A Professor's Work

A Professor's Work attempts to clear up questions about the role of the college professor in society by providing a field study of what a professor actually does. The author organizes a year of his work and his colleagues into an overview of a years teaching, research, and service. The first section describes the service work, including a depiction of the search for a new faculty member, and a committee that investigated the appearance of extremely large general educational classes. Then the teaching section focuses on the teaching and evaluation of a single course, and the dealing with problems encountered by the wide variety of students who attend an urban university. Finally, the research section exposes the relationship of writing and publishing to the conflicts and interactions of scholars and with the impact the study had on the university community. The author also includes a representation of community activities, the relationship of a professor's work to his family life, and an evaluation of professors studied against two theoretical models of professional behavior and activity.