Closing the Gap between Interdisciplinary Research and Disciplinary Teaching

Abstract

A s Ph.D. students, and then as postdoctoral associates, future academicians spend 6–8 years getting ready to push hard on the boundaries and interfaces where traditional areas of science overlap. More than ever, however, this broadens the separation between what that faculty member is prepared to carry out in the laboratory and what is expected from a professor in the undergraduate teaching program, where there are—and always will be—significant needs for faculty members who are equally comfortable with the subjectmatter at the dead-center core of the traditional disciplines. Because the leading edges of research are interdisciplinary and increasing numbers of Ph.D.s are granted in these areas, this disconnect between a future faculty member’s scientific education and the needs for undergraduate and graduate teachingwill continue to grow. One response to this disconnect might be, “Well, we should be teaching in the new interdisciplinary areas and not in the traditional ones.” This is not a defensible position. First, understanding in the interdisciplinary areas generally relies on fundamentals drawn from the traditional areas. Second, at least in the U.S., the need for instruction in the traditional areas, mainly in the large, introductory service courses, is not going away, nor is the need for that content. These are service courses primarily, with only a small fraction of students who would be joining us in the discipline, so the needs of the majority must be paramount. Third, these courses truly pay the bills for departments, so simply neglecting them is not a credible option. At the University of Michigan, we are attending to this gap between interdisciplinary research and the need for future faculty to teach in core disciplinary areas by offering dual-mentorship postdoctoral opportunities as a part of a program to improve the preparation of students for academic careers. Our approach differs from the usual “teaching postdoc” in significant ways: faculty-centered research is still the main driver, and the teaching component is explicitly structured as a training activity. In the chemistry department, faculty members recruit and interview potential postdoctoral associates in exactly the sameway andwith the same criteria as they always have. However, the faculty members also know that they can add a teaching component to their recruiting efforts when they sense that this might be important to the potential new postdoctoral associate. Indeed, we have never advertised this program precisely because we do not want the teaching component to drive a student’s interest. From a practical perspective, the program works this way: a postdoctoral associatewho is a regularmember of oneof our research groups can also have a regular teaching assignment in the department as well as a faculty member who is their teaching mentor. The expectation is that, in the term in which the postdoc has a teaching assignment, his or her workload is 50% teaching and 50% research. During that se*Corresponding author, bcoppola@umich.edu.