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[glowdart]

I've been looking for a reason to deconstruct Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo.  Now I have one. 

And yes, that's scholarship, thank you very much!  PCSA, here I come!

[generic_handle]

And if I had fewer preps, I could learn more colorful language, too.

That's a pity.  My load has not been a detriment to colorful language acquisition, utilization and implementation.  But, maybe that was because I arrived here with a solid scatalogical foundation? 

I would expect your 'load' would assist building a healthy scatalogical foundation quite well. Badump-pssssh.

Nothin' like a good ol' poo-flinging contest between overeducated academics! Who brought donuts?

That's not a donut...

[neil9]

I have used your strategy in 1) successfully. You published one good paper a year, say. But some of them are important enough that these stars can no longer ignore. So you slowly get cited by them. You are never going to be a star but you feel you are almost as good intellectually because, you say to yourself, I could have been a  star if I have had that kind of time and support.

You 3) leaves a lot of room for imagination, which is good. Hope you did not catch cold and there were a large crowd in your office hour.

.

However, to address the important issues:

1) The only hope I have of publishing at an acceptable level stems from the fact that I am a simulationist with collaborators at multiple other institutions.  There is no way that I can play in the big leagues with the resources available to me (those people have groups of thirty underlings including multiple post-docs or research professors to supervise the minors and the necessary equipment to spew data), but I can be comfortably second tier.  That's pretty common in my sub-sub-subfield with a handful of stars and a bunch of us who put out a couple papers a year and regularly present at a few select conferences.  We ooh and ah over the stars' groundbreaking results and then figure out what gaps we can fill that are solid work using the resources at hand and our collaborations.  It seems to work for those who wish to try, particularly those who take advantage of summer break to go visit collaborators who have the resources to do great things.  That path won't let you boot-strap from a teaching college at 4/4 to an R1 at 0/1, but people do go from 4/4 institutions to 2/2 or 1/2 institutions based on demonstrated potential using that technique.

2) I agree that number of credits earned sometimes reflects effort required rather than time in the classroom.  As a student, I took a few classes that had did not follow the one-credit-per-hour-of-lecture-or-three-hours-of-lab rule.  For classes with more credits than hours, the load was hard.  For classes with more hours than credits, the gained experience and extra practice with the material was generally worth the trade-off.

3)  Neil, would telling you what I am wearing as I write this post make this thread more entertaining?  I hope so because here it goes:  I am wearing, what's that, honey?  I have office hours in twenty minutes?  Well, I can't go to the office in this.  I'll freeze during the walk.

[neil9]

Can I call that the least common denominator? If one is good at nothing, one is at least capable of that.

...and I'll bet almost every professor is qualified to teach it.

[mad_doctor]

But is it a form of scholarship/research that counts for tenure with a 4/4 load?

I don't know about the the scholarship, but I can definitely cuss for the duration of an entire course.

[dr_prephd]

Odd.  We have had some courses for which the instructor gets paid for 4 credits but students only get 3 credits, on the theory that they take extra preparation -- mainly students with some learning difficulties.

But I've never heard of a regular semester course which meets for the regular amount of time but is worth 4 credits to students.  I do vaguely remember some students getting 4 credits per course when then go off with an instructor to foreign lands: possibly some justification about the foreign setting making the course worth an extra credit. 

At my daughter's SLAC the writing-intensive courses are 4 credits but only meet for 3 hours per week. I think it is used to signal the larger expectation for writing (and grading).

Ah, thanks, both of these make sense. There's the expectation that profs will provide a lot of student contact outside the classroom, along with a lot of individual attention to assignments, so I guess that's what the extra hour is there for.

[ruralguy]

I'm at a 4/3 in the sciences, but I know well my colleagues in the social sciences (and am married to one!).
Our school "requires" (that is really really really wants, but sometimes might forgo) 1 peer reviewed work
before tenure, and several other forms of "professional activity". I think the dean and many faculty would like to see this be more like 2 peer reviewed things (flatly required, not just desired) and a a general acceptance that one will go to conferences and such. If this becomes the norm, most depts. will simply not hire anyone with fewer than 2 things already, for fear that they will never be able to write enough once here.

Although some folks are bound to satisfy such requirements with the bare minimum (questionale journals,
slap-dash local meetings, etc.), its better than 10 years ago when folks would get tenure with NOTHING....
literally no professional activity beyond the classroom at all.

