Hi group:  My flip quiz for tuition-paying parents was probably an inappropriate response to the serious issues described in the article about the teacher whose “research suffers because of her non-research workload and ... is ultimately denied tenure.”[ http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/23/louisville-lawsuit-raises-concerns-familiar-those-tenure-track#ixzz1qEN8LRgr]

I believe that most of us endorse (and have tried to live) the professional values of (a) quality teaching; (b) student advising & mentoring; (c) college & community service; and (d) scholarly/creative growth & productivity.  These activities are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

To a large extent, however, time spent in one area comes at the expense of time spent in the others.  An hour spent carefully reading and extensively commenting on a student paper is an hour not spent analyzing one’s own research data, writing a committee report, or meeting with a student to discuss graduate school options.  Young faculty (especially, but not exclusively) need guidance as to how to allocate their time among activities that express the four professional values.  They need to know how fungible these activities are: Does time spent writing especially thoughtful comments on student papers, or gaining knowledge and competency necessary for effective work on an important committee, reduce the quantity of scholarly output required for promotion or tenure?

A teaching career is a marathon, not a sprint.  The mentoring of young faculty should help them establish a pattern and balance of activities that expresses their unique talents and proclivities, and that can be sustained over the course of a career.  I do not believe that a balancing of college-wide activities promoting the four professional values requires an identical balancing for each faculty member. The requirements for promotion and tenure should allow for a good deal of fungibility, delimited by the needs of the faculty member’s department and division.  I believe that functionally, we typically have achieved this here, to our great credit.  I hope it continues.

Steve.

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Steven J. Gilbert, Ph.D.
   Professor Emeritus of Psychology
      State University of New York, College at Oneonta
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      Home Page: http://employees.oneonta.edu/gilbersj/stevepage.htm