Written by: Theresa Murphy
Edited by: Kaitrin Freeland
This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.
When most people think of “college”, they think of their own personal experience. “College” conjures memories of big games, late nights, dodging 8 a.m. classes, making friends, and maybe even a class or two. The majority of people only ever scrape the surface of what universities have to offer, whether as undergraduate/graduate students, parents of students, or members of the public whose tax dollars fund public higher education. Beyond the parts of the university designed specifically to engage with the public (such as sporting, alumni, and public engagement events), most laypeople are only ever associated with college through academics. Their exposure is college courses, professors standing in front of a chalkboard lecturing, and students with piles of reading. Colleges have a PR problem. The university is a large ecosystem, and for many well-known universities, undergraduate teaching is only a small portion of that ecosystem. However, the dissonance between public expectations and the actual, multifaceted priorities of the university exposes an important flaw in the system: most college teachers are not adequately taught how to teach.
This flaw in future-faculty training is understandable. Research 1 (R1) institutions are a Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education given to universities that spend a lot of money on research and produce a lot of doctoral degrees as one of their main focuses. These institutions receive much of their funding from research, with faculty members relying on grants, such as those from NIH (National Institutes of Health), NSF (National Science Foundation), and elsewhere, to pay for direct research costs, research assistant salaries, and other indirect costs (AAU, 2022). For that reason, R1 institutions often prioritize research production over teaching for tenure-track faculty, and tenure-track faculty are often prioritized over adjunct/teaching/non-tenure-track faculty. Additionally, research and teaching are not the only priorities. Alongside teaching, faculty juggle research, mentoring, peer review, and committee service, so their time and focus are often divided.
Herein lies the problem. Despite the multifaceted role of faculty members, it is necessary for faculty to spend time developing their teaching capabilities. As an educator with more than a decade of training and experience across levels, I understand the benefit of theory-informed practice for both teacher skill development and student learning. I believe it is essential, therefore, for universities to step up their faculty preparation by integrating teacher preparation requirements into their Ph.D. graduation requirements. As Ph.D. students, we are conditioned into our respective fields and academia as a whole, with the expectation of becoming future faculty members. Ph.D. students are expected to hold teaching and research assistantships. However, teaching assistantships can vary in intensity and can appear as anything from grading help and small-group tutoring all the way to teaching full sections of a given class or its associated labs. Good teaching practices are founded on clear learning goals in course design, inclusive approaches such as Universal Design for Learning, accurate assessments, and course correcting in response to student engagement. These “best practice” educational strategies are very different from just grading papers. While the aforementioned good teaching practices are honed into every undergraduate education major, most faculty members do not have that formalized education training to be great teachers. They may be experts in their field, but their training has likely prioritized content knowledge over educational theory, assessment design, and alternative teaching and learning methods.
The acculturation of future faculty members into the field prioritizes foundational content knowledge, not foundational teaching knowledge. Their previous training towards expertise has likely prioritized content knowledge over educational theory, assessment design, and alternative teaching and learning methods. Students who are passionate about becoming faculty members may seek out additional training offered by the graduate school or professional memberships, but without incorporating specific teaching preparation into the curriculum, PhD students seeking tenure-track positions are disadvantaged. Not having faculty members who were required to learn the fundamentals of teaching also disadvantages future students.
Could universities simply require training for current faculty? It’s complicated. Beyond their multifaceted roles, faculty subscribe to a collegium model of governance. This means that faculty make decisions through consensus and self-governance. This is very different from the bureaucratic structure in which the university administration and staff function: there is much less control over what is required of tenured faculty in comparison to student graduation requirements.
As an educator working with faculty, I saw examples of out-of-date educational models perpetuated by faculty members who had no formal education training. I also saw examples of professors who came into their role after stints as high school teachers. Those educator-trained professors are usually better teachers because they bring educational theories and best practices to their classrooms, focusing on student learning instead of information dissemination. An innate understanding of people, the ability to simplify complex concepts and present them in digestible form, and an engaging presentation style can all be positive qualities that significantly enhance a faculty member’s teaching. We should be structuring training and acculturation into the faculty position: for the average student, the student who develops an intense expertise in a very niche topic but does not always have the easiest time zooming out to the big picture, the type of student I worked with dozens of times as a graduate student career counselor. I believe it is essential for universities to step up their faculty preparation by integrating teacher preparation requirements into their PhD graduation requirements.
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