As Canadian universities restructure, they need to focus on providing the highest quality of teaching and scholarship. This paper presents a new perspective for evaluating and differentially rewarding teaching performance and scholarly output based on a system that has proven to be successful in many other fields. This reward system is cooperative because departmental faculty members would be collectively rewarded for their average overall performances. It differs from the current system of rewards that is both individualistic and needs-based, a system that forces faculty members to compete against each other, within and among departments, to achieve self-defined needs rather than group-defined objectives.

We propose a system in which departments would be judged using readily available and easily interpreted data on teaching and scholarship, ensuring that the allocation of rewards would be fairer and more transparent.

Specifically, we propose that rewards should be based on clearly defined objectives of good teaching and good scholarship and that meaningful incentives should be used so that departmental faculty members work together to achieve those objectives.