^I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but yes. Prominent professors at big research universities are not rewarded for good undergraduate teaching - their entire career structure is dependent upon research. Most of the most successful ones minimize the time and energy they spend on preparing for classes so they can write grants and papers.
That said, some of them still manage to be really great teachers despite this. And research expertise can influence undergraduate teaching - your research findings feed into the content that you prepare, so you can tell students where research has extended the findings in the book or talk about new, innovative research that builds upon foundational principles they are learning about. But most college professors do research of some type, including liberal arts professors and those at your regional public universities. Even a lot of community college professors have small research agendas or scholarship.
Anyway, there are other things to assess in academic quality - the rigor of the classes, the amount of critical thinking and writing required across the curriculum, number of classes with smaller numbers ( < 30, especially in upper-level classes - you want some discussion seminars), quality of undergrad teaching (harder to assess), those types of things.