Teaching Your Way to Tenure

By PIPER FOGG

For some professors, research isn't the only path to job security

The instructions Michel A. Wattiaux received when he started a faculty job in dairy science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison six years ago were simple yet daunting: Change the way the students learn.

Mr. Wattiaux, who was raised on a dairy farm in Belgium, was primed for the challenge. He had spent the previous nine years on Madison's payroll teaching farmers around the world about good dairy practices.