Community-Engaged Scholarship: Is Faculty Work in Communities a True Academic Enterprise?

Abstract

Since Ernest Boyer's landmark 1990 report, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, leaders in higher education, including academic medicine, have advocated that faculty members apply their expertise in new and creative ways in partnership with communities. Such community engagement can take many forms, including community-based teaching, research, clinical care, and service. There continues to be a gap, however, between the rhetoric of this idea and the reality of how promotion and tenure actually work in health professions schools. The Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Health Professions was established in October 2003 with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to take a leadership role in creating a more supportive culture and reward system for community-engaged faculty in the nation's health professions schools. The authors prepared this article to inform the commission's deliberations and to stimulate discussion among educators in the health professions. The authors define the work that faculty engage in with communities, consider whether all work by faculty in community-based settings is actually scholarship, and propose a framework for documenting and assessing community-engaged scholarship for promotion and tenure decisions. They conclude with recommendations for change in academic health centers and health professions schools.

Considerations for Embracing and Expanding Community Engaged Scholarship in Academic Pharmacy Report of the 2013-2014 Research and Graduate Affairs Committee

“…This increase in scholarly papers parallels the interest by professional organizations, 2 the academic health care community, 3,4 and our own academy 5,6 in addressing this unmet need. First identified by Ernest Boyer in 1996, CES was endorsed by the 2004-05 AACP Argus Commission.…”

“…3,4,11 There is a lack of common definition and general understanding of CES that would clearly distinguish between service learning and clinical teaching components. Policies and practices differ across institutions with some fundamental concerns about liability, research integrity, conflict of interest, 13 as well as a traditional dependence upon clinical revenue for research support.…”

“…It will require changes in both practice policies and institutional culture to overcome these barriers. 3 It is widely recognized that scholarly initiatives that engage with partners in communities require time for faculty to create, maintain and sustain these partnerships. 12 Institutions themselves must invest in infrastructure to ensure that faculty have the training, skills, and resources to support the development of CES.…”

Ukrainian Language Education Network: A Case of Engaged Scholarship

“…In the emerging field of engaged scholarship, numerous terms define this field of inquiry: "engaged scholarship" (Franz, 2009;Sandmann 2007), "the scholarship of engagement" (Boyer, 1996 and1997;Barker, 2004;Sandmann, 2008 andCheckoway 2013), "the scholarship of outreach and engagement" (Simpson, 2000), "community engagement" (Bernardo et al, 2013), "community-university engagement" (Brown-Luthango, 2013), "university-community engagement" (Onyx, 2008;Winter et al, 2005), "communityengaged scholarship" (Calleson, 2005), and "public engagement" (Flower, 2008) among others. In the present study, we view engaged scholarship as a two-way relationship between academia and community, in which collaboration between academia and community (on local, regional, national, or international levels) is focused on "the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity" (Carnegie Foundation).…”

“…These three strands are normally used as criteria for an assessment of engagement practices in higher education institutions and examined according to their alignment with the civic and democratic mission of these institutions ("New times demand new scholarship," 2005, 2007). The concepts of "processes" and "products" (Calleson, 2005) and "purposes," "products," and "outcomes" (Sandmann, 2007) are found in studies that offer frameworks for measuring, documenting, and assessing engaged scholarship. In our study, we utilize this categorization to reflect on and explore engagement of the stakeholders through these three strands.…”