Great researcher ... good teacher?

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the research productivity and teaching effectiveness of baccalaureate nurse educators. This was a nonexperimental, correlational, retrospective study. Sixty baccalaureate nurse educators completed a questionnaire that assessed their research productivity and administered a teaching effectiveness questionnaire to all students in their classes in a given week. No relationship of significance was found between faculty research productivity and teaching effectiveness. Faculty at research institutions were found to be significantly higher research producers than faculty at either comprehensive or liberal arts institutions. No significant difference was found in the teaching effectiveness between faculty employed at research, comprehensive, or liberal arts institutions. Recommendations included (1) broadening the definition of research to include the scholarship of integration, discovery, application, and teaching; (2) implementation of two career tracks for faculty in higher education, with different reward structures for each; and (3) allowing the academic department as opposed to individual faculty to be the basic unit of evaluation.