Idle Musings on PETAL

It occurred to me this week that it was almost exactly one year ago that I saw an ad in the Chronicle about an opening at the University of South Alabama to be the Director of something called “PETAL.” And to think I almost didn’t bother to apply…

I’m certainly glad that I did and that things have worked out the way they have. The University has proven to be a wonderful place to work with many wonderful people with which to work. Mobile has been great as well.

But that is not the point of this post. Over the last year, while making the transition from “candidate” to “incoming director” to “director” of the Program for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, as well as making the transition from “doctoral candidate” to just “doctor,” I have (of course) done a great deal of thinking about the “enhancement of teaching and learning” in higher education.

I’ve offered and/or arranged many seminars, workshops, and other activities for faculty on ways to improve their teaching, and while I would obviously like for more faculty to come to each of these sessions, turnout has generally been good for most events, and, more importantly, those who have attended have been very pleased and enthusiastic about what they are receiving there.

I’ve talked with many faculty here and at other institutions about teaching issues in today’s college classroom.

I’ve also talked with faculty about the use of technology in the classroom as well as about how it can allow teaching and learning to take place or continue outside of the classroom.
I’ve even often wondered if enhancement is even the proper “E” word in PETAL, and if excellence might be a better choice, but that debate is for another time.

What really stands out among all of my musings and mutterings on the subject, however, is that excellence in teaching is essentially meaningless.

For example, if you were to write a “great” poem, and no one, or at least very few of your readers, understood it, then you could attribute that lack of appreciation to any number of things that do not directly reflect on the inherent quality of the poem, and it would be natural and entirely possible for you to blame it on the audience for the poem not being suitably prepared or sophisticated enough to recognize, and therefore benefit from, your poem’s obvious greatness.

Teaching, however, is another matter entirely.

If I were to give a great lecture, and no one, or at least very few of my students, understood it, then it simply wasn’t a great lecture after all. By any standard. And even if the audience for the lecture was not suitably prepared or sophisticated enough to benefit from its brilliance, that is the fault of the lecture and lecturer, not of the audience.

Therefore excellence in teaching can only be measured by excellence in learning, and as teachers we must never forget that what we say is not nearly as important as what our students hear. To evaluate our success as teachers by any other measure is a corruption of the purpose of the University.