any assistant professors face tremendous pressures to become productive researchers. Yet studies show that their commitment to teaching remains strong.

"Assistant professors don't sacrifice their teaching," says University of Michigan-Ann Arbor psychology professor Wilbert McKeachie, who works with Michigan's Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. "You'd think they would because they have so much to do. But studies have shown that they spend an inordinate amount of time on teaching."

One thing that would help faculty members meet their teaching obligations, McKeachie believes, is better training for the job. Faculty members themselves often admit that they feel ill prepared as teachers and unfamiliar with alternative approaches. "I do think the old lecture style could be changed, but I don't really know of other meaningful ways to teach 150 students by myself, " says Lynn King, an assistant professor who teaches a large genetics course at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida."

Mark Peifer, an assistant professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says, "I spent 10 years learning how to be a scientist, and I got pretty good at it. But no one trains you in any of the things that you do once you get here...They think that if you can give a good seminar, you can teach anyone."

Many colleges and universities have set up centers that offer training to graduate students and faculty. But in the midst of other obligations, many professors never have time to take advantage of such opportunities. The basic issue is one of incentives, says Steve Haynesworth, an assistant professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who earned a master's degree in education before embarking on his biology Ph.D. "Historically, if I was a below-average lecturer and mentor but wrote really good grants, I'd get tenure in a moment," he says. "But if I got all kinds of teaching honors but brought in no grants, I'd be let go. Within the past few years, however, there are signs that the relative emphasis placed on teaching and research by the university administration is becoming more balanced."

McKeachie agrees that worry about tenure overshadows junior faculty members' willingness to devote much time to improving their teaching. "It's not that they don't want to do well," he says. "It's that they're under the gun for promotion. They're not going to take any chances."

• Faculty in the Crossfire
• Getting off the Ground
• The Balancing Act
• Long Hours
• Deadlines and Rewards
• Training for Teaching
• Teaching at a Small College
• A Statistical Portrait

• A World Of Opportunity
• Changes in the Classroom
• The Laboratory Experience
• Women and Minorities
• The Many Paths to Success

The Human Biology Program at Stanford University has made it easier for faculty members to learn from each other.