Service, Teaching, and Research: Old Elements in a New Academic Melting Pot
Among the colleges and universities of this country there may be universal agreement about little, but it is clear that the blessed trinity of academe has three parts: teaching, service, and research and, paraphrasing St. Paul, the greatest of these is research. The uniformity of agreement on these points is striking; not only in the fact that virtually every academic understands that there are three elements and what these are, but also in terms of which are more and which less important. The exact ratio of significance may vary: at some institutions faculty promotion decisions are made on the strengths of these three virtues within a system which allows a maximum of 40 percent for research, 40 percent for teaching, and 20 percent for service; at others the system is less quantitatively defined. At any rate, it is quite clear that professors must not be one-dimensional persons. Additionally, this is especially true if that one dimension would be service and, in many institutions, nearly as true if that dimension would be teaching; clearly we are dealing with a hierarchy of virtues. Most junior faculty being reviewed for promotion know that their chances of success may be accurately