IHE: "All College Professors Should Be Scholars"

[Wahoo Redux]

All College Professors Should Be Scholars.

What it says.

Merry Christmas.

[Ruralguy]

Although I've been active for over 30 years and plan on at least trying for the next 10, maybe more, I'm not convinced that all tenure profs need to be research active at a teaching oriented school. It can help in the sciences to have at least a couple of folks in a dept. be active so that anyone who feels they need to publish before grad school knows with whom they can at least make an attempt. Yet, in some disciplines, learning how to do certain things, regardless of publication, can be far more important. So, if we have  a half dozen table top science guys, I only care if two publish as long as the other four are wicked good at electronics, lab set ups, general troubleshooting, computing and IT, etc.. What I don't want is someone who is literally stagnant...no publications, no meetings, no work with students, no help with facilities, can't really teach.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Being research active has made me a better teacher and having published on topics that are central to my courses also gives me credibility in the classroom. That said, I know plenty of people who are very good teachers but that don't publish much of anything (and I know people who are terrible in the classroom despite being very good researchers) so I wouldn't say that everyone needs to be a researcher as well as a teacher.

But I do think that all teachers should have some understanding for research (experimental design, research methods, etc.) even if they aren't active researchers themselves, at least in my field.

[Ruralguy]

I agree, so, generally speaking, I think PhDs and a minor publication/presentation requirement should be there for hire and tenure. But for full at a teaching based school?  Make full and named chairs dependent mainly on scholarship.
Maybe have some sort of bump for excellent teaching if you aren't already full. Or reserve some named chairs that are just for great teaching.

[polly_mer]

All College Professors Should Be Scholars.

What it says.

Merry Christmas.

1) We were already discussing this at https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=2007.0

2) Scholars in this article includes being a scholar in the discipline-based education research (DBER), which is very relevant for someone at a teaching college.  Anyone who isn't active in at least discussing that research and how it applies to their own courses is not doing their job.  Physics, chemistry, biology, and math have active teaching communities sharing scholarship on how people learn and best practices in helping a variety of students learn more effectively.

[eigen]

As in the previous thread, I will argue that there are significant disciplinary differences here. I'll second Ruralguy that I'm not convinced that "research activity" significantly informs teaching in my field.

Staying "research active" in the humanities means something very different than staying "research active" in the lab sciences, and there are differential impacts on teaching.

The difference between research productivity at an R1 and elite SLAC in the humanities is a lot smaller of a gap than in the lab sciences. I have undergraduates who work 100-200 hours a semester. My colleagues at an R1 have 10-50 people working under them working 40-70 hour weeks, including graduate students, research technicians, and PhD holding researcher (post-docs, research assistant professors). It turns out that it's hard to compete for grant funding and to get novel publications out of the door when you're competing against a small company. My colleagues teach 1-2 classes a year, one of them usually a graduate seminar, and have TAs to do all of their grading. Their time is spent almost entirely writing grants and planning research projects that their "group" will then carry out. They often don't write the first draft of papers that they are senior or corresponding author on, but spend time editing and revising manuscripts written by their group.

I teach 5 courses a year and am still expected to run a productive, externally funded research program despite not having the same degree of manpower in my research group while competing with people who do to be the first to publish novel findings.

Additionally, in my department, none of us teach significant amounts of time in areas that are even tangential to our research. My research focus has maybe 1 lecture worth of overlap with my teaching, with the occasional chance to teach a seminar or special topics course every 4-5 years.

My colleagues in, say, History, on the other hand, frequently teach courses that overlap with their research areas, and their research does indeed significantly inform their teaching. There's also a much smaller gap between the possible and expected research productivity, as their peers at R1 institutions aren't relying on a research "team" to produce work. This makes it possible for people to frequently move from my school to an R1, or from an R1 to my school- something that would be somewhere between very rare and impossible in my field.

[jerseyjay]

My colleagues in, say, History, on the other hand, frequently teach courses that overlap with their research areas, and their research does indeed significantly inform their teaching. There's also a much smaller gap between the possible and expected research productivity, as their peers at R1 institutions aren't relying on a research "team" to produce work. This makes it possible for people to frequently move from my school to an R1, or from an R1 to my school- something that would be somewhere between very rare and impossible in my field.

