"Striving" is a concept that describes colleges and universities seeking to reposition themselves as more prestigious, often more research-focused institutions (O'Meara, 2007). The goal of this paper is to explore faculty members' views of a striving university context. My analysis revealed that faculty assigned both rewards and risks to striving and that these rewards and risks were pertinent to three issues that impact faculty work lives in some way. These issues include: accessibility; faculty roles and evaluation; and university-community connections.