April 10, 1998

OTICA WINNER "TED" PARDY: Textbooks an excuse for exploring the core and conceptual guts of a course. (Photo: Richard Wright)

A Textbook Case of Academic Heresy?

Ted Pardy's View on Biology Texts Ruffles Feathers

Listen to Ted Pardy discuss biology textbooks and it sharpens the focus and brings out rich, burnished tones in a Kodachrome snapshot of this corker who won the 1998 Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award.

Widely admired for his energy, keen intellect and teaching prowess with classes of 200 to 300, Pardy is a professor of biological sciences. A talented speaker, he is known for drawing students into discussion. But their textbooks perturb him and were the subject of a recent memo to colleagues: "It's obvious that the book hawking season is upon us. Every time I turn around I bump into a salesperson pushing the latest flashy general biology textbook.

"They call on the telephone. They mail stuff, they slip stuff under the office door, they leave messages. I'm becoming a textbook deadbeat-avoiding strangers and ducking into the john whenever I spot individuals toting anything remotely looking like book material," says Pardy, who came to the university in 1977.

Since then, he has helped change the way large classes are taught with computers, video and audio equipment. Eighteen years ago, he helped spark the classroom technology revolution, pointedly calling available technology "not much above the level of colored chalk."

He remains outspoken. The classic biology heresy is creationism vs. Darwinism. Pardy's heresy is even more radical. He wants to dump textbooks.

They're "too damn expensive; too heavy (6 pounds, 2 ounces), crushing in excruciating detail; lacking in focus and filled with visual noise, like one big, never-ending Bud Lite commercial."

"To teach a general biology course without an assigned textbook is heresy. Teaching a general biology course with a contemporary textbook is a charade. I'm contemplating heresy," Pardy says flatly.

"Is it any wonder that students stay away from biology in droves after enduring this stuff? I can only imagine what goes through the freshman mind when picking up a general biology book having over 1,000 pages." Pardy maintains it would take six semesters to absorb that much information.

"Why do I (we) make students buy a $50 book when they will use only $25 worth?

"It seems that we use a generally agreed upon text in our biology course to provide the appearance of having actually sat down and hashed out what the core and conceptual guts of the course are to be and where the emphases should be placed.

"Perhaps some discussion along these lines was done some time in the misty past. It needs to be done on a recurring and reaffirming basis. In any event, the selection of a unified text provides a safe escape from the soul-searching task of identifying and defending what should constitute general biology and then teaching accordingly."

Instead, Pardy would opt for "books that will be read; books with a point of view; books that draw upon the tradition of arts and sciences that expects students to read (and contemplate) significant things enunciated by individuals with a certain perspective and flare for clarity of writing and thought.

"I like thin books. Thin books offer the possibility that they can actually be read cover to cover in one lifetime. Thin books also have a habit of getting to the point."

And so does Ted Pardy.

The point, for him, is to teach. "We need to have people who integrate and enliven. That's my job as a teacher. When you start seeing their eyes open in the classroom, when they stop taking notes, put down their pens and look up at you, you are making a mark."

-Peg Strain, Public Relations

Moeser, Smith Speak of Budget Strategies to Senate

Chancellor James Moeser believes that Nebraska is a better university despite the pain and trauma of last summer's reallocation and resulting budget cuts for many departments. However, some at Tuesday's Academic Senate meeting said the chancellor underestimated the amount of trauma inflicted on many units.

Moeser said the university is entering a new reallocation mode that will differ in process from the first, which identified nearly $7 million and shifted it to other priorities.

"It is imperative that we continue a process of reallocation if one accepts our premise that the campus must move forward," Moeser said. The chancellor said he alone, and somewhat arbitrarily, chose 4 percent as the "magic" number for departments to slice last year because he felt that was "the greatest amount we could get away with without huge trauma."

"It was a judgment call on my part," he said.

Several in the audience said the cuts were far more traumatic than the chancellor realized.

The upcoming process will involve more input upfront and more concensus, he said. Moeser referred to a letter recently sent to all faculty from Rick Edwards, senior vice chancellor, asking faculty to help assemble a set of priorities and goals and to also ask them to suggest new sources of revenue.

Moeser said he believes the university is a better institution due to increases in funding for computer wiring, recruitment of high ability students, improvements in the honors program and targeted funds for hiring of minority and women faculty. He noted that 80 searches for new faculty are under way, as opposed to the annual average of 40. About a third of those positions came about due to reallocation, he said.

Moeser said he will appoint a task force to look at academic structures and administration to create a more efficient way of operating. While cost-savings are a prime goal, he said, it's also important to ensure that the university is organized for optimal effectiveness.

Faculty should assess whether programs still have usefulness or meaning or whether the programs have outlived their need. "We (in higher education) have all grown up in an age of growth; we know no other culture. We have done everything, expanded everything, on the margin of growth. We have no experience in sunsetting programs and we need to develop that skill. Faculty control this at the college and departmental level," he said. "We need to think about what we are willing to give up to attain something else we want to do."

Moeser challenged faculty to think as if they were working to solve a monumental research problem.

And, he said, the university must take care to protect its academic core and intellectual values. "We must never put English, the libraries, philosophy or classics on the trading block," he said. "Other areas that are more entrepreneurial must step up to protect them."

Among Nebraska's strengths, he said, is that the university is currently under-capacity in terms of student population. He suggested the university should work aggressively to recruit top quality out-of-state students as a way to generate tuition dollars.

"I want us to create a strategy for positioning this university to be a winner," he said.

Moeser's talk came on the heels of a speech by NU President L. Dennis Smith, who painted a mostly gloomy picture of projected university finances in the next 15 years.

Smith noted that state funding for the university has shrunk as the state shifts funds to pay for Medicaid, prisons and local tax relief. All necessary items, he said. But, he added, "I don't see an environment in which there are going to be a lot of people scrambling to give us money."

Smith said the university system must look at consolidating some departments and operations, at reducing course duplications between campuses by offering some via technology and at streamlining administrative processes.

He noted that even if every non-academic employee was terminated, the "savings" would not make a significant dent in the projected budget shortfall. And he added that there are many necessary jobs that faculty just cannot do, so terminating non-academic jobs is not a viable answer.

-Kim Hachiya, Public Relations

Nobel Laureate Ramsey to Speak April 16

Norman F. Ramsey, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics and Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard University, will speak at the university at 4 p.m. April 16.

His lecture, titled "Exploring the Universe with Atomic Clocks," will occur in in Brace Laboratory Room 211, and the public is invited to attend.

Ramsey will describe how high-precision atomic clocks, which he pioneered, are being used in the study of neutron stars and pulsars, the movement of the earth's tectonic plates, the influence of gravity on light, and many other areas of contemporary scientific research.

Ramsey is known for his lively, engaging talks. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received many awards for his scientific work including the Presidential Certificate of Merit, the Einstein Prize for Laser Science, the National Medal of Science and the Erice Science for Peace Prize.

He is a former president of the American Physical Society and of Phi Beta Kappa. He has written many research papers and supervised the doctoral work of more than 80 young scientists. He is the author of four books: Experimental Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Moments, Molecular Beams, and Quick Calculus.

Ramsey's visit is supported in part by the Research Council.

For more information, contact Professor Robert Hilborn, 472-2894.

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