These general impressions are largely supported by systematic student testimony. Results of our most recent survey, from spring 2000, indicate that 85 percent of students said they met with faculty members during office hours either frequently (15 percent) or occasionally (70 percent); and 82 percent said they were either very satisfied (35 percent) or somewhat satisfied (47 percent) with the availability of instructors outside of class.

We should pause, however, to consider some other, more equivocal student responses about our educational program. While 75 percent of students gave the quality of classroom instruction favorable marks, the breakdown was that 22 percent were very satisfied while a much larger group, 53 percent, were somewhat satisfied. A further mixed result was in student perceptions of faculty commitment to teaching: an impressive 78 percent expressed satisfaction with our commitment to teaching: but only 29 percent were highly satisfied, while 49 percent were somewhat satisfied.

I have said these latter results were reason to "pause," not reason to contradict our more general impressions about the quality of instruction at Temple or the faculty's commitment to it. We look at these results knowing that students have exceedingly high expectations. And we should also realize that as our student body becomes more residential on campus and has a more traditional undergraduate profile, these expectations are likely to become even higher. We should ask also whether these surveys suggest that students are finding more variation in the quality of teaching than we might like.

Perhaps it is true also that students best appreciate the quality of teaching and instruction when they have fully experienced their college education. Certainly the reactions toward their Temple education of many hundreds of alumni that I have met, both at formal events and informally in my daily life, have been very enthusiastic. It might be useful for us to have more systematic information from recent alumni about teaching at Temple.

What we can agree on is that teaching is an extraordinary challenge that changes constantly. It is partly art: it reflects the particular intellectual and personal style of the teacher. But it is also a considerable science: we know more about the learning styles of students, more about classroom dynamics, more about appropriate methods of evaluation than we ever previously did. Our students come from more diverse backgrounds and bring more diverse experiences than formerly, and that adds both opportunity and challenge to teaching at Temple. Teaching is also caught up in the technological revolution around us. Like it or not, our students have mastered technology and use it constantly to learn and explore in the non-academic world. For these reasons and more, the requirements for excellent teaching at Temple are changing rapidly.

What these observations are intended to convey is that we can improve teaching, but that improvement lies in a difficult-to-define mix of individual and institutional initiatives. There are certainly some things that we can do institutionally to promote teaching, but the success of these efforts depends on individual reassessment and initiative.

Among the institutional steps we ought to consider are the following:

• Temple already has some programs to assist faculty to assess and improve their teaching. The Teaching Academy is an example. Many universities have institutional teaching and learning centers that offer faculty a wide variety of services and assistance, ranging from sessions on syllabus and test construction to the critiquing of classroom teaching through videotaping or peer visits. Some Temple colleges and schools have made efforts to develop peer support systems. It might serve us well to examine the feasibility of a University office capacity to assist faculty who wish to improve aspects of their teaching. The Teaching Academy has recommended such a step.

• Similarly, many universities have strong programs to assist faculty to introduce technology into their classes. Temple has already made an impressive start in this respect. The Teaching Learning Technology Roundtable (TLTR) has worked effectively to provide peer encouragement, support, and instruction in uses of technology in the classroom. We have no way of knowing the extent to which faculty have incorporated various information technology techniques into classes. But the TLTR executive committee reports that about 20 percent of courses are making some use of Blackboard, the Temple choice of comprehensive information system for classes. The 20 percent estimate is impressive, but it also reflects a long distance to go. Each dean has formulated a plan to introduce all faculty to Blackboard by Fall 2001. Perhaps Temple's already vigorous efforts to introduce technology into its instructional programs can be accelerated by offering more continuing education opportunities for faculty to learn the uses of instructional technology and its potential for their own teaching activities.

We should also consider the ability to use on-line methods of instruction and research as part of our general education program. In the future we will not be effective learners unless we can use technology for learning. Perhaps we should especially focus our efforts to introduce technology into instruction in our Core Curriculum. That will not only assure that every student is fully ready for technology-based learning, but it will allow us to reach larger numbers of students with these methods by introducing technology into a relatively focused group of highly enrolled courses.

Along with all but the wealthiest universities, we are now facing difficult challenges in continuing to advance technology in our teaching, research, and administrative endeavors. First, technology is advancing at an enormous rate, and our expenditures would need to accelerate dramatically if we were to adopt all of the new technology that is becoming available. Second, we have had the luxury so far of spending virtually all of our funds on new technology. We have not developed significant reserves or new funding sources for replacement of what we have. But technology ages rapidly, and both replacement and expansion may be financially difficult. Third, we have invested a steadily increasing portion of our technology budget in permanent staff at the Tuttleman Center, in schools and colleges, and in Computer and Information Services. These valuable staff represent permanent commitments in the University budget that grow annually with regular salary and benefit increases. Finally, of course, technology costs in the instructional program are added costs, not replacement costs. Unlike the private sector, which uses technology to replace personnel, we use technology to teach. So we need both technology and people.

