Public service scholarship
Workshop speakers discuss its role in faculty promotion, tenure

By MARA McGINNIS
News Services Editorial Assistant

Representatives from Portland State University described to UB and Buffalo State College faculty members Monday how they have worked to broaden the definition of scholarship in their university's promotion-and-tenure policy to include public-service activities.

Walt Ellis, associate dean of urban and public affairs at PSU, and Devorah Lieberman, director of teaching and learning, emphasized that while changing the guidelines for promotion-and-tenure policy to recognize public service can be "invigorating and enriching," it does not have to denigrate existing policy.

"As we (in higher education) talk increasingly about the role and validity of public service, recognizing the scholarship of public service is a way of enriching, broadening and diversifying the way we assess scholarship," Ellis told faculty members attending a workshop on "Assessing Applied Scholarship for Promotion and Tenure." "It is a more-heightened assessment of the underlying bedrock values of traditional scholarship."

Ellis explained that in order to begin assessing and acknowledging public service, PSU first had to redefine its mission statement and then rewrite the promotion-and-tenure guidelines to reward faculty for such activities.

One of the problems with changing the guidelines, the presenters noted, is that the process will fundamentally change an institution's culture.

"Scholarship of community service and its relative importance has a lot to do with the culture of an institution. The need for a university to identify with and help solve the needs and problems of its community has a lot to do with survival and gaining political support," Ellis explained.

"Community outreach has helped us (PSU) to build and maintain a group of alliances very beneficial to helping funding at our institution," he said.

Lieberman recognized that several misconceptions exist around defining scholarship, particularly scholarship of public service. To clarify whether an activity can be considered scholarship, she says, it should meet the following criteria: requires a high level of discipline-related expertise, breaks new ground or is innovative, can be replicated or elaborated upon, can be documented, can be peer-reviewed and has a significance or impact contributing to a larger body of knowledge.

She emphasized that these criteria hold true for all scholarly activities, whether they take place in a lab, classroom or community agency.

Ellis and Lieberman also noted that whether the faculty member gets paid for a particular public-service activity is irrelevant. What matters, they maintained, is whether or not the activity is peer-reviewed and contributes to a greater body of knowledge.

However, the presenters emphasized that non-scholarly professional, university and community service is expected of all faculty members and "cannot be substituted for distinguished performance in one or more of the categories of professional academic work."

Another point made during the symposium was that since UB faculty members already are engaged in scholarly public-service activities, changing the promotion-and-tenure policy to recognize these activities simply would mean documenting such activities in a new framework.

The President's Review Board at UB is working on revising its policies to better recognize faculty members' public-service activities (See related story, page 6).

Ellis and Lieberman discussed the importance of a well-developed dossier and provided outlines for organizing a dossier, including how to document effectively the scholarship of teaching, research and public-service activities. "A well-developed dossier makes the process so much easier and cleaner, and gives the faculty member a much fairer assessment," noted Ellis.

In response to participants' inquiries, Ellis and Lieberman explained that by recognizing public-service activities as scholarship, such activities will not be considered as replacements for traditional scholarship activities when a faculty member is evaluated for promotion or tenure, but rather will enhance a faculty member's dossier and may offer a slight advantage in the process.

Lieberman suggested administrators and faculty members engage in dialogues to discuss and help define what public-service activities they would consider "scholarship," versus what is "plain, old community service."