“Ask a question and you are a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you are a fool for the rest of your life,” goes a Chinese proverb.
“The important thing in life,” Einstein reminds us, “is not to stop questioning.”
This is the reason why there are teachers, whose paramount duty is to ask questions–and attempt to answer them. And likewise to teach and encourage their students to ask questions and to seek for answers to their questions.
The tasks of higher education faculty members fall into three overlapping areas: teaching, research, and service (institutional and public)—three pillars that buttress the vision, mission and programs of colleges and universities. Among these three, research is said to be a “university’s whole raison d’entre.”
The term research is used to mean “…activities by the faculty that advance knowledge and the arts…Humanistic scholarship, scientific research in natural and social sciences, philosophical and religious inquiry, social criticism, public-policy analysis, and cultivation of literature and fine arts…are included. In addition to the discovery of new knowledge or creation of art, dissemination is a necessary part of research.” [John A. Centra, 1993].
At Foundation University, research undertaking is assigned a maximum of ten percent (10%) in the faculty “Evaluation of Teaching Performance and Service,” under the heading of “Outstanding Achievement” which “…covers the following: completed research, published or unpublished; demonstration of creativity, initiative, or innovativeness through the development of new or superior work procedures, methods, inventions and devices with proof of benefits (economy in time, cost and effort)…” [Faculty Manual, pages 41 and 45, 2004].
Thus the term research, for purposes of this Manual, shall include all those categories of activities enumerated in the above two preceding paragraphs. In pursuing these activities, the faculty, as professional teachers, fulfill their roles as question-posers and answer-seekers.
The intention in putting out this Manual is not to sustain the “professional paradox…where traditionally, college professors were hired to teach, but were rewarded for research…” (Seldin, 1993), but to provide the bases for the implementation and evaluation of research activities. Recognizing that “teaching may still be in second place in the race with research, and that the gap is slowly closing…” FU will continue to emphasize the primacy of teaching and reward outstanding faculty teaching in consonance with the current and “insistent viewpoint that teaching is actually an expression of scholarship, that scholarship does not confine itself to the cutting edge of research…”
The publication of this Manual will insure a balanced treatment of research and teaching as both equally important in fulfilling FU’s vision and mission in its quest for “excellence in mind, body and character, and the pursuit of truth, justice and freedom.”
As a community of scholars in which teaching and research are bound together inseparably in a common core of scholarly endeavor, it is expected that all tenured faculty members should be engaged in research activity.
FU strives for and expects the highest standard of scholarly integrity from its researchers, and shall maintain freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression, in all its research activities, as it protects the academic freedom of its researchers.
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“Always the more beautiful answer who ask the more beautiful question.” E.E. Cummings |
