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Ever since that day, Scott has considered
his question whenever she thinks about the considerable task
of combining her research and teaching into one understandable
and (yes, if we must say it) "entertaining" package.
Who'll come listen?
In the face of recent attacks against the research culture on
university campuses, we tend to forget that research bashing
is an ancient sport. Just look at all the scholars and scientists
through the ages persecuted for their discoveries.
Perhaps the uneasy relationship between the public and researchers
is best illustrated by a story about Michael Faraday, the 19th-century
chemist and physicist. While visiting Faraday's lab, a politician
asked if there was a practical application for his experiments.
"Why, you can tax them, my good man," replied Faraday.
"You can tax them."
Today's widespread distrust and misinformation about university
scholarship not only taxes researchers but taxes the patience
of faculty who are repeatedly asked to justify themselves. And
one of the most common questions put to faculty is why in the
name of all that is taxable should teachers on university campuses
also do research?
"Why?" says Vladimir Haensel, a UMass professor of
chemical engineering who recently won the most prestigious research
prize in his field. "Because students want a teacher who
has also served on the front lines."
Julius Lester, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, is not only
a famed author of 26 books of children's stories, nonfiction,
poetry and fiction, but a winner of the UMass Distinguished
Teaching Award and the Faculty Fellowship Award for research
accomplishment. Lester cites the oft-repeated jest of George
Bernard Shaw: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
"Well, research is our way of doing," says Lester.
Nina Scott recently interrupted her busy schedule by "carving
time out of my living flesh," as she says, to prepare the
1998 Jackie M. Pritzen Lecture, given in March on campus. The
subject of her lecture was a network of 17th-century women intellectuals
in Europe and the Americas who shared a feminist viewpoint about
a woman's right to practice scholarship.
In many ways this prestigious lecture embodies both the teaching
and research functions of a UMass faculty member, for the presentation
requires the communications skills of a great teacher wed to
the scholarship of a fine researcher.
"My research really is the content of what I teach,"
Scott says. "You can't tear them apart."
How were the academic functions of teaching and research ever
joined in holy wedlock to begin with? And now that the knot
is tied, why are skeptics trying to break up this marriage of
minds?
For some 200 years, from the founding of Harvard in the 17th
century until the middle of the 19th century, colleges in America
were primarily teaching institutions. Two momentous developments
that UMass Chancellor David Scott calls "transformations"
created the great public research institutions of today. The
first in 1862 was the Land Grant Act, which for the first time
anywhere opened up higher learning to the masses. By design
land grant campuses such as ours also put knowledge to practical
use, tending through public service to the "health, subsistence
and comfort" of the people.
Following World War II came a second transformation in higher
education. The technological and economic demands of the 20th
century inspired the growth of a research culture in which,
as one Princeton president phrased it, universities were changed
"from centers of dogma into centers of inquiry."
These two educational revolutions created a threesome of purposes
? teaching, service and research ? that has been called "a
triumph of American ingenuity" and still serves as the
basic mission of UMass. The process also created for the United
States the greatest system of universities anywhere.
"Higher education is one of the few U.S. 'industries' universally
recognized as the best in the world," wrote Chancellor
Robert Woodbury of the University of Maine System and a former
vice chancellor at UMass. "Ourcolleges and universities
dominate the globe as do few sectors other than the entertainment
industry, munitions and soft drinks."
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