{"id":5986,"date":"2016-07-07T18:48:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T22:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/faculty-engagement\/?p=5986"},"modified":"2019-02-17T13:15:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T18:15:15","slug":"balancing-research-and-teaching-stetson-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/2016\/07\/5986\/","title":{"rendered":"Balancing Research and Teaching | Stetson Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There may not be greasepaint or wild animals, but sometimes university faculty may wonder whether they have mistakenly chosen life under the Big Top: juggling while trying to keep their balance on a high wire.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a little bit how it feels to try to meet the twin demands of the study and the classroom, research and teaching. And increasingly there is a third element to add to the apparently conflicting mix: service.<\/p>\n

Is it really possible to do it all, to excel in each sphere? Can you keep all the balls in the air? Or does something simply have to give?<\/p>\n

The question is \u201cspot on,\u201d according to one Stetson professor asked about workplace tension \u2014 who illustratively went on to decline an interview request because, the professor explained, the workload meant there was no spare time to talk for several weeks.<\/p>\n

For Doug McKee, Ph.D., associate chair and senior economics lecturer at Yale University, the answer is clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible for a junior professor to be a great teacher and a great researcher,\u201d wrote McKee in a blog post noting the importance of publishing in hiring, promotion and tenure. \u201cOne has to give, and that\u2019s teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a follow-up email to Stetson University Magazine<\/em>, McKee observed \u201cmost faculty understand that teaching matters little in the hiring and promotion process at pretty much any research-focused university.\u201d He may have been unusually candid about things, but McKee\u2019s is by no means a minority opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany faculty members at research universities report that they have a tough time getting higher-ups\u2019 attention for anything but research and securing grant money, making teaching a decidedly lower priority,\u201d Inside Higher Ed <\/em>noted in an August 2015 article.<\/p>\n

PUBLISH OR PERISH<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historically, this \u201cpublish or perish\u201d pressure, as it is widely known, has been greater at major research universities. But times are changing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more and more faculty, there is a creeping increase towards more and more scholarship and publication, because that is where competition is settled,\u201d said Craig Vasey, Ph.D., chair of the committee on teaching, research and publication for the American Association of University Professors. \u201cThe people who publish more do get rewarded for that. The people who teach better don\u2019t generally get rewarded for that because that\u2019s part of your job, to teach and to teach well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research-teaching tension is not a new topic of conversation \u2014 nearly 20 years have passed since publication of the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University\u2019s influential Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America\u2019s Research Universities<\/em>, which advocated a major overhaul of existing practices to improve teaching standards affected by the lean toward research.<\/p>\n

More recently, Association of American Universities (AAU) President Hunter R. Rawlings acknowledged that \u201cthere has been a lot of reward for great research but not as much for great teaching\u201d at the nation\u2019s top-tier research universities. His assertion: \u201cOur teaching should be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments were made in a video on the organization\u2019s website that highlighted how the research-teaching conflict doesn\u2019t just affect faculty but students: It noted that 90 percent of students who switched out of science fields cited poor teaching as a major concern.<\/p>\n

The video introduces the association\u2019s 2011 STEM initiative, encouraging creative new teaching methods and approaches in STEM classes. The pilot projects at eight universities across the country don\u2019t just focus on ways individual faculty can improve their teaching, but how to encourage institutions to raise the level of commitment to teaching overall. Part of that encompasses studying how involving undergraduate students in research benefits students and faculty alike.<\/p>\n

MARRYING TWIN DEMANDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSome faculty think they move their scholarship ahead more with undergraduate co-researchers because they often bring different and diverse insights into the problem they are focused on or trying to resolve,\u201d said Beth Ambos, Ph.D., executive officer at the Council on Undergraduate Research.<\/p>\n

This philosophy, bringing research and teaching together as complementary rather than competing activities, is part of the AAU effort and one of the central ways in which Stetson seeks to minimize that research-teaching tension.<\/p>\n

\n
\"head-and-shoulders
Rosalie Richards, Ph.D., associate provost for Faculty Development at Stetson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe have to understand how to marry those two important components of our role, in order for what appears to be a tension to disappear,\u201d commented Rosalie Richards, Ph.D., associate provost for Faculty Development and professor of chemistry and education. Richards also oversees Stetson\u2019s Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence.<\/p>\n

Bringing research, teaching and even service together is \u201calmost like taking a thread from wool and weaving these things together in ways that reduce the tension of having these three strands that are running parallel to each other, and trying to steal from Mary to pay Paul,\u201d Richards said.<\/p>\n

Such has been the case for Terry Farrell, Ph.D., professor of biology, who has twice been honored for outstanding teaching at Stetson. By embracing the teacher-scholar identity championed at the school, \u201cyou are saying someone is both, simultaneously,\u201d he commented. \u201cI think a lot of us really want to look at it that way, that our scholarship is not distinct from our teaching, and it is all kind of wrapped into one,\u201d Farrell said. \u201cWhen you generate situations in which the research endeavor and the teaching are combined, all of a sudden you don\u2019t have the tension between the two; they are actually kind of synergistic activities. Each furthers the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is not necessarily easy, though. Involving students in research may be easier in some areas and disciplines than others, Farrell recognized. For instance, the study may require \u201chigh levels of mathematical skills or other deeply specialized knowledge, language skills that a typical undergraduate couldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Denner, Ph.D., underscored that reality. \u201cI don\u2019t know any undergraduate in the United States who could do what I do and have to do for my research,\u201d said the Stetson professor and director of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, who is also director of the University Honors Program and editor of the Tolstoy Studies Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Combing through archives in search of relevant articles and references requires language and history skills \u201cno student could possibly be expected to have.\u201d For his part, Denner feels the expectation that students take part in research is \u201coften naive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denner also observed that, though they may be good teachers, many faculty enter academia primarily to do research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get into the game to teach. We like to, many of us are very good teachers, but that\u2019s not why I got in,\u201d he commented. \u201cI wanted to solve big problems. I love to talk with other people about things that nobody else cares about. That\u2019s what I wanted to do and that\u2019s what I was trained to do and that\u2019s what I continue to do, but it is vastly removed from what I do in the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The emphasis on research over teaching may be true at Yale and similar schools, observed Kirsten Work, Ph.D., Stetson professor of biology, \u201cbut if anything we probably have the opposite problem: that our research suffers because we spend a lot of time teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

In part, she went on, that\u2019s just the nature of a liberal arts school: \u201cIf somebody doesn\u2019t really like being in the classroom, they are probably not going to come to [one].\u201d<\/p>\n

By Andy Butcher<\/p>\n

Note:<\/em><\/strong> This article originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of Stetson University Magazine. To read the entire magazine, click <\/em>here.<\/em><\/a> The next issue of the magazine is scheduled for publication this fall.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is reprinted from\u00a0Stetson Today<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There may not be greasepaint or wild animals, but sometimes university faculty may wonder whether they have mistakenly chosen life under the Big Top: juggling while trying to keep their balance on a high wire. That\u2019s a little bit how it feels to try to meet the twin demands of the study and the classroom, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[146,174,25],"class_list":["post-5986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-excellence","tag-stetson-spotlight","tag-stetson-today","tag-teacher-scholar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10057,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986\/revisions\/10057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stetson.edu\/brown-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}