A wide range of observers are concerned that science instructors at United States universities are inadequately stimulating, encouraging, and equipping their students--the potential future generation of researchers--to pursue their interests beyond the undergraduate level.
Many of those concerned assert that the problem lies in an improper balance between what they consider mutually exclusive activities for professors: classroom instruction and research in the laboratory.
On one hand, some contend, science professors should be spending more time teaching in the classroom and less time in the lab; others urge them to put classroom instruction on the back burner and spend more time in the lab, to increase the prestige of their universities as well as national competitiveness.
In my view, however, the commonly held dichotomy between "teaching" and "research" is false and misguiding. There are many institutions where the two approaches to science education do not war with each other. At these ...
