Much has been written in recent decades about the importance of community in education. According to some of the literature, a solution to the lack of community in preservice education might lie in the creation of "cohort programs," in which a relatively small number of student teachers engage in their coursework and (insofar as possible) their fieldwork "together," under the guidance of a small faculty team. The authors' elementary preservice cohort program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT)--the Mid-Town Option--is similar to many of the cohort-based programs described in the literature. And they have experienced many of the same successes and challenges. Their program is somewhat distinctive, however, in its unusually heavy emphasis on class community. They devote a great deal of attention to community building, viewing the experience of community as perhaps the single most important feature of their program. In this paper, the authors concentrate on only one aspect of the topic of community in preservice education, namely, the role of "faculty" in building community. Further, they focus just on "student" perceptions of this role. Their data source for this study was six randomly selected students in the class of 1998-99, each of whom they interviewed on four occasions. In reporting the findings, they present in turn a series of themes that emerged in the interviews, each one corresponding to a contribution most or all of the students felt the faculty had made to building community in the program. In each section, the authors first report the students' views of the faculty role, and their assessment of its importance for the life of the community and their personal and professional development. They then briefly discuss the theme in general terms, showing how, in their view, the contribution fits into the structure of class community.