We will raise the bar of performance and broaden the base of support that makes exceptional performance possible in these areas.

Teaching. It is the faculty—not the library, not students, not the endowment—that is the rich, irreplaceable resource of the university, sine qua non. It is their passionate search for truth and understanding, with and for students, that is the central focus of university life, whether students are eager young learners or seasoned academic colleagues. Therefore, excellent teaching must be the paramount intellectual activity at AU. If we are to enhance the total experience of our students, we will need to enlarge the scope and impact of teaching both within and outside classroom settings. Therefore, we will increase support for new modes of teaching and more extensive pedagogical relations between faculty in different disciplines, departments, and schools. Faculty will be rewarded for inspired, effective teaching in all its forms. The provost will lead an effort to develop new ways to encourage, identify, and reward such teaching.

Research. Just as there are different modes of teaching, there are different modes of research. Although the conventional notion of research is tied only to publications, our model of research will be broadened to include scholarly initiatives that integrate the fruits of research more directly and creatively into the life of the campus. All faculty must fulfill a professional obligation to be widely read, conversant with a broad scope of current knowledge from different sources, and able to demonstrate the outcome of that knowledge among their peers, whether in significant publications or in other high-quality forms. Our faculty reward system should take account of both kinds of research and their demonstrated impact on enhanced student learning. A key component of this effort will be the continued upgrading of the quality of the University Library. The hard work of establishing a consistent standard of evidence for new forms of research will need to be developed by the faculty, and the provost will work with a special project team to develop such standards. At the same time, we will increase support for gifted researchers whose research consistently conveys truly significant new insights and appears in influential publications. In order to spur the development of both kinds of research, I am committing $500,000 to establish a fund for Presidential Research Fellowships for individual faculty to increase their scholarly activities. Three fellows will be selected competitively each year to receive significant support to complete high-level research in published form, and three will be selected to receive support to complete research that will be presented in other forms. This fund will be targeted for growth in our capital campaign.

Service. The requirement of faculty service cannot be allowed to languish as an ill-defined and seemingly inconsequential component of the teaching-research-service triad. The ideal of service within and on behalf of the university will now be defined primarily as service to students, which must be demonstrated through sustained, formal and informal contacts that go beyond and augment the classroom experience. By “contacts” I mean personal relationships in which students are educated not only by the discipline of a field of study but also by the intangible benefits of apprenticeship and support that come only through direct relations with academic mentors in a variety of settings. The task of creating, coordinating, and evaluating such settings must be developed collectively, and I am asking the provost and the vice president of student services to convene a project team to address this issue .