Faculty Talk About Teaching: New Challenges and Opportunities

In the next decade, fully one-third of Smith professors will retire. The college will need to recruit and retain significant numbers of scholar-teachers who can inspire and mentor students in the classroom, the laboratory, or in conversations over coffee.

To compete for outstanding faculty, Smith must offer not only appropriate salaries but state-of-the-art resources laboratory space, technical assistance, additional library resources, professional development, curricular and program support necessary to the kind of teaching and research that directly benefit students.

One of the best inducements the college can offer prospective faculty is endowed professorships in their disciplines. An endowed chair assures the holder of continued and stable support for a particular area of study and the resources for related programs and student opportunities to attend research conferences.

Improvements in facilities are driven by a significant change in higher education: a shift from lecture and recitation to more individualized, hands-on opportunities for experimentation, research, and presentation of ideas. In addition to regular course lectures, Smith faculty spend hours in small group and one-on-one discussions that guide, teach, and challenge students well beyond the classroom.