Faculty members have plenty on their plates—fitting in research, teaching and administrative duties is a challenge. Still, Duke professors are achieving a balance.
Excellent scholarship is vital to an academic career, but at Duke, teaching is also highly valued, said George McLendon, dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences.
An academic who does not care about teaching, McLendon said, “should be at someplace besides Duke—Harvard, for example.” In his opinion, the issue is not “teaching versus research,” because both are important and complement each other.
For some of the University’s best teachers, educating and researching go hand in hand. Alvin Crumbliss, a chemistry professor and recipient of the 2004 David and Janet Vaughn Brooks Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, said the two components make up roughly equal shares of his work, depending on the time of year.
“It’s also hard to make the distinction often between teaching and research,” Crumbliss said, citing time spent with students in the lab as an example of potential overlap.
McLendon remarked that some of the qualities that make an academic a good researcher can also contribute to success in other areas.
“Many of the best scholars are also excellent teachers, [and] are also willing to take on additional service roles broadly in the University,” McLendon said.
Nevertheless, faculty must make choices. Since research weighs so heavily in the tenure process, the students themselves are the main motivation for putting extra effort into teaching, explained Barak Richman, assistant professor of law.
“It takes a significant amount of time to be a good teacher. It takes a lot more time to be a very good teacher,” Richman said. He said that although he certainly wanted to be a “respected scholar,” he appreciated the “real emphasis on teaching” at the School of Law.
In some areas of the University, however, faculty divide their work quite differently. Joseph Heitman, James B. Duke professor of molecular genetics and microbiology, said he devotes about 75 to 80 percent of his time to research, a condition of his appointment at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Heitman stressed the impact professors can have outside of the classroom, which he said is particularly vital at the graduate level. Most of his contact with undergraduates takes place in a research setting, he explained, and he spends only about 24 hours a year in the front of a class of medical or graduate students.
“I have as much contact time as I need,” Heitman said. “For every hour, there’s four hours at a minimum out-of-class preparation time.”
Time management presents distinct challenges for junior faculty because of the structure of the tenure process, McLendon acknowledged. He said the University encourages them to spend less time on other types of service, helping them to strike the right balance.
“[Junior faculty] get a leave during the time that they’re untenured,” said Wesley Kort, chair of the department of religion. “The situation is really quite favorable.”
A competitive leave policy for faculty in their fourth year after earning tenure continues this support.
“There are a variety of ways that Duke encourages coupling teaching and research,” McLendon said. “Duke actually has a remarkable record of promotion to tenure, higher than many other places.”
Faculty were quick to point out that they have other responsibilities as well.
“It’s not just teaching and research, though. It’s a lot more complicated than that,” said Grant Wacker, a professor of church history in the Divinity School. “We spend at least a third of our time... doing things that can’t be seen by the outside world.”
Assuming an administrative post can be an especially great commitment for faculty.
“It’s difficult to be chair and maintain your research pace and to do all the teaching,” Kort said. “I remember walking down the hall and thinking to myself, ‘I can’t do all of this.’”
On the other hand, this compromise is not so hard to find for a few professors, including Steven Schwarcz, Stanley A. Star professor of law and business. He spent decades working in the business world before becoming a professor.
“Being a full-time academic is like being on vacation all the time, compared to being on Wall Street,” Schwarcz declared.
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