There is obviously a difference between researching in history and researching in a lab science. And the communal aspect of research is certainly part of it. That said, what is spelt out above is not really my experience, teaching history at a "teaching school." I teach about 4 courses each semester (between two and four preps). If I am lucky I will have two lectures per course that have any overlap on any thing I have published in 15 years (two monographs and about 15 articles) and there are some classes that are not related to my research at all.

The biggest difference I see between my position and colleagues at R1s is: (1) They have much fewer classes and thus more time to research; (2) They have more institutional support (money for trips, good libraries, research assistants) ; (3) they are expected to publish more. Thus I have been able to push out about one peer-reviewed article a year, while my peers at R1s tend to do twice or thrice that.

(For some reason, the COVID situation has been good for my productivity, since I have finished four draft articles since March, but that is part because I don't have to commute, part because I am lucky to have materials at home and online to use, and partly because I have been using writing as a way of not focusing on the state of the world.)

To get back to the original question: I do not think that publishing is necessary to being a good teacher (nor is it sufficient). I am sure we all know professors who are cutting edge researchers and really awful in the classroom. At the same time, there needs to be some engagement with the current scholarship and evolving perspectives. For most people, I think, keeping up with the literature is part of doing research for publication. I have met professors at my school why are up to date on the state of their field, but have not published anything in decades. But usually if one stops doing research for publication, one stops reading current scholarship, and one's view of the field stagnates, which means that what one teaches becomes less and less relevant.

[eigen]

My colleagues in, say, History, on the other hand, frequently teach courses that overlap with their research areas, and their research does indeed significantly inform their teaching. There's also a much smaller gap between the possible and expected research productivity, as their peers at R1 institutions aren't relying on a research "team" to produce work. This makes it possible for people to frequently move from my school to an R1, or from an R1 to my school- something that would be somewhere between very rare and impossible in my field.

There is obviously a difference between researching in history and researching in a lab science. And the communal aspect of research is certainly part of it. That said, what is spelt out above is not really my experience, teaching history at a "teaching school." I teach about 4 courses each semester (between two and four preps). If I am lucky I will have two lectures per course that have any overlap on any thing I have published in 15 years (two monographs and about 15 articles) and there are some classes that are not related to my research at all.

I apologize if it came across like I was overgeneralizing- I was speaking specifically to the schools I've worked at / where I currently am, which is obviously not everywhere. At my research active SLAC, the teaching load is 2/2 or 2/3 with 6-25 student classes including upper level research seminars, regular sabbaticals, funding for travel, etc. I was distinctly comparing the difference between fields in my (small) part of the "teaching school" world. Some of my colleagues definitely publish multiple articles a year (in article fields) or regularly publish books (in book fields).

Things can absolutely change a lot as you go to more "teaching heavy" teaching schools.

It's nice to hear you understand the difference- I don't get the same consideration from my colleagues here, who don't seem to understand why there would be a significant gap in publications relative to if I'd gone to an R1. In fact, of the people who started within a few years of me, several have already made "lateral" moves to R1 positions elsewhere.

The COVID gap has also been significant, and it's been frustrating to see my cohort outside the sciences have an intensely productive year while my research program has been set back by a year or more.

[polly_mer]

None of the recent discussion addresses the actual question of discipline-based education research (DBER), which relies on field knowledge, but focuses on the research of teaching field classes to students so that those students learn effectively.

It has nothing to do with the research to advance the field itself like the new synthesis technique for a polymer membrane or doing an ethnographic study of the carrot people of East Wherever.  One would not teach a DBER class unless one were in the teacher education program.

Instead, one would use social science research methods combined with field-specific knowledge to make adjustments to techniques and course material to benefit the students based on observations of student performance.

Teaching people ought to focus on teaching, but somehow people tend to go through the motions of presenting material as they learned it and grading instead of adopting the methods of learning what works with a given set of student demographics and then improving the courses to be more effective at reaching their student learning goals.

