TEACHING

Although research requirements vary widely across comprehensive universities, in most cases, a faculty member's work is shaped by his or her teaching. Teaching is the primary duty of most faculty members at comprehensive universities, who carry teaching loads similar to those found at liberal arts universities (Chronicle of Higher Education 2008). According to a fall 2003 survey of faculty, approximately 66% of work-time at both comprehensive and liberal arts universities is spent on teaching, compared to 46% at doctoral institutions (National Center for Education Statistics 2008a, table 250. This same survey also considered teaching loads and found that 36% of faculty members at comprehensive universities teach three classes per semester and 24% teach four classes per semester. These figures are similar to those found for faculty at liberal arts universities, at which 30% teach three classes and 28% teach four classes per semester. On the other hand, faculty at research universities are likely to have lower teaching loads, with nearly 41% teaching two classes per semester and 28% teaching one class (National Center for Education Statistics 2008a, table 250). Based on these results, faculty members at comprehensive universities have teaching loads nearly identical to those of faculty at liberal arts universities.

However, teaching loads can vary dramatically depending on a number of factors, including the academic culture, publishing expectations, the presence of a strong faculty union, and opportunities for reduced teaching loads. Regarding the criticism of comprehensive universities as “greedy institutions,” calls have been made to reduce teaching loads to enable faculty to meet research expectations. Some institutions provide reduced teaching loads as an incentive to conduct research.

However, the teaching load alone is not the only measure of the amount of teaching done at comprehensive institutions. Another yardstick is the number of different classes taught each year. Some faculty at comprehensive institutions may teach four to six different courses each year, unlike faculty at research institutions, which typically demand less classroom teaching time. At the same time, faculty members at comprehensive universities are less likely to teach courses outside of political science or their main fields of study. At liberal arts universities, faculty may be more likely to work in a social science department and, indeed, may be the only political scientist on staff, requiring them to be conversant in all subfields of the discipline. At comprehensive universities, it is easier to teach within one's subfield or area of expertise. Nonetheless, highly specialized teaching is rare—a faculty member in American political institutions may be asked to teach subjects such as the presidency, Congress, or political behavior. While there are more opportunities for specialization, comprehensive universities often have larger class sizes than liberal arts universities, especially for introductory classes. Faculty members at both comprehensive and liberal arts universities may be expected to teach research methods, whereas at a research university, such a course would be assigned to a highly specialized colleague.

Political science faculty members at comprehensive institutions may find their work to be very similar to that of their colleagues at liberal arts colleges—there are often opportunities to build close relationships with undergraduates, particularly with junior- and senior-level students. Moreover, undergraduate research mentoring is growing more common at these universities, encouraging close faculty-student relationships. In addition, many comprehensive institutions offer reduced teaching loads for faculty in exchange for mentoring activities, such as academic advising, internship coordination, chairing of MA students' committees, and undergraduate research oversight and mentoring.

Finally, undergraduate teaching at comprehensive institutions may provide a different set of perspectives for examining student preparedness and critical thinking and writing skills. Ph.D.-granting institutions are often highly competitive for admission, drawing in some of the best high school students. Many liberal arts colleges are also well-known for being highly selective. On the other hand, a good number of comprehensive universities, particularly those with a clear mission to foster undergraduate education, may have lower admission standards. Henderson has found that the typical state comprehensive university has students who are less well-prepared than students at research universities or elite liberal arts colleges, which partly contributes to lower retention and graduation rates (Reference Henderson2007, 7). Dalbey (Reference Dalbey1995), writing about Eastern Michigan University, states that many students at this comprehensive university are first-generation college students or commuters, or work full-time while going to school. More broadly, more minorities and first-generation college students are enrolled in public comprehensive universities than research or liberal arts universities (National Center for Education Statistics 2008b; Warburton, Bugarin, and Nunez Reference Warburton, Bugarin and Nunez2001). What these findings suggest is that in some ways, comprehensive universities may be more diverse than other institutions in terms of both the student body and, perhaps more importantly, academic skills. Clearly, retention of students is a very important concern at comprehensive universities. Faculty at comprehensive universities need to be aware of the challenges facing many students and should work toward identifying students who may benefit from such services as a writing center or a study skills workshop. One strategy is to provide feedback on student performance early in the term to help target students who may need additional attention. In sum, undergraduate teaching can be more challenging in some ways but may also be very rewarding.

