Many important charact-eristics of a research university contribute to quality at Southern Illinois University Carbondale; none compete with faculty for first place. To be sure, without students there is no university. Our raison d'etre are students but after that we are faced with the centrality of excellent faculty. The university is the faculty.

Faculty who care, faculty who contribute to the body of knowledge in their various fields, faculty who can stand in front of a lecture hall full of students and inspire, and return to their study, studio, or laboratory to create and share insight with the broader community: After sharing it locally, they share it nationally and internationally, these are the people who power the boat. Our leaders know this. Look at how some leaders worked diligently to bring and/or develop household names. People like Buckminster Fuller, John Gardner, Richard Russo, Rodney Jones and many others, some still here, some lured away by success, maybe we did not fight hard enough to keep them. We always should. Their names inspire a commitment to excellence for those that knew or know them and there are many, thankfully too many to name.

Boldly recruited and appropriately compensated: Recruited like quarterbacks, paid like coaches. In six years I have heard the name Bucky, Fuller, or Buckminster Fuller an average of once a day? nearly two thousand times. Someone with insight hired a person of vision. I wonder if a hiring committee participated in the process, or was it just raw leadership going after raw excellence. This is backward looking, though. We need to look forward. Our future is at stake.

Academic boldness is difficult to find and a challenge to implement, with standards of hiring, labor contracts, fixed raises with little or no flexibility for excellence. Yet, these people set a standard. These two-legged marketers are excellence on feet.

Everywhere promoting SIUC for its quality, not because of an excellent contract, not because of excellent students, not because of excellent facilities, not because of an excellent location, simply because faculty members, the best of the best, strident minds, productive intellectual lives, nothing status quo, groundbreaking thinkers and doers, were and are right here at Southern. And excellence begets excellence. Academic courage and boldness are required to build this kind of faculty. And people are frequently afraid of local excellence. Forces work against excellence all the time. I am not sure why excellence incites fear, but it does, especially in those of average capability or drive, insight or talent.

And universities are not the only places where this occurs. It takes a special organization to allow excellence to flourish.

And it is not just excellence in faculty members. Civil service employees and administrative and professional staff of the highest quality are required, but they are not typically recruited in the national or international market place. People will read about our sparkling buildings, and precision in our financial sheets, if and only if excellent faculty members are building the reputation of Southern in the four corners of the world, one idea or accomplishment, one piece or performance, at a time. Other necessary and important characteristics fall into place. Faculty must be first, and they are not always easy to love. Sometimes good faculty members are persnickety, want things their way, demand much from the organization, and expect to be treated with deference. Right or wrong, it is the way of the academic marketplace and good universities tolerate it, excellent universities seek out people of excellent intellect, sometimes in spite of the challenges they present.

This is not to suggest that all people who contribute to international reputation are not liked by colleagues or are not good teachers. There are too many positive examples, locally and around the world. However, the prickliness of some great faculty members causes some to look with disdain on their well known, internationally recognized, coworkers. Never assume that a good scholar is a poor teacher, or that a poor teacher is a good scholar. Mutual exclusivity does not exist.

The literature on faculty work life suggests that the best teachers are frequently strong researchers, scholars, artists, and servants to their professions and the extended public. Faculty excellence at the core of a research university is not new or radical. Leaders understood it 150 years ago.

Excellent faculty will make Southern excellent. Nothing else will make a first rate research university for our region.

WALTER V. WENDLER is a professor in the School of Architecture at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.