A lesson from the past

By Richard McCarty
Executive Director for Science

This past June, I spent a stimulating week at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore during the APA Science Directorate?s annual Summer Science Institute (SSI). My colleagues,Virginia Holt and Andrea Phillippi, and I had the pleasure of working with 32 talented undergraduates from across the country during an intensive week of exposure to psychological research. The students had the benefit of working with a superb collection of Hopkins faculty and six guest lecturers from other universities.

Teaching and research, a view from the past

As an alumnus of Hopkins, one of my tasks during SSI was to provide the students with some background on the important role that the university played in the history of American psychology. In the course of collecting information on G. Stanley Hall, John B. Watson and many other early pioneering psychologists associated with Hopkins, I discovered a gem of wisdom on the Hopkins web site. When the university opened on February 22, 1876, its first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, made reference to the relationship between teaching and research. And his words have as much relevance today as they did then.

Regarding teachers, Gilman said, 'The best teachers are usually those who are free, competent and willing to make original researches in the library and the laboratory.'

And with respect to researchers, he said, 'The best investigators are usually those who have also the responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, the observation of the public.'

The best teachers

To supplement Gilman?s words from the past, I had the benefit of listening to presentations during SSI that were offered by some exemplars of the inextricable link between teaching and research. The SSI guest faculty included professors Eddie Castaneda, Arizona State University; Diana Cordova, Yale University; Judy DeLoache, University of Illinois; Bernadette Gray-Little, University of North Carolina; Tom Kamarck, University of Pittsburgh; and Marty Seligman, University of Pennsylvania.

Each of them was asked to present their primary research findings to the students and to make an effort to engage them in discussions and challenge them with questions in an active learning format. This is hard enough to do with a class that one has been teaching for an entire semester. However, our guest faculty were offered this challenge with a group of total strangers early in the morning, following late nights of extracurricular activities that included an Orioles baseball game, museum visits, card playing, dancing and other forms of social stimulation.

To say the faculty succeeded would be like saying that Michael Jordan is a pretty good basketball player. Our guest faculty members were engaging and stimulating, and they encouraged our students to contribute insightful questions and thought-provoking comments during these 3-hour sessions that always seemed to end too quickly.

As I watched these master teachers in action in a classroom in Gilman Hall (you guessed it, named for President Gilman), I was struck by how clearly they embodied Gilman?s views of scholars who are both outstanding teachers and outstanding researchers. Too often, critics of the academy present teaching and research as unrelated and competing activities. They frequently complain that faculty members are too interested in their research projects and, of course, they don?t teach enough. Within the context of this criticism, research is viewed as a largely selfish and individual activity while teaching is viewed in the traditional way of one faculty member standing in a classroom before a group of students. In fact, the situation is much more dynamic than that. Many faculty members could not conduct their research without the help of large numbers of undergraduate research assistants. I might add that some of the very best teaching in colleges and universities occurs when these research groups get together informally for lab meetings. In addition, advising of undergraduate or graduate students by faculty is often done informally in the faculty member?s office or lab. When done well, advising sessions represent a natural extension of the classroom.

A new beginning

At the risk of being labeled old fashioned, permit me to rise up in support of President Gilman?s description of college and university faculty. He had it right when he presented an ideal view of the interrelationship between teaching and research in 1876 and it remains valid to this day. As the academic year begins anew, my hope is that faculty will be energized by Gilman?s vision as they go about their tasks of teaching, advising and conducting research.