Life at a Teaching University

ABSTRACT

Many new political science faculty at teaching universities are recent PhD recipients, and are coming to these institutions from research-oriented universities. There are considerable differences between the training for graduate students received at research universities and the expectations for faculty at teaching universities. This essay reflects on the author’s first year at a teaching university and offers six themes that may assist other new faculty in the transition from life as a graduate student at a research institution to life as an assistant professor at a teaching university.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflection
• teacher training
• undergraduate education

Notes

By “teaching university” I mean an institution of higher education in which the expectations for faculty include higher teaching loads and relatively low expectations for scholarship. By “research university” I am an institution of higher education in which faculty are evaluated largely on their research productivity and have relatively low teaching expectations.

APSA Syllabi Project, accessed here: http://www.apsanet.org/RESOURCES/For-Faculty/Syllabi-in-Political-Science/Online-Syllabi-Collections, on August 7, 2017.

My experience is not unique. One study of time diaries of faculty suggests that 57% of academic work is done alone (Ziker 2014).

I owe this observation to Scott Wolford.

Of course, political science departments vary in size across teaching universities, just as teaching universities vary in size from a few hundred to tens of thousands of students. Therefore, the sensitivity of the department and university to enrollment declines and increases is relative to the size of the department and university.

I owe this observation to Damon Eubank.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Josiah F. Marineau

Josiah F. Marineau is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Campbellsville University. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. His research focuses on the relationship between foreign aid and taxation with a geographic focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He teaches courses in comparative politics and international relations.