Research, teaching, and advising represent an inseparable troika; each define a facet of any professor. Research allows the field to be pushed forward and developed; teaching provides us with the next generation of researchers; advising permits us to hone our mentoring skills. A solid teaching program, then, must interlock with a solid research program, which will support the teaching program. Advising enters into both aspects since we work to advise students about both classwork and research possibilities. At a liberal arts university, the most visible aspect of the three is the classroom.
The undergraduate classroom is one where presentation of information is the paramount issue. This does not mean that classes should be dry lectures. A skilled educator will provide opportunities for active involvement. Participation in classroom discussion activities should be fostered and should act as one element of the evaluation process. Additionally, out-of-class work should make up a large portion of evaluation. Most computer science courses have a significant ``hands-on'' aspect; this needs to encouraged with both formal lab sessions and independent work.
One natural result of this will be to begin to prepare interested students for further work in research areas. Undergraduates should be exposed to research-style projects, in order to give them some background in that aspect of computer science. Then, interested students can be encouraged to take on additional research projects, as either term projects or independent study. Thus, students with a desire to pursue graduate-level work will begin with a fair amount of background skills.
Since another goal of the undergraduate program is to prepare students for the workplace, one aspect of the curriculum should be group projects. While individual work is important, it is also relevant to future work experience to learn how to work in and contribute to a group effort. While many students will feel uncomfortable with this approach, especially those students used to receiving credit based solely on their own efforts, it is an undeniable fact that many real-world projects are group ones. An additional facet of the group project can be the {\it self-evaluation}. In this, the group members would agree on a report detailing what contributions each member made to the overall effort. This has the benefit of allowing the instructor to better evaluate each participant as well as providing another opportunity for group interaction skills to develop.
In addition to in-class discussion, lectures, labs, and assignments and projects, it should be possible to teach more advanced courses through a Socratic method. In lower-level courses, a traditional lecture model of instruction is the most effective, with opportunities provided for class discussion. In upper-level courses, student participation should be stressed over being a passive recipient of information. The Socratic method, while unfamiliar to most undergraduates, will encourage this. It will also help to develop strong communication skills and thinking ability.
Whenever possible, a background of interdisciplinary topics should be the foundation of any course. No course stands alone; every one represents an opportunity to demonstrate how a particular field (e.g., computer science) fits into a larger context of learning. This liberal arts approach aids the student by emphasizing learning over simply remembering the facts of a particular field. Once again, the ultimate goal is to produce a general-purpose thinker, one that can go off in the world and never stop learning.
To finish the discussion of the undergraduate classroom, a comment needs to be made on the subject of evaluation: I tend to shy away from extremely objective tests; rather, I prefer essay tests or essay-style tests for undergraduates. Additionally, I feel that extra credit opportunities should be plentiful as motivation is a key aspect of the educational program. It is also important that the students receive timely and adequate feedback regarding their work. No student should ever be ``wondering'' what their status is in a particular class; they should know.
To help a student see exactly where they are and where they are going is the key point in the advising process. A lot of this goes on in the classroom, but it has to extend to beyond those borders as well. All students deserve to be handled by effective advisors. This does not, however, mean that the advisor plans everything out for them. One of the goals of an education is to become independent; it is important for the advisor to realize that. Younger students, of course, will need more advice and more explicit guidance. Older students will need advice and the encouragement that you trust them to make good decisions (and gentle help if you realize that they are not).
Outside of the classroom, students need to be advised in more subtler ways as well. For example, numerous opportunities exist for students to participate in clubs and competitions. In addition to offering advice about classwork, I also feel that it is important that I mentor students in these areas as well. For example, at Transylvania, I am involved with both the ACM Competition Team and the Transylvania Academic Competition Club. This gives me another opportunity to interact with the students, teaching and advising them in non-classroom settings.
It is also important for students to receive guidance in research. If a student is planning to attend graduate school, this is extremely important. However, it is also important if a student is not planning to do this---many students are unaware of what research entails. Some students will discover they love it and decide to forgo industry in order to pursue an advanced degree. Others might actually discover that they do not like the research paradigm. A proper advising situation will help the student find this out before investing the time and energy to apply and begin a graduate program.
With regards to the general topic of research, I feel that interdisciplinary work is often the best. My reasoning is two-fold. First, it provides the student with viewpoints removed from their core discipline; the methodology of other research areas will often differ from one's home discipline. Second, multiple disciplines will expose the student researcher to a wider range of basic concepts. Ideally, they will begin to see the same ideas presented over and over again, but with different angles on them, depending on the background discipline.
Students will need to be mentored about one of the most important aspects of research---collaboration. This will be not only between different disciplines but also within the student researcher's own field. This is an extension of the earlier idea of group projects. Little research is performed by the solitary genius, so it is important that student researchers have the experience of working with others on projects. This will be part of the learning of the general methodology of the research field in question.
Also related to the idea of methodology, students need to be taught how to present their ideas to others, both people in the field and to a general audience. It is important to encourage students to attend conferences. First, a local conference as an attendee only might be a good experience. As maturity and presentation skills develop, presenting their work at a local conference is a logical next step. Finally, the student will work their way up being able to present the work at a national conference. If the mentoring has gone well, then the final product will be a confident presentation.
Research is not a passive activity. Nor is it a solitary one. The researcher must exist as a member of a community; the community will support the researcher, who in turn will support the community. And, part of this cycle of support exists in the form of teaching. Teaching provides a new generation of researchers; as such, teaching should not be considered a subsidiary aspect. When done properly, teaching and research, and the advising that accompanies both, will all merge into a single entity, greater than the sum of its parts.