ABSTRACT
University faculty are evaluated on three key dimensions of performance: research, teaching, and service. This chapter discusses issues related to service, that is, the part of a person's job that is not about research publication or teaching. Larger and wealthier academic institutions may have resources to contract out many administrative obligations to non-faculty employees. But whether contracted out or retained within the faculty, the jobs need doing. To choose an academic career is, to some substantial extent, to choose a life devoted to the generation, presentation, and publication of new knowledge. Many academics are good only at that. A newly-minted assistant professor should, for example, serve on a department- or college-level committee charged with making recommendations about the granting of tenure. It strikes people as an unconventional but quite effective way to acquaint junior faculty with research, teaching, and service norms of the institution.