GRADUATE-LEVEL INSTRUCTION

Graduate-level instruction at comprehensive institutions is another unique area of our work that often contrasts strongly with teaching at doctoral institutions and liberal arts universities. First, it is notable that comprehensive institutions often require graduate instruction to take place in the seminar format and demand oversight of MA theses and comprehensive exams, which is a very different set of responsibilities compared to the liberal arts teaching experience. As a result, the use of more advanced readings from professional journals and the ability to approach research topics with much stronger emphases on epistemological, theoretical, and substantive questions are natural expectations of graduate-level instruction. Graduate seminars also offer formal and informal opportunities to assist in the socialization of graduate students into the profession, which is especially useful for those students planning on pursuing doctoral work. A comprehensive university may also offer graduate degrees in public administration or other interdisciplinary fields, creating another level of diversity among the graduate student population. Finally, comprehensive universities may offer less opportunity to teach specialized graduate courses than research universities; therefore, a faculty member may be expected to offer the same seminar each year.

Students in many MA programs are quite different from Ph.D. students and offer their own set of opportunities and challenges. In general, we find that our MA students have a wide array of professional and academic goals. Many MA students are interested only in the terminal MA degree and have no broader research or teaching interests. Many first-year MA students are investigating graduate school to determine if they do want to pursue the Ph.D. Some are returning for the job advancement that an MA degree can provide, especially in the field of public administration. Many MA students must pursue their degree on a part-time basis while they balance work, family, and other responsibilities. Moreover, many introductory political science graduate students are only one semester beyond their undergraduate studies. For all of these reasons, MA graduate instruction entails a unique set of opportunities and challenges and is very different from doctoral-level instruction.

With new MA students, a considerable mentoring effort is often required to integrate them into political science graduate programs, in which the expectations for student performance change considerably from those of the undergraduate years. These students' limited backgrounds in research methods and research design often require teachers to find a balance between what students are capable of accomplishing and what standards are appropriate to the program; as a consequence, graduate students may need more one-on-one attention. Such mentoring can be especially challenging when dealing with students who are especially partial to applied research and may be resistant to research directions that include tests of more theoretical literature.

These issues are especially prominent in the context of overseeing the MA thesis, which normally involves much student mentoring in the early stages of framing research. MA thesis oversight is a particularly unique responsibility and is significantly different from the supervision of an undergraduate honors thesis, for which undergraduate research expectations still apply. Many of the same teaching and mentoring skills that are used in overseeing a dissertation apply to overseeing the MA thesis: one needs to be able to assist the student to frame large bodies of literature, create research hypotheses, and determine what are and are not appropriate data for the project. This graduate mentoring can consume a considerable amount of time, but for instructors at comprehensive universities, this work is often most relevant for the thesis student who is likely to continue graduate school beyond the MA degree.

Graduate mentoring also must be placed in the broader context of mentoring and service at the undergraduate level, which is another regular facet of one's professional life at the comprehensive institution. While we have devoted much of our discussion to aspects of teaching MA students, the teaching focus at a comprehensive university is still oriented primarily to the undergraduate, which means that faculty members may also be engaged in undergraduate activities and mentoring. At comprehensive institutions, many departments have active student groups, organizations, and simulation programs that require faculty oversight. Many political science departments at comprehensive institutions also foster a culture of faculty accessibility, under which students may freely seek a faculty member's counsel beyond specific office hours. In this regard, the departmental culture of availability to students is much more like the liberal arts environment and is quite different from the environment of many doctoral institutions, in which faculty are required to hold no more than two office hours per week and can maintain an arms-length relationship with students.

A final point we wish to reiterate regarding graduate student mentoring that has been common in our experiences is the necessary skill of and interest in integrating the MA student who may have an interest in Ph.D. studies into the wider profession. In this respect, our jobs more closely resemble that of faculty at doctoral institutions, who must advise students about publishing, conference presentations, and various networking opportunities. Mentoring can take several significant forms. Faculty might ask a student to co-author a conference paper or article. This type of experience can pay dividends for the student by demystifying the publication process. As well, for students who anticipate moving on to a doctoral program, mentors might encourage them to join professional associations to increase their knowledge of the discipline and expose them to research beyond their own departments. At the same time, given that many of our MA students do not aspire to continue beyond the program, faculty are also often asked for broader professional advice about fields outside of academia. Such guidance can be especially difficult to provide for those of us who have spent all of our professional lives in academia.

RESEARCH

Apart from different teaching experiences at master's institutions, the research aspect of work at a comprehensive university often differs considerably from that which takes place at many liberal arts institutions and doctoral-granting programs. At the same time, we must note that professional research expectations vary widely across MA-granting institutions. Some departments require professors to have multiple publications in peer-reviewed outlets in order to gain tenure and promotion, while other departments are considerably less demanding about where and how much research has been published.Footnote ⁴ In this respect, it is difficult to generalize about how departments at comprehensive universities view and value research achievements.

