The endangered teacher-scholar

The International Changing Academic Professional study results were announced this month.  The study is really about the morale of the professorate and the life of academics world-wide as they see themselves.  In the brief report in Inside Higher Education the last line caught my eye.

Locke also highlighted an increasing "division of academic labor” and speculated that UK academics who undertake both research and teaching may now be in the minority, as they already are in the U.S.

The teacher-scholar model is the one that traditionally has been applied to MCU and many PUI faculty hires.  In recent years, I have noticed that faculty are being put into teaching slots or research slots with little or no room for the teacher-scholar.  Folks like me who went into the profession to be teacher-scholars find ourselves torn to pieces as we try to avoid being put into one slot or the other.

Teaching feeds my desire to help people achieve their dreams through thoughtful work and acquired skill.  Research feeds my desire to solve puzzles and add to the field of knowledge that I teach.  To the extent that teacher-scholars are being asked to choose, they are often being told to become teachers only in order to give limited research resources to the newly hired people in the research slots.  I know a number of teacher-scholar types who lament that they are no longer supported to be teacher-scholars and have become second class citizen in their own departments because their focus is not primarily research.  With the increase in lecturers on many campuses, particularly at public institutions, I wonder if we are headed the way of the RO1s where many undergraduate lectures are taught my lecturers with security and the tenured faculty are only the research faculty.

I do believe that teacher-scholars add something to the classroom, in that they bring in the scientific process of questioning assumptions and showing how our ideas are based on best evidence to date, but subject to new ideas.  Being engaged in research keeps these things in the front of your mind and brings the excitement of discovery and passion for moving the field into your face and talk.  Teachers who are disengaged for the processes of scholarship just can't do this as well.  Perhaps having more teacher-scholars would reignite some interest in science careers.

So, cheers to the teacher-scholar.  May your value be appreciated before you are gone.

T.S. Hall