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Teaching should also count!
Ohio State University president Gordon Gee thinks it's time to pay more attention to teaching in awarding tenure. In an interview with the Associated Press, Gee describes as outdated the currently prevailing formula -- which rewards the quantity of publications, not matter what their quality, over excellence in teaching. As the head of the largest university in the country, others will surely be paying attention. And so will we. Students should always come first and making them the priority entails bumping up teaching a few notches on the academic totem pole.
Some professors on campus are already grumbling. "There's a feeling, I think, that good teachers are a dime dozen," says one English prof at OSU. Having spent more than decade in university classrooms and has taken classes from at least 75 different professors, I would like to politely disagree. I can count the really good teachers I've had on one hand. Ultimately, they are the ones who really make a difference. Once the answers to the multiple choices exams have been forgotten and the essays one has written have become but a hazy memory, the persona and insights of the great teachers are what leave a lasting imprint.
Posted by David Azerrad on February 12, 2010 at February 12, 2010 04:35 PM
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