Survey will gauge faculty contributions to state
Archived article from Nov 3, 2003
By Carla Cantor
A new survey designed by graduate students at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy will help the administration gauge the level of public service that faculty provide in New Jersey and solicit ideas on how Rutgers can strengthen its service mission and forge stronger ties to the state.
President Richard L. McCormick sent an e-mail to some 2,600 faculty members on all three campuses last week urging them to participate in the survey. “Your responses,” he wrote, “will be of great value as we move ahead to improve Rutgers’ outreach and service to New Jersey – and to obtain the support we should have from the state of New Jersey.”
The survey is an outgrowth of an idea that David Guston, an associate professor at the Bloustein School, had for a student project in his graduate-level course. The course, “The Role of Experts in the Policy Process,” explores the implications for society in using technical expertise to address public-policy issues and examines, in part, the role of public universities as communities of experts.
After hearing several of McCormick’s speeches, Guston saw a link between the course and the university’s core service mission. “I was looking for a project that could benefit both the students and Rutgers,” Guston said. Along with Sharon Ainsworth, director of state relations, Kim Manning-Lewis, executive director of University Relations, and Bloustein School Dean James W. Hughes, Guston met with McCormick in early September to explore the idea of conducting a survey.
“As employees of a public research institution, we have a responsibility to share our expertise,” said Guston. “It’s not enough to say as a faculty member, ‘I will do service.’ In studying the role of experts, we learn that certain things must happen for experts to be considered credible by society. There’s a knowledge and skill and an institutional basis for the provision of expertise in a service role, just as there is for research and teaching.”
About a dozen graduate students, mostly from the Bloustein School, formulated the survey with assistance from the Office of Institutional Research and Academic Planning. The survey asks faculty to describe their public service experiences from July 2002 to June 2003. These activities should be an outgrowth of the faculty member’s expertise and should benefit New Jersey agencies and communities, Guston said. Although a service role can be remunerated with a “modest” honorarium or per diem, it should not be a significant source of income. For example, faculty could include reviewing research proposals, but not conducting contract research. Similarly, it could encompass giving a public lecture, but not delivering a paper at a professional meeting.
The survey, accessed via an ID and password, asks faculty members to provide perceptions of the environment for service at Rutgers. For example, how committed do they feel the university, or their department, is to service? Faculty members are asked to evaluate several proposals to increase service, such as establishing a campus clearinghouse that would identify service opportunities or providing mailing and photocopying assistance for service activities. The questionnaire is confidential. However, faculty can elect to be contacted for follow-up activities, such as participating in focus groups or media interviews.
The students will analyze the survey and present the results to McCormick in December. As part of the project, students are conducting interviews with institutions and bureaus around the state on how they recruit experts and investigating what other universities are doing to encourage service activities.
The impact of the survey will not end with the semester. The administration hopes to use the results in formulating university policy, Guston said. The survey also should help develop an understanding among state policy leaders of the benefits Rutgers provides to the state, he added.
“The survey should be of great value as we move ahead to improve outreach and service,” said Ainsworth. “So much of our funding is based on Rutgers’ perception among policy-makers. If we can catalog the faculty piece of the service we provide to the state and local communities, it will give us a basis to seek financial support. There is a great potential benefit when we look to get support from state senators and assembly representatives to be able to say to them: this is the type of outreach Rutgers’ faculty provide to the state.”
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