But at the School of Education, learning is not defined by the classroom clock. After class, discussions often spill out into the hallway and resurface in a faculty office or over a cup of coffee in a campus bistro. This is the pattern that we follow at the Curry School. Faculty and students forge relationships grounded in the classroom that embrace students' professional aspirations and careers. Students frequently co-teach courses with faculty members, collaborate on research, and publish work with them.
Students also share in the governance of the school.
In short, our faculty are not merely teachers. They are advisors, mentors, colleagues, and friends. The educational leaders of the twenty-first century will be those with the experience, skills, and confidence to take on the daunting, but nonetheless exciting, task of reimagining education to meet the demands of the future. But of course, the exact image of this future remains unknowable to us, a circumstance Jefferson acknowledged when he set forth his ideas about the University of Virginia. They will be more advanced than we are in science and in useful arts, and will know best what will suit the circumstances of their day.