Nevertheless, in our own experience, research is always an important facet of professional life at comprehensive institutions. This focus is supported by a study indicating that comprehensive institutions have asked faculty to increase their research productivity (Henderson Reference Henderson2007), and we anticipate that the value of research achievements at such institutions is only likely to increase. Even though the teaching load at these schools is heavier than at doctoral-granting institutions, there are many examples of scholars at comprehensive institutions who are able to maintain a high level of research productivity. Unlike many liberal arts institutions, where teaching demands, undergraduate service responsibilities, and the absence of a strong research culture can derail a faculty member's research ambitions, comprehensive institutions preserve the possibility of a very active scholarly research agenda, if not demand it in the form of peer-reviewed publications. We maintain that one can work at a comprehensive institution with a reasonable expectation of sustaining an aggressive research agenda. We believe that this is possible as a result of an array of factors.

First, the presence of graduate schools at comprehensive institutions often creates an environment in which research is more openly part of the academic culture, and in this respect, scholarly productivity is encouraged and actively supported. Graduate schools at comprehensive institutions experience many of the same pressures as doctoral institutions, which require faculty to be actively engaged in research or service work in the broader profession to bring external recognition to the university and department. Moreover, in a competitive market for prospective students, graduate schools need faculty members to excel in their research endeavors to help maintain visible and attractive graduate programs. In addition, many graduate schools actively oversee competitive research grants and awards and may provide support for collaborative research work with graduate students. In comparing our professional work experience and academic culture at comprehensive institutions with that in our previous jobs at liberal arts universities, the research climate at the comprehensive institution appears to be both markedly different and more actively supportive of productive scholarship and research.

Many comprehensive institutions offer faculty research sabbaticals and various forms of development leave, as well as course-release time—incentives that are often strikingly absent from liberal arts institutions, where the dominant teaching culture may not permit temporary leaves from teaching. Such breaks from teaching can be extremely rewarding and productive in terms of maintaining and building on one's research program. At the same time, the practice of taking a semester off from teaching during the probationary period—which is more common at Ph.D.-granting institutions for assistant professors prior to a third year review or faculty members who have just joined the department—is rarely routine at comprehensive institutions. Faculty at comprehensive institutions also rarely receive summer research salaries. This compensation is far more common at doctoral institutions, and thus, summer teaching opportunities can become a financial necessity at comprehensive institutions.

Another factor related to research life at comprehensive institutions is the kind of teaching one may be asked to do, which can affect a research agenda. Deardorff et al. (Reference Deardorff, Githens, Halva-Neubauer, Hudson, Reeher and Seyb2001) note that faculty at liberal arts institutions are often asked to be generalists, because these schools frequently expect professors to teach across the subfields in political science and sometimes outside the field. This finding squares with our own work experiences at liberal arts universities. However, at the comprehensive institution, such practices are much less common. Although one's teaching load can still be considerable when compared to doctoral institution loads, a professor rarely needs to be a generalist or teach across a number of political science subfields. Rather than teaching across multiple subfields, a comprehensive university is very likely to expect faculty to teach many topics within a subfield. For instance, an international relations scholar who is primarily trained in global political economy may be expected to teach other courses such as American foreign policy, international organizations, and research methods. Even so, this scenario is more conducive to research than a situation of teaching multiple subfields or courses outside of the discipline. This point is significant, because a more focused teaching role may permit one to more easily meld teaching and research interests together, thus expending less time on course instruction that is far outside of one's immediate research interests. Jobs at comprehensive institutions are still generally teaching-oriented, but more focused teaching can make it easier to follow a research agenda during the regular academic year.

At our own institutions, the presence of very active and ambitious research agendas among junior faculty members is not uncommon. Certainly, some faculty members work to publish in order to move to a more research-oriented institution, but in our experience, junior faculty members are increasingly entering the profession with the expectation that research is a critical element of their professional lives under the model of the “teacher-scholar.” The teacher-scholar concept seems much more widely accepted across the profession today and is also evident in liberal arts institutions (Deardorff et al. Reference Deardorff, Githens, Halva-Neubauer, Hudson, Reeher and Seyb2001). The idea of a faculty member serving as a “teacher” alone with no external role in the profession and without an active research agenda seems less and less accepted at comprehensive institutions. The view that active scholarship helps promote improved teaching is increasingly common and is reflected in the way that many junior faculty members approach their jobs.

The presence of introductory MA graduate students may also provide the possibility for collaborative research experiences that are often not available in undergraduate education alone. Most comprehensive graduate programs employ graduate assistants who can assist faculty with various research requests or relieve faculty from some classroom duties. In addition, graduate students who enter with solid writing and research skills may also be able to conduct research alongside a faculty member, which can rarely be done even with the most talented undergraduates, unless he or she has had extraordinary training in research design and methods. At comprehensive institutions, where graduate programs and graduate curricula are in place, the odds for collaborative research with MA students increase significantly, especially when these students are seeking admission to Ph.D. programs.

