No Flight from the Classroom

Abstract

An old undergraduate grumble, that professors won't teach, has lately become shout. Rebellious students on number of campuses are demanding changes in the system that leaves the classroom to ill-prepared graduate assistants, while professors devote their time to research. Meanwhile, the graduate assistants, who have long been irked by their neither-fish-nor-flesh position in the academic hierarchy, want clarification of their status and opportunities to improve their teaching ability. According to Drs. Robert Dubin and Frederic Beisse of the University of Oregon, an undergraduate's chances of seeing professor are not very good. They give the following odds: * One in three that an undergraduate will get graduate assistant as teacher in any course he may choose to register for; * In the first two years the odds go up to two in five; * If the undergraduate seeks small class for intimate contact with professor, the chances are only one in three that he will find professor in the class he registers for. Concerned by the growing picture of the professorless classroom, the American Chemical Society's Committee on Chemistry and Public Affairs invited Prof. Frank Westheimer of Harvard to see if there really has been flight from teaching on the part of research chemists and scientists generally. In chemistry, particularly, and in other sciences, Prof. Westheimer finds no evidence of faculty flight. On the contrary he finds distinguished research chemists lining up to teach undergraduate courses. When the University of Chicago years ago tried to separate research and teaching by setting up series of research-only institutes, Enrico Fermi would accept the chairmanship of the Institute for Nuclear Studies only on condition he be allowed to continue to teach freshman physics. His example was followed by other members of his institute, in what Prof. Westheimer calls a spectacular example of the flight to teaching. Research professorships are rare. In survey of 13 large universities Prof. Westheimer says he could find only six research professors among 200 faculty chemists. Data on absenteeism-one of the charges often made against senior faculty-for 20 of the professors at universities surveyed by Prof. Westheimer show the number of undergraduate lectures missed for reasons other than illness is between one and two year per lecturer. Prof. Westheimer marshalls other evidence, including the names of people teaching undergraduate courses in various universities, to show that research scientists not only teach but like it. In general, he says, good researchers make the best teachers and students prove by lining up for their courses. But even if the senior professors in the sciences are not running from the classroom, graduate assistants are coming in in larger numbers. And here Prof. Westheimer, like others, sees problem: The undergraduate should feel the excitement that research brings to most graduate students and this excitement should permeate the laboratory. Somehow, he finds, it doesn't. And that itself is problem. Many are the complaints that teaching by graduate assistants is dull, routine and listless, and number of Prof. Westheimer's colleagues are trying to see how they can change the situation. What is really the best thing to do is matter of some disagreement. Proposals that graduate teaching assistants simply be abolished are unrealizable, says Prof. K. B. Wiberg of Yale. There just aren't enough senior faculty members to cover the laboratory sections traditionally taught by assistants. Whatever may mean for the assistants' own education-and this part