I have been privileged to work with the President and colleagues to develop an award to honor our Princeton faculty for their remarkable University-wide service—indeed, for the kinds of service, not only within but also beyond their academic departments, that contribute immensely to the life and success of the University. 

As you could well imagine, I, as Dean of the Faculty, have beheld multiple kinds of faculty. I have recognized those who are new to our University and aspiring to be great as scholars and teachers. Those who have hit their stride, having accomplished a stature commended by academic peers within their departments and around the world. And those who have attained the topmost echelon of professional success, whereby their research has transformed scholarship, has impacted the world, and has charted the path for future generations of ambitious faculty, researchers, and students to gain and advance knowledge.

By definition, the faculty whom we will revere tonight—and those whom this kind of audience will annually praise, I hope, for years to come—will usually hail from that esteemed class of Full Professors: those whose reputations for scholarly excellence have been cemented, and whose commitment to educating our students has been affirmed. 

Our University stipulates, however, that our faculty must fulfill all their professional responsibilities: that they must commit to service, not only to scholarship and teaching. 

By what set of accolades, then, do we appreciate faculty service, when the center of gravity of a University dictates, and accrues its institutional force from, those two main orbits—scholarship and teaching? Remuneration and appeals to benevolence, of course, represent our currency of gratitude. Yet I believe that it is incumbent on a faculty community, and on the institution this community serves, to imbue recognition of service with a higher level of meaning.

Princeton, above all fellow colleges and universities, thrives on recruiting and cultivating the individuals who are regarded as “the smartest in the room,” so to speak—whether these individuals be the faculty, students, or staff who research, teach, learn, and collaborate within it. Can we not also marvel at the intelligence of the room itself, however? Can we not envision a world in which we celebrate, with genuine enthusiasm for the reality and legacy of accomplishment, the faculty who not only thrived within these rooms of research and teaching, but those who indeed curated those rooms—or, more precisely, who established the ideal circumstances for the effect of those rooms—so that the academic mission of the University could achieve its highest potential?

I do not want to overstate the administrative metaphor of that room. But it does propose a language for us to explain how certain faculty, while being the premier researchers and educators of our time, have been champions for ensuring that their faculty colleagues, their students, and their staff thrive at the University. The qualities of such faculty include not only being brilliant scholars and masterful educators. They are administrative leaders prized for their wisdom and circumspection, for their acumen and exactitude, for their passion and compassion, for their stamina and dedication, and for the undying flame of their University citizenship.

The stories some of us will tell, but we all will hear, about the service of our two inaugural honorees, Sandie Bermann and Rick Register, demonstrate why our recognition of faculty must be as panoramic as possible to ascertain their various forms of success and impact, not to mention why their service to the University is critical to Princeton’s service to the nation and to broader humanity.