Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:20:42 +1000 Reply-To: Helen Nave Sender: Conferences on Chemistry Research and Education From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: The Felder Paper In-Reply-To: I am a postgraduate student working on a Ph.D in Acoustics. For this year only, I am studying part-time, and am employed as a research officer part-time, working on a project involved with Engineering Education. I love tutoring, and while I don't think I'm too bad at research, I don't like it much, and don't think I have the love of research that is required for a research career. I would love to lecture, and I like administration. On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Jack Martin Miller wrote: > Not true --- however it is easy to demonstrate research skills (people > count papers, but if all you can offer is a clone of your research > supervisor, 20 papers means nothing and you won't make a short list. > However, unless you have taught, the only way you will be able to > demonstrate your teaching skills is to have a CV that gets you an > interview, since you have to be seen teaching to be evaluated on teaching. This may be true, but references from students or the like may provide a resource here. I have a few email letters from past students that I tutored thanking me for my interest and dedication. Surely this sort of thing should count?!?!?!?! Once lecturers are employed, there are teaching evaluation forms at our institution which are used as feedback. > Is teaching important or not? If it is > >(and it MUST be) then colleges and universities are going to have to > >start recruiting and retaining more faculty who want to teach. Amen!!!! Helen Nave Dept Mech Eng, University of Qld, St Lucia, Australia, 4072 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:26:43 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: research vs teaching In-Reply-To: <199510161638.MAA153062@ns2-1.CC.Lehigh.EDU> On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, JAMES E. STURM wrote: > To the Chem Teaching Conferees (Conferants?): The topic is large and diverse > enough to render inadequate any one-sentence conclusion. The papers were > chosen to encourage comment. My comments: > > - I find it hard to accept a categorical denial of any link between > research and quality of teaching. My scholarship-related reading has > often had relevance to topics brought up in courses or even affecting > choices of course content. On the other hand, choosing and processing > course assignments in ways that relate to the students' learning use up > 180% of the usually available time. Students benefit from seeing > effective practitioners in action and from interaction with them. Not to > keep active in one's field tends to stagnate one's perspective. I believe > that the system should encourage and respect the whole business of > intellectual exchange. What about those who are born teachers / educators - have the gift of communicating information succinctly and precisely, and for starting with the students' perspective rather than their own complex one - and who are miserable with a life involving research, and are frustrated at not being able to teach to their full potential? Or who aren't very good at it? It seems to me that the reason people are good at research is partly because they like the life of solitary discovery - maybe even a bit of a loner. That's the reason I don't like it. The people who are good at teaching often have good "people skills". They can, and enjoy, reading people, understanding their thinking processes before they do, and interacting with them. This is largely why I like teaching - getting students to produce what they don't think they can, but you know they are capable of! Surely this is merely specialisation by preference, and needn't be in any shape or form a caste system??? Helen Nave, Dept Mech Eng, University of Qld, Australia, 4072. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 13:45:03 -0400 From: John Hogg Subject: Comments of active researchers? Where are the comments regarding Felder's paper from the very active researchers (i.e. those with large graduate students research groups consisting of 5-15 graduate students and 2-5 postdocs, 3 or 4 concurrent grants, and the expectation of publishing 5-10 papers a year)? Do none of them care enough to participate in this discussion or do they already have the opinion that there is no debate left? I know many "researchers" who feel this way but I disagree that there is an absolute requirement that one do research to be a good teacher. It's just not true that this is necessary. John Hogg Professor of Chemistry Undergraduate Advisor John Hogg ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 12:18:06 -0500 From: JBELL Subject: The scholarship of teaching "Teaching VS research" is an artificial dichotomy. As many have pointed out, there are examples of people who SEEM to be able to do both well. This begs the issue, however, as to what the SCHOLARSHIP of teaching entails and this is what Boyer (and Felder, in part) is talking about. Meeting a class well-prepared to lecture at an appropriate level from the students' perspective is not NECESSARILY good teaching, if that class would benefit more from some other form of presentation. The scholarship of teaching implies an examination (involving experimentation, data analysis, and publication of results) of issues like the most effective (in terms of student outcomes as well as evaluations) methods of presentation. Without this retrospection and research, Jack Miller is correct (one of our few points of agreement) that the presenter is "akin to a News Anchor". Likewise, authorship of a textbook is not necessarily pedagogical scholarship unless the approach taken in the text can be shown (research again) to be more effective for student learning, than some other approach. Are the same people going to be good at both traditional bench/theoretical research and pedagogical scholarship? Probably not. In research intensive universities, should "teaching" faculty be judged on the basis of the scholarship of teaching? Surely. But the sufficient condition, being a good and dynamic lecturer/presenter/demonstrator, is not enough; the retrospection is also required. Jerry A. Bell Director Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Programs American Association for the Advancement of Science jbell@aaas.org ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 10:44:02 -0500 From: "P.C. Wankat" Subject: Felder's proposal I have been thinking about Felder's proposal. We tend to think globally, but when we act it is local. I suspect there are schools where his ideas would work quite well. After all, most well functioning departments already have one or more professors who focus heavily on service: committees, paperwork, advising, schedule deputy, lab coordinator, undergraduate curriculum, graduate coordinator, and what have you. Generally, department chairs will reward these people at salary time. At many schools chairs could do the same for professors heavily focused on both the scholarship and the activity of teaching. Of course, there are schools which would not buy into Felder's model. So what? There are schools which do not buy into the current research paradigm either. The real test of success will be when a significant number of schools start 1. raiding other schools for professors who are outstanding teachers, 2. promoting outstanding teachers to full professor on a regular instead of an irregular basis, and 3. start making outstanding teachers distinguished professors. Phil Wankat ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 10:34:52 -0500 From: barton jan Subject: Re: research vs teaching, and evaluation thereof In-Reply-To: <1388.rlight@iris1.sb.fsu.edu_POPMail/PC_3.2.2> You are so correct, Robley. >From a former student. Janice Sweeny Barton, Chair and Professor of Chemistry, Washburn University. Topeka, KS On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Robley Light wrote: > On Mon, 16 Oct 1995 17:16:57 -0400, JOHN WOOLCOCK wrote: > > >There are other ways to evaluate teaching besides student evaluations. One may > >is to create a "teaching portfolio". In the last few months I have been > >impressed with one particular source. It is a workbook by Laurie Richlin and > >Brenda Manning entitled "Improving a College/University Teaching Evaluation > >System. A Comprehensive Developmental Curriculum for Faculty and > >Administrators." I have been using it to create two course portfolios that > >focus on creating an "enhanced syllabus", critiquing a videotape of my > >teaching, analyzing student evaluations, identifying course goals, etc. It has > >been very helpful for me since it channeled my reflections about the courses I > >teach into a set of documents that illustrate my teaching philosophy and > >practice int he classroom. The second half of the book are two sections on how > >to develop a workable evaluation of teaching system. I have not examined these > >sections but if it is like the first half of the book it should also be an > >excellent way to create a thoughtful peer evaluation system for teaching. The > >authors claim that: > > We, too, have developed a "teaching portfolio" method supposedly to > evaluate teaching as part of a teaching incentive awards program funded in > the state of Florida by the legislature. Having served on the university > committee for this award two years ago, I can say that it is still > difficult to make fine distinctions even using this method. > > Both student evaluations and the teaching portfolio are pointed to > evaluating the "activity" of teaching, rather than the "product" of > teaching. In evaluating research, we evaluate the product. We look at > the published paper, or the grant application, which are the products of > long and involved activity. Peer review panels don't go into the > laboratory and watch "how" someone carries on his or her research, or into > the office to watch "how" someone puts together the research grant > proposal. > > So what is the "product" of teaching? I would submit it is the increase > in knowledge, understanding, etc. that the student gains from the > experience, no matter how enjoyable or charismatic the "activity" had > been. The product is not often really capable of evaluation until one > sees what the student can do with the learned material in later > applications. How can we devise systematic and thorough ways to assess > and compare these products, rather than just evaluating whether the > student is enjoying the experience? > > I'll admit to not having read the literature that some refer to which > presumably says that student questionnaire's correlate well with "other > methods" of evaluation. Could someone cite the best couple of articles > leading to this conclusion? I'd like to see if they really address the > "product assessment" question. > > Robley Light > ************************************************************* > Robley J. Light Phone: (904) 644-3844 > Department of Chemistry email: rlight@sb.fsu.edu > Florida State University Fax: (904) 644-8281 > Tallahassee, FL 32306-3006 home page: http://www.sb. > fsu.edu/~rlight > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:24:29 GMT From: Zvi Grauer Subject: Re: Teaching VS Research Dear Fellow Scientists The bottom line in life can be summed in the statement: "money talks, ..." I am saying this from personal experience. I ran a small business for several years, and learned first hand how people are nice when they see money coming. Research generates grant money. It allows one to pay students, buy big expensive research toys, travel and talk about his/her work, and do PR promoting it and him/her-self. It allows administrators to skim off some for the college and rave about the work and equipment done at the institutions. I know very few teachers who can point and say: I brought x student to this college, and thus generated so much funds. Even if they could, the college is controlling the money and they have no power over its use. How can you tell how much money they generate from effect on enrollment- do a principal component