[rroscoe]

neil9,

FWIW, I teach History at a CC. I have a 5/5 load and generally have 3-4 different preps each semester with over 150 students. I give three exams each semester, which are a combination of short IDs and essay. I also assign a term paper. Finally, I teach summer classes for extra cash. It should go without saying that I do all of my own grading and make all of my own copies.

I've held my t-t position for two and a half years. And yet somehow I've managed to publish an article, book chapter, book review and give one conference presentation. I'm currently revising my dissertation for publication. It is difficult to publish with such a heavy teaching load. But it isn't impossible. To suggest that those of us with heavy teaching loads are "just teachers" is laughable.

Oh yeah, and I've taught high school before. Trust me, teaching at the college level, including at a CC is completely different than the secondary level. I love teaching at my CC. And while ideally I'd like to have more time to research, I'm glad my college isn't publish or perish.

rroscoe 

[neil9]

rroscoe , good to hear your success story. I was biased from a science subject perspective. Ruralguy's post seems more in line with my thinking.

[prof22]

I'm an assistant professor and I have a 4-4 load.  

Here is the breakdown:

TEACHING
2 sections of one undergraduate course every semester (1 prep -requires limited prep since I always teach it)
1 course is replaced with clinical supervision (no prep)
1 graduate course OR I do additional clinical supervision (0 or 1 prep).

Office hours - 5 (During this time, I do some advising for undergraduate students)

SERVICE
Service - On average, 1-2 hours a week.

RESEARCH
If you have 0 or only 1 peer reviewed publication before your tenure review, you will not get tenure.  I think university wide, we say 2 peer reviewed pubs.  For some departments, I think 2 good peer reviewed publications are acceptable.  However, in my field, there are more opportunities to publish so it's recommended that you have 3-4 peer reviewed publications for when you go up.  Also, you are expected to have a research agenda.  Folks with 3-4 peer reviewed publications have been denied tenure because they did not have an agenda.  As for conference presentations, we are given 1K a year (there are ways to get more money for traveling though).  Technically, I think 1 national conference is enough; however, when more money is simply available, I take advantage and present at 2-3 conferences a year.  

*I have been an assistant professor for 3 years and I have 6 peer reviewed publications.   

[neil9]

prof22, your load looks more like 3-3 to me as the clinical supervision needs no prep and no grading (I assume).

Your university wide 2 publications requirement seems appropriate. But seriously that will not establish you as a serious researcher.

Are you in science? Six publications within three years is pretty good if most are first authored and they appear in 2nd tied journals or above.

[prof22]

neil9,

I agree, the load does not feel like a 4-4.  Clinical supervision only consumes 2-3 hours a week.  As far as establishing as a serious researcher at my institution, it is difficult.  We are not R1, we are a "teaching" university. 

I'm in the College of Education.  5 out of the 6 were first and single authored.  5 out of the 6 appeared in 2nd tier or above (the 6th pub was in a book; however it was actually peer reviewed).

[neil9]

prof22, you have proved me wrong. Congratulations on your achievement!

[offthemarket]

For the record, I'm in the sciences and have a load very similar to prof22 at a 4/4 institution.  I'm getting out about 3 solid first authored papers a year, plus a few others sprinkled in there. 

Science faculty at a 4/4 institution can do real research.  There might not be incentive for it, though, and they can't be saddled with four different preps each semester.

I think the trick is to choose an appropriate size and scope of project.  And design them so that one study can answer more than question.  I won't be having many papers in journals that require mountains and mountains of data, And be a timely and effective collaborator.  The thing that really takes the time is the minutia of the publishing process, not even the science itself.

And I have several unwritten manuscripts on my hard drive, though I keep doing experiments as I continue to have new questions.

[gonehiking]

For the record, I'm in the sciences and have a load very similar to prof22 at a 4/4 institution.  I'm getting out about 3 solid first authored papers a year, plus a few others sprinkled in there. 

Science faculty at a 4/4 institution can do real research.  There might not be incentive for it, though, and they can't be saddled with four different preps each semester.

Yes, but it sounds like you actually have facilities with which to do your research.  It is common for science people at 4/4 institutions to not have that.  (As noted a couple pages ago, my real load is actually 3/3 with 6 preps, which could go higher.)  I don't even have access to all of the journals I need to read.  For me, publishable science means doing very lengthy and intricate data processing and analysis to squeeze blood from the turnip of data I have, or hanging on to the fragile link I have to some collaborators.  That's where facility access is key, so you have some choice in what you are doing.

I'm still impressed that you are getting 3 first-author papers per year with a 4/4.  I'm not sure that happens at all in my field and I can't imagine that is normal in your field (whatever it may be); kudos!