Few other professions offer the profoundly democratic practices available to faculty as we select colleagues with whom we will teach, develop curriculum, create cultures of discovery, and prepare students to contribute fully to their civic and personal communities. Tenure and promotion procedures, for all of their faults, tend to be rigorous and to implement the teaching and research vision of faculty. The admission of doctoral students who move from graduate apprenticeships to accomplished scholarship is governed by the faculty. The curriculum-what we expose students to and the levels at which we ask them to perform-belongs to the faculty. Sometimes by vote, sometimes by consensus, the democratic processes of the faculty community provide more freedom and greater levels of self- and organizational-determination than professionals in most other fields can imagine. Along each step of the way, faculty have the opportunity to participate in self-governing practices in which they carry both the responsibility and the authority for the principles and practices of the academic community. The faculty contributing to the Educator Symposium that follows point repeatedly to our obligation as professors to prepare the next generation of scholars for their work as teachers. It seems reasonable to suggest that in keeping with that obligation, entrance into the professional community of higher education assumes several desirable characteristics: * mastery of the disciplinary material we profess * deep understanding of the complexity of student learning and the implications carried for the diversity of learning styles in the culturally rich cadre of students who enter our programs * skillful use of a variety of pedagogical tools and approaches appropriately suited to the range of teaching goals and learning styles present in our classrooms and labs * the ability and the commitment to accept the personal obligations that accompany the privilege of residence in a democratic professional community. Nowhere does a faculty's democratic obligation carry more responsibility than in the selection of colleagues for tenure-track and contract appointments. The stakes are high. Engaged faculty participation bears directly on the quality of teaching that students receive and on the quality of the academic communities we build. This is hardly a moot point. The national trend by legislatures to slash higher education budgets is severe and has implications for the quality of teaching in programs across the university. Tuition costs are accelerating upward to meet the shortfalls, a phenomenon that threatens to reduce access for thousands of lower-income students and to alter the cultural, social, and educational interactions available to students in attendance. Placing the brunt of operating budget shortfalls on students also encourages a public view of education as a consumer product with a steep price tag. In the language of the marketplace, when people pay more, they expect more-oven if the dollars aren't really there to support the necessary teaching infrastructure. From the Astin and Sax annual national first-year student surveys to Levine's and Cureton's recent portrait of today's college student, When Hope and Fear Collide, the presence of student consumerism and growing dissatisfaction with the quality of instruction is clear. At the same time, class size is increasing (a problem compounded by the soaring enrollments reported in the Annual Enrollment Survey reported on page 273). It is no exaggeration to suggest that teaching is becoming more difficult, more demanding, and more dependent upon increased levels of professional classroom qualifications. Yet, the evidence we should consider during the search for new teachers is not always apparent on a curriculum vitae or readily available through reference checks. How can we know whether candidates possess a deep understanding of the complexity of student learning or whether they are familiar with a variety of pedagogical tools appropriately suited to a faculty community's teaching goals and to their students' learning styles? …