The Community College Professor : Teacher and Scholar / Mark Oromaner.

The emphasis in community colleges on teaching as a primary faculty responsibility has frequently caused classroom teaching to be divorced from scholarship. Although the teaching role is not a necessary condition for successful scholarship, some form of scholarship appears to be a necessary condition for successful teaching over an extended period of time. Therefore, the stress on teaching in community colleges may have actually led to a decline in the quality of teaching. The facts that new colleges are not being opened, that enrollments are declining, that funds for professional development are scarce, and that community college faculty are aging all reinforce the importance of scholarship as a means of enhancing faculty members' performance and image as professionals. While at the university level scholarship is equated with research, at the community college level a more liberal definition of scholarship should be employed, including professional activity, research/publication, artistic endeavors, engagement with novel ideas, community service, and pedagogy. The systematic processes involved in each of these activities will do much to strengthen teaching and combat boredom and burnout. Though examples of scholar-teachers exist on every campus, there is a need for the formal encouragement, support, and reward that would institutionalize the role of the scholar-teacher, and, in doing so, revitalize the teaching role. (EJV)

Teachers. ericd

Practitioners. ericd

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