Focusing on the research to advance the field itself is one way that teachers fail to do their jobs.

[Puget]

None of the recent discussion addresses the actual question of discipline-based education research (DBER), which relies on field knowledge, but focuses on the research of teaching field classes to students so that those students learn effectively.

It has nothing to do with the research to advance the field itself like the new synthesis technique for a polymer membrane or doing an ethnographic study of the carrot people of East Wherever.  One would not teach a DBER class unless one were in the teacher education program.

Instead, one would use social science research methods combined with field-specific knowledge to make adjustments to techniques and course material to benefit the students based on observations of student performance.

Teaching people ought to focus on teaching, but somehow people tend to go through the motions of presenting material as they learned it and grading instead of adopting the methods of learning what works with a given set of student demographics and then improving the courses to be more effective at reaching their student learning goals.

Focusing on the research to advance the field itself is one way that teachers fail to do their jobs.

DBER certainly has its place, but a lot of the research is very poorly done because the people doing it aren't actually adequately trained in either human research methods or the science of learning. I'm not saying all of it, but overall I've not been impressed at what I've seen (lots of confounds, inappropriate statistical approaches, etc.)

To the extent DBER research is useful, I'm not convinced that doing it yourself, rather than just consuming it, would enhance many people's teaching. And to be useful, it needs to be done in collaboration with folks with the above actual expertise. So your average physicist or historian shouldn't be trying to do such research on their own anyway.

Finally, the last statement is patently untrue unless you append "at teaching only institutions". A big chunk of my job (officially 50%) is doing research to advance the field and training my grad students to do likewise. If I switched to DBER I would not get tenure. Same is true at every R1. My job is not to be a "teacher", it s to be a professor, which involves some teaching (which I try to do reasonably well, and again, I do actually know the science of learning and memory pretty well), but also lots of research and mentoring of student researchers.  You may want to remind yourself periodically that we don't all work a Super Dinky.

[spork]

[. . . ]

the carrot people of East Wherever.

[. . .]

I resemble that remark!

[eigen]

None of the recent discussion addresses the actual question of discipline-based education research (DBER), which relies on field knowledge, but focuses on the research of teaching field classes to students so that those students learn effectively.

At least at my university, getting a paper published in a top-tier DBER (like J. Chem Ed) is not seen as a "real" contribution to scholarship. It's counted something like a half or partial paper, which I consider very frustrating given that the data collection and time involved is significant.

Finally, the last statement is patently untrue unless you append "at teaching only institutions". A big chunk of my job (officially 50%) is doing research to advance the field and training my grad students to do likewise. If I switched to DBER I would not get tenure. Same is true at every R1. My job is not to be a "teacher", it s to be a professor, which involves some teaching (which I try to do reasonably well, and again, I do actually know the science of learning and memory pretty well), but also lots of research and mentoring of student researchers.  You may want to remind yourself periodically that we don't all work a Super Dinky.

I think this perspective is an issue. I think it's one of the reasons that when you look at the doctoral completion rates of students who went to teaching-focused institutions vs. R1s you see such a gap in favor of teaching-focused institutions. I think it's also why social mobility increases tend to be relatively low at many R1s.

My experience at an R1 for graduate school was that most professors did not see teaching as important enough in their job to justify the tuition charged to students, and tended to do a disservice to anything but already talented and well-prepared students from socioeconomically stable backgrounds.

I think trying to have professors (root word, teach) focus increasingly on production of scholarship rather than on education (broadly defined, including mentoring) is an issue. Look at the increased reliance on using adjuncts to teach introductory courses, the use of graduate TAs to teach laboratory courses, and the growing divide between "teaching faculty" and "real professors" in how things are discussed.

I certainly see a place for faculty positions that have a larger focus on research, but when teaching becomes less than half (or less than a quarter) of the responsibilities, I think it starts becoming detrimental to the education of the students.

[Puget]

None of the recent discussion addresses the actual question of discipline-based education research (DBER), which relies on field knowledge, but focuses on the research of teaching field classes to students so that those students learn effectively.

