Scholarship and the Modern Professor
Overview
The idea of Scholarship as a concept is easily overshadowed by the pace and intensity of our achievement
and assessment-based society. While Faculty historically fit the classification of Scholar, it is easy
for this concept to be supplanted by the metric spaces of research, teaching, and service (or whatever
metrics an organization might embrace). These metrics are useful for assessment, but not for definition
of what a Scholar is (or what a Scholar does). Webster's 1913 definition for Scholar
is One engaged in the pursuits of learning; a learned person; one versed in any
branch, or in many branches, of knowledge; a person of high literary or scientific attainments; a
savant.. Thus, the true reflection of Scholar is a deep embedding of oneself into a
discipline and a way of being that extends well beyond simply learning. Achievement of a high
level of Scholarship leads one to an embedding of knowledge and understanding to an extent that is becomes
difficult to separate the person from the discipline.
Stages of Development
- Apprentice
- Journeymen
- Masters/Scholars
Scholarly Methods [Wikipedia: Scholarly method]
- Dialectic reasoning
- Historical method
- Empirical method
- Scientific method
Modern Complications to Scholarship
- Pace of Play, Quantity of Knowledge
- Tenure Clock
- Assessment Metrics (next slide)
- Our thoughts/efforts are often focused to achievement
- Sometimes coming at the cost of careful contemplation & deliberation
Common Assessment Metrics (of Faculty)
- Research
- Teaching
- Service
- Are these incongruent with Scholarship?
- No!! They are common outcome measures; not the defining values
Misunderstanding of the Scholar/Professor
- "What Professors Do" IEEE Potentials, 2012, and other misguided documents/blogs trying to
document Professors work
- A great researcher does not have to function effectively in the classroom
- Achieve X, Y, and Z and you will be successful
- Vague definitions of sufficient metric space requirements
- Belief that delivery of metric space accomplishment is enough
Scholarship is a Way of Life
- Work products are a way of documenting progress — not necessarily leading to great Scholarship
- A Scholar is an information conduit: exploring, understanding, and disseminating knowledge
- Scholars seek to have a deep understanding of their chosen field
Surviving the Assessment Metric Spaces
- Why? These assessments are not incongruent to the role of a Scholar
- A scholar should be interested in all embodiments of knowledge: Discovery
and Dissemination
- A chosen field should not strictly limit a Scholar's study
Examining the Metric Elements
- Research
- Teaching
- Service
Research
- On first blush it appears evident, but:
- Easy to focus on the how and what
- More difficult to contemplate the why
- This oversight is evidenced by conclusions that are really summaries
Research: Challenges
- Complacency: this is what I know and do
- Publish or perish
- Easy to pursue an investigation for publication sake
- Harder to consider when (and should) an exploration should be undertaken
- Need to show accomplishment can overshadow important, but more difficult explorations
- Grants, grants, grants
- Fiercely competitive
- Easily discouraged
- Necessary to maintain & support an active research program
- Career pressures to achieve documentable accomplishments
Research and the Scholar
- Richard Hamming, A stroke of genius: striving for greatness in all you do
- To do important work, you must: (i) work on the right problem, (ii) at the right time, and (iii) in
the right way
- To select a problem you must (i) have a good attack, (ii) a good starting place, and (iii) some
reasonable idea of how to begin
- Hard work matters, but only if its done on the right problem
Luck favors the prepared mind [Pasteur]
- Emotional commitment, Courage (but not over-confidence)
- Selling your research
Research: Reviews
- Myth 1: The reviewer did not understand the work
- Myth 2: The reviewer is an idiot
- Reality: The writing did not adequately convey the contribution
- Do not be discouraged. It's not personal, it's the process of research.
Try to appreciate what the reviewer is saying: ask yourself, "Why would a reasonable person think this
about my work?"
- Good writing is critical and every paper (technical or otherwise) must tell a story
— make it interesting
Research by the Scholar
- Knowledge discovery
- Explore serious problems
- Be confident, but not arrogant
- Reach to others; work with others; have an open door
- Welcome criticism; accept that you might be wrong; try to understand the other's perspective
- Work actively to sell and promote your research and its significance
Teaching: Challenges
- Teaching is considered 0/1
- Focus on material delivery overshadows training the individual to learn self-teaching skills
- Often focused on student (or, sometimes peer) assessment reports
- Student as customer
- Treatment of higher-ed as a continuation of K-12 instruction models
Teaching: The Scholar in the Classroom
- Redirect perspective to validating students knowledge attainment
- Become the subject mentor/guide
- Change student focus to self-directed learning
- Encourage student confidence
- Train the student in the logical reasoning of the topic
Teaching: The Scholar as a Mentor
- Scholars disseminate knowledge
- Scholars seek ways to illuminate
- Scholars help guide others
- Expand knowledge dissemination:
- beyond the classroom and students
- beyond technical topics
Service: Challenges
- Why is it relevant to the Scholar?
- Administrative burden
- Mentoring
- Conference organization (beyond the technical)
Service: Solutions
- Service is needed to facilitate Scholarship
- Within the institution
- Within the community and world
Make Room for Family & Social Life
- Play hard too
- It can be done, you can squeeze it in
- Family need explanations/training as well
- Interact widely and with everyone
The Modern Scholar
- Cognizant of performance requirements, but not confined by them; understands the need for assessment
and works to promote accomplishments in the context of those performance metrics
- Pursues study for knowledge attainment, not for the accumulation of performance metric assets
- Serves as a knowledge lens
- Focuses study, but willing to look elsewhere for potentially relevant knowledge
- Broadly interested in knowledge wherever it may lie
- Engaged in all aspects of knowledge:
discovery and dissemination
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