Over the last few weeks I have found myself answering this question numerous times for both potential students and their families and for members of the local community. At first blush it might appear to many that the sole purpose of a university is to teach students how to prepare for productive lives, careers, and engaged citizenship. Why, given this goal, would it matter if the faculty members at a given university are engaged in research? Indeed, some might logically argue, less time devoted to research would actually free up more time for teaching (after all, many believe, a faculty member’s job is a cushy one—teach a few classes, grade a few papers/exams, take a sabbatical every five years, enjoy summers off).
This is a line of thinking that I am very familiar with and it is one that misses an incredibly important point—faculty engaged in research are actually better classroom instructors and student mentors than those who are not. It is one thing to teach material from a text or the steps in a particular process, it is altogether another thing to do this from the perspective of one who helped to shape that text or who actually employs a given process on a regular basis. Students can find a good classroom experience at a great many universities. What they cannot find as readily, however, is a classroom experience where the instruction is informed by researchers who are actively involved in impactful, cutting edge research. This is exactly the type of classroom experience, however, that the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters offers its students. Our faculty members are not just talented teachers they are also engaged scholars who are making important contributions in their respective fields. They infuse the excitement they feel about their work, the work’s impact in moving a field forward, and their love of pedagogy together into a powerful combination that truly sets a CASL experience apart from that of other universities and colleges. It is this point that I emphasize time and time again. It is, in my mind, the CASL difference and it stands at the core of why a CASL education is so impactful for so many. Our students are challenged to think about new things, new perspectives, and new approaches to problems. They are invited to play a role in the academic dialog and, in many cases, to participate in that dialog as research partners. This prepares them to step confidently into the world beyond CASL (whether it be professional school, graduate school, or the world of work) and to meet that world with the tools that they need to be tremendously successful.
The Association of American Colleges and Universities publication, College Learning for the New Global Century, sums this up nicely:
The key to educational excellence lies not in the memorization of vast amounts of information, but rather in fostering habits of mind that enable students to continue their learning, engage new questions, and reach informed judgments.
These are traits that can only be instilled by a faculty deeply committed to the principle that good scholarship informs good teaching.
