A number of concerned observers, notably the Pew Higher Education Roundtable and the American Association for Higher Education, argue persuasively that the academic department is the logical focus for responding to the current winds of change. Using a marketing metaphor, the academic department has been likened to a "producers' cooperative" of services that consumers seek. Thus, the department should be held accountable for the quality of teaching delivered by its members, for the coherence of its major, for its contributions to the general education curriculum, and for supervising and rewarding its individual faculty members. If departments are to be held accountable, it is surely in their best interest to act in such a way that they are accountable.

Expecting academic departments to be the principal agents for recasting American higher education might appear to some like putting a fox in charge of the chicken coop. For many observers, departments epitomize everything that is wrong with higher education. Departments have come to be viewed as the agents of a discipline that draw faculty attention away from their home institution, and seek to sustain individual privilege at the expense of initiatives designed to enhance learning and teaching. Departments have been portrayed as clans of arrogant experts accountable only to their own personal agendas and to their disciplines. From this rather harsh point of view, departments have become privatized as they and their institutions strive to enhance their reputations through the faculty they hire, often at the expense of undergraduate teaching. Faculty define their interests in increasingly narrow terms, which in turn is often reflected in the courses they teach. As individual courses come to represent the increasingly specialized views of their faculty-owners, the curriculum begins to lose focus and coherence. Thus, the privatization of faculty effort has far-reaching effects on an institution's educational mission.

In spite of its apparent flaws, the department, more than any other unit, stands the best chance of providing the basis of change that can renew higher education. Although individual faculty members may find their greatest rewards elsewhere, a department can only be rewarded on the basis of the combined efforts and accomplishments of its collective faculty. This fact alone makes departments an obvious vehicle for change. Furthermore, institutional support for a discipline is focused in the department, as is the institution's responsibility for teaching undergraduates.

For a department to compete effectively in the new marketplace, it must ensure that its members remain active scholars who are not only expert in their primary fields, but also open to inter- and cross-disciplinary opportunities. New developments and intellectual opportunities will continue to occur at the interfaces between traditional disciplines and must be expressed to students. These are the very processes whereby disciplines themselves evolve and change. An effective department will hold its members accountable for the quality of learning achieved by both its majors and students seeking general knowledge. In this regard, the department is the logical arena for faculty to talk regularly about how, what, and why they teach, as well as to learn from each other and from their students as they strive to lay a solid intellectual foundation while keeping course content current and relevant and to interpret the meaning of success in an increasingly competitive marketplace for ideas, jobs, and opportunities. An effective department will function as a team of scholars with diverse experiences, talents, interests, and ambitions that is willing to assign (and reward) different responsibilities to individual members at different stages of their professional careers.

If the renewal of undergraduate education is to occur through the department, a department must become an agent of the institution as well as of its discipline. Methods must be devised to foster greater commitment to teamwork. Rewards at the faculty and departmental level must be restructured to respond to the collective achievement of the department in both teaching and research. Techniques need to be developed to make effective teaching a subject of collective dialogue and inquiry and a mutually shared goal. Teaching should become the focus of the kind of scholarly activity that most faculty now reserve for their disciplines. Effective systems of quality control must be devised by institutions as well as mechanisms for rewarding departments that attain collective goals.

Up to now, most departments and their faculties have been reluctant to engage in the kind of self-scrutiny that is the hallmark of successful service-oriented enterprises. Using the marketing metaphor again, an organization that focuses on its customers will tailor its services to fit their needs, continually monitor its success in fulfilling service goals, and make adjustments over time. Approached with a positive attitude, this is a time of exciting opportunities for departments and their faculties.

JJL