Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1998/04/22/research_and_teaching_compatible.php
Wednesday, April 22, 1998
'Every candidate should present a record of excellence both as teacher and scholar, with unambiguous professional distinction and a strong likelihood that this distinction will continue to grow and that the individual will provide intellectual leadership to the faculty in the years ahead,' reads the Dartmouth College Tenure Guide.
The old cliché, 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach,' finds itself outdated at today's institutions of higher learning. In the modern academy, professors are asked to fulfill the dual role of the researcher and teacher.
Ideally, a university's faculty is skilled in both pedagogy and research. In 1996, U.S. News and World Report, in its annual survey of American colleges and universities, ranked Dartmouth first for quality of undergraduate teaching. Dartmouth stands out in the Ivy League for its committment to undergraduate education.
At Harvard University, some students complain that professors absorb themselves in academic research, seeing themselves only secondarily as teachers. 'My Economics professor openly told my class that he does not have time for office hours, contrary to the college's mandatory rule,' explained one Harvard undergraduate. 'He could care less about his students, researching is all he wants to do.'
At Harvard and other research universities, teacher's assistants predominate; interaction between full professors and students is often limited.
At Dartmouth College, teacher's assistants are rare and never teach classes. For many associated with Dartmouth, its professors' committment to their roles as teachers distinuishes the College from large research universities.
'Being too heavily engaged in research only becomes a problem when a professor neglects his or her students as a consequence,' said Professor Jeremy Rutter, chairman of Dartmouth's Classics department.
'My own experience at Dartmouth is that very few professors here neglect their students. The ethic of the place is that there is no one more important than an undergraduate student.'
Dartmouth's Ivy League affiliation forces it to compete with major research institutions for the same applicant pool. The College's unique focus on the undergraduate attracts many students.
'I came [to Dartmouth],' explained one freshman, 'because the professors seemed willing to talk with students and were involved with their classes.'
A new report, 'Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities,' released this week by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, found that research universities fail to provide a quality education to undergraduates. 'The research universities have too often failed, and continue to fail, their undergraduate populations,' the report concluded.
'Tuition income from undergraduates is one of the major sources of university income, helping to support research programs and graduate education, but the students paying the tuition get, in all too many cases, less than their money's worth. An undergraduate at an American research university can receive an education as good or better than anything available anywhere in the world, but that is not the normative experience. Again and again, universities are guilty of an advertising practice they would condemn in the commercial world. Recruitment materials display proudly the world-famous professors, the splendid facilities and the ground-breaking research that goes on within them, but thousands of students graduate without ever seeing the world-famous professors or tasting genuine research.
'Some of their instructors are likely to be badly trained or even untrained teaching assistants who are groping their way toward a teaching technique; some others may be tenured drones who deliver set lectures from yellowed notes, making no effort to engage the bored minds of the students in front of them.'
What one finds at the modern research university, then, is that 'many students graduate having accumulated whatever number of courses is required, but still lacking a coherent body of knowledge or any inkling as to how one sort of information might relate to others. And all too often they graduate without knowing how to think logically, write clearly, or speak coherently. The university has given them too little that will be of real value beyond a credential that will help them get their first jobs. And with larger and larger numbers of their peers holding the same paper in their hands, even that credential has lost much of its potency.'
'Dartmouth is a research university in all but name,' proclaimed President-designate James Wright upon his appointment. The truth is, however, that Dartmouth's educational approach and intellectual character differs markedly from that of the research university.
'We are not going to be deflected from our purposes,' declared Wright. 'Research in the academy is . . . a critical activity,' he explained, calling for steps to 'strengthen these ties [with Dartmouth's professional schools].'
Many at Dartmouth worry that overemphasizing research could compromise both
the quality of the research and the College's committment to teaching.
'I think many faculty members agree with me when I say that the tenure process forces juinor faculty to publish too quickly,' said one professor teaching in the Humanities.
'There is some good research out of schools like Dartmouth or Williams, but oftentimes the juinor faculty are forced to publish before their thoughts can be fully developed.'
'For a President to say that Dartmouth is a research university in all but name,' newly elected Student Assembly President Josh Green '00 said of Wright's comments, 'it's pretty bold. Bold and maybe a little scary.'
Indeed, many are concerned that Wright's program for Dartmouth will undermine its historical committment to educating the undergraduate.