2008 Woodie Awards
Publish or Perish? W&L's well thought out reserach policy helps attract the best professors
Taylor Woods
Issue date: 2/7/07 Section: News
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Washington and Lee history professor Mark Carey vividly remembers his days as a post-grad researcher at a major research institution. "You would send an e-mail and you'd get a response a month later." His mentors acted as though "teaching was cutting into work." His desire to find balance between research and teaching at W&L demonstrates how the university has used institutional incentives for research to attract strong new faculty members to the humanities.
President Ken Ruscio held a panel discussion on the weekend of his inauguration. One of his goals was to "start a dialogue" about the role of a professor at W&L. His "teacher-scholar model" seeks the right balance between teaching and research through discussion. However, as Dean Howard Dobin emphasized, "nothing has changed" since Ruscio initiated dialogue on the role of research at W&L. Perhaps it's because teachers are happy and candidates are lining up for teaching jobs at W&L.
From her office in Washington Hall, Jane Stewart directs faculty to grants from both W&L and from the corporate world. As part of University Development, her job is to find professors grants from the corporate world and to administer their applications for grant money from the University.
These grants will help pay professors for work missed, travel, and other expenses of doing research throughout the world, whether it's across the ocean or in Lexington. Because professors have 6 or 9 credits to teach during the year, professors do most research in the summer. For example, new sociology professor Jonathan Eastwood is going to spend the summer researching nationalism in Caracas, Venezuela, though "not the safest place in the world" for his studies. All professors interviewed expressed satisfaction, and new History Professor Molly Michelmore states "there is great institutional support" for research.
Despite the support, Washington and Lee professors in the humanities have no fixed quota or requirement on the amount of articles, books, papers, etc. to publish in a year. Research isn't necessary for promotion or job security, though Professor DeLaney described "strong administrative expectation" for faculty to engage in it. Most public universities mandate faculty to conduct research, in a large part because the benefits of research justify the allocation of state money to the institution. However, some private universities such as Vanderbilt, Georgetown, and Harvard require professors to do research also.
President Ken Ruscio held a panel discussion on the weekend of his inauguration. One of his goals was to "start a dialogue" about the role of a professor at W&L. His "teacher-scholar model" seeks the right balance between teaching and research through discussion. However, as Dean Howard Dobin emphasized, "nothing has changed" since Ruscio initiated dialogue on the role of research at W&L. Perhaps it's because teachers are happy and candidates are lining up for teaching jobs at W&L.
From her office in Washington Hall, Jane Stewart directs faculty to grants from both W&L and from the corporate world. As part of University Development, her job is to find professors grants from the corporate world and to administer their applications for grant money from the University.
These grants will help pay professors for work missed, travel, and other expenses of doing research throughout the world, whether it's across the ocean or in Lexington. Because professors have 6 or 9 credits to teach during the year, professors do most research in the summer. For example, new sociology professor Jonathan Eastwood is going to spend the summer researching nationalism in Caracas, Venezuela, though "not the safest place in the world" for his studies. All professors interviewed expressed satisfaction, and new History Professor Molly Michelmore states "there is great institutional support" for research.
Despite the support, Washington and Lee professors in the humanities have no fixed quota or requirement on the amount of articles, books, papers, etc. to publish in a year. Research isn't necessary for promotion or job security, though Professor DeLaney described "strong administrative expectation" for faculty to engage in it. Most public universities mandate faculty to conduct research, in a large part because the benefits of research justify the allocation of state money to the institution. However, some private universities such as Vanderbilt, Georgetown, and Harvard require professors to do research also.
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