Research, teaching, and service--the traditional tripartite division of academic work. The kind of institution and the nature of institutional priorities have some bearing on the arrangement of the first two parts, but service always comes last. From the authors' shared perspective as faculty members and administrators in writing studies, though, the nature of service is both more meaningful and more complicated than this seemingly straightforward arrangement would suggest. For them, service is simultaneously an integral part of the teaching and research that they do and a problematic label that is often attached to many of the courses that they teach, especially at the first-year level. In their work, the term "service" applies to a range of activities. Certainly, it includes participation in departmental, campus, and cross-campus committees. But to conceive of service only from this perspective negates the principles that lie beneath their approach to activities in which they partake in the name of service. This approach affects both the choices they make when they serve and the perspective they bring to the sites of service. For the authors, service is an important practice that involves working from a set of principles. At their core, these principles are reflected in a portion of the mission of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), the organization that Duane Roen currently serves as president and Linda Adler-Kassner as immediate past president. That mission, in part, says that they "believe in writing and writers" and "advocate for effective writing programs." Extending from these principles, the authors see service as an opportunity to build alliances with others on campus and within the community, thus enlarging their experiences (which contribute to their research and their teaching) and, ultimately, the experiences of their students. In this article, the authors contend that serving the profession through principle doesn't mean teaching "service courses."