Education vs Research: this distinction came up in our Knowledge Engineering meetup this morning. Research advances the frontier of a discipline, or call it a subculture. Education is about catching people up, getting them to the frontier in the first place.
Not that getting to the front has to be a long trip. Low hanging fruit in abundance is a characteristic of many of budding ecosystem. But then you want to be sufficiently trained when you get there.
And that’s the pitfall: in the mad dash for fame and glory, for one’s original research, the commitment to teach, to educate, and thereby pass the torch, gets overlooked. How many are willing to forego mining for gold in order to teach mining?
In my First Person Physics endeavor, which gained me entry to the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), I got to know some of these education-focused pros, such as Dr. Bob Fuller, who considered Dr. Robert Karplus to be one of his mentors.
Princeton University is supposed to focus on Education over Research in being more about giving undergrads a fast track vs trying to make a name for oneself by heading a pack of grads and postdocs.
