CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A common perception, especially outside the university classroom, is that teaching and research are two separate domains, with little overlap.
That’s not the reality, however, for many University of Illinois faculty – including those whose 18 essays appear in “An Illinois Sampler: Teaching and Research on the Prairie,” recently published by the University of Illinois Press.
For those faculty, “there is an active and dynamic link” between the two, says Antoinette Burton, a U. of I. professor of history and co-editor of the collection with Mary-Ann Winkelmes, a former campus coordinator for programs on teaching and learning at Illinois, who is now at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“These are not people who think of teaching as one thing and research as another,” Burton said. “They want to explain how the two are connected in a variety of ways.”
The book describes the teaching-research link as part of a “feedback loop of education” that works across disciplines and in many different learning spaces, “from virtual to concrete, from desks to drafting tables to laboratory benches to archive shelves, from the dance floor to the ocean floor,” from Illinois prairies to African farms.
Contributors include faculty members from the arts, humanities, engineering, and social and natural sciences. Their essays average about seven pages each.
“As faculty, we know how our colleagues bring their passion about their research work into both introductory surveys and more specialized seminars,” Burton said. “We also know how invested we are in helping students appreciate the research process and its transformative impact,” as well as the value of “deep study” on a topic, she said.
“But it’s not clear that a broader public has any window into how that plays out in specific classrooms or labs or studios,” Burton said, and that is one goal of the book.
Kyle Mays, a doctoral candidate in history who served as the research assistant on the book, says in the final essay that the book also addresses one of the most important issues facing the current generation of students: practical education versus liberal education.
It “challenges the idea that science and humanities are so different that they can’t operate, if not together, at least in parallel fashion,” Mays writes. “This book should remind us that, when students become central, the humanities and sciences are not all that different, research and teaching are one, and the beneficiaries are students, their teachers, and our society.”
To reach Antoinette Burton, call 217-333-6874; email aburton@illinois.edu.
