Importance of Teaching v. Research

[E-P]

So I have offers from two schools right now.  Both are R2 institutions, both are well thought of.

 

For School 1, the offer includes no teaching the first year, but then 2 classes per semester for the rest of my time there.

For School 2, offers rarely require teaching, as the department is mostly graduate students, and there aren't many undergraduates to teach.  I was assured that if I wanted to teach, I could, after I pass comps, but I talked to a couple of people who were about to graduate, and they've taught 3-5 classes, period.  However, it's definitely something I would have to seek out.  However, I would get a lot of experience and exposure to research, grant proposal writing, etc.

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At this point, I have no idea if I would want to spend my career at a high R1 institution, or someplace more focused on teaching.  But I worry about shortchanging myself by going someplace where teaching is more of an afterthought.  I don't want a decision I make in 2018 to limit the career possibilities that I could make in 2022

Thoughts?

[Elephas]

Personally I think school 2 sounds attractive because you're under no obligation to teach and you can balance it around your workload. For example if you know you are going to have a heavy semester either courseload wise or research wise you'd be able to choose whether you TA one or no courses as opposed to not only doing all your work and still having two classes to help manage. Being able to have the exposure to both research and teaching will give you the option to be exposed to both and decide which you like the most and have experience in both that will be helpful when you apply for career positions. 

[TakeruK]

What kind of teaching does School 1 actually offer? Will you be an instructor of record and/or have significant teaching responsibilities that will actually make you competitive for teaching jobs later on? 

Also, in your field, what is the typical "saturation" level where it's no longer useful to have more teaching experience? Two classes per semester sounds like a huge teaching load which means either 1) these are significant teaching responsibilities and you'll end up spending all your time teaching or 2) these are more like TA/grading/discussion group leading positions which will still eat up a lot of time but having 4 of these per year for 4-5 years means you'll have way too many. 

That is, for my field, a teaching experience like a TAship where you grade and/or lead discussion sections and/or run small group tutorials is a good experience to have, but once you've done it 2 or 3 times, it doesn't help you get a teaching position. Having 20 of these vs having 3 of these are the same value, even for teaching heavy jobs. A strong candidate, in my field, for a teaching focussed job would have decent research experience, at least one major teaching experience where they did more than just TA and then 3 or more TA positions. However, most candidates don't have the "major teaching experience" since most STEM grad programs don't do this, so there are still many instructors in my field that are hired without this.

For the two schools you're looking at, it seems like School 1 is likely way too much teaching. However, School 2 might not offer enough. I went to a school like School 2 and while my primary goal isn't teaching, I also wanted to do more than the minimum TA experience. So I sought out extra teaching responsibilities. For my TA work, I asked the prof to take over the lectures for 1 week and that worked out well. So, I think you have more flexibility at School 2. You get to teach on your terms, not because you need it for funding. Also, you may be able to teach as an adjunct prof at a nearby college too.

Ultimately, if you want the most options open in 2022, I would advise you to take School 2. It gives you more options because it provides the most valuable resource: time to do what you need to do. So, in 2019 or 2020, you might refine your goals a bit more and you can use this time to either focus more on research or teaching. At School 1, you're stuck teaching (and perhaps at no value to you) no matter what.

Finally, in my field, even teaching focussed schools will want their instructors to do research as well. All these schools, even those without PhD programs, want to raise their research profile. Despite what they might say about valuing teaching and such, they seem to be hiring on the basis of research as long as you demonstrate some interest and aptitude for teaching. Maybe this isn't the case in your field, but talking to many people in teaching focussed schools, this is what they tell me!

[fuzzylogician]

When you say school 1 offers more teaching opportunities, does that mean TAing or actually designing and being instructor of record for a class? You can easily hit the point of diminishing returns with simply TAing large intro courses over many years; doing just a few of those will give you about the same level of experience. If you're actually designing and teaching your own classes that obviously gives you more experience, but that will be a serious time-suck and will hurt your research. Personally I think the School 2 offer is better. You can concentrate on your research, so you could (if you wanted) have a better shot at research-oriented jobs. And you could seek out teaching opportunities if you want to concentrate on those kinds of jobs. These days, even for teaching jobs, search committees look for applicants with stellar research. I'd make sure I had that available. 

Edit: I had the tab open for a bit! @TakeruK basically said the same thing above. There's good advice there. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by fuzzylogician

[E-P]

Regarding TA versus instructor of record, I'm not sure!  I'll find out and report back.  I have the impression that you can choose between TAing for a large class, or being the IoR for a small class, but I haven't actually had that confirmed.

 

@TakeruK I have no idea what the saturation level is.  Do you have any thoughts on how to find that out?  I imagine that it has some to do with the specific field too - School 1 is technically a Communication program, and School 2 is more Information focused.  I can do my research at either, but I'm betting the law of diminishing returns is higher in Comm that in iSchools.

[SomeoneThrewMyShoe]

So this is actually a concern for one of my schools because they focus a lot more on research over teaching (and I love teaching so I'm super concerned). When I brought up my concerns to multiple advisors, they indicated that it's important to have the research be the main focus in your doctoral program. Just make sure you have some teaching experience in general just so you're a bit more marketable as a job applicant. I'm going to take as many teaching opportunities as possible (the program I'm worried about offers summer sessions, winter sessions, etc) so I'm going to do more to build a pedagogical portfolio,  but "emphasis on research over teaching is what you want in a grad school" is what I've been told by my advisers. I've been told that with a good enough research background and some teaching experience - you'll be diverse enough to teach at an R1 or something smaller if you so desire. 

[TakeruK]

4 hours ago, E-P said:

 I have no idea what the saturation level is.  Do you have any thoughts on how to find that out?  I imagine that it has some to do with the specific field too - School 1 is technically a Communication program, and School 2 is more Information focused.  I can do my research at either, but I'm betting the law of diminishing returns is higher in Comm that in iSchools.

Check with your advisors / mentors / letter writers / profs from your current department for things specific to your field. Although things could vary with field, at School 1, with 2 TA positions / semester for the last 4-5 years, which is like 16-20 TA positions would probably be way past diminishing returns! 

Note: Don't just go by what the job application asks for, since not everything each application requires is weighted equally. At many R1s in my field, job applications will still require a "teaching statement" or something like that but profs have told me that it's not very heavily weighted. They put it in the job ad so that they can point to it and say "see, we care about teaching!" but as long as you don't write something ridiculous, it will have little bearing on the final decision.

[rising_star]

Honestly, School 2. I say this as someone employed at a teaching-focused institution. When evaluating apps, we're not going to care that you TA'd 20 times. We're going to care that you have taught a few courses successfully, that you have ideas about how to teach our required courses, and have a clear sense of electives you could teach. We also want you to demonstrate that you understand and use high impact learning practices in your teaching. Beyond that, we need to know that you can do research, ideally involving undergrads in the future.