If your faculty are using Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), then your most compatible solution would be to use Office for Mac 2011. Apple's iWork products (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) are not true MS Office clones, and you may experience unexpected, bi-directional compatibility issues.
Additionally, the native iWork file formats are not compatible with MS Office, but within the mentioned caveats, they can export files (.doc, xls, and ppt) that are reasonably shareable with MS Office.