Developing Institutional Strategies for Rewarding Engaged Scholarship in Promotion and Tenure

Posted by on June 18, 2012

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
Moving Us Forward: Developing Institutional Strategies for Rewarding Engaged Scholarship in Promotion
and Tenure

Pre-­Conference Institute for Teams.
October 11, 2012.
Dartmouth College, NH.

Facilitated by Drs. KerryAnn O’Meara & Timothy K. Eatman.

Many of our college campuses struggle with the same challenge. Our academic reward systems have not caught up with 21st century scholarship and teaching, including engaged scholarship and service-learning. Numerous studies of faculty involvement in community engagement show that academic reward systems
that do not change to assess and recognize engaged scholarship stand as a formidable barrier to the careers of engaged scholars, recruitment of faculty for this critical work, and campuses truly institutionalizing the work at their core. This is why the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement considers reform in faculty roles and rewards a major part of the application for classification as an engaged institution and why the Eastern Region Campus Compact has developed this institute. These state Compacts wish for member campuses to become role models for the rest of the country in not just talking about faculty roles and reward change but actually doing something to change what is not working.

In the last 15 years, one of the most powerful and effective strategies for organizational learning and change is the use of teams. In fact this approach has been used to examine national models for change in general education reform, incorporating diversity and global perspectives into the curriculum, and revitalization of faculty development and growth. On October 11th we aim to use this model of institutional teams to examine academic reward systems for how they support engaged scholarship. Institutional Teams of 3-5 individuals should include both tenured faculty involved in the promotion and tenure process as well as untenured faculty and institutional leaders with experience in community engagement. All team members should come with a strong interest in advancing tenure and promotion guidelines to explicitly merit community engaged scholarship.

PRIOR TO THE INSTITUTE, TEAMS WILL:
• consider key institutional documents related to faculty roles and rewards (annual faculty report requirements, promotion and tenure materials, union agreements if applicable, merit and contract renewal procedures, faculty recruitment materials, campus mission, strategic plan)
• meet as a team and consider the central questions of: how well does our institutional reward system recognize the work of engaged scholars? Going forward, which of our policies and practices with regard to faculty roles and rewards could be improved to better support this work?
• from this, each team will create and submit a one page critical issue statement which:
o identifies and provides some explanation of one or two critical areas where the team wants to concentrate their efforts at the institute
o provides a timeframe for achieving resolution to critical area(s)

DURING THE INSTITUTE, TEAMS WILL:
• work collaboratively on critical areas throughout the day; be assisted by Drs. O’Meara and Eatman who will share best practices on parallel issues from other campuses, and by the learning of other teams with similarly identified challenges
• develop action planning outline from collaborative team work, group reflection on process, and accumulated resources that focus on critical area

FOLLOWING THE INSTITUTE, TEAMS WILL:
• report back to their campuses on recommended changes–either to a Deans council, faculty senate, provost or like meeting of key stakeholders and potential allies for reform
• NOTE: This kind of approach was also used by the former AAHE Faculty roles and rewards conference for 10 years, is now regularly built into AACU’s process, and was the process for Community Campus Partnerships for Health faculty development programs funded by FIPSE Objectives of the Institute are that every team walks away:
• With a set of concrete recommendations for how the policies they concentrated on might be changed to better acknowledge engaged scholarship
• With examples of how similar campuses have approached similar problems
• With a sense of shared energy and momentum for making these changes real and moving them through shared governance procedures
• With a network of colleagues and peers to support ongoing discussions and work

For registration, please go to http://www.ercompact.org or use the following link – ERCC Registration