analysis? When teachers bring in grants for teaching, they will also be pursued by the administrators with perks, etc. It does happen - in departments of education, where money comes in for designing and evaluation of new teaching methods, etc. Regarding the conflict between teaching and research - one has only 24 hours a day, and when someone gives you a research contract, you are going to make sure he is happy, or you will not have it next year. The students will come to your school regardless of teacher's performance. They will grumble, but frankly, they do not have many alternatives since the other institutions are not any better. In my opinion this is the reality that leads to the inequality, and the only way to change it is to change the power structure in colleges, which is highly unlikely, or to have a strong pressure from the student body, which is also unlikely. Zvi Grauer. Adjunct Prof. of Chemistry Montgomery county community college Camden County College PA 215 886 5330 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 10:14:46 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: research vs teaching >Helen Nave, wrote > > What about those who are born teachers / educators - have the gift >of communicating information succinctly and precisely, and for starting >with the students' perspective rather than their own complex one - and who >are miserable with a life involving research, and are frustrated at not >being able to teach to their full potential? Or who aren't very good at >it? It seems to me that the reason people are good at research is partly >because they like the life of solitary discovery - maybe even a bit of a >loner. That is not how research works for most researchers that I know --- it is usually a group activity and in a graduate student "tetaching" environment, even more so. That's the reason I don't like it. The people who are good at >teaching often have good "people skills". They can, and enjoy, reading >people, understanding their thinking processes before they do, and >interacting with them. This is largely why I like teaching - getting >students to produce what they don't think they can, but you know they are >capable of! I like research as well for just this reason - it is a group learning experience. >Surely this is merely specialisation by preference, and needn't be in any >shape or form a caste system??? Based on the discussion I wonder if "research" has a totally different meaning in Engineering schools -- it seems to be the engineers who have been making the greatest distinction. I have a university wide perspective from our P & T committee and my work subsequently with a Faculty Association Committee providing advice on P & T documentation, including the teaching dossiers mentioned by other participants, but we have no Engineering School. I note also in the discussion that researchers are being offered by some the quid pro quo of -- have "teaching profs" and they'll do all the paper work the researchers don't like .. this proposal an the part of the "teaching only" side of the argument is degrading to teachers, and in any case assumes "teachers" are good at or like paper work and "researchers" are bad at it or don't like it. If one were to accept the argument for lack of correlation between teaching and research, then where is the correlation between either of these and effectiveness at paper pushing. If it is menial, it doesn't require a faculty member. If it does, then it requires one competant in the particular task and one who will get their paper work out on time. This is no more necessarily the teacher than the researcher. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:57:03 EST From: Howard Kimmel Subject: Re: Correction: Revision of paper by Richard M. Felder I really do not know how people are keeping up with the traffic in this conference. I am trying to get two proposals and two reports finished while reading in this conference. Impossible! My comments may be repetitive, but it cannot be helped. I assume the constraints of two days discussion on a paper has purpose. But, difficult to deal with. As a suggestion for the future, perhaps a week for discussion of a paper is more reasonable. Anyway, I first want to say that i have no ax to grind on this topic. As a 30 year person at my institution, i have seen all sides of this. i "rose thru the ranks" on the so-called "research pathway", and after 15 years here, i was trying to do research, serve as chemistry division head, and contribute to the field of science education. i was overwhelmed and had to make a choice. i did by devoting more time to science education at the expense of reserach. My reason, besides the fact that i was a tenured full professor and could afford to make that choice, was that while there were many doing research in the chemical field, there were very few interested in science education (at least in my institution) and very many pursuing research, and i felt that i could make contibutions to education. I have never regretted my decision. Which brings me to my first comment. yes, i still wrtie grant proposals and win grants. Yet, among my researach colleagues, it would appear that getting $1 million in reserach grants is more worthwhile than say a $1.2 million 3-year grant in an educational endeavor. (Here it becomes a matter of recognition.) So going back to Rich Felder's paper. I can agree with much of what he says. But we part when he starts talking about separate pathways. Here, altho he denies it, he still perpetuates the notion of second class citizenship for non-researchers. If someone is devoting full-time to excellence in education, why should that person be saddled with a high teaching load, as opposed to someone devoting full-time to excellence in research. Both require great deal of time. Indeed, >They (faculty on reseach pathway) would also be expected to teach graduate and > (if they wish to do so) udnergraduate courses and to perform at a satisfactory >level in their teaching. and >Research-oriented faculty members, with their lighter teaching loads and >freedom from unwanted UG administrative and advising responsibilities, would be >able to increase their productivity......, grants brought in by education- >pathway faculty..... clearly reflects discrimation against one group of faculty for the enrichment of a second group. Treatment and awards are certainly different, no matter what Rich otherwise may claim. People going to universities should expect and be expected to teach, ALL LEVELS. And those not on the research path also get hit with all the committee work, etc. Yes, we need good people in the classroom, and research is also important, for maintaining oneself in their profession. But here research is being used in too narrow a context. Let me offer an outlandish suggestion. Since we look at chemistry, physics, engineering, etc., as fields of study, in which we do scholarly work thru research, why not look at science education or engimeeromg edicatopm as fields of study, in which one can (and does) pursue scholorly studies. Then we have everyone on a single pathway, with one set of criteria for evaluation, both in teaching and in scholarly pursuits. For those researchers out there who do not beleive that scholarly pursuit in education is not equivalent, i strongly disagree. There is much going on and to do in educational research which require the same types of skills as research in chemistry, or engineering, etc. SOme institutions have already recognized scholarship in education (mine does only in part). The ACS is devoting sessions at its next national meeting to research in chemical education. So there is some recognition of science and engineering education as a subject worthy of study, and rewards. It seems to me that any other approach is akin to "beating a dead horse", and will not change anything. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Howard Kimmel Dept. of Chem. Eng., Chem. and Environ. Sci. New Jersey Institute of Technology University Heights Newark, New Jersey 07102 Tel: 201-596-3574 FAX: 201-642-1847 e-mail: kimmel@admin1.njit.edu >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:22:05 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: felder paper Usually in science if we 'think something is wrong' we do an experiment(s) to test it, then we try to get our results published in a peer reviewed journal. It is interesting to see that the defenders of this system will trash it if it suits their purposes. (My experiences are as valuable as those published, they are just not published, get real). Mary Mary L. Swift Voice: 202-806-6289 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Fax : 202-806-5784 College of Medicine Howard University E-mail: mswift@umd5.umd.edu Washington DC 20059-0001 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:12:53 -0400 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: felder paper Dear Colleagues I am still working throught the volume of messages that you all have generated. I detect that there is a search by some for a uniform error proof procedure for evaluating professorial effectiveness. Sort of like one shoe fits all. don't get angry with me. I know that isn't the case but that is the way it sounds. This brings up the point of my present note. Much of the evaluation process is context driven. the range of contexts run from teaching one course with 500 students through teachng one course with 6 students up to teaching 4-5 different courses with 5-25 students and everything in between. How do you rank the effect of such a spectrum of educational loads on students and faculty alike? I really don't know. Surely the expectations for 5 courses is very different from those for 1 course. The evaluation process must too be different. Perhaps we should spend time on job descriptions and then base evaluations on the match between the job description and the performance level of a faculty member. I think that at some places the job descriptions may not b clear. They may say that teaching is paramount and then behave otherwise by failing to set up a reward system that recognizes teaching. It's something like standards for ACS approval of a department. There should be guidelines and then lattitude in implimenting those guidelines. Theresa Theresa Julia Zielinski Niagara University FCHEZIELI@NIAGARA.edu Chemistry Department 716-286-8257 (campus office) Niagara University NY 14109 716-639-0762 (home office) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:01:59 CDT From: John Henry Wells Subject: Re: Teaching Portfolio's In-Reply-To: <01HWIK5ZSV9U8WYOM1@grove.iup.edu>; from "JOHN WOOLCOCK" at Oct 16, 95 5:16 pm John Woolcok wrote in part ... There are other ways to evaluate teaching besides student evaluations. One may is to create a "teaching portfolio". I have found the teaching portfolio to be a valuable tool in helping to improve my teaching (formative evaluation) but less valuable in helping my peers to evaluate my teaching (summative evaluation). The main difficult with using a teaching portfolio is that the value of a portfolio must be shared by all ones peers. Peers must value their owe teaching and be seeking to improve teaching through the use of a teaching portfolio to know how to interpret a portfolio for purposes of tenure and promotion. The teaching portfolio is something different, and it needs to have correspondingly different attitutides among peer evaluators for it to be useful in promotion/tenure decisions. John Henry Wells Assoc. Professor Biological Engineering ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:41:57 -0400 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: scut work Dear Colleagues I would like to speak to support the idea that the best of our teachers should also make a committment to teaching the non-science majors. I need only point out an artilce in the most recent Scientific American Magazine, "Ludites on the Hill" November 1995 p 30. Sheila Tobias also addressed this point at the recent ACS meeting in Chicago. Those non-science majors will be and are the voters who will be putting representatives into the halls of government for the next generation + . Their attitudes about science and their