Section 2: Faculty Rights and Responsibilities

2.3 Responsibilities

2.3.1 Duties

Faculty members are expected to demonstrate a commitment to and competence in teaching, scholarship, and service activities. In a university community, teaching, scholarship, and service are communal responsibilities. However, variation naturally occurs among departments and among faculty members within departments as to the balance among these activities.

It is important to emphasize that teaching, scholarship, and service are interrelated, and that some activities may span more than one area.

2.3.1.1 Teaching/Instruction

Faculty members are responsible for teaching effectively by employing useful methods and approaches that facilitate student learning. It encompasses classroom instruction, course development, mentoring students in academic projects including dissertations, testing, grading, and the professional development of the faculty member as a teacher. Mentoring students at all levels is an important aspect of teaching; creative and effective use of innovative teaching methods and curricular innovations is encouraged.

2.3.1.2 Scholarship

As a research university, faculty members are responsible for engaging in scholarship subject to their appointment. Scholarship is a discipline-based, multidisciplinary activity that advances knowledge and learning by producing new ideas and understanding. Scholarly contributions include peer-evaluated, discipline-appropriate works such as books, articles, chapters, films, paintings, performances, and choreographic or theatrical design. As a research university, many units expect faculty in certain disciplines to secure funding where appropriate for their scholarly endeavors through organizations and disciplinary opportunities.

Scholarship can be divided into five sub-categories: application, creative activity, inquiry, integration, and the scholarship of teaching. Each department, considering its relevant discipline or disciplines, may emphasize contributions in some subcategories more than others, as described in its mission statement and other relevant departmental documents. Individual faculty are not expected to contribute to all five subcategories of scholarship. Some overlap in the meaning of the five subcategories is inevitable, and a particular scholarly contribution may fall under more than one subcategory.

These subcategories are:

Engaged scholarship is the scholarship of application. It adds to existing knowledge in the process of applying intellectual expertise to collaborative problem-solving with urban, regional, state, national and/or global communities and results in a written work shared with others in the discipline or field of study. Engaged scholarship conceptualizes "community groups" as all those outside of academe and requires shared authority at all stages of the research process from defining the research problem, choosing theoretical and methodological approaches, conducting the research, developing the final product(s), to participating in peer evaluation.
Creative activity should be fully accepted as scholarship in departments where such work is appropriate to both professional specialization and teaching. It includes, but is not limited to, choreography and dance performance; creative writing; direction and design of plays; exhibitions of visual arts such as paintings, sculpture, and photography; direction of film and video; and musical composition and performance.
Inquiry involves rigorous investigation aimed at the discovery of new knowledge within one's own discipline or area of study; it often serves as the basis for other forms of scholarship and may result in scholarly publications, funded research, and presentations at professional meetings.
Integration makes meaningful connections between previously unrelated topics, facts, or observations, such as cross-disciplinary synthesis or an integrative framework within a discipline that results in a publication or presentation in a suitable forum.
The scholarship of teaching focuses on transforming and extending knowledge about pedagogy, including appropriate textbooks or educational articles in one's own discipline. Innovative contributions to teaching, if published or presented in a peer-reviewed forum, also constitute scholarship of teaching.

2.3.1.3 Service

2.3.2 Professional and Ethical Conduct

Within the university, faculty members are expected to treat colleagues, staff, and students with respect and fairness. Faculty should conduct themselves professionally by listening to the views of others, working constructively as members of the diverse academic community, and safeguarding the recognition of achievements of others, including those in subordinate positions. Faculty are expected have integrity in the discharge of their duties as educators, scholars, colleagues, members of the university community and members of the greater community as described in Appendix C, the Faculty Code of Conduct.

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