The attitude of university faculty members about the functions of the university

The purpose of this applied research is to investigate the attitudes of faculty members of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz  It has been about the functions of the university. The overall outline of this research is a combination kind of sequential exploratory (Qual. Quan. Qual.). In the qualitative section, the phenomenological method; in the quantitative section, use descriptive statistics such as averages, and in the  final qualitative section, the focus groups method has been utilized. The domain of this research and it's statistical society contains the faculty members of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, in which it is included the initial exploratory interview section with a purposful sampling of 54 members; a quantitative section with random sampling of 225 members; and the final qualitative section (focud groups) with  desirable purposful sampling of nine faculty members. The data-gathering tools in three qual.- quan.- qual. stages are conducted through (1) semi-structured interviews, (2) a researcher-made questionnaire prepared by interviews, and (3) a focus group interview. Then, the face and content validity of the researcher-made questionnaire is confirmed and it's reliability is calculated using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the whole questionnaires(α = 0.78) which denotes a desirable reliability of the proposed tool. To analyze data, Strauss and Corbin's coding method was used in the qualitative part and descriptive statistics was used in the quantitative part. The obtained results showed that university functions have 5 academic, research, cultural, entrepreneurship, commercialization, and social fields of performance. The obtained results from the quantitative part of research about the showed that academic performance is considered as the most important one, and the minimum mean shows that entrepreneurship performance has mentioned less in University. In addition, the participants of the focus part confirmed the findings of two previous steps.