No conflict between instruction, research

In his recent guest opinion, Sterling Chaykin makes a number of assertions regarding teaching and research at UC Davis, and on the basis of these proposes topics for action by students. As a member of the department that is the descendent of Chaykin’s home department when he was on the faculty at UCD, I take strong exception to the statements on which he bases his advice.

Chaykin states that students experience a “memorize and regurgitate” classroom and are “rarely challenged to evaluate facts and situations and reason their way to rational and viable conclusions.”

Chaykin retired nearly 19 years ago. I have spoken with my colleagues and since his retirement we have not seen him observing in our classrooms. Neither has he requested a viewing of our evaluations by students, nor asked for access to our course podcasts, chat rooms or extensive Wiki and web sites. We wonder how he can possibly have any idea of what or how we are teaching.

In fact, we take great pride in the emphasis we put on our undergraduate instruction and constantly upgrade our courses to keep them challenging and relevant. Regurgitation is insufficient to obtain a good grade in our classes where students are taught and tested on analysis, interpretation and inference from data.

We are just completing our annual assessments of faculty and so I have been privy to other professors’ course evaluations and I find that students appreciate our efforts. The norm for our faculty is scores from the students of 4.1 to 4.7 (out of 5) in an evaluation of “excellence of instruction.” Similar scores are obtained for students’ views on how well the professors “stimulated independent thinking.”

This is hardly the response one would expect from students “getting precious little for the exorbitant fees.”

Chaykin makes a case against the comprehensive university model of teaching, research and service. I disagree, as I see research labs as essential for developing the next generation of scientific leaders through training of graduate students and postdocs. A research experience can be the highlight of an undergraduate’s college experience. Our active research allows us to keep our instruction up to date, and some of our most prominent researchers are some of our best instructors.

Some students don’t need the opportunities provided by a comprehensive university and the state provides them the option of paying less for an excellent experience at a California State University campus.

Chaykin further indicates that the current state is something new and that education at UCD used to be better. I was a student at UCD in the mid-1970s and have taught here from 1989 through the present. Instruction here was excellent when I first came here and maintains the same high standard today!

— Charles Gasser is a Davis resident and a professor of molecular and cellular biology. Reach him at csgasser@ucdavis.edu

Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=116436

Posted by Special to The Enterprise on Dec 16 2011.
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