At least at my university, getting a paper published in a top-tier DBER (like J. Chem Ed) is not seen as a "real" contribution to scholarship. It's counted something like a half or partial paper, which I consider very frustrating given that the data collection and time involved is significant.

Finally, the last statement is patently untrue unless you append "at teaching only institutions". A big chunk of my job (officially 50%) is doing research to advance the field and training my grad students to do likewise. If I switched to DBER I would not get tenure. Same is true at every R1. My job is not to be a "teacher", it s to be a professor, which involves some teaching (which I try to do reasonably well, and again, I do actually know the science of learning and memory pretty well), but also lots of research and mentoring of student researchers.  You may want to remind yourself periodically that we don't all work a Super Dinky.

I think this perspective is an issue. I think it's one of the reasons that when you look at the doctoral completion rates of students who went to teaching-focused institutions vs. R1s you see such a gap in favor of teaching-focused institutions. I think it's also why social mobility increases tend to be relatively low at many R1s.

My experience at an R1 for graduate school was that most professors did not see teaching as important enough in their job to justify the tuition charged to students, and tended to do a disservice to anything but already talented and well-prepared students from socioeconomically stable backgrounds.

I think trying to have professors (root word, teach) focus increasingly on production of scholarship rather than on education (broadly defined, including mentoring) is an issue. Look at the increased reliance on using adjuncts to teach introductory courses, the use of graduate TAs to teach laboratory courses, and the growing divide between "teaching faculty" and "real professors" in how things are discussed.

I certainly see a place for faculty positions that have a larger focus on research, but when teaching becomes less than half (or less than a quarter) of the responsibilities, I think it starts becoming detrimental to the education of the students.

I think this another over-generalization based on certain institution types. I'm at a selective private R1, and went to a S(selective)LAC as an undergrad, and I think the students here get teaching which is on average just as good, plus more access to research opportunities. We have very few adjuncts, though we do have some full-time teaching-stream faculty (though they also do some research with students). The fact that I only teach 1-2 courses per semester is one of the reasons I can teach those courses well-- it seems weird to argue that a higher teaching load would make one a better teacher. And if I wasn't actively running a lab, I could't provide the mentoring for students that is the most formative part of their training in the field.

I did my PhD at a state flagship R1, and I agree that the quality of teaching may on average have been worse than a good SLAC there, but again, with much better research opportunities for students who chose to pursue them-- it's a trade-off. I also don't think this is an apples to apples comparison though, because even a state flagship R1 is much less selective (at least for in state students) than a selective private institution. I'd be interested to see a direct comparison of outcomes for students at equally selective R1s and teaching-focused institutions. (I also don't think PhD completion rate is a very good metric for success -- we shouldn't be pushing many students into PhD programs as we've discussed ad infinitum on the fora).

[Sun_Worshiper]

None of the recent discussion addresses the actual question of discipline-based education research (DBER), which relies on field knowledge, but focuses on the research of teaching field classes to students so that those students learn effectively.

It has nothing to do with the research to advance the field itself like the new synthesis technique for a polymer membrane or doing an ethnographic study of the carrot people of East Wherever.  One would not teach a DBER class unless one were in the teacher education program.

Instead, one would use social science research methods combined with field-specific knowledge to make adjustments to techniques and course material to benefit the students based on observations of student performance.

Teaching people ought to focus on teaching, but somehow people tend to go through the motions of presenting material as they learned it and grading instead of adopting the methods of learning what works with a given set of student demographics and then improving the courses to be more effective at reaching their student learning goals.

Focusing on the research to advance the field itself is one way that teachers fail to do their jobs.

DBER certainly has its place, but a lot of the research is very poorly done because the people doing it aren't actually adequately trained in either human research methods or the science of learning. I'm not saying all of it, but overall I've not been impressed at what I've seen (lots of confounds, inappropriate statistical approaches, etc.)

To the extent DBER research is useful, I'm not convinced that doing it yourself, rather than just consuming it, would enhance many people's teaching. And to be useful, it needs to be done in collaboration with folks with the above actual expertise. So your average physicist or historian shouldn't be trying to do such research on their own anyway.

