by Dr. Nicholas M. Creary

According to U.S. News' definitions, being number 90 makes Marquette a mid-level, second-tier national university. Being number 90 means Marquette can't claim to be "one of the top four or five Catholic colleges" in the United States, and barely makes the top five Jesuit schools. More importantly, since Marquette never wants to compare itself with Notre Dame, Georgetown or Boston College (top three Catholic schools), we should be most concerned that we have fallen behind St. Louis University ( number 81) and are not that far ahead of Loyola Chicago (number 111), to which I frequently hear comparisons made. Given the recent financial and administrative crises that Loyola has experienced, we rest on our lead at our own peril.

I've heard a lot of talk recently about transforming Marquette from a good to a great university. From a faculty perspective, I will take just one facet of a university's mission: teaching load. Great universities require at most a 2-2 teaching load of their faculty (i.e. they only have to teach two classes per semester).

I take an example from fellow Jesuit institution, the University of San Francisco (tied with Loyola and Catholic University at no.111). Like Marquette students, students at USF need 128 credits to graduate, but only have to take 32 classes: i.e., they take four four-credit classes per semester, of which 11 (or 44 credits) are core curriculum requirements. Consequently, all faculty have a 2-2 teaching load. Such an arrangement frees faculty time for research, obviates the need for students to take 17-credit overloads (or more) and allows faculty and students to explore a given course's content in greater depth.

Marquette takes great pride in its "scholar-teacher" model: i.e. faculty are hired to teach as well as conduct research in their given fields of study. This ensures undergraduate students will take classes that are taught by the professors, not graduate students receiving training from the professors. And that is a good thing. However, there is a dangerous assumption in calling this the "scholar-teacher" model, and that is the implicit presumption that scholars at larger or more prestigious schools (or the top 50 first-tier national universities in U.S. News' terminology) don't necessarily teach.

The old adage "publish or perish" is a constant in higher education (hence the need for faculty to conduct research). In this respect, Marquette's expectations are no less than those of Notre Dame's or Georgetown's. The difference is that those schools give their faculty – who also teach – the time and resources to conduct research, write it and publish it.

This is not to say that Marquette doesn't provide any support for faculty research. The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs is one of the best resources we have on campus. But if the scholar's mission is to roll back the frontiers of ignorance through research and teaching, then – given the time and effort required to develop new and effective courses, prepare lectures and assignments for them and assess students' performance (enrollment caps are another issue) – lightening our teaching load will allow us to be more reflective and productive scholars.

So I put to those who would make Marquette great: What will it take to guarantee a 2-2 teaching load for every faculty member? I can think of two ways to do this: Either lower the student-faculty ratio by increasing the number of faculty offering classes and/or decreasing the number of students at Marquette, which is unlikely given that tuition accounts for over 60 percent of the university's annual operating revenues; or, like USF, reduce the number of courses required of students and offered by faculty, which is also unlikely given recent implementation of the new core curriculum and that few people will have the desire to engage in another round of such discussions.

This objective – which is only one facet of academic greatness – will require greater imagination and creativity (and financial endowment) than Marquette has shown thus far.

Creary is a faculty member in the history department and is currently on leave conducting research in South Africa.