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A Christian liberal arts school, Hope College enrolls about 2,900 students and boasts a record of sending nearly one-third of its graduates to professional and graduate schools. Blankespoor, who was named 1991 National Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, admits that he's not doing the same sort of "fast-lane research" that he might have done at a major research university. But he is convinced that the intimate nature of small colleges provides students with a high-quality education. "They have more materials and they have more attention from professors," he says. Blankespoor estimates that he spends about 60 percent of his time on teaching, 30 percent on research, and 10 percent on service. Instead of devoting months to writing major grant proposals, he prepares less time-consuming budget requests that bring in about $50,000 a year from lake associations in Michigan to sustain his research into parasitological diseases in the United States and around the world. His target is to get one or two articles published each year in a refereed journal. Without graduate students, postdocs, or full-time technicians, he works with four to seven undergraduates on various research projects. According to Blankespoor, professors at Hope College may spend their time differently than professors at research universities, but they are still expected to do everything. He begins his workday at 5:30 a.m. and often does not finish before 9 p.m. "You have to blend it all," he says. "You can't be just a good teacher or just a good researcher."
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n the lakeside town of Holland, Michigan, Hope College biology professor
Harvey Blankespoor is putting in long hours to balance research, teaching,
and service to the college. But expectations are different at a small liberal
arts college than they are at a large research university, even if the workload
is not.
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