| |
"A teacher affects eternity; He can never tell where
his influence stops."
- Henry Brooks Adams
The work of faculty is, by its very nature, virtually
unbounded. In addition to teaching classes, advising
students, and serving on departmental committees, faculty
members are expected to keep abreast of developments
in their fields of specialization by engaging in original
research and scholarship, participating in activities
of one or more professional societies, and to read the
latest research studies produced by their colleagues.
There is always a new question to ask, further analysis
to complete, or another issue to discuss.
|
Our
responsibilities at a research university like
UCLA are both to teach and to conduct research.
Teaching is wonderful. I think it's wonderful
to have that interaction with students, most of
whom really want to learn what it is you're teaching
them. To try to present material in a way that
they can learn, to give them assignments and exams
that challenge them to think and help them to
learn. [Research is] very challenging and can
be very exciting and rewarding. But what frustrates
me about research is that in order to do it, you
need money to do it. So there's a little bit of
an entrepreneurial aspect to being a professor
which I didn't really know until I got here, and
it doesn't suit me that well. Oh well, no job
is perfect. There's a huge amount of freedom in
a teaching position, freedom in what you research,
freedom in how you teach your classes, freedom
in when I care to arrive and leave. I could do
all my work at home. I could do all my work between
midnight and six A.M. No one cares. So it's very
flexible now as well. And it suits me very well
right now because I have two young children and
they have their schedules and have to be taken
to school and picked up and whatnot, and then
I can work around that. - Adrienne Lavine, Chair
and Professor, UCLA Mechanical &
Aerospace
Engineering Department
|
Faculty
have a job advantage that each semester starts with
a new group of students and each class has its own personality.
Faculty are constantly trying to improve their teaching,
to become more effective, and to improve their students'
experience. They get paid to immerse themselves in the
subjects they love and have the opportunity to kindle
the same passion in others. Many find that one of the
most satisfying aspects of their job is seeing the spark
in a student's eye as his or her passion for engineering
grows.
Academic researchers rely on the federal government
for a significant share of their overall research money;
about 60 percent of all academic R&D is federally funded.
In 1999, the Federal Government supported an estimated
46 percent of all doctoral academic scientists and engineers,
74 percent of those for whom research was the primary
responsibility, and 37 percent of those for whom research
was a secondary responsibility.
Here's one engineer
who made the jump to academia, inspired by his desire
to explore the possibilities of newly emerging fields.
|
