(153g) Advocacy for the Tenure-Track Teaching Professor

“Lecturers do not perform academic research and hence are not real professors.” This is a common sentiment from engineering schools around the world. But these faculty can provide many services beyond that of a temporary lecturer. In this talk, an argument is made in favor of providing tenure-track positions to lecturers. Beyond teaching any and all core courses, these teaching faculty can perform pedagogical research, create highly specialized elective courses, provide academic advising for students, and develop higher quality unit operations laboratories. Teaching faculty can even provide new sources of income for departments by developing new graduate programs or maintaining alumni networks. Evidence of success will be provided by highlighting the University of California’s Lecturer with Security of Employment (LSOE) position.