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.

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:

1. 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. 
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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.

Service includes service to the university, service to the profession, and outreach to the community. These functions may overlap in some instances.

All faculty members will perform basic citizenship service within the university. This includes, but is not limited to, serving on departmental committees, advising students, and participating in college and university committees. Academic advising of students is an important aspect of the university citizenship and will be considered in faculty evaluations.

Some faculty members may accept more extensive citizenship functions, such as a leadership role in the Faculty Senate, membership on a specially appointed task force, advisor to a university-wide student organization, and membership on a university search committee.

Service to the profession includes association leadership, journal editorships, article and grant proposal review, guest lecturing on other campuses, and other appropriate activities.

Outreach, or service to the community, primarily involves sharing professional expertise with the wider community and should directly support the goals and mission of the university. Under very rare circumstances, outreach may include non-professionally related activities outside the university. Some departments and disciplines, given the nature of their professional work, will be more involved in outreach than will other departments and disciplines. Community outreach is particularly valuable for an urban institution.