An Investigation of the Relationship Among Teaching Evaluation, Research and Ability

This article addresses an important controversial issue in higher education. Do faculty research activities complement and strengthen the teaching role, or do they occur at the expense of classroom teaching? For the most part, all we have had up to now is subjective opinion supported by much heat and little light. Wood and DeLorme use regression analysis in an effort to measure the impact of faculty research productivity and several other variables on student evaluations of teaching effectiveness. While some key questions remain unanswered, the authors have at least given us a start toward an objective method of approaching the issue.