The Rocket

Issue date: 3/23/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Nate Daymut [Click to enlarge]

Think professors only teach a few classes and hold office hours a couple of times per week? Think again.

"This is not your typical eight-hour-a-day job," said Neil Cosgrove, the English department chairperson and a full professor.

Though many students may not be aware of it, professors have many professional responsibilities beyond their roles in the classroom.

In fact, there are three major categories written into the faculty union's collective bargaining agreement that professors sign before beginning work at SRU. These include teaching, scholarship and service.

But unlike teaching and service, scholarship can be difficult to define.

Nearly two dozen definitions of scholarship exist in the faculty union's collective bargaining agreement, including items such as academic journal publication, the publishing of book chapters or books, and creative achievement.

"Because there are so many different departments, there are 23 different areas listed, all of which can be defined as scholarship to meet the specific needs of each discipline," said David Culp, the business department chairperson and a full professor.

Kathleen Strickland, a professor in the English department, said the terms 'scholarship' and 'research' are hard to define, because both are broad terms.

"At SRU, there are a variety of research models that are respected, because research is different in different disciplines," Strickland said.

Teaching is the most important of the three categories at SRU because the university specalizes in teaching, rather than research.

Jerry Chmielewski, the biology department chairperson and a full professor, said research-focused such as Penn State emphasize their professors getting big grants, meaning the professors become more grant writers than teachers.

"Here, there isn't as much emphasis on grants, so (professors) have more time to be in the lab doing what we like to do," Chmielewski said.

At research-focused schools, Cosgrove said, professors have much more time to research and often only teach one or two classes, as opposed to a school like SRU, where professors have to teach about four classes and have a lighter scholarship load.

Continued...

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