Lecturer
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Lecturer is a term of academic rank. In the United Kingdom lecturer is the name given to those who teach in their first permanent university position. That is, lecturers are academics early in their careers, who lead research groups and supervise postgraduate students as well as lecture courses. However, in the United States, Canada, and other countries influenced by their educational systems, the term is used differently.
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[edit] United Kingdom
[edit] Academic usage
Lecturers in most UK universities hold (for the most part permanent) positions in a university which involve carrying out both teaching and research. The term was originally used in contrast to Professor, which was an extremely prestigious and high ranking position typically held by only one or a very few in a department, and Readers. Neither position traditionally required any teaching, although normally professors or readers would do so at least occasionally by choice.
Currently in most Universities in the UK all of these positions require teaching. However, a professor is still the most prestigious and highly paid position, and is normally achieved as a promotion after a readership. The promotion to reader requires external letters of recommendation (as does a professor, similar to US tenure), a strong publication record and (often) a strong record of gaining research funding. Traditionally, a senior lectureship was theoretically equivalent to a readership and demanded the same salary, but reflected prowess in teaching or administration rather than research, and was far less likely to lead directly to promotion to professor. However, in recent years a Senior Lecturer has also had to demonstrate strong research prowess, as well as sound teaching and administrative skills. Some consider Senior Lecturers as a rank between Lecturers and Readers in many universities, whether their promotion was achieved through teaching or research, and they will normally be promoted to Readerships before reaching Professorships. Senior Lecturers and Readers, however, remain on the same payscale and in many departments still are comparatively senior staff.
Post 1992 also known as "New" British universities (that is, universities that were until recently termed polytechnics) have a slightly different naming scheme than that just described in which the grades are Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Principal Lecturer, with the latter corresponding to Senior Lecturer in the pre-1992 institutions. Also, a few UK universities have recently begun using the Australian terminology
The UK has largely given up the tenure system[citation needed]. This means on the one hand that lecturers have permanent positions as soon as they pass a probation (which normally requires no more than three years and is much less arduous than tenure), but on the other that a University can decide to make an entire department redundant (e.g. Exeter University 1990 and 2005), laying off even senior academic staff such as professors. UK academics can spend their entire careers as Senior Lecturers or below.
Most lecturers in the UK have a doctorate (Ph.D., DPhil etc.). In many fields this is now a prerequisite of the job, though historically this was not the case --- even senior academic positions such as readerships could be held on the basis of research merit alone without formal doctoral qualification[1]
In the UK, in some fields, before a candidate is appointed to a lectureship, it is often the case that candidates will spend some time as a postdoctoral researcher. However, some universities (e.g. the University of Aberdeen) also have an alternative path whereby staff who spend their time doing mostly teaching and administration are known as Teaching Fellows. These individuals usually have the same rank and status as a Lecturer, but their salaries may start off at a slightly lower level. In this career structure, Teaching Fellows may be promoted to the rank of Senior Teaching Fellow, which carries the same salary, rank and status as the traditional Senior Lecturer/Reader position. Senior Teaching Fellows may also eventually reach the rank of Professor. Teaching Fellows under this system are not primarily employed to do research, but may do so for a small fraction of their time if they wish and if it does not interfere with their teaching and administrative duties. This research may relate to the original discipline in which they completed their higher degrees or it may be pedagogic (e.g. educationally-related) in nature.
In the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge it is important to distinguish between University Lecturers, who hold a position equivalent to lecturers in other UK universities, and college lecturers. Lectureships at the College level are typically part-time, temporary positions involving teaching duties alone; usually their holders are graduate students or have recently completed a PhD. Those who hold permanent positions in Colleges are Fellows, a position which is usually combined with a University Lectureship, Readership or Professorship. Colleges also appoint Junior Research Fellows, whose position is full-time but limited in tenure (typically three years) and non-renewable.
[edit] Ecclesiastical usage
A lecturer is typically an assistant curate serving in a Church of England parish. It is an historic title which has fallen out of regular use, but several churches in the UK still have clergy with the ancient title Lecturer including many London churches, St. Mary's Church, Nottingham and Carlisle Cathedral.
[edit] United States and Canada
Many American universities have the position of lecturer, whose responsibility is only undergraduate education, especially for introductory/survey courses that attract large groups of students. In contrast, U.S. professors have permanent or tenure-track positions which include responsibility for research. The most common U.S. terminology for these non-tenure track academic positions is "Instructor," or "Adjunct Professor". However, this non-British usage of the term "lecturer" is increasingly coming in to use (e.g. at Harvard, Stanford and MIT), creating confusion on the term's meaning. Many U.S. lecturers or adjuncts are themselves graduate students and may be taking courses and working towards Ph.D. dissertation. Some have already completed the Ph.D. but do not yet have a tenured position as a professor. A full-time lecturing position in North America (in contrast to part-time adjuncts performed during a Ph.D) usually involves courses with heavy teaching and/or marking loads and does not normally allow for time to do research. Such positions are also not normally permanent and therefore do not allow for hiring or formally advising other research group members or graduate students.
Academics desiring a position as junior faculty might choose to first work as lecturers in order to secure the teaching experience required to qualify them for a tenure-track position. The position is generally less prestigious than the entry-level assistant professorship (which is the equivalent of a UK lecturer). The salary is considerably lower than a U.S. professorship, and tenure is generally impossible. U.S. lecturing may not require a doctoral degree, depending on the university (see the article, "professor"), though a Master's degree (or at least 18 hours of graduate level work in a particular field) usually is required.
Many U.S. universities are currently hiring more part-time and full-time lecturers to replace full professors who die or retire. Using lecturers to teach an increasing number of courses is viewed as a cost-saving measure by some university administrations, or as a means of reducing teaching load on professors.
It should be noted, however, that the title is sometimes, paradoxically, used in just the opposite sense: in some institutions, a "lecturer" is actually a higher rank than full professor, a sort of "grand old man" of the college or university: Amherst College, for instance, long listed Henry Steele Commager as "lecturer," the only one in the college, placing him in a symbolic position of seniormost member of the faculty.
In some schools "lecturer" is a temporary post for visiting academic celebrities -- a famous writer may be made a "lecturer" for a term or a year, for instance, teaching a course and leading a lecture series, without regard to their academic degrees.
[edit] Other countries
In other countries, usage of lecturer may vary unpredictably. For example, in Indonesia, the term lektor is used for five different fairly senior research and teaching positions approximately equivalent to the US associate professor, while in Poland lektor is a term used for a teaching-only position, generally for teaching foreign languages. In France, the term lecteur is the name of the lower category of teaching in university and other higher-level education structures, mostly in literary and foreign languages courses. Samuel Beckett's first job in Paris was as lecteur of English at the École Normale Supérieure.
In German speaking countries, the term Lektor historically denoted a teaching position below a professor, primarily responsible for delivering and organising lectures. The contemporary equivalent is called Dozent or Hochschuldozent. Nowadays, the German term Lektor only exists at philology or modern language departments at Germany speaking Universities, for positions that primarily involve teaching a foreign language.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ For example David Fowler retired as a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Warwick in 1990 without a doctorate . See obituary in The Independent].
