Professors busy with classrooms full of students each day are often also laboring on more personal projects — publishing original research in their fields of expertise.
Many University faculty members are constantly putting forth their work that not only adds original voices to the academic arena, but also brings those professors closer to the goal of tenure and promotions.
As they pour time into valued research, professors are sometimes forced to teach fewer classes to make room for their demanding load.
Jerry Kennedy, Boyd professor of English, said professors working on research projects typically teach one or two fewer classes than those inactive in the research field, but they often work longer days  — even nights and weekends.
“If the University wants a faculty member to remain active in research, it’s very difficult to teach as many courses as a faculty member who is not expected to publish,” Kennedy said.
But the busy schedule is all part of the requirements for University faculty.
Gaines Foster, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said faculty members are required to publish work to earn tenure and promotions. Some areas, like the History Department, require books, and others, like psychology professors, publish articles as grounds for professors to move up, he said.
But standards to obtain tenure are more qualitative. Most departments seek about six outside opinion letters, input from the faculty in case committees and the opinion of the department chair, Foster said.
The departments also measure national and international impact of professors’ work, he said. Some use databases’ citation indexes, and others use outside letters.
Kennedy said the English requirements to gain tenure vary depending on the field of the professor, but the requirement for literary scholars is usually one authored book to gain tenure and another to move up in the ranks.
“These are not iron-clad rules because we have great diversity and expertise in the English Department,” Kennedy said.
Some professors, like poets, would have a much more difficult time getting an entire book published, he said, so it’s a case-by-case basis.
Books must be peer reviewed and deemed worthy, as well as published by an institution with “academic prestige,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said the quality of the professors’ teaching and service in the community and the University are also evaluated.
Kennedy said the requirements have changed since he came to LSU in the 1970s, when tenure and promotion could be acquired by publishing a few articles.
Kennedy said a better hiring and intellectual atmosphere has contributed to the University’s higher standards.
“LSU has become a better university since I’ve come to the University,” he said.
Dan Novak, associate professor of English, said job descriptions in that department typically involve 50 percent research and 50 percent teaching, but service on committees, programs and staff meetings are not under contract.
He also said it usually takes 18 months to get a contract from a publishing company.
“It’s something you can’t control,” he said.
Novak said though the research and projects are time consuming, professors do it because they love it.
It also helps their classes and keeps them engaged with the newest thinking and research, Novak said.
“Without research, what students get is a worse product,” he said.
Jesus Avila, English graduate student and teaching assistant for a course on major American authors, said the research does not affect the quality of classes.
“I’ve always taken that as being part of the job,” Avila said.
Millie Calcada, creative writing English junior, said she thinks the research can affect the quality of classes.
Calcada said she had a teacher who was constantly exhausted and unprepared for class because he was working on a side project.
The History Department has a stricter publishing requirement for professors.
A professor must publish one book to gain tenure and publish another to move up, said Victor Stater, department chair of history.
“If all you had was a book, you’d be on shaky ground without publishing an article or two,” he said.
It is typical to publish a few more articles in addition to a second book for promotion, Stater said.
He said most researching history professors teach two classes while two Boyd professors teach one class and conduct more research.
“The expectation is that you’re going to teach and publish,” Stater said.
He said research enhances teaching because professors teach classes dealing with what they’re researching.
“The two feed off each other,” he said.
Stater said classes also affect research because new ideas occur to him while giving lectures or when a student asks an interesting question that makes him think in a different way.
Karl Roider, alumni professor of history, said researching history professors teach two courses per semester, and history professors not working on research generally teach four courses per semester.
Roider said researching while teaching prevents professors from teaching the same thing every semester.
“That’s the big difference between a research-based university and a non-research college,” he said.
 
 
_____
Contact Meredith Will at [email protected]