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Faculty scholarship, most simply defined, means faculty research and study on a specific topic related to their academic field or professional concerns. Faculty scholarship can be many things, all kinds of which improve content area knowledge, improve teaching, and retain faculty involvement in and enthusiasm for what they do.
Traditional Scholarship Definitions
Traditionally, scholarship has meant faculty's original research into their content area and presentation of new discoveries and ideas to the public in scholarly venues such as conferences and journals. Generally speaking, it was understood as a college professor's original investigation into their specialized field or academic discipline. In higher education circles, it has been the means by which college professors remain not only current in their discipline, but improve their own knowledge (making them a better teacher), contribute to knowledge in their area of specialization, and bring recognition to the institution as well as the faculty member. Since the 1940s, faculty scholarship in higher education has commonly been considered what has been identified as "research," this investigation of some aspect of a professor's academic discipline using research methods and resulting in the discovery of "new" knowledge and the advancement of knowledge in that field.
New Definitions of Scholarship: Four Divisions
Today the definition of scholarship has been broadened in many circles - by "scholars" of scholarship, by expectations of higher education institutions, by the changing educational field, and by accrediting agencies. Initiated primarily by Ernest Boyer's 1990 groundbreaking document, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, the idea of faculty scholarship in higher education has been transformed. Boyer divided scholarship into including four different kinds: that of "discovery," "integration" or "synthesis," "application" or "service" and "teaching and learning." These can vary widely to mean original investigation into one's field; or synthesis and interpretation of many others' ideas; or applying knowledge of one's content area to the real world through the creation of a product, service, or program; or the examination of pedagogy through applying research methods and scientific analysis to the act of teaching itself. Each of these should conform to Lee Shulman's criteria that scholarship must be public, not private, susceptible to critical review and evaluation, and accessible for exchange and use by other members of one's scholarly community.
Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff add in their sequel to Boyer's work that a good scholar must have six qualities: clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant results, effective presentation, and reflective critique.
Scholarship Appropriate for the Faculty Forum
Each of these types of scholarship are appropriate for a Faculty Forum as they reach their written stage (which all can culminate in) and are then subject to writing workshops, and eventually made public and available for peer review.
See also New Definitions of Scholarship for more thorough discussion and clarification of this concept.
Works Cited
Boyer, Ernest L. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990. [Also: Revised Edition, 1997]
Glassick, Charles, Mary Taylor Huber, and Eugene Maeroff. Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.
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