Faculty the Secret Sauce
At IUP, the faculty actually teaches and has accepted that role as part of their mission. At many, perhaps most, top universities teaching of undergraduates is left to graduate students called Teaching Assistants (TAs).
We at IUP believe that advanced education and a dedication to the art, science and skill of teaching are key to developing the undergraduate mind. We believe that we can teach better than some graduate student in pursuit of an advanced degree who is required to teach lowly undergraduates as part of his or her quest for an advanced degree. We are dedicated to teaching the undergraduate student and , in the CHC, we find the curious, capable minds that make this mission of ours to teach the undergraduate so once students at CHC finish the “core” program, in two years, they must then address their major subject of study. Once again, IUP’s CHC students encounter professors who teach every day, and do it well.
Look at the numbers. By the measures by which the top universities judge their performance, IUP’s professors are doing just fine in producing students who can compete for top honors. But we are doing even better at producing thinking adults who can contribute greatly to society, whether in the arts, in science, in the humanities, or elsewhere. Out graduates get offers to study with the top graduate programs in the world, often without cost to them; but of course they have to teach undergraduates. It is only then that they will appreciate the secret sauce of IUP – a teaching faculty.
