James Bess and his own team of teaching researchers set forth in this book to initiate conversation about fundamental changes in the way the tasks associated with higher education professionals are defined. The authors identify traits of faculty members best suited to these newly defined tasks and suggest development of training programs which prepare faculty for working and teaching in teams. Bess suggests that the traditional triangulation of expectations for the faculty member at an institution of higher education-teaching, research and service-is both too limiting and too demanding, and that there is no true parity among these areas, with research being most heavily weighted as far as prestige in a hierarchical setting is concerned. Bess rightly names the common bane of the higher education faculty member-that of "role overload." He identifies faculty members who receive great satisfaction from certain areas of their jobs and despise other parts, and asserts that this "reduces the quality of [faculty] work and hence the effectiveness of their contribution to their institution. They also suffer personal anguish when they see that the often considerable time required to be spent on work in which they have little interest or little talent does not either advance them toward their professional goals or result in personal satisfaction." (5) Bess' articulation of this profound and central problem will ring true to many an overworked faculty member; it is a problem which no doubt sends many individuals away from the profession.

What Bess proposes, then, is re-defining the tasks associated with teaching and dividing the areas, or "domains," in which college or university teachers function in a completely new way, according to identifiable talents of individual faculty members. The domains he suggests are: pedagogy, research, lecturing, leading discussions, mentoring, curricular/co-curricular integration, and assessment. Each of the individually authored chapters which follow Bess' introduction focuses on one of these domains, and identifies prototypes of faculty members with talents and interests in those specific areas. Throughout the book comparisons and constructs of both organizational and psychological paradigms form the foundations for the analyses of certain types.
The ideas developed in this text are both exciting and frustrating. The book demonstrates some truly revolutionary approaches to thinking about faculty placement and development within institutions of higher education. How many individuals would be more stimulated if they could exploit their talents and interests in one area-say lecturing-and not have to be encumbered by the unwelcome task of assessment? Or vice versa? The exploration of learning communities in many schools would be enhanced by the recognized teams of teachers, which would indeed "promote communities of learning." (49) If this ideal model were to work, the common hierarchy among faculty-anathema to many-could be dismantled, and individuals would flourish in supportive communities or teams that encouraged their progress.

The frustrating part about the text is that it doesn't deal with individual possible scenarios. Bess suggests developing these seven-member teams from within content-specific disciplines. This assumes that there are at least enough individuals in any given discipline to make up a team, or more than one, since so much of the success of a team will be based on not forcing individuals to work together, but rather finding the right dynamic of members in order to be successful as a unit. What of small institutions, whose disciplines are frequently represented by four or fewer individuals? Any reader-pedagogue of this text will no doubt issue many other questions: What about the individual who contentedly demonstrates more than one of the faculty profiles identified in the individual chapters? Will statistics show that there is the same number of willing assessors, for example, as researchers in any given discipline?

And even if there were that willing number, would they be willing to risk dropping the prestige, and indeed job security which our profession has thus far associated with solid research? Those within the profession will be faced with the chicken and egg conundrum: how can new members in the profession give up the prestige and assurance associated with recognizable research without reassurance that there is a world of jobs created for them? And yet how can those positions exist without not only willing, but prepared employees? There is no denying that even at small, liberal arts institutions, a definite hierarchy exists among those who produce (read: publish) more "research" pieces. Much as we would like to dismantle that pecking order, until there is an established route for those who opt out of the research track to demonstrate their successes, few will leave that established route for recognition within their fields. What assurances will these individuals need before they are willing to dedicate themselves to a less prestigious set of tasks?

The revolutionary approach that Bess proposes would have to be just that-a complete and broad revolution in the university academy. He identifies the need to introduce this way of thinking into preparatory programs-graduate school, or newly created certification programs. He also rightly claims that this new type of organizational structure within the academy would have to be supported by newly formed professional organizations. Further, this is something that would have to be recognized nationally within the profession, and not just at a few schools. Otherwise, how could an individual move from one institution, where she has successfully worked within a team, honing certain skills but ignoring others, to an institution that demands multi-tasking?

Bess does address many of these doubts in both his introductory and his concluding chapters, and underlines that the book is not meant to be a "how to" guide for initiating these processes. While the ideas presented are not only imperfect but very impractical for many institutions and individuals, they do demonstrate thinking outside the box, a professional box which many find far too restrictive. It is a book which undertakes a very important debate about the future of the profession, a debate in which we should engage with enthusiasm, even as we point out the flaws it may hold.

Gretchen Trautmann
UNC Asheville