Saber Tooth Curriculum (Peddiwell, 1939), a satire educational fiction, has inspired me the most in my career as a college educator. Addressing the issue of the mismatch between educational theory and practice in the midst of social changes in ancient time, the book describes how factors and forces such as the community and institutional dynamics influence education and thus learning. Modern-day college faculty are subject to similar forces and are simultaneously pressured by our commitments in research, teaching, and service, which required us to function strategically in the scientific knowledge enterprise of today’s higher education sector.

I always strive to be engaging and professional in teaching. While demanding, I know that it is possible to make substantial contribution to students’ learning and inspire their personal and professional development whilst fulfilling our research and service commitments. At the end of the day, being able to make a difference in a student’s life is probably among the most rewarding of being a faculty member. The key to the successful maneuvering in the higher education enterprise, in my opinion, is to connect and integrate teaching, research, and service by placing knowledge at the center. In this view, teaching is to disseminate the knowledge that we use in and generate from research, and service is to facilitate research and teaching. Accordingly, I have delineated my reflections on college teaching to include the fundamental beliefs as follows.

1. Defined as the dissemination of knowledge, along with related aspects of attitude and skills, college teaching can be a profession on its own.
2. The best way to plan a course is to see it as packing a set of core knowledge of a domain, preferably the same domain as the faculty’s research, to be delivered. The teacher’s ongoing research and creativity inquiries would add depth and insights to the formulating and delivering of the knowledge set.
3. College students, young adults or non-traditional, are amazingly capable in learning.
4. Learning is not a linear and neat process. Part of a college teacher’s job is to allow students making mistakes and taking the consequences.
5. In their course of learning, college students are often making career choice decisions at the same time, which college teachers should facilitate to provide context and connection to learning.
6. While most students learn better with clearly structured direct instruction and assessment, delivery strategies such as collaborative learning, problem-solving, and project-based learning provide the needed complexity for in-depth learning.

Finally, for educators in information and computational domains, the socio-technical nature of data, information, and technology is worth noticing as knowledge is always contextual and all instruction design would involve contexts. Per the socio-technical perspective, while not necessarily presented formally, the ethical, interpersonal, organizational, and societal aspects of the knowledge domains should be shared with students throughout the course of teaching.

To conclude, I expect myself to continuously enable student learning and development as part of my professional undertaking in the higher education enterprise of scientific knowledge creation and dissemination.