approach to reading and doing science by themselves and with their children will make a big difference in how science departments and research projects will be handled in the future. Those non-science students will be setting science policy. Even if they as for our advice will they be able to act on it without sufficient appreciation of science that is rooted in their school experiences. Then there is the training of science teachers for the K-12 level. Shouldn't some of our best young people go there? Theresa Theresa Julia Zielinski Niagara University FCHEZIELI@NIAGARA.edu Chemistry Department 716-286-8257 (campus office) Niagara University NY 14109 716-639-0762 (home office) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 13:45:54 -0400 Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: "Stephen R. Bondeson" Subject: Re: Discuss the Felder Paper In-Reply-To: your message of Mon Oct 16 07:27:27 PDT 1995 Given the conclusion from the data that teaching and research are not synergistic, we must decide on a response or course of action. Must it be to further divorce the two activities by establishing two tracks for rewards? Perhaps the correct response is that good teaching and productive research SHOULD be related and, as Universtiy professionals, our jobs are to again connect the two. Can we define (redefine?) our roles to blend the teaching of science with the doing of science? Isn't this how it should be? Steve Bondeson ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prof. Stephen R. Bondeson (715) 346-3714 (voice) Department of Chemistry (715) 346-2640 (FAX) University of Wisconsin-SP sbondeso@uwspmail.uwsp.edu Stevens Point, WI 54481 --------------------------------------------------------------- "One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try." Sophocles -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:27:36 -0400 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: felder paper Dear Colleagues, I just read a few of the letters that have been posted over the last day. Briefly, I have two comments. Good teaching is not synonimous with good lecturing. I wish it were so. On the chened-l there was a lengthly didiscussion of this. During good lectures students are lulled into thinking they are learning and understanding but usually they return to their rooms with a set of indecipherable notes etc. and do not do as well on exams as one would think. I further add that lecturing promotes the deepest form a passivity in students as studies of attention span have shown. Other research also shows that active students learn more. Perhaps the highest evaluations should go to the faculty who have the most active learners or who are able to transform the traditional blank faced student inot a working learning student. Theresa Theresa Julia Zielinski Niagara University FCHEZIELI@NIAGARA.edu Chemistry Department 716-286-8257 (campus office) Niagara University NY 14109 716-639-0762 (home office) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 13:20:42 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: Discuss the Felder Paper In-Reply-To: On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Dr. Jose Lage wrote: > > As student: my best teachers liked to teach -- nothing to do with being good > researchers or not! > > My final comment: if you can not do both you must make sure the organization > you work for value the one you do best. I couldn't agree more with these comments!! Very insightful!! Helen Nave Dept Mech Eng, University of Qld, St Lucia, 4072, Brisbane Australia ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 13:14:32 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: RR -- October Education Conference In-Reply-To: <00997F5E.C6B78660.538@earth.oscs.montana.edu> On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Reed Howald wrote: > scientific society to foster and support teaching in a particular field would > be to establish a large outstanding teaching award program in their own > discipline. The possibility of a bidding war among universities for > recognized teaching talent would be sufficient that no great financial > committment would > be required for individual awards. What would be required is a system > of 50 to 500 annual awards, administered by experts in the field, in > which the academic community has faith. > I think this is a great idea, if, in fact, the awards do lead to a "bidding war". The professional recognition, and promotional career path is what is lacking!! Helen Nave ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 19:55:13 -0700 From: Kevin Karplus Subject: [nave@SUN.MECH.UQ.OZ.AU: Re: research vs teaching] A quick response to Helen Nave's comment: > It seems to me that the reason people are good at research is partly > because they like the life of solitary discovery - maybe even a bit of > a loner. That's the reason I don't like it. A common fallacy. University professors get far more collegial interaction (both in the same school and with distant colleagues) from research than from teaching. You'll find teaching a much more solitary endeavor, particularly as you get older and the students stop interacting with you as a person, and start interacting with you only as a teacher. I can talk about research in a substantive way with half a dozen grad students, with the faculty member on either side of me in the hall, and with dozens of researchers around the world. I can talk about my teaching in the same way with only half a dozen people, and then only because we have both taught the same course. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 19:18:29 -0700 From: Kevin Karplus Subject: teaching and/or research Several interesting points were raised today. I'll add my comments on some of them. 1) Is good teaching and good research correlated? Conventional wisdom says that they are, but at least one study cited claims that they are uncorrelated or slightly negatively correlated. Conventional wisdom also claims that research and teaching compete for that most scarce of faculty resources---time. The question has so far been asked only at the level of the individual instructor---we also need to ask it at the institutional level. Are the students of the research universities better educated than those of the 4-year colleges? The companies that hire students certainly seem to put extra value on a brand-name degree---is this just good marketing, or is there additional value to the students from these institutions? How do we measure the quality of instruction at an institutional (or even departmental) level? What factors does it correlate with? Since the role of research universities (at least officially in California) is to educate graduate students and upper-division undergraduates, I'd like to see data that focuses on those students. I can easily believe that the research universities do a poorer job of freshman courses---but that is not their primary function. My personal conjecture, backed only by anecdotal evidence, is that research and GRADUATE education are highly correlated, but that research and UNDERGRADUATE education are only slightly correlated. I'd be interested in seeing some real data. 2) More detailed information on teaching quality UCSC (University of California, Santa Cruz) has for many years attempted to be a research university with a heavy focus on undergraduate education. Teaching is much more highly regarded here than at the other 8 UC campuses, but the promotion process is still somewhat weighted toward research. For the last year, three departments have been participating in the AAHE Peer Evaluation of Teaching project (music, chemistry, and computer engineering). Our version of the project was to request reflective essays on teaching tied to specific courses, as a somewhat less intensive version of the course portfolio that some people are proposing. You can see some examples on my home page http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus under "Comments on Teaching". I don't know if any of the chemists have made theirs public. So far, the results have been mixed. The chairs of chemistry and music supported the project enthusiastically, and felt they had gotten some useful information for promotion decisions (music more than chemistry). The chair of computer engineering supported the idea, but there was a much lower rate of participation and the information obtained was not as useful. I have not yet heard feedback from higher up in the promotion chain (dean, Committee on Academic Personnel, and Academic Vice Chancellor) about the value of the data. 3) Teacher training for faculty and grad students Some participants have suggested that we "teach professors and PhD students how to teach". In principle, this is a good idea, and several departments here do have courses (generally 0 or 2 credits) for grad students to help them learn to teach, but there is often an underlying assumption that education departments can teach us how to teach. Many faculty will strongly object to the implication that the education faculty can help them improve their teaching---for two reasons: 1) the quality of the "product" of the education schools does not seem to have been improving over the past 30 years---certainly the quality of the education of the incoming students from the high schools does not seem to be improving; 2) the education faculty do not seem to be better teachers, on average, than the rest of the faculty. There are some mechanical aspects to teaching that many of us can improve on, but the real substantive part of the teaching is not amenable to quick fixes in generic teaching skills. 4) Rewarding scholarship of teaching I think we need to start giving more weight to activities like textbook writing. Good textbooks are very difficult to write, and very few of us are writing them, in part because the effort does not generally pay off in terms of career advancement. There are many institutions that would consider one good journal article as heavily as a textbook, though the textbook may take 10 times as much effort. When I was an assistant professor, I seriously considered writing a textbook for a course that I was teaching for which there were no decent texts. I never did undertake the project, for fear it would completely destroy my chances at tenure. (Someone who did write one of the better texts in the field did get denied tenure afterwards, so my fear was not just assistant-professor paranoia.) Now there is a marginally adequate text on the market, and the demand for the course has dropped considerably in most schools, so there is not much point to dedicating that much time to the project. I have considered a few other textbook projects since---one associated with a technical writing course I have been teaching (see http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~larrabee/ce185-f95/185-w95-top.html for the latest draft), and one associated with effective searching of the library databases that are available over the Internet. In both cases, I have not followed through on the projects because the time they would take was far out of proportion to any reward I would get. Although the above is all purely anecdotal, I contend that it is typical of the way faculty assign priorities to projects. Almost all of us have far more that we want to do than we have time for, and we end up choosing those things for which we expect the greatest reward, whether the reward is internal satisfaction, promotion in our institutions, or recognition by our colleagues. If we want to encourage the "scholarship of teaching", then we have to start rewarding it. Some changes are fairly cheap, and do not require a major shift in how our universities operate. For example, consider how many conferences give "best paper" awards---but how many conferences or professional societies give "best textbook" awards? How many opportunities are there for someone who has come up with a new lab manual or demonstration to present this to colleagues who'll appreciate it? For that matter, what market is there for any teaching-related material smaller than a textbook? My impression of most of the "engineering education" journals is that they are write-only journals, so they don't really fill the need. Perhaps the World-Wide Web will offer easier ways to disseminate such material, and thus encourage more attention to it. For example, there is a nice beginning to a text on bioinformatics at http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/Curric/welcome.html (Best teaching resource awards could be given for web sites and computer programs, as well as for textbooks.) 