SERVICE

The area in which “greediness” is most frequently experienced and maligned is service. Service is a more focused endeavor at comprehensive institutions than at liberal arts schools, where it primarily takes the form of departmental service. Simply put, in smaller departments, service is divided among fewer faculty members. Departments at liberal arts schools are often multidisciplinary, and hence, a political scientist may be expected to serve on search committees for other disciplines. Departments at comprehensive universities do not usually require cross-disciplinary service, but they do often need faculty to serve on search committees for other subfields in political science. Faculty who join a department at a comprehensive university need to be flexible and well-versed in the entire discipline.

Within the department, there is also a tendency for faculty to be generalists in the area of service. Often, junior faculty find it difficult to refuse “invitations” for service assignments. We have seen departments in which untenured faculty members carry the bulk of the service load, even on personnel matters such as chairing search committees. More commonly, junior faculty members may receive time-consuming service assignments such as assessment, curriculum, and advising of student clubs. In a larger, research-oriented department, it may be easier for a junior faculty member to politely refuse onerous service, since he or she was clearly hired for his or her scholarship. However, comprehensive institutions, where departments are smaller and teaching is emphasized, likely will not tolerate outright refusal of service assignments. Departments with healthy environments for junior faculty often include tenured faculty who are willing to shield newly hired members from unduly heavy service.

Refusal of departmental service should not be a regular occurrence for tenured or untenured faculty members at a comprehensive institution. Service is more important than the material credit one may gain from it. Faculty members at all stages of their careers need to contribute to the social fabric of the department. Many faculty at comprehensive institutions find ample opportunities to use service assignments to gain insight into the world of university administration. This perspective is very useful for someone who thinks that he or she may want to move into administration at a later point in his or her career. In departments with graduate programs, for example, service as a graduate chair can offer an opportunity to get a feel for administrative work. Liberal arts institutions generally do not provide such opportunities, and research universities often rely on the most senior members of the department for leadership positions. Because we work most closely with our immediate peers, service to the department is arguably the most important type of service. For faculty in departments in which service is distributed equitably and few, if any, members feel a sense of over-assignment, service can be rewarding for its own sake and for its provision of a positive work environment. Comprehensive institutions offer more opportunities for department service without the jack-of-all-trades responsibility demanded by liberal arts institutions.

Outside of the department, at the college and university level, comprehensive universities can offer further stimulating service opportunities. College committees are often composed of faculty members elected by a general college-wide vote. Service on these committees can provide insight into the politics and practices of other departments, as well as the views of the dean and associate dean. On many of these committees, faculty have an opportunity to shape college policies. At smaller comprehensive universities, committees that exist at the college level at a comprehensive institution may actually be organized at the university level. This structure produces a different dynamic and may not provide the same chance to work with other social scientists and others from your own unit. College- and university-level service at comprehensive universities therefore resembles service at research universities more closely, although service may not be given as much recognition as it receives at research institutions. One side benefit of such service is that these activities allow the political scientist to engage in the university's political process. For some faculty, and especially those at comprehensive institutions where extensive service is possible, these experiences can be highly rewarding, because the activities may parallel a faculty member's own teaching or research interests, as in the case of the study of coalition building, diplomatic bargaining, or norm creation.

Faculty at many comprehensive universities are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Active participation in union service can be rewarding in the opportunity it provides to influence the improvement of working conditions and faculty compensation, and to network with union activists at other institutions. At institutions without collective bargaining, there is often a faculty alliance associated with the American Association of University Professors. Additionally, many of the matters pursued by unions can be handled by faculty senates. Unions, faculty alliances, and faculty senates are fundamental players in grievance and due process procedures at most universities. At the comprehensive institution, unions and faculty alliances offer essential service experiences in many of the most important decisions made within the university.

While department, college, and university service are paramount, comprehensive institutions may also expect faculty members to obtain and maintain a significant profile in the profession. Research is an obvious way to achieve this objective, but service, too, can provide opportunities. One form of professional service that many faculty members at comprehensive institutions pursue is service or leadership in scholarly organizations, such as regional groups or substantively focused associations within national and international professional organizations. For example, faculty can provide professional service by helping manage and organize regional meetings of the International Studies Association and related regional political science associations. General social science associations also hold national and subnational meetings. At liberal arts institutions, faculty members may not have enough time to devote to this type of service on a regular basis; at research institutions, service at this level is often discouraged. For a faculty member at a comprehensive institution, this variety of professional service is a way to create publicity for your institution in the discipline and also further your own career by gaining service experience and build contacts.

Last, similar to faculty at liberal arts universities, faculty members at comprehensive institutions may be expected to maintain a higher profile in the community than peers at more research-focused institutions. Community service can involve a wide range of activities, from media interviews to delivering a talk to a general audience. Community service may not be a major part of a research university's mission, but this is often not the case with comprehensive institutions, which hold high expectations in this area.