Faculty Community-Engaged Scholars Choosing to Come and Stay Alignment Between Individual and Institutional Identities and Values

Abstract

As institutions seek to recruit and retain diverse community-engaged scholars, it is important to understand the experiences of faculty who choose to work at their new institution and whether those experiences align with their initial perceptions about institutional commitments to and support for community-engaged scholarly work. Do institutional signals that express support for community-engaged scholarship influence faculty members’ choice to work at an institution? Once recruited, how do faculty experiences align with their initial expectations for community-engaged scholarship? This study examines 21 faculty members’ experiences at a single minority-serving university (MSI) to understand their sense of alignment and the intersections between individual faculty and institutional commitments to equity-centered community engagement. Institutions that highly regard and reward faculty community-engaged scholars provide conditions that foster full participation of faculty, students, and communities allowing them to flourish.