Assessing the research and teaching performance of the mechanical engineering teaching staff at FEUP

This paper analyses the research and teaching performance of the teaching staff of the Integrated Master in Mechanical Engineering (MIEM) at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). Performance in the two strands of professional activity is measured by the number of publications authored by the individuals and their impact on the scientific community, and by the marks receive from the students through pedagogic questionnaires (PQs). The teaching staff includes all permanent elements involved in MIEM curricular units (CU), with the exception of those teaching just the CU Dissertation. The set has 74 professionals, with 62 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The staff bibliographic data are public and were collected from the Scopus database at the end of September, 2021. The PQs data are classified and were provided to the cycle of studies Board by FEUP” Sigarra administrative office. Data for all CUs were considered, with the exception of Dissertation, in a per semester basis, for the period 2016–2017 up to 2020–2021. The methodology consists of (i) processing and analyzing, separately, the datasets collected from Scopus and Sigarra to obtain statistical figures characterizing both areas of activity, and (ii) testing the research and teaching information to find out whether or not those data are correlated. The results show that the MIEM teaching staff has good publication rating, with (i) group h-index 117, (ii) 4 publications per capita in 2020, (iii) 23% owing more than 100 and 9% more than 200 works published, (iv) 22% having more than 1500 and 11% more than 3000 citations, and (iv) 19% holding h-index greater than 24 and 7% greater than 40. However, the distributions of research indicators are uneven, with (i) 50% of the staff contributing merely with 10% of the publications, (ii) 41% having less than 300 citations, and (iii) 43% holding h-index below 10. With respect to teaching, the MIEM staff is highly appreciated by the students. The average score over the period 2016–2020 is close to 5.3 points out of 7, with 19% receiving more than 6.0 and 51% more than 5.3. The scores are evenly distributed, with just 4% individuals rated below 4.0. Finally, it was found that the research and teaching data are not correlated (Pearson correlation coefficient less than 0.1), which strengthens the idea that all elements of the teaching staff can potentially be good on both components of activity, possibly, just needing appropriate stimuli and recognition.