Finally, the last statement is patently untrue unless you append "at teaching only institutions". A big chunk of my job (officially 50%) is doing research to advance the field and training my grad students to do likewise. If I switched to DBER I would not get tenure. Same is true at every R1. My job is not to be a "teacher", it s to be a professor, which involves some teaching (which I try to do reasonably well, and again, I do actually know the science of learning and memory pretty well), but also lots of research and mentoring of student researchers.  You may want to remind yourself periodically that we don't all work a Super Dinky.

I'm in a similar situation. Research to advance the field is the thing I am primarily incentivized to focus on and so that's what I do; if I fail to do this, then I will not get tenure. I am also a good teacher, but have largely taught myself through trial and error and I haven't looked to DBER research. Maybe I should familiarize myself with some of it (I know of at least one journal in my field that focuses on this kind of thing), but I'm doing fine without it and it really isn't something I can afford to dive into right now.

As I said earlier, being an active researcher helps me in the classroom, both because it gives me another layer of expertise in the topics that I cover and because I stay on top of the literature and methodological debates. It also helps me to advise students that are interested in research or academic careers. However, I know teaching-focused academics who don't do research, and that is fine with me as long as they teach well.

[eigen]

I think this another over-generalization based on certain institution types. I'm at a selective private R1, and went to a S(selective)LAC as an undergrad, and I think the students here get teaching which is on average just as good, plus more access to research opportunities. We have very few adjuncts, though we do have some full-time teaching-stream faculty (though they also do some research with students). The fact that I only teach 1-2 courses per semester is one of the reasons I can teach those courses well-- it seems weird to argue that a higher teaching load would make one a better teacher. And if I wasn't actively running a lab, I could't provide the mentoring for students that is the most formative part of their training in the field.

I did my PhD at a state flagship R1, and I agree that the quality of teaching may on average have been worse than a good SLAC there, but again, with much better research opportunities for students who chose to pursue them-- it's a trade-off. I also don't think this is an apples to apples comparison though, because even a state flagship R1 is much less selective (at least for in state students) than a selective private institution. I'd be interested to see a direct comparison of outcomes for students at equally selective R1s and teaching-focused institutions. (I also don't think PhD completion rate is a very good metric for success -- we shouldn't be pushing many students into PhD programs as we've discussed ad infinitum on the fora).

I think you're over-generalizing your experience as well. Honestly, we all are- very few of us have anything other than multiple anecdotes to contribute (our experience, our peers experience, our students experience). From my experience, 1-2 courses per semester is pretty par for a selective LAC (ala Middleburry or its ilk), and much higher than most of my friends who teach at R1s and teach 0-1 courses per semester.

I think it's a problem when I see folks in my field who have a normal teaching load that is less than a full class once a year (30-50% of the lectures in a team taught undergraduate class split between three faculty) and an expectation that "teaching" is less than 10% of their job description. To me, that sort of "research focused" position is a better fit for a national lab or research institute (ala Scripps). The small, tuition funded, private R1 I did my PhD at was a 1/1 teaching load with faculty alternating between teaching a graduate course one semester and an undergraduate course the next. No labs were taught by faculty (all graduate students), no undergraduate courses were graded by faculty (all graduate students) and active learning was not a thing (huge lecture halls) for most courses. This does not seem to describe you, but it's not at all uncommon.

Maybe it's field specific, but I hear a lot about how many "available research positions" there are for undergraduates at R1s, but I don't see how that compares to, say, a school like Reed that guarantees a substantial undergraduate research experience (with thesis) for every undergraduate student with direct training by a faculty member (not working on a part of a project with a grad student or post-doc mentoring it). I know my lab has far more undergraduates working in it than my graduate advisors lab, and they all get 1 on 1 training time with me, have input over the direction of their project, and get writing experience and proposal writing experience along with it. This may be the experience for undergraduates in your lab- and if so, great! But it's not the experience of many undergraduates in graduate-focused research institutions.

I also think it's interesting (again, in my field) how many faculty members at R1s did not attend R1s for undergrad: they attended SLACs and benefited from it.