Faculty match students' individual learning styles by employing a multi-modal learning environment. Faculty help students to discover ways of learning and provide assistance to students as they develop their educational plans. Excellent faculty stimulate intellectual curiosity. They develop challenging presentations and activities while maintaining an appropriate level of complexity. Faculty create an interactive learning environment in which students are active not passive learners.
Excellent faculty encourage independent thinking.
Students develop an independence in acquiring, analyzing and accessing knowledge in the process of assuming more responsibility for their own learning. The faculty member's role becomes less of a communicator of information and more that of a mentor who guides students in the pursuit of learning. These outstanding faculty understand that students must develop independent thinking in order to make the most productive use of their talents and abilities. Excellent faculty encourage students to be analytical listeners. To develop their students' intellectual curiosity, they provide opportunities for students to analyze carefully what they hear.