A smart colleague of mine, James Bailey, argues that teaching excellence and research excellence are uncorrelated. Specifically, he cites work that shows that research productivity is not a good predictor of teaching evaluations or peer review. That doesn't particularly surprise me. But I do think there is both reason behind and evidence for the idea that a research environment produces a richer intellectual environment for students.
For starters, those who do research are being kept honest on a regular basis. When one sends a paper off to be refereed or presents a paper at a conference, he is exposing himself to the possibility of getting beaten up intellectually. But if one's ideas can survive scrutiny, and have foundation in evidence (there I am, going all positivist on you), then one is probably reasonably well qualified to teach.
Second, research almost forces one to keep current. I am not saying that everyone needs to print a refereed paper every year--but one every five years is not unreasonable, and would help people stay current (BTW, my mother was an English professor at a "comprehensive" teaching university, and she still managed to crank out an article every now and then. She wasn't particularly rewarded for doing so, it was just important to her.)
Third, I don't think it is an accident that the greatest University in England was home to Newton and Keynes, among others; nor is it an accident that MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, etc. attract the best motivated and brightest students from all over the world.
So I am curious about what the (likely small number of) people who look at this blog think. Do (did) they get a better classroom experience from faculty who produce research. Or at least from those that produce well-known research?
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