Carol Colbeck, assistant professor of education,
has found in her research that faculty naturally
integrate teaching and research, giving each equal priority.
Photo: Greg Grieco
Carol Colbeck,
assistant professor of education,
has found in her research that faculty naturally
integrate teaching and research, giving each equal priority.
Photo: Greg Grieco
By Paul A. Blaum
Public Information
College professors, with or without official encouragement, are shattering a common perception that research necessarily interferes with teaching.
"Our findings show that faculty often do not separate teaching from research, but do both at the same time in an integrated approach that gives equal priority to student learning and to the development of new knowledge," said Carol Colbeck, assistant professor of education and research associate at the University's Center for the Study of Higher Education.
"The key is for university policy to reward faculty for jointly producing teaching and research, so faculty are not compelled to focus on one at the expense of the other," Colbeck said.
Furthermore, the more faculty are involved in departmental decisions about teaching assignments, the better they can integrate the two activities by developing courses about their current research topics or by incorporating information about their recent research into existing required courses.
To explore examples of teaching-research integration, Colbeck observed faculty work in four departments at two California universities: an elite research university dubbed "Vantage University" and a public "Cosmopolitan State."
"At Vantage and Cosmopolitan, I observed faculty at work in physics, a 'hard' or high-consensus discipline, and in English, a 'soft' or low-consensus discipline," Colbeck said. "I conducted structured observations of 12 faculty members: three faculty in each of the four departments. All were nominated by their chairs as being excellent at either teaching, research or both. The study logged 1,030 hours of professional activity."
The faculty observed by Colbeck integrated teaching and research an average 19 percent of the time.
"Faculty can increase both their teaching and their research productivity by integrating the two more frequently," said the College of Education researcher. "To do this, faculty can learn from what their colleagues do in other disciplines."
Physicists tend to integrate teaching and research by involving students in their research. English professors, on the other hand, are more likely than physicists to teach about their current research in the classroom.
For instance, English and other humanities faculty can bring a new emphasis to an old concept, apprenticeship. This could help them juggle the demands of classroom teaching, training research students and producing publications.
"Humanities faculty should be encouraged to collaborate more frequently with undergraduate and graduate research students," Colbeck said. "Faculty who work in disciplines such as English, where researchers typically work alone, could explore interpretations of texts or cultural analysis with their student apprentices, thereby training them to conduct research while simultaneously making progress on their own research.
"Faculty in the hard sciences should be encouraged to invigorate their classroom presentation of elementary principles from their own current research. Even a physicist conducting cutting edge research can bring aspects of his or her current investigations into undergraduate lectures and discussion," she said.
Strong traditional values among black women that discourage smoking may be the reason for noticeably lower smoking rates among African-Americans in the West and Deep South compared to blacks in other regions of the country.
"Black women outside the urban hubs in the South and West had the lowest overall prevalence rates among all gender and regional groups surveyed," said Gary King, associate professor of biobehavioral health.
Interestingly enough, the lowest smoking prevalence rates (11 percent) were among black adults 18-24 years of age -- male and female -- who lived in the non-urban South. Thus, Southern black women as a whole, regardless of age, were more inclined to avoid smoking than other blacks nationwide, according to King.
"It may be that these women are less prone to smoking than women of comparable socioeconomic status in other sections of the country because of adherence to strong traditional African-American norms or religious beliefs, community social structure and alternative ways of coping with stress," he said.
"Our data showed that African-Americans in the Midwest had the highest smoking prevalence rates -- 38.9 percent in the 'central city' or urban core and 30.3 percent in suburban or rural areas," said King, a faculty member in the College of Health and Human Development.
King collaborated with Anthony P. Polednak, Department of Public Health, Hartford, Conn., and Robert Bendel of University of Connecticut's Center for Environmental Health, in his research.
Erosion and drainage problems can cause major damage to property and can even lower the value of a home, said an urban forester in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
"Erosion from drainage coming from higher elevations is the most common water problem homeowners face," said Scott Sjolander, Penn State Cooperative Extension urban forester based in Crawford County. "Erosion can be stopped if you know what to look for."
Sjolander said homeowners easily can check for current or potential drainage problems around the home.
n Flood plain maps. Every municipality should have flood plain maps. "If you own land or a home within a flood plain, there's a chance it will be inundated with water at some point," Sjolander said. "If you buy a home in a flood plain, banks require that you take out a flood insurance policy. Don't assume floods will never happen to you."
n Check for hydric (wet) soils. "Hydric," or wet soils can be detected by making a simple inspection of the property. Look for soil that is gray, blue or black. The soil also may emit a sulfurous or sour odor.
n Watch where runoff water flows and exits on the property. If runoff occurs on a relatively flat area, homeowners can plant a vegetative filter strip. Placing plants in highly erodable areas is called critical area planting. Homeowners can use a variety of vegetation ranging from turfgrass to woodland plants. Sjolander recommends checking the surrounding area for naturally occurring plants to see which species seem the most vigorous.
Sjolander warns that homeowners should avoid planting exotic species or competitive native species that could take over the site, pushing out other native plants.
n Bale Barrier. A straw bale barrier should be entrenched and anchored across an area where erosion occurs. The temporary barrier prevents sediment-laden runoff and directs water elsewhere.
n Silt Fence. A simple barrier of geotextile -- a woven material available at hardware stores, home centers and lumber yards -- stretched across supporting posts also will provide temporary relief until a permanent solution can be found.
n Swale. A swale is a permanent broad depression that can be built in a yard to carry water more directly to a specific location. Swales should drain into a creek, street, wooded area or drainage easement.