Faculty’s roles. If we study research in broader terms, it will allow us to better understand its role in the university system and its interaction with teaching and service (Faliciani-White, 2016). A faculty member plays a number of roles while working at a HEI. According to Bentley and Kyvik (2013), the main responsibilities of a university professor comprise teaching, supervising doctoral students and taking part in administrative work (p. 330). This situation is similar to the Kazakhstani context but numerous faculty members complain about the lack of time to devote to research due to heavy teaching responsibilities and additional service work. At many HEIs faculty have to be engaged in both teaching and research simultaneously. Some faculty believe that teaching should be the priority of any HEI, whereas others state that research should never be neglected for the sake of “quality and standards” (Tennant, XxXxxxxx, & Xxxxxxxxx, 2010, p. 165-166). Research is usually considered to have a “higher status as an indicator of academic excellence”, where researchers possess certain privileges like better funding, while faculty, who are not engaged in research, have to take more teaching hours “as a punishment” (Tennant et al., 2010, p. 166). Tennant et al. (2010) present the scarcity model, according to which teaching and research should be separated: it is destructive when faculty are involved in both. For example, those who are not experts in research can focus on their teaching responsibilities to improve rather than trying to be good at both and have the opposite result. It is rather challenging to combine both due to time constraints and energy demands (Tennant et al., 2010). One of the other roles performed by a faculty member of the modern world is that of an entrepreneur. Due to decreasing funding in HEIs, in order for faculty to survive, they have to engage in entrepreneurial activities to gain access to external resources and funding in the form of research grants (Bentley & Kyvik, 2013). For instance, sixteen higher educational institutions in Kazakhstan established commercialization centers (MES, 2015). Thus, academic entrepreneurs are seen as conductors of research results to the market with the aim of commercial benefit (Xxxxx, Xxxxxxx, & Xxxxx, 2014). It is stated that previous experience of working in the commercial sector may be a driving factor for a faculty member to be engaged in academic entrepreneurship (Rahim et al., 2014). However, the main drawback o...
Faculty’s roles. On an individual level, it is obvious that a faculty member has to carry out several roles to be successful in a university environment. For instance, the question of maintaining teacher/researcher balance always remains relevant. Participant 10 shared his view on teaching and research: The role of research in faculty’s life? First, I’ll tell you that these things are practically incompatible. Why? I will explain why. Because a faculty member at university is a big bureaucrat. (P10, Bio) Heavy teaching load is one of the main impediments towards conducting research for some faculty. Apart from teaching, there is additional work performed by faculty such as filling in different reports, curator work, advisor work and other service work for which they do not get additional payment but which takes a bulk of their time. It seems that administration wants to overwhelm a faculty member with as much work as possible so that he/she does not have a spare minute to spend. Participant 8 suggested an interesting idea: Some managers seem to hold a belief that the more time a worker spends at his workplace, the more work he does. While in the West they long ago came to an idea that the less an employee spends at work, the more effective he is. At my university, in my opinion, it is the way that a person should always be at his workplace, fill in some reports, organize some educational-cultural activities, which do not relate to any science or education, this is hilarious. (P8, Eng) It is clear that some faculty are irritated by this extra work which they perceive as a distraction to do research. Participant 3, who also holds a position of the head of the department, admitted: They get tired, you cannot require something from them; that is why, in order to do research, the teaching hours should be reduced at university. (P3, Ph) On the other hand, there is a belief that there is enough time for experienced professors to do research as preparation for lectures does not take so much time anymore. However, beginning faculty experience more difficulties as they spend more time for lesson preparation. Participant 4 thinks: In the beginning, a teacher should only teach and after he gains experience, he can transfer to research. (P4, Ph) Despite all the challenges, most of the participants agree on the importance of conducting research, but not everyone considers that it should be a requirement at university. Some faculty can be really good at teaching, they do not like doing r...
