Academic

Ranking (and Evaluating) College Presidents and Faculty: Advice from the Dartmouth Review

By propertyprof

Joseph Asch '79 has an op-ed piece over at The Dartmouth Review ("A Good New President?") about what the new Dartmouth president should be like--a respected scholar is at the head of his wish list. (They sure got that in Dr. Kim.)

Asch has some advice on how to evaluate a scholar:

First, go to GoogleScholar and enter the name of a candidate. How many articles and books has the scholar published? And is he or she the lead author of these books and articles, or just one of many co-authors? 

Are the publications ground-breaking pieces of investigation that have been cited in other articles by fellow scholars, or did they receive little notice in the academic community? GoogleScholar will tell you. 

A significant article or book will have been cited in over 100 other scholarly publications; the academic gold standard is 500 citations.

Was the content of these works true research, or were they just opinion pieces or book reviews that did little to advance fundamental knowledge?

And finally, did the pieces appear in demanding journals, or only in second- or third-tier publications and presses, a sign that publishers of the first order did not deem them worthy?

Then comes some more advice to students regarding faculty:

Side note: Try this exercise with your own professors.

Al Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).