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26 | JADE ARTICLE #2 | 27 ANGELO LEONE ET AL. • • The teacher’s research is also beneficial when presented and opened to challenges from students. This could, in turn, stimulate new research directions. Teaching could be a recruitment platform for attracting students with a passion for research. Such integration is especially important in the science and engineering fields where students form the backbone of the research undertaken. E) Teaching and research synergy at student level Synergy at the level of students exists both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. At the postgraduate level, the synergy is very rich as the learner is in a transition towards the status of a qualified researcher. However, at the undergraduate level, the student participation in research is more limited and, therefore, the synergy is at a lower level, being done in principle with the main purpose to train students to become independent learners. The most used forms of involvement are students’ participation in research events (e.g. seminars, lectures, conferences and colloquia) and students are taught postgraduate involvement in staff research; However, some authors, like Jenkins, consider that it would be a mistake to expect students to engage too early in research (Jenkins et al, 2007). The assumption that teaching diminishes research quality is reflected widely in graduate programs in the sciences, says Mark R. Connolly, a researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who commented on Feldon’s findings (Feldon et al, 2011). Actually, science-faculty members are rewarded largely on the basis of their research, notes Mr. Connolly. That reality naturally leads faculty members to place more value on time spent advising their graduate students on research than on teaching. It is Important to note that many teaching and learning activities may incorporate one or more of the 4 categories. Discussion A good balance between the 2 entities should be sought in the competency based USA medical school teaching. For the past 6-7 years, may academicians and academic leaders felt the necessity of synergism between teaching and research among medical school faculty members. The usual trend was to hire the faculty members TEACHING AND RESEARCH SYNERGY IN A COMPETENCY BASED EDUCATION ERA that have the large research grants, and whose salary was basically paid through the research grants. Such faculty members did not invest much in teaching; they wanted the least involvement in teaching, giving priority to research, to publications, and having the grant renewed. After reviewing the situation, academic leaders opted to create a new faculty tract for teaching faculties, supported completely by school budget and trained for teaching and medical education. For these teachers, research was not considered as a priority and a measured element in their promotion, while teaching was highly valued, periodically assessed, and evaluated. This trend attracted a large number of faculties in the medical schools to be devoted to teaching with partial commitment to research. While there are many differences between the disciplines, the greatest convergence seems to occur when we consider the goal of student learning in higher education (Healey, 2005; Hay, 2010). Rather than keeping research and teaching separate, Barnett (1997) and others advocated that undergraduate teaching should parallel research. Relating the learning of the methods used to carry out research in their discipline to inquiry-based or research-led learning, in particular courses could bring benefits for both students and academics. Students would become involved in the processes and language of inquiry at a much earlier stage than now, and staff could support student engagement applying the skills and knowledge that make them distinctive in their fields. In an effort to strengthen research-teaching-scholarship relationship, one window of opportunity or a starting point that might be open for both teachers and researchers, might be the conceptualization or review of priority curriculum selected from the early undergraduate years. Such curricular modifications could improve learning design developments, which could in turn involve both research informed content as well as research-led learning, and might lead to new “ways of doing things”, as Elton suggested. They could also go further to “doing things no one else is doing” or even “doing things that otherwise can’t be done (Smith, 2002). The re-emphasis of undergraduate education is probably the most pressing issue that universities must face in the next decade. The challenge is to demonstrate that the learning and research environments, at the undergraduate level, are not competitive but complementary (Piper, 2001). The teaching literature suggests that, if there is to be a solution to the research-teaching problem then there must be radical