplished and would go a long way in improving student attitudes and performance.
Other issues are much more serious, however, and how they are answered will have a fundamental impact on how Rice University perceives and implements its undergraduate educational mission.
There is overwhelming support among faculty and students for a B.S. as well as a B.A. degree option for majors in science. The implementation of such an option would cost the University little in resources, would add tremendously to the flexibility of students in their career paths, and would also likely result in an increase in the number of students majoring in science. Historically, however, this is a significant departure from the University's past educational philosophy.
Of the other concerns, perhaps the most serious problem is the large size of introductory science classes. This issue is of extreme importance as it may well be the root of many of the other serious problems such as the ability to retain students, especially those from underrepresented groups, as science majors. While this issue could be simple-mindedly classified as fairly routine in nature, to solve it will require significant faculty resources (as well as classroom facilities) that are not currently available. This is of prime importance if we are to not only improve student-teacher ratio but also augment other offerings (freshman and advanced seminar courses, interdisciplinary courses and courses geared towards non-science/engineering majors, etc.) which are not likely to replace existing teaching demands. While a careful departmental review of the various classes and major curricula by individual departments may result in elimination of some no-longer viable classes and the consolidation of others, such savings are not likely to be of a magnitude that will significantly impact the need. Increasing the teaching load of the science faculty is incompatible with the University's mission as an institution of scholarship and research and not consistent with practices at the other top universities with whom we like to compare ourselves. Simply put, in order to reduce class size we must have more excellent teachers. The cheapest way to do so in the short run is to create more named instructorships such as the Huxley Fellows or Evans Instructors. To reduce class size by increasing the regular faculty as well is also a clear goal, but this effort will take a significant increase of resources over the next decade.
Additionally, the committee notes strong national trends toward interdisciplinary and integrated courses of instruction, but the departments and divisions at Rice have typically functioned in an autonomous manner. To develop new classes and curricula will require levels of cooperation and mechanisms for implementation that currently do not exist.
This page is maintained by Rachel Miller
(mail to: rmiller@rice.edu)
Created 24-Mar-97
Updated 30-May-97