These are formidable challenges to overcome. Yet Temple, like other universities, must sustain and expand its commitment to technology in its instructional programs. This will require that we select with care our technology investments, that we raise significant additional funds for these purposes through grants and gifts, and that we self-consciously forego other priorities to stay at the forefront of technology in our educational programs.

• While technology has become a central thrust of information storage, retrieval and management among students and, indeed, across society, the importance of libraries cannot be overstated. In many disciplines, materials remain principally available in print form. Monographic literature is almost entirely available in this way. And the knowledge developed in the past is largely in print, microfiche, film, and slide media. Temple University's libraries have declined in Association of Research Libraries (ARL) rankings for several decades. In 1986, Temple ranked 67th among North America's principal university research libraries; in 1992, 75th, and most recently in 1999, 85th. These rankings are in some measure flawed, however, because they count raw numbers of volumes and serials held. When so much information—especially journal materials—is available on-line, the holding of physical copies makes little sense. Indeed, the ARL itself is reconsidering the components of its index.

Nonetheless, Temple must be sure that it is maintaining the collections that it needs for its academic and instructional programs, so that its decline in rankings reflects only measured steps to provide access to information on-line rather than in hard copy. For important holdings from the past, the University must find suitable off-site storage to relieve the serious crowding in the library while assuring prompt access to materials that are needed. And Temple must continue to teach students how to use libraries and library materials, even in an era when much information is on-line. A Library of Congress catalogue number should still have meaning in the age of websites.

• We may wish also to offer week-long, half-day short courses at the end of the academic year on various aspects of teaching. I have personally had good experience with faculty response to such programs. At year's end, many faculty are engaged in reflection about the past year's teaching and have identified particular aspects of their own performance for improvement. Perhaps Temple should experiment with such offerings.

• One initiative that seems quite obvious to me is an organized effort to introduce new faculty to the various aspects of teaching that I have mentioned in these remarks. A recent study funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, involving a survey of more than 4,000 doctoral students, found that a substantial majority feel unprepared for the teaching responsibilities they will face as faculty members. Last year alone, Temple recruited 65 new presidential faculty—about 6 percent of the total presidential faculty. They will make an enormous impact on our instructional program, and most will be part of Temple for a long time. It is fair for these new faculty—as well as for new deans' appointments, clinical professors, and, of course, our students—to challenge us to support new faculty as they seek to become fine teachers.

• An important group of teachers at Temple are our graduate teaching assistants. Both to prepare them for their responsibilities at Temple and to help them prepare for careers in teaching elsewhere, the University should systematically assist them to develop teaching skills. Many universities offer orientation programs for graduate teaching assistants that provide information about student learning styles, about effective teaching techniques, and about university support services for teaching and learning. In addition, it should be the responsi bility of each college and school, or in some cases individual departments, to assure that a teaching seminar is offered for new graduate teaching assistants. Regular evaluation of graduate assistant teaching should also be undertaken, both to ensure the quality of teaching and to assist graduate assistants to increase their teaching skills.

• Another important group of teachers are the University's adjunct (part-time) faculty. While many are experienced teachers and most could not give much time to formal programs about instruction, adjunct faculty can be assisted if academic units include them in faculty orientation programs to learn about teaching expectations, institutional support programs for teaching, service programs for students encountering academic difficulty, and student assessment of teaching. My own previous experience with efforts to assist adjunct faculty to strengthe n instructional effectiveness confirmed their eagerness to participate and their commitment to improving the quality of their teaching.

• One further initiative should involve continual assessment of our teaching activities. We should adopt a standard, short student-evaluation-of-teaching form throughout the University. The Provost and a committee that includes representatives named by the Faculty Senate has already made impressive progress toward this goal. A new form would replace the excessively long, 56-item form now recommended. Student assessments of teaching should occur each semester in all courses, except for a few in which asses sment is unsuitable. Colleges and schools would be free, as they now are, to supplement the short University form with additional questions. The results of student assessments could, of course, be used for evaluation for faculty retention, te nure, promotion, and merit awards. But their most important use would be faculty self-evaluation of teaching and courses. Low levels of student satisfaction with some aspect of a course may be a signal for rethinking or redesigning that element of the course. And trend lines in assessment from one semester or one year to the next are good indicators of what is going well and what needs to be impro ved.

• Over time we should build additional means for periodic assessment of our teaching. Teaching portfolios and peer visits have become increasingly common in academic life, and we should consider those or other assessments as we continue to develop Temple University's instructional program. Although it would be too burdensome to allow individual faculty members to add items to any institutional form, there should be encouragement and assistance for faculty members who wish periodically to track student reactions to their classes. In a few institutions, especially in business schools, faculty seek student response periodically through the semester with brief forms that help faculty understand whether students find the course "process" and "teaching style" helpful in ma stering its subject matter.

Temple's faculty have long been devoted to teaching and to students. As an institution, we should engage in continuous efforts to renew and strengthen the quality of instruction. The proposals here may be a first step. Others will u ndoubtedly emerge as faculty, deans, and the Provost continue to consider means to improve instruction.