5) Institutional rewards There was a very interesting report in 1991 "Report of the Universitywide Task Force on Faculty Rewards" (commonly called the Pister Report, after the chair of the task force), which suggested many of changes that Boyer seems to advocate. This report may still be available from the Office of the President for the University of California, but I couldn't find an on-line copy any where. Although Pister is now Chancellor at UCSC, I haven't seen a real implementation of the ideas in the Pister Report. It has certainly been the case at UCSC that people with good research records and poor student evaluations have had promotions delayed or denied, but the tenure decision, at least, seems to depend more on research output (measured more by the opinions of outside experts in the field than by raw counting of papers or dollars). To a large extent, the PERCEIVED weight of research and teaching is more important than the actual weight. If faculty believe that research is what they will be evaluated on, then they will try to improve the appearance of their research record. If they believe that they are being evaluated on teaching, that is what they will try to improve. The perception at UCSC that teaching matters, whether statistically justifiable or not, does make a difference in how faculty spend their time. I apologize for the excessive length of this message---sometimes I just don't know when to shut up. Kevin Karplus karplus@cse.ucsc.edu http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus Due to budgetary constraints the light at the end of the tunnel is being turned off. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 10:01:43 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: research vs teaching X-To: Larry Brown In-Reply-To: On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Larry Brown wrote: > In message <199510161638.MAA153062@ns2-1.CC.Lehigh.EDU> Conferences on > Chemistry Research and Education writes: > > It is reasonable to assert that both teaching and research are important roles > for the university and its faculty as a whole. The real question is whether it > is necessary or desirable for individual faculty members to be deeply involved > in all of the roles of faculty. I couldn't agree more!! Helen Nave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 09:53:29 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: research vs teaching In-Reply-To: On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Jack Martin Miller wrote: > > The teaching only faculty member referred to, if they are to teach 4 or 5 > courses as has been suggested will have no time for innovative teaching --- > they will be, as someone earlier suggested, a paper pusher doing jobs > nobody wants to do -- administrative assistants etc. This is how I > perceived such people when I was a student 30 years ago and it is how > students perceive them today. But if this is Ok with them, and they have enough to do, obviously there is a position for this type of person!!! Helen Nave Dpet Mech Eng, University of Qld, St Lucia, Australia, 4072 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:07:41 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: Comments of active researchers? >Where are the comments regarding Felder's paper from the very active >researchers (i.e. those with large graduate students research groups >consisting of 5-15 graduate students and 2-5 postdocs, 3 or 4 concurrent >grants, and the expectation of publishing 5-10 papers a year)? Don't quite fit --- 2 MSc. students, 2 post docs, 2 undergrad summer assistants, 5-6 papers/year, 3 concurrent grants and a contract. (Note that this is another benefit of research to undergraduate teaching -- the ability to provide professional lab type experience to the best undergrads as summer assistants in one's lab). Do none of >them care enough to participate in this discussion or do they already have >the opinion that there is no debate left? Perhaps because many in this discussion have already defined researchers as having made a choice, and by the definition of these participants that choice precludes them apparently by definition from being good teachers. Therefor perhaps they have simply said it is not worth discussing, and you now know that their votes in future hiring or P & T decisions have been confirmed. Perhaps the problem that I have already noted re "engineers" being disproportionate in their concerns is that engineering tends not to be represented in colleges, providing only the University as a teaching outlet for this discipline, unlike others from the arts and sciences. I know many "researchers" who >feel this way but I disagree that there is an absolute requirement that one >do research to be a good teacher. No it is not an absolute requirement, especially for lower year courses, but none of the "teacher only" school have been able to counter the need for research grants as being a source of funding for advanced instrumentation used in undergraduate as well as graduate instruction except perhaps at the very larges institutions. Graduate students are only a small part of the research equation. I hear mention of small departments without grad students as being teaching only. My wife is a professor in a Fine Arts Dept, small, no grad students, yet most faculty are active researchers in the sense of publication (or for some - public practitioners of their particular art (drama, visual arts, music etc). My wife has had sustained research grants (unusual in the humanities) and except for her "Tradgedy" and "Shakespeare" courses, everything she teaches is as a result of her research --- having started teaching these subject, Canadian Drama, Canadian radio drama, Canadian TV Drama at a time when no one else was. She founded a learned society to help preserve TV materials, wrote the seminal book on the subject and started teaching these topics when the large universities hadn't given them credence, though now they do. Her employment of undergrads as assistants was as vaulable or more so to their future careers than their formal courses. If one adopts the teaching only approach, how to you get to pass on these skills to our students - an important part of what we teach, in the humanities as well as the sciences. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 12:12:45 -0700 From: Rob Scheer Subject: Re: Felder discussion - reply to J M Miller #1 > As a corrollary, you imply that one cannot teach a subject unless one is >"on the cutting edge of research". This may be true for a graduate (or even >advanced undergraduate) course (I would want someone up on the latest >developments in a microchip design course for example), but I don't believe >its true for the fundamental basic courses in any discipline. For example, >I don't think there has been any changes in "F=ma" in the last 50 years or >so. What changes are occuring will show up in textbooks fairly quickly, so >you should be able to keep up with no difficulty. > >Richard M. Lemert >Asst Prof - Chem Eng >Univ of Toledo In response to the statement above, I must disagree, at least partially. Effective knowledge transfer requires a strong incentive for the student to learn. Usually this is a negative reinforcement, a bad grade. The incentive can be a positive force such as when a concept is introduced in conjunction with a current topic of research or industry. Case studies which are unique and relevant go a long way to encourage student involvement in the learning process. Including current events and unique case studies requires some involvement in either research or industry. Thank you ********************************************************************** Robert J. Scheer Research Instructor Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering University of Utah Phone: (801)585-5313 FAX: (801)581-4816 ********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 12:16:31 -0700 From: Rob Scheer Subject: Re: Felder discussion - food for thought > Consider the hypothetical case of a young assistant professor who is a >brilliant theoretician. Publishes on average one high-quality paper in a >top journal every 6-8 weeks. Accepts as research assistants only students >who either have a fellowship or are self-supported. Since he has "no" >research expenses, he wastes no time writing research proposals - he doesn't >need to. > > The question is - Would this person get tenure in your institution? >Richard M. Lemert >Asst Prof - Chem Eng >Univ of Toledo Effective teaching does bring in money. Departmental FTE's are an important factor in determining allocation of state and university funding at our school. Thank you ********************************************************************** Robert J. Scheer Research Instructor Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering University of Utah Phone: (801)585-5313 FAX: (801)581-4816 ********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:18:57 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: [nave@SUN.MECH.UQ.OZ.AU: Re: research vs teaching] Kevin Karplu wrote >A quick response to Helen Nave's comment: > >> It seems to me that the reason people are good at research is partly >> because they like the life of solitary discovery - maybe even a bit of >> a loner. That's the reason I don't like it. > >A common fallacy. University professors get far more collegial >interaction (both in the same school and with distant colleagues) from >research than from teaching. You'll find teaching a much more >solitary endeavor, particularly as you get older and the students stop >interacting with you as a person, and start interacting with you only >as a teacher. > >I can talk about research in a substantive way with half a dozen grad >students, with the faculty member on either side of me in the hall, >and with dozens of researchers around the world. I can talk about my >teaching in the same way with only half a dozen people, and then only >because we have both taught the same course. Right on. Perhaps those most fearful of research were poorly taught was research is. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 12:26:16 -0700 From: Rob Scheer Subject: Re: Felder paper, reply to Doris Kimrough >I agree that it would make no sense that a junior faculty with no teaching >experience be allowed to follow a "primarily teaching" track; however, that >then puts her/him in the position of proving her/himself in the research >arena. Suppose s/he then is successful and achieves tenure; one can assume >that it was primarily on the basis of research. Would s/he then be allowed >(encouraged?) to switch over? And how is s/he ever going to "meet the[se] >performance criteria" if in order to succeed s/he has focused efforts on >research? > >I don't mean to sound cynical, but except for the outside industrial >chemist/engineer who has already established her/himself and can be hired >with tenure (or as someone else pointed out as a full professor), I just >don't see how this would work in the current RTP system. > The point may be that the current RPT system is not effective in creating a university environment which both fosters innovation in research as well as teaching. >Doris > >Doris Kimbrough phone: 303-556-4885 >Chemistry Department Box 194 fax: 303-556-4776 >University of Colorado at Denver >Denver, CO 80217-3364 > >dkimbrough@castle.cudenver.edu ********************************************************************** Robert J. Scheer Research Instructor Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering University of Utah Phone: (801)585-5313 FAX: (801)581-4816 ********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:24:52 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: teaching and/or research >Kevin Karplus raised the question of publishing on the www. At Brock we have recognized multi-media and web materials, if disseminated to be a legitimate part of a dosier for P & T. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:20:57 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: research vs teaching >On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Jack Martin Miller wrote: >> >> The teaching only faculty member referred to, if they are to teach 4 or 5 >> courses as has been suggested will have no time for innovative teaching --- >> they will be, as someone earlier suggested, a paper pusher doing jobs >> nobody wants to do -- administrative assistants etc. This is how I >> perceived such people when I was a student 30 years ago and it is how >> students perceive them today. > Helen Nave replied > But if this is Ok with them, and they have enough to do, obviously >there is a position for this type of person!!! > But given the arguments we have heard about the time good teaching takes, can they do justice to their students and are their colleagues doing justice to them? Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:32:44 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: Correction: Revision of paper by Richard M. Felder Howard Kimmel summarized far better than Ithe very real problems with Felder's 2 stream approach. Yes, he's right, - unfortunately the classical researcher looks down on his education based grants, but the admin doesn't necessarily, nor I would assume do his students because he can be seen doing something to change his discipline. Felder's approach simply defines "teachers" as second classcitizens, but guarantees them some places --almost "affirmative action" -- but why when there are excelent teachers who also want to take part in the full University panoply that includes research make a special category for a narrower view. By all means, tighten up tenure such that if an individual is a poor teacher they will not get tenure no mater how brilliant their research. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:33:50 -0400 From: reeves Subject: Felder Paper October 18, 1995 Response to article by Professor Felder: This was a great first article with which to start a discussion on how to bring credit to those of us who spend "full time" working on being better teachers. I was especially impressed by the myths that Dr. Felder debunked, since those myths, developed largely to defend the status quo, have always served to muddy the waters. As an educational community, it is our obligation to repeat frequently that the research that looks at the correlation between good teaching and good research finds either no correlation or a negative correlation. We have a system which has become one dimensional in its analysis of faculty accomplishments, and while we continue to be mislead by the myths, "outsiders" such as legislators (who pay my salary) and the general public are beginning to suspect the truth. For years, large universities have been funded by legislatures and alumni who think that the resources are being spent to give their sons and daughters the best undergraduate education, while in fact the emphasis has been research in anything but education. Even when educators are able to secure funding to look at key questions in teaching, the grant, and particularly the research it funds, is considered "soft" by the "real researchers". Consequently, the good teachers who have neither the time nor inclination to play the traditional research game are fired in favor of the grant go getters who often do demonstrable harm in the classroom. In North Carolina, the Board of Governors took notice when one of the best teachers at our large, "flagship" institution was axed because his research didn't measure up. One result has been the requirement that non-tenured faculty and graduate students be visited in their classroom and summatively evaluated for their teaching performance. If that notion makes you cringe, remember that it got mandated from the outside because we have failed to take the initiative ourselves to reform an ailing system from the inside. And if the mood of North Carolina legislators I've spoken with is any indication, things are going to get worse until we make them better (or they make them so intolerable that we all quit). With all of this in mind, I'd like to propose two ideas for discussion. First, in reference to Dr. Felders insight that "College teaching is probably the only skilled profession that requires no prior training and provides none on the job: most professors begin and end their careers without as much as five seconds of instruction on how to teach." I'd like to propose that one remedy to this situation is a faculty run (and administration supported) center for teaching excellence such as the one I head at UNCW. The mission of the center is to help faculty become better teachers and that effort can take a variety of forms. One approach that is particularly successful is to provide a space (and refreshments, if possible) for faculty from different disciplines to talk to one another about common problems like "how can you effectively reach 200 students in a large lecture hall" or "what is known about the effect of using hypermedia in undergraduate instruction?" Centers can also provide funding and equipment to faculty involved in innovative teaching initiatives. But most importantly, centers can encourage faculty to document their teaching initiatives through scholarly publications and seminars, and provide facilities and training that facilitate the implementation of innovative ideas such as the use of the Internet or hypermedia in undergraduate instruction. Centers that help faculty write research grants abound at our universities. Centers that help faculty become better teachers are few and far between. This needs to change. The second idea is more political. Instructors in introductory general and organic chem. courses should seriously consider education research to be as important and "cutting edge" as any research being practiced anywhere in their institution. While I can't site chapter and verse to prove it, I would agree with the contention made by others that we are doing a lousy job of teaching introductory science, and are loosing potential scientists by boring them to death. Implementing innovative teaching practices and assessing their impact on our students is as valuable a contribution as any academic can make in this day and age. Not only should education research be valued, it should be applauded. Technology is changing the world around us, and most of us are doing exactly nothing to bring our students the new skills they'll need to survive. The technology available to teach and communicate is mind boggling, and no one knows how to use it effectively because the studies are just being done. I submit that the great researchers should concentrate their efforts here, if we are to do what we are being paid for. Jimmy Reeves Jimmy Reeves, Director The Center for Teaching Excellence University of North Carolina at Wilmington 601 S. College Rd. Wilmington, NC 28403 910-395-3034 910-350-4000 fax http:\\cte.uncwil.edu reeves@uncwil.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 14:35:57 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Discussion timing I note an almost 5 hour delay in postings being distributed by the listserver. Starting discussion tomorrow on the next paper means that there will be a whole slew of todays discussion waiting for me in the morning. There should be a blank day inbetween, say cuttting off discussion at noon of the third day and not starting the next paper until the 4th day. I too am juggling 4 research grant applications, a small teaching grant application, marking, manuscript revision and tomorrow's lecture, trying to get some new material into the computer for it. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 12:30:36 -0700 From: Kevin Karplus Subject: scholarship of teaching, listserve delays One reason for the listserv delays is that the server cut off after 50 messages yesterday night. The same may have happened today. This artificial limit has given a decidedly larger share of the discussion to a few people who posted many short messages. Another listserv problem---this server, unlike every other mailing list I subscribe does not seem to send the author back copies of their message---just an acknowledgement that the message was sent. I didn't keep a copy of the long message I sent last night, and would appreciate it if someone (not all 700 of you!) could send me a copy for my files. Back to the main discussion: I believe that MANY of us are having a lot of difficulty with the concept of the scholarship of teaching---even those who view themselves primarily as teachers. I keep reading suggestions, not that we have a scholarship of teaching, but that we all switch from being researchers in our current fields to researchers in education. THAT DOESN'T ADDRESS THE ISSUE OF A SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING! (sorry for shouting) I don't mean to belittle research in science education---that is clearly a field in which more research is needed. But the point Boyer was trying to make is that there are other forms of scholarship than research. It is a scholarly activity to teach, to write textbooks, to create lab demonstrations---even if NO research is involved. Some of us seem to be unable to break the scholarship=research equation, even when specifically invited to talk about other forms of scholarship. Let's start talking about teaching, and not about research in science education. ------------------------------ Kevin Karplus karplus@cse.ucsc.edu http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus Due to budgetary constraints the light at the end of the tunnel is being turned off. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 12:31:36 PST Reply-To: WamserC@pdx.edu Sender: Conferences on Chemistry Research and Education From: "Carl C. Wamser" Subject: The poison is in the dose Teaching / research -- a healthy ecological balance or competitors for scarce resources? Those who consider that teaching and research go hand in hand and mutually support one another are visualizing the ideal academy, probably the one that most of us visualized when we entered our professions. We would work at the frontiers of research and also pass on knowledge to the next generation. To the extent that any of us are not just visualizing, but can actually come close to such an ideal, it is probably through extraordinary individual efforts in combination with enlightened administration and funding sources. If you have such a situation, don't let any negativism get to you -- enjoy and prosper! The reality for most, however, is an ideal academy under duress. Although we desire this ideal balance, higher education feels financial and political pressures that transmute into faculty expectations. Although research funding is harder to obtain, universities desire its warm glow and hard cash more than ever. This has resulted over the years in the well-documented emphasis on research in faculty evaluations. The backlash is the equally well-documented pressure for improvement in undergraduate teaching. I recommend the editorial by Ted Marchese in the current (Sept/Oct 1995) issue of "Change", which exhorts us to appreciate the intrinsic value of teaching rather than simply respond to external threats. He also quotes Derek Bok: "teaching remains one of the few human activities that does not get demonstrably better from one generation to the next." That quote gave me pause, first out of embarrassment for my profession as a teacher. But it also clarified for me the reason that it has seemed increasingly difficult to do several things at a high level of quality. The frontiers of research have indeed been moving faster, requiring greater effort to keep up, let alone contribute to those expanding frontiers. Hence our ability to achieve an ideal balance of research and teaching is compromised by the limited time and energy we have to apply towards increasingly sophisticated tasks. The great success of research and the knowledge explosion have effectively overdosed us on what should be a good thing. So what to do now, confronted as we are by multiple priorities? My opinion is that we should not be pressured to do everything at a high level. Boyer described the faculty as "a mosaic of talent". A beautiful mosaic arises from the combination of a great variety of different pieces, certainly not all identical, and certainly all potentially beautiful in their own right. Each of us should have the ability to define our piece, and an enlightened administration should have the ability to see the whole picture. The terrible conflicts caused by limited time and multiple high priorities have been addressed by women struggling with family and career, and I suggest we may gain some insight with those comparisons. Personal postscript: My situation might best be described as a researcher / teacher, struggling to do both to a high level yet feeling I'm neglecting both. I put aside my guilt of neglect by believing that both are still being done at a "good" level, acknowledged as such by those who matter to me (students, colleagues, administrators). The situation is complicated by the mission of Portland State University, which as an urban university, places high regard on community interactions -- a third "high" priority for faculty. Although "community" is defined in a broad sense, including the community of scholars, the press to do a third priority has made me realize even more clearly that I can't do it all to the level that would satisfy me. Everyone is better served when we do what we do best. Whether this works in reality depends on the situation one finds oneself in. I hope that conferences of this type serve to lead higher education to a clarity of mission that really works. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Professor Carl C. Wamser * e-mail: WamserC@pdx.edu * * Department of Chemistry * phone: (503) 725-4261 * * Portland State University * fax: (503) 725-3888 * * Portland, OR 97207-0751 * * * Home Page: http://www-adm.pdx.edu/user/chem/grad/faculty/Wamser * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 15:40:57 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: Felder Paper Jimmy Reeves writes > > This was a great first article with which to start a discussion on how to >bring credit to those of us who spend "full time" working on being better >teachers. I was especially impressed by the myths that Dr. Felder debunked, >since those myths, developed largely to defend the status quo, have always >served to muddy the waters. As an educational community, it is our >obligation to repeat frequently that the research that looks at the >correlation between good teaching and good research finds either no >correlation or a negative correlation. Since evidence to the contrary has been declared "anecdotal" this is not worth persuing, but I gather it was based on survey data -- and you can get a survey to say almost anything you want depending on how you pose the question -- the results quoted must be taken seriously, but not necessarily taken as the gospel. while in fact the emphasis has >been research in anything but education. Nonesense --- we all know that the emphasis has been on football! Even when educators are able to >secure funding to look at key questions in teaching, the grant, and >particularly the research it funds, is considered "soft" by the "real >researchers". Consequently, the good teachers who have neither the time >nor inclination to play the traditional research game are fired in favor of >the grant go getters who often do demonstrable harm in the classroom. And most such stories are as anectodal as the ones I'm accused of perpetrating. Of course they occasionally happen, but they are not the norm. In >North Carolina, the Board of Governors took notice when one of the best >teachers at our large, "flagship" institution was axed because his research >didn't measure up. One result has been the requirement that non-tenured >faculty and graduate students be visited in their classroom and summatively >evaluated for their teaching performance. Great idea. We also have outside assessemnt of undergrad programs and teaching in each department, every 5 years, and were doing it before it was provincially mandated. If that notion makes you cringe, Why should it --- I've said all along that good teaching is a "sine qua non" in a university, but am jumped on when I say that "so is rresearch". " I'd like >to propose that one remedy to this situation is a faculty run (and >administration supported) center for teaching excellence such as the one I >head at UNCW. Excelelnt idea --- we do it for our TA's in conjunction with our instructional development office, which also runs peer mentoring programs for faculty, new and old. > The second idea is more political. Instructors in introductory general and >organic chem. courses should seriously consider education research to be as >important and "cutting edge" as any research being practiced anywhere in >their institution. The problem here is that this year's introductory chemsitry instructor is next year's year 4 or grad course instructor - at least in mid and small sized institutions. This proposal is shades of developing a Freshman teaching ghetto in perpetuity, since many in this discussion have suggested that only instructors in upper year courses need bother being involved in research. As a Dept. chair I found that rotating faculty kept them freshest. No matter how good you are in a freshman course, after 3 or 4 years it starts to get to you, and rotation is beneficial. I've taught both basic and advanced freshman, and classes of 300 arts studetns taking a compulsory science course for humanities and social science majors (sometimes much more fun than teaching freshman chemistry) as well as mid and small 2nd, 3rd and 4th year undergrad courses and grad courses. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 15:54:57 -0400 From: JOHN WOOLCOCK Organization: Indiana University of Pennsylvania Subject: Re: research vs teaching, and evaluation thereof I agree in general with the comments by Robley Light and John Henry Wells concerning Teaching Portfolios. They are new and many folks are just now understanding what they can reveal about teaching and what they don't reveal about teaching effectiveness. That is why I have such high hopes for the Richlin and Manning book. It has two 10 week "courses" in how to create a teaching evaluation system using teaching portfolios. There are three levels of measurement of effective teaching that they suggest: qualitative, ranked and quantitative. The quantitative assesment tool has five componenets: Teaching Responsibilities, Teaching Philosophy and Goals, Representative Instructional Material, Formal Evaluation (peer and student evals) and Teaching Honors and Activities Undertaken to Improve Teaching. How well does this work? I wish I knew! Perhaps we will try it at our institution. However, using the quality of the end product (the students) has an important flaw. While a teacher can prepare the setting in the classroom or lab to maximize learning, whether or not the student takes advantage of it is his/her own choice. Thus as educators we must realize that the cause-effect cycle does not operate in teaching the way it does in science. So while outcomes assesment should be a Departmental goal and responsibility it should not be used as a citeria for tenure or promotion of an individual. Thus teaching need a separate but equal "productivity index" as suggested by R. Felder's paper. John Woolcock IUP Chemistry Dept. woolcock@grove.iup.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 16:15:41 EDT From: Richard Felder Subject: Second-Class Citizenship Second-class citizenship is a very real phenomenon at all research universities. It is manifested by lower salaries than those earned by colleagues of the same rank, lower chances of receiving tenure, and greater obstacles to advancement to full professor. As things stand now, this caste system works almost exclusively against those who choose to dedicate their careers to undergraduate education. Do outstanding disciplinary research and adequate teaching, and you advance; do outstanding teaching and adequate (or less than outstanding) research, and you ride the back of the bus or, if untenured, you're history. Several contributors have suggested that my proposed education pathway relegates those on it to second-class citizenship, since at one point I say that those on this pathway would do more teaching. Of course they would do more teaching. If they are engaged in educational scholarship, as I envision--developing, perfecting, and disseminating new instructional methods, writing texts, generating instructional software, etc.--the classroom is their laboratory. But does that make them second-class citizens? To quote the paper, "No distinction should exist between the two pathways in benefits, prequisites, or expectations of departmental and university service. Education-pathway professors should have the same opportunities for merit raises, tenure, and promotion to full professor as their research-pathway colleagues enjoy. The sole criterion for faculty recognition and reward should be quality of performance: no professor should ever experience second-class departmental citizenship because of his or her career focus on either education or research." Compare that with the status quo, and then tell me which system discriminates! Let me boil my position down to its essentials, since I sense that it's been somewhat obscured by much of the discussion. -- We need both outstanding disciplinary researchers and outstanding teachers and educational scholars at research universities. -- While a gifted few are able to excel at both activities, there are not enough to populate all our faculties. As the system now stands, teaching is almost invariably the activity to be sacrificed. -- The consequence of this sacrifice is that true educational scholarship--development and dissemination of improved instructional methods and materials, undergraduate textbooks, educational software, etc.--is not practiced in most academic departments. Some departments have people who could do some of those things, but the need to make disciplinary research their top priority precludes their doing it. -- My proposal is that in every department, instead of 10 out of 10 professors being researchers first, educators second, only 8 or 9 out of 10 should be allowed to adopt those priorities, and a minimum of one or two should have education as their top priority. If this is done, then the quality of both research and teaching in every academic department will improve. (I won't go through my justifications for the latter statement, but they're in the paper.) Since those arguing against my position seem unwilling to challenge the overwhelming research evidence against the purported linkage between research activity and teaching quality, perhaps they could provide a demonstration of where the foregoing reasoning breaks down. More precisely, exactly whose interests would not be served by this system? Rich Felder felder@eos.ncsu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 16:28:21 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: scholarship of teaching, listserve delays Kevin Karplus wrote > ) > >I don't mean to belittle research in science education---that is >clearly a field in which more research is needed. But the point Boyer >was trying to make is that there are other forms of scholarship than >research. It is a scholarly activity to teach, One must distinguish between the "act of teaching" which is only one part of what we are paid to do, and scholarship associated with that teaching which is to bring a new light to the subject and in that sense is "research" whether you like to call it that or not. I use the term "schlarship appropriate to the discipline". If it doesn't go beyond your class, it it may have taken some schlarship on your part, but it is part of your "teaching" function, not "scholarly" function. The schlarship is involved in the disemination of this new information to your peers for their use whether in textbooks, software on disk, on the web or whatever. to write textbooks, A far different skill and activity than "teaching" but