BALANCING ACADEMIC TASKS: HOW CAN WE COMBINE THEM?

Academic work at university involves both teaching and research, in addition to various other tasks such as management and self study. In a world of increasing specialization, is it possible for a single person to perform well in all these fields? Most academics believe that the relationship between research and teaching is absolutely necessary, and very few would say that university teachers should concentrate exclusively on teaching. In many cases, teachers prefer to devote their time to research and leave teaching aside, because they feel that research is more creative and better considered.

Both teaching and research require a lot of time if excellent results are to be achieved, but time devoted to one cannot be used for the other, and viceversa. In some cases, there can be, to a certain extent, an exchange of contents, and teaching (mostly postgraduate teaching) can use results of research. In these situations, specialized courses and advanced research can nurture each other. Positive relationships between research and teaching include: research may improve the quality of advanced courses, some equipment and infrastructure obtained for research projects can be used for teaching purposes as well, and research results may update advanced course contents.

In this paper the relationships among the different tasks of the university teacher are explored, and an effort is made to answer the question in the title: how can we combine them?