POSTGRADUATE PROGRAMS: WHERE TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTEGRATE TOGETHER TO ASSIST ACADEMIC STAFF FOR COMPETENCY

Academic staff (AS), across the world, is intended to be the most professional and competent in both teaching and research areas. Sometimes AS may trend to emphasize on one of this area while the other is expected to be more competent. This matter was stratified as being one of the most critical concerns of managers in Ferdoswi University of Mashhad (FUM). The paper aimed to show how educational leaders could manage this by redirecting and developing postgraduate programs. It is divided to two main parts. At the first part, it explains some new-created plans such as expanding the domain of AS certain tasks to teach for more modules in postgraduate programs; engaging AS in weekly or short-period in/out department seminars with emphasizing on postgraduate running curricula; holding experts discussion panels at schools; developing some interdisciplinary fields of study in postgraduate inter-dependent departments; motivating AS to join to postgraduate focus groups; facilitating the process for publishing all proposed AS works, more specially the works whose subject might cover the postgraduate curricula’s requirements; and exciting AS toward teaching excellence in postgraduate programs. At the second part, the paper shows the results of interviews conducted with an intended sample of managers. It presents the most important points of a semi structured interview to 2 educational leaders of the top level and 6 ones of the middle levels of the organization. Findings showed that all interviewees realize the plan effective to integrate two last separate academic areas. Among them, the respondents choose “expanding the domain of AS tasks to teach for more modules in postgraduate programs” at the highest priority and “motivating the staff to join to scholastic focus groups” at the lowest one.