a legitimate form of "schlarship appropriate to the discipline" which will get you some credit at Promotion and Tenure time. to >create lab demonstrations---even if NO research is involved. Would you want to use a textbook that had nothing new in it --- why write it --- if it has something new then the process of acquiring the new material and thinking about its presentation IS research. I get the distinct impression that there is a mistaken view in the great wide world of what constitutes research, though admitedly, different forms of research may be valued differently by different people. Some of >us seem to be unable to break the scholarship=research equation, even >when specifically invited to talk about other forms of scholarship. > >Let's start talking about teaching, and not about research in science >education. But is not the basis for this discussion how to be sure that good teaching gets appropriate credit in the overall equation of faculty evaluation. Good teaching, if not renewed continually becomes stale teaching, even for old disciplines that havn't changed at the fundamental level --- the thing is there are too many things now to teach in the introductory courses --- many fundamentals must be left out --- which ones? why? -- one must have a living continuous interactive contact with ones' discipline. This IS RESEARCH whether done with grants and students or not. Interestingly, if used purely for teaching purposes, it is the lonliest form of research that was criticised this morning --- the other forms are a team, group activity. Listen to nobel prizewinners and other famous scientists talk about their ideas - how many made their breakthroughs while contemplated basic data in the preparation of their freshman lectures. The discovery of the first compound of Xe XePtF6 is said to have been arrived at in this fashion. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 16:46:40 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: Second-Class Citizenship > >Since those arguing against my position seem unwilling to challenge >the overwhelming research evidence against the purported linkage >between research activity and teaching quality, I have but it was ignored. perhaps they could >provide a demonstration of where the foregoing reasoning breaks down. >More precisely, exactly whose interests would not be served by this >system? > >Rich Felder >felder@eos.ncsu.edu It is not so much your proposed system breaking down, but in the discussion of evolving careers, if as people's research winds down some with age, and if they were good teachers all along and they evolve into the primarily teaching post, we are likely to get the 2 out of 10 in your category anyway. However as i read the proposal, you would bring people in into this category, if you bring in 2 and 2 have evolved, you get a very different pattern in a department 4/10 rather than 2/10. What do you do with the person who just winds down but is tenured - neither effective at teaching or research. Another 1/10. In small or mid sized departments you may have broken the critical mass to keep the advanced courses going for which everyone seems to indicate that the researhcer is needed. The real world, as long as there is tenure, doesn't let you say --- we will have a dept. of 8 resercher/teachers and 2 teachers because the individuals evolve from what you hire them as. It might let you say we'll go with X teacher/researchers and Y researcher/teachers. with the X/Y ratio varying from university to university. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 16:52:44 -0400 From: "Robert L. Lichter" Subject: Re: Felder Paper I've been trying to follow the blitz in this adventure. It's akin to running a symposium with speakers and respondents all talking at once, and in fact is one of the limitations of an Internet-mediated exchange. Thus, I haven't had an aopportunity to look in detail at the megabytes of bandwidth that have come close to saturating storage. Nonetheless... With one or two exceptions, I have seen no references to what the whole educational exercise is all about: ---------------- | The students.| ---------------- The issue, in my judgment, is not whether faculty teach well. The issue is whether students learn. Genuine measurement of that is a long-term process and is a multivariable function. Breaking faculty activities artificially into "teaching vs. research" is arbitrary and misleading. There are over 3,600 institutions of higher learning in the U. S. alone (this is an international discussion so I won't presume to know what the global total is!), each with its own history, tradition, resources, focus, type of student, type of faculty. It is folly to expect all institutions to adopt the same model. Each will find its own way. Each will blend research and non-research approaches to facilitating students' ability both to learn and ultimately to develop the tools that will allow them to take independent responsibility for their own learning. To argue that research by itself hampers or strengthens teaching misses the point. If the research (_including_ that at the doctoral level) achieves the above _student-centered_ objectives, then it is effective teaching. If it does not, then it isn't. But by the same token, all the pedagogical techniques and faculty teaching evaluation methods in the world are vacuous if they, too, don't facilitate student learning. Incidentally, let's be clear about what we mean by "research." It is not only the generation of new knowledge, but also the submission of that knowledge to public presentation after critical evaluation by scholars in the field. As a learning tool it should not be confused with "discovery laboratories" or the like. RLL ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert L. Lichter, Executive Director 212-753-1760 The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. rlichter@panix.com 555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022-3301 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 15:01:43 -0600 From: John Crepeau Subject: Re: Comments of active researchers? I am not the researcher that fits Professor Hogg definition of active, but I enjoy doing research very much, and I am writing grant proposals that certainly bite into my time in preparing for my next course. However, I love teaching just as much as I do research, and it is the primary reason that I chose an academic career. I always thought of a university professor as a renaissance man (of course, I now think of them as renaissance people), and liked the fact that they could do lots of things. Maybe I am naive in my youth. Why shouldn't a professor be able to do both? I am not averse to the notion of two separate tracks, but I like the idea of being well rounded. I cannot draw on years of experience, as I am just beginning my second year on a university faculty, but my research and industrial experience has been brought into the classroom at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and experiences in teaching have been included in my research. Often questions from undergraduates force me to look at a problem from a different angle. One of the difficulties in judging both equally is that instead of having a superior researcher or superior teacher, spending the same time on both may lead to mediocrity in both. I frankly can't resolve that issue in my mind quite yet. As one of the posters mentioned earlier, if an instructor is enthusiastic about the topic, it rubs off onto the students. If that instructor *wants* to teach, it improves the quality of the class. The positive mindset can be a great help. I would like to see university administrations consider both the teaching and the research equally, understanding that some members of the faculty wish to emphasize one or the other. John Crepeau Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Idaho ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 17:07:46 -0400 From: John Hogg Subject: Re: Course for Non-Science Majors >Dear Colleagues I strongly agree with Theresa Zielinski's comments about courses for non-science majors. I've been teaching such a course, in addition to the sophomore organic course for majors, for the past 3 years and have found it to be much more challenging than any other course I've taught at the graduate or undergraduate level. It is not easy to enter a room with over 300 students whose collective opinion is that "science sucks" and try to convince them that they need to know science to be informed citizens. The challenge makes it interesting and I put in a tremendous amount of time on this class. I use everything from straight lecture to demos to interactive participation to daily lectures on the "science in today's newspaper." The personal rewards, for me, are far greater than I ever felt when I got a research paper published or got a new research grant. I would contend that this contribution to hundreds of students each semester is as important as most research being done. I also advise around 250 undergraduate chemistry majors and am heavily involved in our "Chemistry Road Show" program. The departmental administration has been supportive of these efforts as have most colleagues. However, the prestige, I feel, still lies in the traditional "research realm." Ultimately, one must ask if he/she is making a major contribution to the total education effort and if he/she is happy with what he/she is doing. If the answer is "yes" then probably everything is going to work out provided you did not decide to do this until after you got tenure. Hardly anyone ever complains about someone who is doing at outstanding job regardless of the job. Success is rewarded in almost every case. However, everyone always thinks his/her cross is heaviest, that his/her efforts are not adequately rewarded, and that he/she is unappreciated and sometimes this is even true. Life ain't always fair and we wouldn't have much to talk about if it was. My ultimate test of teaching is "would I want my son/daughter in this professor's class?" This is a pretty good test. Apply it to your own teaching. John Hogg Professor of Chemistry Undergraduate Advisor Texas A&M University > >I would like to speak to support the idea that the best of our >teachers should also make a committment to teaching the >non-science majors. I need only point out an artilce in the >most recent Scientific American Magazine, "Ludites on the Hill" >November 1995 p 30. Sheila Tobias also addressed this point >at the recent ACS meeting in Chicago. > >Those non-science majors will be and are the voters >who will be putting representatives into the halls of government >for the next generation + . Their attitudes about science and >their approach to reading and doing science by themselves and >with their children will make a big difference in how science >departments and research projects will be handled in the future. > >Those non-science students will be setting science policy. >Even if they as for our advice will they be able to act on it >without sufficient appreciation of science that is rooted in >their school experiences. > >Then there is the training of science teachers for the K-12 level. >Shouldn't some of our best young people go there? > >Theresa > > >Theresa Julia Zielinski Niagara University >FCHEZIELI@NIAGARA.edu Chemistry Department >716-286-8257 (campus office) Niagara University NY 14109 >716-639-0762 (home office) > John Hogg ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 17:12:51 -0400 From: "Robert L. Lichter" Subject: Re: research vs teaching, and evaluation thereof > However, using the quality of the end product >(the students) has an important flaw. While a teacher can prepare the setting >in the classroom or lab to maximize learning, whether or not the student takes >advantage of it is his/her own choice. Thus as educators we must realize that >the cause-effect cycle does not operate in teaching the way it does in science. This begs the question. The real issue is that we don't yet know how to characterize student learning over the long term in a way that is meaningful and that provides feedback to the "teacher." Incidentally, someone asked earlier where all the faculty at doctoral (I shun