Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series examining the way university faculty view their jobs. Today’s story examines the ways instructors spend their time.

NIU faculty spend almost as much time researching as they do preparing to teach.

A UCLA survey found that 64.9 percent of NIU’s teachers spend 12 or less hours per week preparing to teach, while 54.4 percent spend 12 or fewer hours per week in research or scholarly writing.

The University of California at Los Angeles’s Higher Education Research institute conducted the study. NIU full-time faculty who taught at least one undergraduate course or spent at least nine hours per week in scheduled teaching were questioned.

James Norris, dean of NIU’s College of Liberal Arts and Science, said teachers will need more or less preparation time depending on whether they are teaching the class for the first time or if they were not satisfied with it the last time.

“Research and teaching go together,” Norris said. Teachers continue to learn during research and they convey this to their students, he said.

Research is integral to an active faculty because it enables professors to provide students with a quality education, said NIU Provost Kendall Baker.

As teachers write what they are interested in, they take part in an active discovery process, Baker said.

Baker, who serves as vice president to President John La Tourette, is analyzing the results of the study.

Teachers at NIU and small liberal arts colleges do research, Norris said. “I wouldn’t be in the business without it,” he said.

owever, about 42 percent of those surveyed agree strongly or somewhat strongly that research interferes with teaching. Seventy-three percent listed research or publishing demands as a source of stress in their profession.

“Doing research is stressful,” Baker said. Whenever teachers spend time with a problem, they worry about whether others will learn from or agree with what they have done, Baker said.

While instructors are not required to conduct research, “professionally-active faculty members are always sharing their research,” he said.

As a university, NIU has changed in the past 25 years, Baker said. The faculty is much more active professionally, he said.

Even those teachers who publish few, but long pieces of their work bring their experience to the classroom, he said.