ABSTRACT
Teaching, research, and service served as the academic triumvirate in North American colleges and universities for most of the 20th century. The primary goals of our institutions of higher education are to generate, disseminate, and apply knowledge, and it is through faculty members’ activities as researchers, teachers, and service providers that institutions meet these goals. Although members of academia claim to value all three components of the triumvirate, it is clear that the components are not equal. The disparity between teaching and research has been the source of debate and contention since the early 1900s, resulting in the ironic situation that faculty members are hired to teach but rewarded for their research and scholarship (American Association of University Professors [AAUP], 1994; Amey, 1999; Boyer, 1990; Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, 1998; Cuban, 1999). There has been much discussion about the relative importance of teaching and research and which area should be given the most weight in promotion, tenure, and annual evaluations. However, it is only recently that academia has extended this discussion to the service component.
