ESEARCH AND TEACHING are the two cardinal
purposes of the research university. Yet the relation between them is all too often
misunderstood -- or at least misrepresented. The stereotypes invoked to characterize the
relationship are largely negative: research professors as distracted globetrotting prima donnas,
reluctant to channel their time and their highly refined cognitive resources into the mere
classroom; dedicated teachers as part saints and part burned-out drudges, far from the
avant-garde of their discipline -- and regarded by the envied and underworked residents of
that avant-garde, and by parts of the non-academic public, as the proverbial Those Who
Can't.
Such stereotypes undermine the sense of community a university needs to foster. Even more
fundamentally, insofar as education and scholarship are set over against each other in the
social structure of the academy and the personal attitudes of those who work here, the
institutional coherence of the research university is undermined. Why attempt to combine
such supposedly dissonant activities?
Within the academic world, the system of
incentives and rewards is generally agreed to favor the excellent researcher over the excellent
instructor. Rebalancing these reward structures is -- or ought to be -- a priority for academic
leaders nationwide, as my distinguished colleagues from Stanford and Michigan, Don Kennedy and Jim Duderstadt,
maintain in this issue's Publisher's Corner editorials. An era of public and private resource
constraints is also likely to witness struggles over the relative importance of instruction and
discovery, waged on such battlefields as tenure review committees, the pages of intellectual
and policy journals, and the chambers of state legislatures. Universities that do not produce
coherent answers to questions about the relation of
these two central responsibilities may find other forces of society rushing in to fill this policy
vacuum, expressing quite different priorities on how to allocate material and intellectual
resources. Stereotypes have consequences that are far from proportional to their accuracy.
Actual experience is more complicated than the
disjunctive stereotypes would indicate. No one would dispute that teaching and research can
compete for scholars' time, attention, and resources. As economist Eli Ginzberg recounts in his
inaugural article for 21stC's new series "The Long View," some of Columbia's
most distinguished minds have identified themselves as researchers first and teachers, at best,
second. Emphasis has fallen on one or the other in cyclical fashion, and Eli cites sound reasons
to expect another turn of this wheel. Yet the history of this university also includes prominent
examples of scholars who excel at both, and the talent at eliciting the mutual reinforcement
between them is by no means limited to figures from the past -- nor is this expertise kept out
of reach of undergraduates. In this decade, 59 percent of the class sections taught by
Columbia research faculty who have received the highest national recognition have been at
the undergraduate level.(1) Barnard historian Robert McCaughey, who
has analyzed the relation of active scholarship and quality of teaching at his own institution
and other liberal arts colleges, has found them to be strongly correlated. His data support the
proposition that an academic who pursues scholarship in his or her discipline is more likely to
succeed in communicating with students than a colleague who eschews research and focuses
on classroom teaching alone.(2)
Much imbalance occurs because the two activities are measured along different scales.
Research productivity can be quantified, at least through such approximate tools as citation indices and the
ability to attract grants. Success in teaching is harder to establish in other than qualitative
terms, since it is reflected in the success of one's students and their impressions of one's
mentoring ability. Universities face the challenge of developing tenure evaluations that
include attention to quality of instruction, and given current pressures on the institution of tenure itself, the effort to recognize and reward superb teachers
is becoming even more difficult. Still, Columbia considers this effort indispensable to
maintaining the proper balance between teaching and research.
Combining research and
teaching presents risks and opportunities for every scholar, and the articles presented here
show how various members of the Columbia community (and of the larger academic
community) are responding. Herbert Chase comments on why he and his colleagues have
reshaped the College of Physicians and
Surgeons' basic science and practical curricula to meld medicine with the information
sciences of the future and thereby integrate research more directly into teaching. Journalist
Nancy Henderson also examines the digital era's effects on teaching, describing electronic
initiatives at Columbia and elsewhere and asking whether the incorporation of the Web into
the university is taking us toward a scenario of dehumanized edu-conditioning or, as its
practitioners hope, enhancing and expanding the functions that skilled educators already
perform well. A trio of younger scholars, representing the humanities (Mary McGlynn), the
physical sciences (Fawaz El-Habel), and the social sciences and learned professions (William
Sage), offer their individual perspectives on the balancing act each must perform in launching
an academic career, such as the contrary demands of publish-or-perish prestige accumulation
and devotion to one's students, craft, or society. Biologists Darcy Kelley and Robert Pollack
consider how the scientific culture differentially values grant-funded research and grantless,
often thankless teaching. Their different experiences, including parenthood and an abdication
from the "throne" of a funded lab, lead them to complementary conclusions about the
centrality of the teacher's vocation in the life of the mind.
All these
articles reflect an awareness that balancing the extension of knowledge with the
communication of that knowledge to students is an ongoing challenge. How best to meet this
challenge itself invites research -- and also can at least in part be taught. The articles that
follow contribute to this ongoing process.
1. Data compiled by Marian Pagano, Office of Planning and
Institutional Research, on MacArthur Fellows, members
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Guggenheim Fellows, members of the National Academy of Sciences, members of the Institute of Medicine, and Nobel laureates.
2. McCaughey, Robert A. Scholars and Teachers: The Faculties of Select Liberal Arts
Colleges and Their Place in American Higher Learning. (NY: privately printed, 1994).
GEORGE RUPP,
Ph.D., is professor of religion and president of Columbia University.
