Unpacking Faculty Engagement: The Types of Activities Faculty Members Report as Publicly Engaged Scholarship During Promotion and Tenure

Abstract

While a growing body of scholarship has focused on the personal, professional, and organizational factors that influence faculty members’ involvement in publicly engaged scholarship, the nature and scope of faculty publicly engaged scholarship itself has remained largely unexplored. What types of activities are faculty members involved in as publicly engaged scholarship? How does their involvement vary by demographic, type of faculty appointment, or college grouping? To explore these questions, researchers conducted a quantitative content analysis of 173 promotion and tenure documents from a research-intensive, land-grant, Carnegie Classified Community Engagement university and found statistically significant differences for the variables age, number of years at the institution, faculty rank, Extension appointment, joint appointment, and college grouping. Recommendations for future research are discussed as well as implications for institutional leadership, faculty development programming, and the structuring of academic appointments.