THE PUBLIC MIND: RETIRED PROF FEELS QUALITY OF TEACHING SHOULD COUNT MORE THAN QUANTITY OF WRITING

To the editor:

It disappointed me greatly to learn from my Sunday Missourian that Professor Richard Hansen who is, from all reports, an excellent teacher must have his job in the economics department of the university terminated because during his six years here he has published very little. I can understand that it would be appropriate to give a few additional "brownie points" to faculty members for publishing. But the notion that an excellent teacher is regarded as unsuitable because of his failure to contribute to the heap of "garbage" which is being published annually is abhorrent to me.

There is nothing to suggest that Dr. Hansen did not devote enough time and effort to his professional duties nor that there is anything the matter with his intellectual competence. The sole criticism seems to be that he did not devote a sufficiently large fraction of this time efforts to publishing.

When I was a member of the economics department here (for about 25 years prior to my retirement), I typed hundreds and perhaps thousands of pages of what I referred to as "study sheets." I found that this helped advance my own understanding and refined my thinking from year to year. But perhaps more importantly it was designed to help students understand the textbook and understand what I was trying to teach.

I often took issue with statements I found in textbooks. Even on weekend hikes and bike rides I would often find myself pondering controversial points in economics and every now and then found reason to alter my position on them. I felt that toward the end of my teaching career I was much more "right" in my views on economic matters than I had been earlier in my career and was much better able to defend these views. I know that if, instead of doing this sort of thing, I had felt myself under great pressure to publish journal articles, my own intellectual development would have been substantially slowed down and I would not have gained anything like the degree of understanding of the subject matter of economics.

I never consciously did anything for the primary purpose of gaining either tenure or promotion. Instead I simply tried hard to improve my own understanding of the subject and to develop ways of presenting it to students which would make it clearer to them. I was given tenure chiefly because the department head apparently had respect for me and the work I was doing. Under today's rules, if I had been hired at all, I would soon have been terminated.

The university's president and provost both felt quite reasonably that they had little choice but to carry out the decision made by the department's tenure committee. Everything was done according to rules and regulations which were presumably adopted by the Faculty Senate. It is quite possible that the name and fame of the university are spread more widely by having its faculty publish than by having them do an excellent job of teaching. If the university's reputation as a source of faculty publications is regarded as more important than serving the best interests of its students, then the decision to terminate Dr. Hansen is defensible. Otherwise I think not.

Phillips H. Brown

Associate Professor Emeritus

Cape Girardeau