As the title states, I want to know the mountain I’d face if I were to try to continue publishing at a teaching university. For context, I am a year and a half away from graduation from an R1 university in a well-known program for my field (social sciences/teacher education).
Recently I’ve seen TT positions open up, that I understand will or might not be available when my own time comes, for teaching with no publishing duties. I wouldn’t mind this but I’ve also grown to enjoy writing and research. If I were to want to continue publishing with a 12 hour teaching load, would I be chasing the impossible? Should I reach out to these particular schools to inquire?
Other context: my wife and I have a small child who will be school age by the time I graduate, and we are looking to leave our state due to political climate.
Comments
No. A 12 hour per semester teaching load doesn’t preclude you from publishing. Just have to be good at time management.
Im also surprised that there are 0 pub requirements. I’m in the Cal State system (more teaching focused), and our department requires about a pub a year for tenure.
I’ve never seen a TT track position outside a community college that requires no publishing duties.
The issue isn’t so much that your institution may put up barriers for you, but that between teaching and raising a family it’s difficult to maintain focus or muster the energy necessary to continuously stay on top of literature or remain active in scientific dissemination. Usually something gives. However, it’s definiteley possible — it just costs, because something has to give.
Yes you should definitely ask what is possible, and if there is time that can be set aside for independent development activities. These often include designing curricula, engaging in policy work, and independent research. They typically expect that you have some exceptionality when you go up for tenure anyways.
Everyone recognizes how challenging the research landscape is — and even after this current administration is done, it’s unclear what we will be left with or what vestiges of the American scientific infrastructure will remain (or whether a new generation of politicians, seeking an easy target, will continue to disassemble research further). But if it’s something that you enjoy, I would continue — even in a teaching-only position it’s possible to keep a foot in the research world by maintaining a *consistent* record of publication. That’s the important part.
While you get your bearings, I’d see if you could negotiate with your current lab for helping them “get out the door” things that may not be the primary outputs, but still need to get done. A record of consistent ability to hit your deadlines and produce for your old lab from afar will keep you in the game until you can build your own independent work, if that’s one of your goals.
I’ll add to other positive responses I have seen that pedagogy journals are everywhere and always looking for quality papers. Publishing on teaching given your work would be helpful.
I don’t know from your posts what kinds of academic job postings you’re looking at but you should be aware that in the US there are roughly two kinds of long-term faculty jobs:
On the one hand are tenure-track jobs (aka TT jobs) with titles like Assistant Professor of X that involve research, teaching, and service. In my current case 40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service. I’ve never heard of a TT job outside of a community college that doesn’t require research.
On the other hand there these teach-focused faculty positions called “Teaching Stream” or “Professional Stream” jobs. The latter have titles like” Assistant Teaching Professor” or like “Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream).” These are renewable contract positions that last anywhere from 1-5 years. These jobs do not come with tenure protections and have their own review/promotion requirements. They have usually no or very low research expectations and generally do not come with funds or lab space to support research. I held one of these before I got my TT job and the work break down was 80% teaching, 20% service. What you’re describing sounds like one of these jobs. I was able to publish in this position but it took a lot of effort and discipline because I was teaching a 4/4 load without any financial support for my research.
This is easily answerable. Look up the faculty lists for teaching-intensives in your discipline and check out their CVs. Specifically, check out CVs for Associates, and Assistants in Y6 or Y7. What’s their publishing record? Are they getting grants?
After that background, drop an email to a few, at different teaching intensives, and ask for a chat. Preferably, try to set up a meet at the next conference that absolutely everyone in your discipline attends. (There’s a chance they don’t get any funding or encouragement to attend conferences either, and this is an easy way to find that out.)
I started my career at a pure teaching university. I was only there for a year before going to an R2. During that year I continued my research, conducted several studies with my classes, and published several articles. I was one of the only ones in the dept of about 15-20 tenured faculty doing that. However, to get tenure you had to have some publications but the senior faculty there tended to focus more of their time in service, program improvement, etc vs research. This just meant there was less opportunity for institutional support and collaboration that I had during my doc studies at my R1. But all of the faculty supported my effort and knew its what I needed to do for tenure.
Having said that, if I were going into the academic job market right now I’d be focusing on schools with either large endowments that can’t fail or high enrollment and growth. I’m not sure all of the R1s that rely on federal research dollars are going to make it over the next few years and even if they do might be shrinking considerably. Teaching schools with enrollment growth and low cost are probably the stable option. Of course who knows what the future holds but those are my thoughts about it.
Yes, you can still publish with a 4/4 teaching load. You just have to be smart about what kinds of research products and publications you go after. It will be harder to land a grant and your facilities/equipment maybe limited. You will also probably have undergrads to assist you rather than graduate students.
It is not uncommon for faculty to focus on their classes during their 9 month appointment and then focus on research for the other 3 months in the summer.
I’m currently at a teaching focused university and there are publication requirements which vary by discipline. In some disciplines like Math, you can get tenure and promoted to Associate with just one or two publications. Other disciplines like Business, you would need more. We never state an exact number, but, there are opportunities to write about the expectations of publication in each discipline in your tenure packets.
Our social science faculty do publish fairly regularly, but no where near the level of an R1.
My previous University had almost no scholarship requirements but people still published. You had to be ‘scholarly active’ which meant going to and presenting at conferences was enough.
I’ve spent my career in SLACs and all of my colleagues publish– it’s required for tenure. Some are prolific. Others less so. But everyone either does it or they leave. This is while we are expected to achieve “excellence” in teaching as a baseline. So sure, it’s possible: I have colleagues who have published 4-5 books over 20 years, and others who get at least 1-2 articles out a year. (It’s field dependent of course.)
Your background is very similar to mine: I graduated from an R1 and now work in a teaching university (4-4 load) in social sciences.
It depends on the quality of what you want to publish. If you want to do high quality work (e.g. Q1 journals) it is possible but hard. I see many faculty who publish in Q3 journals or try to pass conference submissions as “publications” and they are getting tenure, so the expectations are pretty low, which I guess is good given that we don’t have the time.
The downside is if you want to do high quality research the support is not really there. Things like paying participants an incentive is common in social sciences, but there’s so many obstacles in a teaching university to process those payments.
One thing to note besides the high teaching load is that teaching universities typically have high service loads as well. It is common for me to see pre-tenure faculty in 20+ committees, doing lots of advising, or asked to serve as program coordinators, directors, or other demanding leadership roles. Such responsibilities will further limit how much research you can do.
I’m at a teaching and learning institution (miserable and want out but that’s another story) and still publish and present.
I feel like this is VERY important if you want to one day get a position at an R1.