Post-Tenure Reflections on Community-Engaged Scholarship in a Psychology Research Setting

Abstract

Community-engaged scholarship emphasizes community partnership in the teaching, research, and service roles faculty pursue. Traditionally, psychological research places the highest value on tightly controlled, laboratory-based research led by faculty as “expert” and community as “subjects.” The difference in values between traditional research and community-engaged research can serve as a paradigm-level barrier to community-engaged scholarship for psychologists working in research settings. I discuss my personal experience as a faculty member with a community-based participatory research (CBPR) orientation and describe four suggestions to increase community-engaged scholarship among psychology researchers in similar high-research institutions: (a) revise promotion and tenure documents to recognize it; (b) update IRB reviews to support it; (c) earmark internal funding specifically for it; and (d) create networks to spread it.