Virginia Commonwealth University, an urban research university, must set excellence in teaching as its highest faculty priority and mean it. Everything the university stands for issues from teaching. VCU claims to hold faculty to high standards of teaching, research and service. These threads are inseparable, and indeed should be woven into the same cloth.
Excellent teaching requires study and reflection on the canon of the subject being taught.
Teachers of excellence challenge students to twist, break, chew-up, digest, reinvent and otherwise revise that canon. Real teaching knows what binds students' jeans, year after year, to the chairs in class. To teach this way, teachers must challenge the canon themselves. Thus, research issues from excellent teaching. A close relationship with students who are critical thinkers results in discovery and synthesis of new knowledge.