We identify three reasons for encouraging faculty members at Calvin College to be engaged in scholarship. The first goal of scholarship is to increase our knowledge of God's creation, and in so doing increase our knowledge of God. Different computer science faculty will naturally have different scholarly interests, with some faculty being more interested in the engineering side of the discipline, and others being more interested in its mathematical side. Maintaining such diversity of faculty interests is important to a healthy department, and should be a goal in faculty recruitment. A second goal of scholarship is professional development.
Computer science is a discipline dependent on rapidly changing technology.
Moreover, the rate of change seems to be increasing, making it difficult to keep abreast of the changes. However, it is imperative that computer science faculty do so, for a variety of reasons. One reason is that it renews their enthusiasm for the discipline through the joy of making fresh discoveries. Another reason is that it helps faculty members keep their classes up to date by incorporating appropriate new developments and technologies. Yet another reason is that faculty members actively working in a wide variety of areas demonstrate the breadth of computer science.