Third, faculty in research universities have special opportunities and responsibilities to advance knowledge, understanding, creative expression and professional practice. This is not to say that faculty in other sorts of colleges and universities do not also make important contributions to knowledge and practice. It is to say that in a research university it is an essential feature of our mission and expectation for faculty. Ordinarily we have taken this assumption to apply to the research expectations of faculty. Rarely do we explore its implications for the role of teaching in a research university.
Teaching is a disciplinary practice.
It is as essential to the vitality and future of a discipline as scholarship, research and creative expression. Excellent teachers in research universities have a responsibility to advance and improve the practice of teaching. Again, this is not to say that teachers at other sorts of institutions do not have this responsibility. A research university should make advancing teaching as essential to our institutional mission as advancing research. We sometimes forget that 'publish' simply means 'make public,' and the reason it is prized is that it is only through making public that we can influence knowledge, understanding and practice.