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In Making a Place for the New American Scholar, Eugene Rice (1996) calls for a rethinking of faculty careers today. Contemporary academic culture has brought many changes, including the redefinition of scholarship, new teaching approaches, and different working conditions for faculty today. Scholarship activity can improve faculty teaching, enhance faculty vitality, help to prevent faculty burnout and faculty's inability to keep up with changes in their discipline. (See Benefits of Scholarship for more discussion.) Faculty scholarship should be actively encouraged and supported, even in colleges where teaching is the primary emphasis and scholarship activity is not a traditional focus.
Importance of Administrative Support
Support for scholarship needs to manifest at all levels for most effectiveness in encouraging faculty endeavors in this area. From faculty peers to program deans to local campus upper management to corporate decision makers, all should work together to provide a supportive atmosphere for faculty scholars. Administrators can lead the way in establishing a scholarship climate through many avenues, including an awareness and allowance for the complexity and multiplicity of a college teacher's role, and including scholarship as part of the rewards system. Administrators need to work together to give recognition and respect for scholarship, encourage its appreciation, and even serve as examples by their own engagement in scholarship.
Encourage Collegiality
Studies cite that an institution's best method of encouraging faculty scholarship is creating an environment of scholarly activity. While offering time and incentive for scholarship are two significant ways to encourage faculty involvement in this activity, the interaction with faculty peers, or the collegiality and formal or informal reciprocal peer mentoring of faculty who also write, research, publish, present at conferences are integral to faculty success, motivation, and participation in scholarship activity. Creating an atmosphere of collegiality, peer mentoring, and networking is cited as the single most effective method of encouraging faculty involvement in scholarship. There are many ways to do this: activities, workshops, and seminars that emphasize faculty collaborative learning are currently considered best in a social constructivist educational environment emphasizing creation of knowledge. (See Faculty Development Context.) This approach lends itself especially well to scholarship and writing. The Faculty Forum workshops are based and designed on this model.
Some other ways to encourage faculty development and scholarship are following:
develop a community of scholars
start with a small group of motivated volunteers
institute a forum, colloquiums, workshops, seminars, other group activities devoted to scholarship and exchange of scholarly work (such as the Faculty Forum conference)
organize faculty peer mentoring groups (such as the Faculty Forum workshops)
pair scholars with non-scholars in offices, or in other arrangements
group faculty interested in scholarship together for resources and encouragement.
encourage faculty initiative of scholarship culture, perhaps through a faculty scholarship committee
set up a faculty committee for scholarship development, or faculty development in general
encourage leaders as scholars; scholars as leaders
create collegiality and academic dialogue within departments, across departments, and with other professors within disciplines at other institutions
encourage faculty ties to the disciplines, to professional organizations
assist and support professional networking.
Offer Recognition
Recognition has been cited as a crucial motivating factor in encouraging scholarship activity, and giving recognition to reward faculty is simple, easy and relatively inexpensive. Some ways to do this are:
publish faculty names and papers in a campus newsletter
regular e-mail announcements with faculty accomplishments listed
publish faculty accomplishments on this website
publish Faculty Forum proceedings at this site
announce faculty accomplishments at meetings
award certificates for scholarly activities and accomplishments
allow faculty involved in scholarship to have positions of leadership in the department
the Faculty Forum conference itself provides recognition to scholars
Provide Resources
Resources for scholarship assist in greater faculty involvement in this activity. This can be easy access to information for research, avenues for scholarly pursuits, and appropriate facilities and equipment for social sciences and technical fields who need this. (See also Lynn McCutcheon's article, "Getting Published if You're the Lone Ranger," on the support section of this site for suggestions on researching with little resources in these fields.) Some ways to integrate the Faculty Forum within present programs and resources are:
include Faculty Forum activities, and other scholarship activities such as publications and conference presentation, to count significantly in the annual review process of promotion and raises
include these activities in other evaluation and reward criteria
support scholars in general by giving them release time to work on a paper.
give faculty release time when they participate in the Faculty Forum
pay a small stipend for scholarship work
pay for trips to conferences to deliver papers
organize events, like Faculty Forum Recognition dinner, to supplement other rewards
compensate Coordinators of Faculty Forum
Provide Training
Training seminars can help faculty deal with personal obstacles to scholarship. These may include seminars on: time management skills, communication skills, knowledge of research design and statistics, computer literacy, socialization, encouragement and instruction in writing skills, use of human, material and library resource. The Faculty Forum and this website are examples of means to offer guidance and assistance in scholarship through mentoring and training on research, writing, and other necessary skills.
Ensure Flexibility
Flexibility in encouragement of scholarship is important. Many different kinds of scholarship can enhance teaching and contribute to faculty vitality, and faculty are diverse and may be at different places in their career and scholarship needs. Studies show that first year faculty need to focus on teaching primarily; senior faculty can devote more time to scholarship activity. Some faculty benefit from non-traditional or broader scholarship as defined by Ernest Boyer. Recognizing faculty needs and how they mesh with institutional definition and mission is important.
be flexible and provide a variety of approaches for faculty development so faculty can choose the ones best for their individual needs
keep changes minimal in the beginning to avoid resistance
implement change towards scholarship slowly
have realistic expectations of scholarship
let scholarship participation be voluntary
give institutional recognition of a broad range of scholarly activities and work assignments
encourage other kinds of scholarship as desired, and implement support programs for faculty for these
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