Teaching and Research Not Tied

This week, I would like to share an article that explores the relationship between teaching and research at a research intensive university, "Study: Teaching and Research Not Tied"

Two Northwestern University researchers found that skilled scholars do not come at the expense of quality instructors, or vice versa. Skilled researchers and effective teachers are neither substitutes nor complements for each other -- in fact, they have no relationship at all.

Their research adds another perspective to a conversation that has troubled research universities for years: whether an emphasis on scholarship comes at a cost to quality instruction. “We are able to estimate with really quite impressive statistical precision that they aren’t related,” said Morton Schapiro, president and professor of economics at Northwestern and one of the authors of the study. Schapiro and his co-author David Figlio, who also teaches economics at Northwestern, evaluated data from all first-year undergraduates students at the university between 2001 and 2008.

They measured teaching quality of faculty in two ways. First, they measured how “inspirational” a teacher is by the rate at which non-majors became majors. For example, if a student with an undeclared major took a biology class and subsequently became a biology major, that student’s professor would be marked as inspirational. Second, they measured “deep learning,” or a professor’s long-term value to students, by how well students perform in more advanced classes in the same field. The authors measured research excellence of faculty through two indicators, as well. First, they counted which faculty members are recognized for their research at the universities annual dinner. Second, they computed each faculty member’s "h-index," which measures frequency and influence of research publications.