Academia in the 21st century: Towards both a research and a teaching-intensive university

Abstract

Over two decades ago, when I first joined the University of British Columbia (UBC) as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts in Education, I was immediately advised by my colleagues and my department Head of the importance of research to my academic career. One of the Associate Deans in my Faculty arranged meetings with junior faculty to advise us of upcoming research grant competitions and volunteered to review our research proposals. To help me successfully plunge into the competitive “publish or perish” culture of UBC, my department Head was available to offer feedback on my early papers. Yet, as far as my teaching was concerned, I was just provided with a list of course numbers and it was up to me to figure out from calendar descriptions and economically worded past syllabi what and how I was now responsible to teach. I initially took this lack of attention to my role as a university teacher as a reflection of my joining a Faculty of Education, and a possible assumption of my curricular and pedagogical competence based on the nature of my doctoral degree. Yet, I soon realised that my experience was shared by colleagues joining other Faculties, whose doctoral and post-doctoral experience provided them with minimal, if any, exposure to educational issues. There was no doubt in my mind and the minds of my contemporaries joining the academia in the 1990s, that our professional lives were to be about research, and that teaching was the necessary price to pay for the privilege to be an academic at a university with world-class aspirations. (Abstract taken from first paragraph of document)