Every day at UVM countless faculty engage individually and collectively with students, staff, and community partners in teaching, research and service that serves the public good. Much of this work falls into the category of what has been widely described as “engaged scholarship” or the “scholarship of engagement.” Such work is often interdisciplinary, collaborative, boundary-spanning, and opens doors to multidirectional discovery and teaching where expertise is shared. KerryAnn O’Meara, a national expert on faculty community engagement and reward systems, joined us to consider the work of engaged scholars in public research universities. She presented findings from research showing the challenges engaged scholars face as the goals and purposes of their work, approaches to the pursuit of knowledge, assumptions about peer review and rigor, partners in knowledge production and significance differ in part or whole from that of peer scholars. O’Meara reported on how exemplar engaged scholars navigate these challenges to make critical contributions and share some of the key reward system reforms and strategies institutions have put in place to create better academic homes for engaged scholars.
(What is Engaged Scholarship?)
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Sample Promotion and Tenure Documents
During her visit, Dr. O'Meara met with key administrators and faculty around campus to discuss engaged scholarship and its role in the scholarly agenda at the University of Vermont. These meetings were primarily by invitation.
Prior to Dr. KerryAnn O’Meara’s Keynote address on November 12th and during the reception which followed, there was a poster session to demonstrate the variety and breadth of high-quality engaged scholarship at UVM. For the purposes of this poster session, engaged scholarship is defined as academically relevant work that simultaneously meets campus mission as well as community needs (www.scholarshipofengagement.org). Posters may have included profiles of service-learning courses or community-based research projects, or exhibits related to programs, offices, and initiatives that support these forms of scholarship.
Guidelines that were set for the poster session:
For more information, please contact Alan Tinkler at 656-0095 or partnerships@uvm.edu.
KerryAnn O’Meara, PhD is an Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research and practice focus on the academic profession and the civic mission of higher education, with particular interest in how reform in academic reward systems and in opportunities for professional growth can advance faculty work and institutional missions. O’Meara serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, and Associate Editor for the Journal of the Professoriate. Her work on faculty scholarship has appeared in the multiple publications and she has authored two related books: Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Rewarding Multiple Forms of Scholarship by with R. Eugene Rice (2005) and Scholarship Unbound: Assessing Service as Scholarship for Promotion and Tenure (2002). She is currently the principle investigator on a collaborative project with the Kettering Foundation to study the origins of faculty civic agency and spent two years at the Harvard Project on Faculty Appointments. O’Meara regularly consults with institutions, national associations, and networks on issues of faculty development, reform in academic reward systems, and community engagement.
The National Review Board for the Scholarship of Engagement defines "engaged scholarship" as:
"a term that captures scholarship in the areas of teaching, research, and/or service. It engages faculty in academically relevant work that simultaneously meets campus mission and goals as well as community needs. In essence, it is a scholarly agenda that integrates community issues. In this definition community is broadly defined to include audiences external to the campus that are part of a collaborative process to contribute to the public good." (see link below)
The National Review Board for the Scholarship of Engagement
The "Research University Engaged Scholarship Toolkit" (National Campus Compact)
"Faculty Civic Engagement: New Training, Assumptions, and Markets needed for the Engaged American Scholar" (book chapter by KerryAnn O'Meara - under publication)
Last modified November 20 2009 01:49 PM
