I hope that anyone who read my last posting will take the 10 min to read the article I sent along w/ my thoughts! If not, you really should. 

There is a distinction to doing service, such as volunteering at a soup kitchen or being on committees, and community/civic engagement which takes enormous amounts of time and effort while providing necessary partnerships that can enhance student learning while also helping the community. Scholarship comes in many forms and varieties. For instance, I spent six weeks on a Fulbright Scholarship studying about workforce development and poverty in Post Apartheid South Africa. Did I publish anything from that? No, but the work that I did there was definitely scholarly. And, the video that I developed (not peer reviewed) has been seen by over 1000 people. That form of education and scholarship, not to mention the ongoing collaboarative work that I did w/ the State Department, The U.S. Embassy, and counselors and social workers in South Africa had a much deeper and far reaching impact than if I had published some articles in journals that very few outside of academia ever read. I am NOT discounting the vital importance of publishing, but again there are many forms of scholarship and we absolutely must move beyond the narrowed parameters of publish or perish mentality. 



Karen S. Joest, Ph.D
Associate Professor, Child and Family Studies
Department of Human Ecology
State University of New York, College at Oneonta
607-436-2063
[log in to unmask]

________________________________________
From: Teaching Breakfast List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Proulx, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 12:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: service as a form of scholarship in the T & P process

Hi again!

With all due respect to those who think otherwise, I can't disagree more with the position that service is a form of scholarship or creative work.  Without question, service is an important element of faculty performance that should be given appropriate consideration and weight in T&P decisions.  However, service should never be given equal weight in T&P decisions with scholarly or creative work, particularly regarding promotion to full professorship.  The element that distinguishes tenured associate and full professors at four-year institutions from faculty at other institutions including community colleges and high schools is their scholarship not their service.   Acquiring and developing a strong record of service is much easier and less rigorous than acquiring a record of scholarship.  That fact doesn't demean the importance of service or "giving back" to society.  Rather, it elevates scholarship to its rightful in academia.

Respectfully,

Bill


William R. Proulx, Ph.D., R.D.
Associate Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics
Department of Human Ecology
205 D Human Ecology
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
607-436-2147


-----Original Message-----
From: Teaching Breakfast List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joest, Karen
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: service as a form of scholarship in the T & P process

Hello everyone,

I agree w/ Steve's comments--in particular that we have to make choices about where our time goes. Although we have those four "pillars" I would suggest that our college and some of our faculty devalue service and committee work done by faculty. I've even been reading it in several of your postings. For instance, Devin's posting about service.

"Since Service is one of the three things we are required to do at SUNY Oneonta, I wonder where this would rank on your list?  Would your daughter have prefered a great teacher who served on 6 different committees, or one who had 6 different publications and was internationally recognized as an expert in her/his field?"

This is not to stomp on you Devin, or anyone else, but the committees that I sit on, things like AOD (Alcohol and Other Drugs), The President's Council on Diversity (PCOD), PAIRS (for decreasing sexual assault and violence),the GSRC, Employee Recruitment and Retention Task Force (ERRTF) to mention just a few of the committees I serve on-- not to mention that I am the President of Habitat for Humanity of Otsego Co--work with our local schools to decrease drop out rates, and take students to Latin America to work with street children--I believe I make a real difference, though perhaps never enough, in the lives of our students, faculty, staff, our community and the world.

So, to answer his question--I think it matters on what committees that faculty member chooses. My goal, in doing committee and service work is NOT to merely do enough to get my credit toward T & P, but rather to make a difference in the world around me!! I would suggest folks reading the following VERY BRIEF article about how UNC-Charlotte is changing it's T & P process to reflect the very real positive impacts that we faculty can make on our communities through our expertise--that community enagement is a "new and innovative form of 'nontraditional scholarship."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/07/ramping-community-engagement-uncc#.T1diKXPumqg.email

So, faculty DO have to make choices about where they spend their time. I for one, will continue to actively redefine how we value the very real service and civic/community enagement that our faculty provide. To quote the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, " Beyond expectations that higher education prepare the future workforce and build knowledge through research, society also looks to public universities to be, in AASCU's parlance, 'stewards of place.' To that end, one of the central missions for universities is to contribute directly to their communities by developing regional economic competiveness, improving schools, managing natural resources and helping to chart the future."


Karen S. Joest, Ph.D
Associate Professor, Child and Family Studies
Department of Human Ecology
State University of New York, College at Oneonta
607-436-2063
[log in to unmask]

________________________________________
From: Teaching Breakfast List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gilbert, Steven
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 12:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: How do you deal with disruption in class?

Hi group:  My flip quiz for tuition-paying parents was probably an inappropriate response to the serious issues described in the article about the teacher whose "research suffers because of her non-research workload and ... is ultimately denied tenure."[ http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/23/louisville-lawsuit-raises-concerns-familiar-those-tenure-track#ixzz1qEN8LRgr]

I believe that most of us endorse (and have tried to live) the professional values of (a) quality teaching; (b) student advising & mentoring; (c) college & community service; and (d) scholarly/creative growth & productivity.  These activities are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

To a large extent, however, time spent in one area comes at the expense of time spent in the others.  An hour spent carefully reading and extensively commenting on a student paper is an hour not spent analyzing one's own research data, writing a committee report, or meeting with a student to discuss graduate school options.  Young faculty (especially, but not exclusively) need guidance as to how to allocate their time among activities that express the four professional values.  They need to know how fungible these activities are: Does time spent writing especially thoughtful comments on student papers, or gaining knowledge and competency necessary for effective work on an important committee, reduce the quantity of scholarly output required for promotion or tenure?

A teaching career is a marathon, not a sprint.  The mentoring of young faculty should help them establish a pattern and balance of activities that expresses their unique talents and proclivities, and that can be sustained over the course of a career.  I do not believe that a balancing of college-wide activities promoting the four professional values requires an identical balancing for each faculty member. The requirements for promotion and tenure should allow for a good deal of fungibility, delimited by the needs of the faculty member's department and division.  I believe that functionally, we typically have achieved this here, to our great credit.  I hope it continues.

Steve.

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Steven J. Gilbert, Ph.D.
   Professor Emeritus of Psychology
      State University of New York, College at Oneonta
      [log in to unmask]
      Home Page: http://employees.oneonta.edu/gilbersj/stevepage.htm