the expression "research") institutions were. I suggest they are absent because they generally don't read the listservers/bulletin boards on which this activity was announced. I hope this doesn't result in finger-pointing! RLL ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert L. Lichter, Executive Director 212-753-1760 The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. rlichter@panix.com 555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022-3301 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 17:50:16 -0400 From: "Henry C. Griffin" Subject: Felder paper and additional remarks I respond to Felder's challenge to address the data on correlations among teaching, research, and student outcomes. In contrast to pre-college education, higher education can be oriented quite directly to performance of former students in the real world. That world has relatively few lectures, innovative teaching methods, or other features of educational institutions. Astin's data do NOT address student outcomes in non-educational contexts; we do not know performance would correlate with influences from teachers and researchers. Many respondents have drawn on various amounts of experience to question Astin's (and Felder's) conclusions. I suspect it is because the teaching by researchers is informed by their contact with the real world of chemistry and finance and they believe realism to be an added value. Students are apt to prefer neater packages constructed by people who do not know how unreal those packages are (see the quotation from Sophocles). Therefore I reject the conclusion that Astin (as reported by Felder and respondents) shows researchers are less effective in improving real learning skills than are non-researchers. -Henry Griffin, Prof. of Chem., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 18:09:27 -0400 From: "John P. Fackler, Jr." Subject: Re: research vs teaching, and evaluation thereof Bob, you are correct about the bulletin boards. Most of us haven't the time to sit at our computers and go through the material. I will read some of it tonight in the quiet of my living room. JPF >> However, using the quality of the end product >>(the students) has an important flaw. While a teacher can prepare the setting >>in the classroom or lab to maximize learning, whether or not the student takes >>advantage of it is his/her own choice. Thus as educators we must realize that >>the cause-effect cycle does not operate in teaching the way it does in science. > >This begs the question. The real issue is that we don't yet know how to >characterize student learning over the long term in a way that is >meaningful and that provides feedback to the "teacher." > >Incidentally, someone asked earlier where all the faculty at doctoral (I >shun the expression "research") institutions were. I suggest they are >absent because they generally don't read the listservers/bulletin boards on >which this activity was announced. I hope this doesn't result in >finger-pointing! > >RLL > >------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Robert L. Lichter, Executive Director 212-753-1760 >The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. rlichter@panix.com >555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022-3301 > John P. Fackler, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Tel: (409) 845-0648 Fax: (409) 845-9351 Home: (409) 776-8120 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 17:43:35 -0400 From: reeves Subject: Re: Second-Class Citizenship To Professor Felder's comment that "The consequence of this sacrifice is that true educational scholarship--development and dissemination of improved instructional methods and materials, undergraduate textbooks, educational software, etc.--is not practiced in most academic departments. Some departments have people who could do some of those things, but the need to make disciplinary research their top priority precludes their doing it." I would comment that you cannot know whether new instructional methods and materials, etc. are "improved" unless we do the research to find out. Someone needs to be looking at the results of all of these "educational improvements". I still maintain that any institution that instructs large numbers of undergraduates in introductory courses in chemistry should have "research active" faculty studying the effectiveness of the instruction, especially in light of the new materials (hypermedia, CD-ROM textbooks, etc.) that are being produced and used today. Jimmy Reeves, Director The Center for Teaching Excellence University of North Carolina at Wilmington 601 S. College Rd. Wilmington, NC 28403 910-395-3034 910-350-4000 fax http:\\cte.uncwil.edu reeves@uncwil.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 17:34:14 -0500 From: "P.C. Wankat" Subject: Astin's data Henry Griffin's message makes it clear that many people are misinterpreting Astin's data. Let me quote from Astin's book (p.67): "It is important to realize that we are looking here at institutional [in script in original] characteristics, since research done on individual faculty at single institutions reveals no relationship (or even a weak positive relationship) between Research Orientation and being an effective teacher....The conflict between research and teaching thus becomes apparent only when we look at institutional differences. Also, Rich Felder, Henry Griffin, I and many other of the correspondents are indeed from research institutions. But we probably are not typical. Phil Wankat ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Oct 1995 08:56:09 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: [nave@SUN.MECH.UQ.OZ.AU: Re: research vs teaching] On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Kevin Karplus wrote: > > I can talk about research in a substantive way with half a dozen grad > students, with the faculty member on either side of me in the hall, > and with dozens of researchers around the world. I can talk about my > teaching in the same way with only half a dozen people, and then only > because we have both taught the same course. I must admit here, that my supervisor and I are the only ones involved in our broad area of research in this department, and, in fact, in the university. I DO network (conferences, email, professional bodies etc.), but am not part of a "research group" per se. Perhaps this gives me a biased view of research. I would also venture to say that the interaction with colleagues regarding your research is a very different human interaction than helping students. It was this teaching, educating helping, perhaps even counselling that I was referring to. I also am drawing from the experience of having two academics in the family - one very heavily into research, who turned down jobs involving teaching (just wasn't cut out for it), and one majorly into research, but doing her fair share of teaching (I'm not sure how well) and is now a head of department, and taking on increasing amounts of administration. The remark about being a bit of a loner was referring to the time when you're shut in a lab performing experiments ad infinitum, and then shut in a room analysing results - not much human interaction there. Anyway, I can discuss my teaching methods (admittedly I'm only a tutor) with many many people - isn't that what we're doing now?!?!? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I'd be having this kind of a conference with this many people with as different backgrounds and experiences on the merits of different sound absorption procedures when acoustically traeting an auditoria (or such like). Helen Nave Dept Mech Eng, University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072, Brisbane, Australia ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Oct 1995 09:07:59 +1000 From: Helen Nave Subject: Re: [nave@SUN.MECH.UQ.OZ.AU: Re: research vs teaching] On Tue, 17 Oct 1995, Jack Martin Miller wrote: > > Right on. Perhaps those most fearful of research were poorly taught was > research is. I don't think that I mentioned being fearful of research anywhere. I do it every day. I'm not shaking in my boots. I don't think I'm super at it, and it is one of the things that, given a career choice (and isn't that what this is all about) I would choose not to do. I think that was a really poor choice of words. Are you an astronaut? Is it because you're fearful of it? Does everyone who learns a musical instrument in childhood try to make it a career? Is it because they are fearful of it? Is it because their teacher was hopeless? Or just because a lot of other people can do it better, and it would not make them the happiest person. I reject the above statement wholeheartedly. > > > Jack Martin Miller > Professor of Chemistry > Adjunct Professor of Computer Science > Brock University, > St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. > > Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 > FAX (905) 682 9020 > e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca > http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Oct 1995 08:00:48 +0800 From: Mercury Wiey Subject: Re: [nave@SUN.MECH.UQ.OZ.AU: Re: research vs teaching] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 22:30:24 -0500 From: "Robert L. Lichter" Subject: Re: research vs teaching, and evaluation thereof At 6:09 PM 10/17/95, John P. Fackler, Jr. wrote: >Bob, you are correct about the bulletin boards. Most of us haven't the time >to sit at our computers and go through the material. I will read some of it >tonight in the quiet of my living room. Thanks for the affirmation. From my quick scanning of the exchanges I'm concerned about the underlying tone that seems to be emerging, with its hints of university bashing. People seem to have lost the concept of balance! I'd have hoped you'd have better things to do in your living room! Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert L. Lichter, Executive Director 212-753-1760 The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. rlichter@panix.com 555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022-3301 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 22:30:30 -0500 From: "Robert L. Lichter" Subject: Re: Astin's data >from Astin's book (p.67): "It is important to >realize that we are looking here at institutional [in script in original] >characteristics, since research done on individual faculty at single >institutions reveals no relationship (or even a weak positive relationship) >between Research Orientation and being an effective teacher....The conflict >between research and teaching thus becomes apparent only when we look at >institutional differences. This is the weakness of epidemiological research. If you have a large enough data set and enough variables you can identify almost any trend, especially where control experiments are either not obvious or possible. The challenge is to disaggregate the data and identify explicit relationships, as Astin tried to do in his recent article in Change magazine. The problem in that paper is that it's not clear that the right questions were asked. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert L. Lichter, Executive Director 212-753-1760 The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. rlichter@panix.com 555 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022-3301 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 19:41:29 -0700 From: Kevin Karplus Subject: non-science majors John Hogg said "It is not easy to enter a room with over 300 students whose collective opinion is that "science sucks" and try to convince them that they need to know science to be informed citizens." Perhaps the mistake here is in trying to teach a group of over 300 students. Why are the non-science majors being treated like cattle? Perhaps this has something to do with their antagonism toward science and scientists? If science students take a literature or history class, are they confronted with enormous lecture halls? By making our big classes so big, we have made them more difficult to teach well. Perhaps we should consider teaching more, but smaller classes. Kevin Karplus karplus@cse.ucsc.edu http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~karplus