Consulting by faculty members is the use of scholarly expertise for the benefit of organizations outside the scholarly community through friendship, volunteering or in return for some sort of compensation.
Universities have widely varying policies on faculty consulting, generally limiting the proportion of a faculty member's time, which may be spent on consulting, and instituting rules to avoid conflicts of interest.
Consulting is distinguished from activities, which are scholarly or creative, from public service, and from outside activities which are unrelated to the area of scholarly expertise. For instance, a professor of history who designs sailboats on the side is not considered to be consulting, although a professor of engineering might be.