The Faculty is the caretaker of the university. It is responsible for seeing that the university lives up to its mission and does a better and better job at meeting its goals. Many outside the university community do not have an appreciation for the complex multi-faceted job that members of the faculty have dedicated themselves to undertake.
Faculty are not simply talking heads delivering sermons on the topic of the day. They must be engaged in scholarship as well as teaching. Scholarship applies to curriculum design, namely, the construction of an integrated learning process that will produce a responsible, well-educated, and skillful citizenry. Scholarship also applies to the discovery process and the dissemination of the lessons learned and the knowledge gained. Faculty don't just lecture: they also mentor: i.e., they work with undergraduate and graduate students to transmit the process of research and learning and the ethical principles that guide them.
Faculty are entrepreneurs who must constantly sell their ideas to others in order to garner the resources necessary to accomplish their goals. They are constantly measured against their peers in the competition for external as well as internal research funding and resources. The intense competition that exists within the academic marketplace is not always understood or appreciated by those outside the university. The funds and resources generated by these small enterprises throughout the campuses are used to create, improve, and maintain the university's infrastructure that enables it to accomplish much of the mission described above.
Faculty are managers who share in the governance of their disciplines and their university. They serve on editorial boards, review boards, program committees, standards bodies, accreditation panels, etc. to review their peers' activities and ensure that high standards are met. They serve on internal departmental, college, and university committees that set the direction of the institution and its programs as well as its own standards. These efforts are indispensable for maintaining quality in all the activities of the university.
Faculty are planners who must constantly look to the long-term future of education and discovery. It is their responsibility not to be captives of the short-term focus of the marketplace. They must insulate the academic enterprise from the fads and inefficiencies of the market and focus their limited energies and resources on the research and teaching enterprise. Universities are sometimes criticized as functioning only for knowledge's sake and being divorced from the real world. In reality, the university has the difficult task of ensuring that society will have the knowledge to deal effectively with situations we have no way of foreseeing. Therefore, faculty must also be vigilant to opportunities that arise at the boundaries between disciplines. Interdisciplinary studies are the engine of university evolution that generate new approaches and new disciplines of inquiry.
Faculty are community resources who often volunteer their knowledge and experience to helping solve many problems in our society. They give of their time and energy and bring back to the university community a perspective that leads to new lines of inquiry. When they involve their students in the service enterprise, they also serve to educate our future leaders about how they can make a difference.
Faculty are educators not only of UW students, but of the general public as well. They must publicize their research contributions and those of their students and interpret them in the context of the mission of the university. They must not only be available to discuss their work and the university's mission with the public: they must actively seek out opportunities to do so.
Finally, faculty are role models for their students. By their example, they set the standards of ethics and citizenship that will not only encourage students to become responsible members of society, but also inspire some of them to dedicate their careers to improving the lives of others.
