New Brunswick, N.J. -- For Robert Kubey, a day at Rutgers University wouldn't be complete without hitting the books -- and the drums.

For two years, the associate professor of communication has joined with three other professors and a doctoral student in a band named, what else, The Professors.

Stephen Cooper, J, T-ski, Dr. Kubey, and Gary Radford play a mix of blues, rock, and heavy metal. J teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Dr. Radford at William Paterson University. The others are at Rutgers.

Many of their original songs relate to their day jobs: the efforts to win tenure, the loneliness of grant writing, the wearisome prevalence of political theory.

The Professors got their biggest gig in May, at the annual conference of the International Communication Association in Chicago. Last month, they played at a New York club.

Dr. Kubey says the band is surprisingly unacademic: "If you heard this stuff coming in on the car radio, you wouldn't say, 'They're a bunch of weenies.' You'd think, 'This is real music.'"

Copyright (c) 1997 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. http://chronicle.com Title:The Professors: Where Research Meets Riffs Published: 97/07/03 [reproduced with permission]