Our University – Teaching and Research

 

Job prospects for graduating students are as challenging as anyone has seen in decades.  There is scarcely a bright light to be found.  In a rush to address this complex socioeconomic and political issue some universities might be led to rethink mission and worry more about job placement than education. 

 

Well intentioned but misguided.

 

Such a posture may work at a trade school or technical institute and many community colleges, and even some very limited mission universities, but should not be the case at a research university.  At institutions like ours, teaching students to think and solve problems, provides the framework for gainful employment. 

 

Last August I traveled to Viet Nam, where a lament from national leaders about the inability of Vietnamese students to be productive in the work place was heard over and over.  It was interesting that the students I met, considerable in number, were thoughtful, kind, respectful and deferential, and seemed dedicated and hardworking.

 

Officials in higher education, leaders at U.S. embassies, presidents of the best universities in this nation crying for new ideas to employ their people and make an economy work,  are concerned about the fact that the students are weak in the area of problem solving and critical thinking. 

 

Students can give back everything you give them but they don’t innovate.

 

I hear consternation at Wal-Mart, Denny’s, in the state house, and at times to my great discomfort even on our campus, about how too much emphasis is placed on research and not enough on teaching.  I think what my friends in all these places really want to say is too much emphasis on poor research and poor teaching.

 

Research, scholarly and creative activity in any manifestation, is the only way that teaching can ever really be excellent.  It can be good with limited intellectual curiosity but it will never be excellent.

 

When research and scholarship are driven by a passion to know, a desire to find a better way through something, a heart to develop a new way of seeing the world, or the beauty of a human voice, teaching can begin.

 

Until then, all you have is training or instruction; valuable in its own right, but not the mission of our university. Teaching not infused with new insights, the real by- product of research, is not teaching. 

 

Ask the people of Vietnam.

 

The first department chair I ever worked with at LSU was Fountain Tillman Smothers, an old fashioned Tennessean with character more unique than his name.  Professor Smothers was the genuine article. 

 

He believed distinctions between teaching and research were hollow and naive, and that teaching and research were connected like inhaling and exhaling….one without the other was of no use. He took a broad view of research, he was an aficionado of the arts and loved poetry, and could quote it like a Tennessee gentleman.

 

Fount knew that thinking people study, inquire and create.  They find solutions to problems.  They invent.  They create work for others.  And while he never said it to me directly, he knew that thinking people would be successful in the market place.

 

At our university, the desire to know should be an industriousness fueled by discovery and transferred from teacher to student.

 

Students so equipped find work, or work finds them. They are educated, not trained.