These services can provide a mechanism for enriching the professional experience of faculty and thereby broadening their background for instruction and research activities at Rice. The University also has a responsibility to help in the transformation of results of research into products, services, and processes that might become available in the marketplace. In many instances, the best means of effecting such a transfer requires active participation of researchers as advisors or consultants.
Faculty members deserve to be compensated for their works, ideas, and efforts in the process.
External activities of this type must not interfere with the principal activities of faculty members related to preparing courses, teaching, counseling students, serving on committee and administrative assignments, conducting research, publishing scholarly work, or producing other creative work. Experience indicates that these activities are best carried out in an environment that encourages the free flow of ideas between participants and preserves academic freedom. However, this free exchange may be understandably detrimental to the interest of a private enterprise, thus resulting in a potential conflict of either type. It is the responsibility of deans, in consultation with their department chairs, to maintain a proper balance of University and outside activities of faculty members in their various schools. The primacy of the students educational interests.