New Faculty Wooed by Value on Teaching
Defying the infamous archetype of a professor who hates to teach, new faculty at USF say the value USF places on teaching and service drew them away from bigger, more prestigious schools.
“The appeal was this program was smaller, more grassroots, and interested in educating undergraduates,” said Tracy Benning, assistant professor in environmental science who joined USF this fall from UC Berkeley. “At Berkeley, the undergraduates fall through the cracks. Teaching, or good teaching, isn’t as valued there.”
Benning said she had already decided last spring to leave Berkeley, where she was an assistant professor, when she decided to take a look at USF. Berkeley’s focus on research and graduate studies wasn’t allowing her to teach as much, or as competently, as she would have liked. “Good teaching is a skill and inspires students to go on,” she said. “I was disillusioned with the academic career track because it wasn’t letting me do what I wanted to do.”
Benning is joined by a growing class of new professors who say they joined USF because of the opportunities to teach and because their classroom performance counts toward tenure approval.
Josh Gamson, who was an associate professor of sociology at Yale for nine years before joining USF this fall, said he became interested in coming to San Francisco because his friend and colleague, Nicole Raeburn, an assistant professor of sociology at USF, often described teaching at the University of San Francisco as “her dream job.”
“My perception was that the social activity and commitments at USF were genuine, as was the value on innovative teaching,” Gamson said. “I wasn’t discouraged from teaching creatively at Yale, it just wasn’t a priority.”
Gamson is the second professor from Yale to join USF in consecutive years. Peter Novak, assistant professor of visual and performing arts, joined the campus last year.
Stephanie Sears, who is completing a doctorate from Yale, joined the sociology department this year as part of the university’s Irvine Scholars program which invites promising minority faculty to finish their dissertation under the direction of USF faculty. If job openings are available, the candidate is offered a tenure-track position. Sears said she was already considering a term appointment at USF when former sociology chair Michael Webber encouraged her to apply for the Irvine program.
“I didn’t want to be part of a ‘publish or perish’ institution because I like teaching, so I knew I wanted a school that valued teaching,” Sears said. “I have a great community here that supports my teaching and my research, and doesn’t consider one more important than the other.”
USF’s emphasis on diversity also pulls in faculty, especially as affirmative action programs remain in jeopardy at many public schools. Benning said she wanted to teach at a university where diversity is valued and was unhappy with the University of California’s 1996 decision to upend affirmative action.
“At USF, the diversity of the students is higher than at lots of other universities I had seen,” Benning said. “If the administration doesn’t see the importance of it, that sends a message.”
“Here I can talk about what I believe, such as sexual self-determination, gender equality, and racial equality,” Gamson said. “At Yale, (diversity) was accepted as an academic component but not an educational one.”
|
