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For the Love of Teaching
George Kalbouss
To The Editor:Thanks for Leonard Quart’s article, "The Party’s Over," in the January–February issue of Academe. His experiences reminded me of why I went into college teaching: to engage and excite undergraduates in my field of expertise, namely, Russian literature and culture. After twenty-eight years at the Ohio State University, during which I taught over 15,000 students, created numerous new courses, started my own mini-endowment, and achieved recognition as one of the university’s best teachers, it came down to the following: I had to publish a book to get promoted, a book that would be read by fewer than two hundred people. Period. None of the rest counted. In other words, my success at my university would be decided by some editors who knew nothing about my performance at Ohio State and some promotion and tenure committee whose members, randomly selected from other departments, would decide more on the publisher’s decision than on my twenty-eight years of service. This was just plain silly. When something is that silly, and there is pension money available, it’s time to walk away, which I did in June 2001. Interestingly enough, I was asked to return to teach a course in the fall. Without the silly publishing requirements weighing down my soul, I never enjoyed it more, nor did my students.
George Kalbouss
(Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Ohio State University
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