Barry Checkoway noted, however, that convincing senior faculty members and administrators of that-and rewarding such service at research universities-will be a challenge, even for institutions that are committed to public service.

"Public service contributes to the vitality of the university and brings out the best in a university," said Checkoway, who also is executive director of the Center for Living Through Community Service.

The symposium, sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs, celebrated UB's Faculty Development Public Service Initiative. At the same time, it generated debate about how research universities should value and reward such work.

According to Checkoway, who studies the place of public service in the research university, national organizations in higher education and major universities see UB as an example of an institution that has made a clear commitment to public service.

"In the circles in which I move, UB is perceived as one of the leaders in the field," he said.

He cited the establishment of the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs as a demonstration of that commitment and noted that President William R. Greiner is one of the few top university administrators nationally who publicly and consistently has made public service a priority.

"UB has a track record of outstanding efforts," Checkoway said, pointing to the university's recently published second compendium of public-service projects.

He noted that it is not clear how successfully research universities encourage faculty to engage in public service.

"Universities need strategies for public service," he said. "Some universities have strategies for filling football stadiums, while others have foreign-policy strategies (for research and teaching partnerships in other countries).

"But what about having a domestic policy? So many of us are far more interested in working in Bangkok or Bombay, rather than in the City of Buffalo."

Checkoway said it often seems that the prestige of a university's research grows in direct proportion to its distance from the campus.

"But research universities are strategically situated to be able to respond. They are civic institutions, which were established with a civic mission," he said.

The answer, said Checkoway, is to begin to redefine service as scholarship.

To do that, a distinction must be made between scholarship that involves the discovery of knowledge and that which involves the application of knowledge through public service.

"Service is scholarship when it draws on one's professional expertise for the welfare of society," he said.

As such, public-service work can serve as a kind of "reality test" for faculty members who, he said, have been criticized in recent years for not doing work that is relevant to society.

"Maybe for this year's performance review, faculty should be required to describe the impact they think they had on the community," he suggested. "It will be an immediate consciousness-raising."

To accurately reward service, universities must undertake nothing less than developing a new conception of research, he said.

While this remains a formidable task on an institutional basis, a group of UB faculty members discussed six projects that demonstrate that public-service efforts already are underway.

Each has completed a project made possible by the Faculty Development Public Service Initiative, which provides grants of up to $10,000 each for interdisciplinary projects that integrate scholarship with public service and enhance faculty awareness of how public service enriches teaching and scholarship