Academic Leader

In 2005, the Business Roundtable predicted that if the United States were to maintain its position as the world's most powerful and technologically advanced nation as well as remain competitive in the global economy, it would need to double the current number of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates by the year 2015—less than a decade from now. This is why it is important to develop innovative ways to engage community college students in science.

Discussion of teaching and learning as an academic, scholarly endeavor has become an acceptable conversation on college campuses. A shift is beginning to take place whereby the scholarship of teaching and learning is now being taken seriously. We are making progress in higher education by making undergraduate education intentional, thus moving toward a learner-centered paradigm.

For many academics the broad question, harshly put, is whether it is ethical to teach students how to influence the choices of consumers using sophisticated behavioral science techniques. A related question—the one addressed by this article—is whether it is possible for university administrators and faculty to effectively manage the ethical issues attendant to marketing courses.

As more and more faculty are being asked to teach online, there is a growing need to address workload, promotion, and tenure policies to reflect the differences between teaching online and teaching face-to-face. Because of the differences among departments and institutions, there is no single solution to these issues. Academic Leader recently spoke with Philip DiSalvio, director of SetonWorldWide, Seton Hall University's online campus, to get a clearer picture of the policy issues involved with online instruction and to explore possible policy action alternatives.

When the Center for Faculty Excellence was asked to be responsible for new faculty orientation 2005-2006, we knew we wanted a combination of face-to-face meetings as well as a way to provide information that could be accessed when and as often as a new faculty member needed. Because the university's course management system is Blackboard, we quickly settled on an approach that combined face-to-face sessions and Blackboard to deliver important information.