Policy Manual

Faculty enable the university to fulfill its institutional mission through their performance in three sometimes overlapping domains: teaching, scholarship, and service (see I-2.1 University of Iowa Purpose and Mission). The subsections below provide guidance and examples that colleges can draw upon to recognize and categorize faculty work commonly associated with each domain. Although the efforts of each faculty member are not distributed evenly or identically among these various roles, all faculty contribute to the shared goal of maintaining the university’s status as a top-tier comprehensive public institution of higher education. 

1. Teaching. Teaching is work performed by faculty to inform, assist, and inspire students in their learning. Teaching includes the preparation and updating of course materials, syllabi, lectures, discussion topics, assignments, and examinations, and may occur in the classroom and laboratory, in clinical settings, or online. Faculty also meet with their students outside of class or clinic, evaluate and provide feedback on student work, write and submit letters of recommendation, mentor undergraduate, graduate, and/or professional students, serve on master's- and doctoral-level comprehensive examination and thesis committees, train and supervise teaching assistants, and participate in diverse initiatives to improve instruction.
2. Scholarship. Scholarship is work performed by faculty that contributes to the expansion of knowledge and/or creative achievements in their disciplines. Inclusive of artistic as well as analytic and research-intensive endeavors, scholarship encompasses activities that can take place in various settings, such as laboratories, libraries, studios, offices, and in the field. Faculty work both independently and with collaborators, including undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Faculty also prepare and submit proposals to obtain support for their projects, and they share the results in venues ranging from professional meetings, scholarly journals, and academic books to concert halls, podcasts, and novels.
3. Service. Service is work performed by faculty outside the domains of teaching and scholarship to support the university and to contribute, as representatives of the institution possessed of relevant expertise, to the surrounding community, their disciplines, and the broader society. Faculty provide administrative work for their programs, departments, colleges, and the university, for instance by serving on collegiate committees and in important departmental administrative positions such as Director of Undergraduate or Graduate Studies. In addition, faculty care for patients in health care settings, hold offices in professional organizations, and help organize professional meetings, serve as peer reviewers for scholarly journals, offer advice and input to corporate and government funding agencies, and provide educational outreach programs for various constituencies.