This books offers new ways to think about teaching excellence in higher education and presents a definition of the concept of teaching excellence. It offers a fresh interpretation of Boyers famous account of scholarship as the foundation of university teaching. To fully understand the nature of teaching excellence in higher education, the book gives an account of the various dimensions of the domain of university teaching and the core drivers required to bring those domains to life. The idea of empowerment underlies the journey to excellence in teaching. The book argues that university lecturers aspiring to become excellent should be active agents, strongly pursuing the development of their perfectible abilities required for high quality teaching. The work draws on recent developments in virtue theory to set out the qualities of character requisite for guiding and driving university lecturers to grow and develop into excellent teachers.

An esteemed professor and one-time chairman of the mathematics department at New York's Pace University, Adams, interested in all facets of university administration, has produced an almost Jeffersonian volume of correspondence from his tenure. His views on textbook selection, collective bargaining and the proper role of the university have all flowed from his notebook, and no problem was too minute to evade his scope The frivolity of some of these papers is balanced by Adams's opinions on weightier issues, including sexual harassment and compensation in higher education. His approach and forward manner on these situations, despite how genuine, sometimes engendered resentment from his fellow faculty. But for those interested in the particulars of an academic career, this book offers a glimpse of what life may really be like inside the ivory tower. - Kirkus Discoveries-

"I began this book to articulate my sense of disappointment and alienation from the status I had fought so hard to achieve." A remarkable admission from an alumnus of Harvard Law School who has held tenured professorships in the law schools of Yale and Stanford and has taught in the law schools of Harvard and Chicago. In this personal reflection on the status of higher education, Julius Getman probes the tensions between status and meaning, elitism and egalitarianism, that challenge the academy and academics today. He shows how higher education creates a shared intellectual community among people of varied races and classes—while simultaneously dividing people on the basis of education and status. In the course of his explorations, Getman touches on many of the most current issues in higher education today, including the conflict between teaching and research, challenges to academic freedom, the struggle over multiculturalism, and the impact of minority and feminist activism. Getman presents these issues through relevant, often humorous anecdotes, using his own and others' experiences in coping with the constantly changing academic landscape. Written from a liberal perspective, the book offers another side of the story told in such works as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals.