Teaching for Tenure

NEARLY EVERYONE at Harvard has had the painful experience of taking courses with experts who cannot communicate their knowledge. While discussions of teaching skills have always been included in departmental recommendations for tenure, the recommendations have rarely gone deeply into that aspect of the candidate's ability. Research and teaching have both been criteria for tenure, but the emphasis has undoubtedly been on the former.

Dean Rosovsky's move last week to sharpen the focus on teaching abilities in tenure decisions is laudable, if long overdue. His request that department chairmen include separate evaluations of teaching skills with ad hoc tenure recommendations suggests that perhaps teaching will become an important criterion for Harvard faculty. If teaching ability received as careful a scrutiny as research and publications in tenure decisions, the Harvard education--at least from the students' point of view--would improve immensely.