---- malcolm McCallum <[email protected]> wrote: > Publish or Perish is in my experience not that common. > I've worked in some universities where publication was about as important > as, well, what color your shirt is. > On second thought, the color of your shirt was more important. > Universities are highly variable and some value publication very highly, > whereas others > could care less. However, I personally believe that if you are getting a > phd then you should be doing > it in something you are interested in, in which case you will ultimately not > find publishing all that > stressful or difficult. There are other options including Doctor of Arts, > and specialists degrees which > qualify you as teaching faculty or community college faculty where research > becomes virtually zero.
Hmmmmmmm. The importance of research to the advancement of a faculty member does differ greatly among institutions, and community colleges seem not to value it at all. That may be ok. But scholarly involvement of some level would seem to be a necessity for effective teaching of scholarship. That is in the same sense as competence in auto mechanics is a necessity for teaching auto mechanics. If my daughter wanted to become an auto mechanic, I would send her to master mechanics to learn, not to folks who read books about cars. If a university does not value scholarship in its faculty, then perhaps it should. But, it should also provide an environment where excellent scholarship is not only expected, but reasonably can be so expected. That means a class load that allows real time for scholarship. A professor who has a 12 hour teaching load, spread evenly through a five day week, has a really difficult task at hand to do field work, or even lab work. A 12 hour class load, especially if some classes are quite large, means at least half that many hours with students from those classes. Add 3-4 hours of committee time, 12 hours of class prep, minimum, and one approaches a full week, to say nothing of exhaustion. And some regional "universities" are pushing toward 15 hour loads. Unless some of the classes are redundant (as they commonly are in community colleges, which reduces the effective load somewhat), scholarship will go begging. To spend time in scholarship, the means of doing it must be at hand. That means space, equipment, supplies, and so on. The money must come from somewhere. Outside money is great, but it must be generated. That takes not only the faculty member's time and effort, but seed money from the institution, to generate data to show to granting agencies in the form of publications and preliminary results. Otherwise, no grant. One of the blessings of small university scholarship is that the institutions have been expecting undergraduate student involvement. The professor then has at ready hand a cadre of individuals, some of whom not only will prove to be great hands, but minds and collaborators. But then we hear from some students the complaints offered by another on this list, saying that the faculty member is taking advantage of the students. In reality, (s)he is usually just offering an opportunity for each party to benefit from the other. But in this context, too, the professor must have large blocks of time to engage in scholarship, or it won't be effectively done. And if it is not effectively done, all lose, but especially the students and the institution. Which brings us back to the question of whether the institution should expect scholarship. My answer is, yes, but through providing the means for it to be done. Scholarship and teaching are not, as some seem to think, competitors, but rather are mutualists in the academic world. mcneely
