This essay, the first in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, offers a vision of the new American scholar. The first part of the essay examines the numerous activities that surround faculty work and how they relate, in a changing external environment, to the role of the scholar. The stage is set by defining how higher education relates to the larger purposes of American society and by noting the assumptions and consensus within which academic professionals have traditionally operated. The essay then examines how the contexts of faculty work are being transformed in the 1990s by financial constraints, the technological environment, and basic assumptions about work itself. The second part of the essay deals with how these changes affect and necessitate rethinking faculty careers. It discusses changes in the academic workplace, the shifting concept of scholarship, the interdependence of teaching and research, the relationship between personal and professional needs, interactive approaches to learning, working within a collaborative organization, the career implications of crossing knowledge domains and moving in and out of the academy, and tenure and alternative employment arrangements. (Contains 23 references.) (CH)