Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Volume 10, Number 2

An overriding quality of being a college or university faculty member is to be engaged in many areas: with the discipline, the campus, the department, and students. Yet engagement has multiple layers of meanings. It can be as simple as "appointment," "meeting," or "date." In a more romantic sense, it can be defined as "rendezvous." And, at its most complex, engagement can mean "commitment." How faculty members allot their time can determine the depth of their engagement in their different responsibilities--and the quality of the results. Best of all, interaction among these areas of responsibility can be used to further the learning of the next generation of scholars: our students. By bringing their enthusiasm for their subject into the learning environment, professors can engage their students in the excitement and issues of their discipline. In this issue, we showcase multiple levels of this engagement.