Scholarship Reconsidered

When was the last time your unit updated its criteria for promotion to Full Professor? Even if updates were made recently, how much has it really changed in the last 25 years? Over the years, the ways in which scholarship is manifest has evolved, including more novel dissemination outlets (e.g. podcasts, blogs), community participatory research, and interdisciplinary research teams. However, the ways in which faculty are rewarded for these efforts is not reflected in current promotion evaluation criteria. Beyond just scholarship, these criteria often undervalue the vital work our faculty do in service to their university and overlook the countless hours spent mentoring the next generation of scholars. How then can we make intentional shifts in how faculty are evaluated for promotion and tenure to better reflect and reward the work they do?  

Long before we were holding regular Zoom meetings with our research teams in different parts of the world, Ernest L. Boyer was advocating for a new way of thinking about what "counts" as scholarship and how teaching and service duties can be more fairly rewarded. The Boyer Model, described in detail in the 1990 publication from Boyer himself titled Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate challenges the status quo of the academy's publish-or-perish expectation of faculty productivity and success.  Other universities have successfully initiated changes to their promotion criteria based upon the Boyer Model including Seattle University's ADVANCE from whom Project CREST has adapted procedures for creating system-level change right here at UCCS. Additionally, other institutions have leveraged the Boyer Model for modifying other university systems including undergraduate education.

Can we change the promotion to Full Professor criteria here at UCCS to better reflect what our faculty do to serve our students, the university, and their fields? The answer is yes, we must. In the Fall of 2022 a group of 20 faculty and administrators representing every college on campus have been brought together by Project CREST to think deeply on what scholarship means to them and how best we can move forward as a university to effectively and equitably evaluate our faculty for promotion decisions. The Scholarship Reconsidered: A UCCS Promotion Think Tank met three times through the Fall 2022 semester to discuss the Boyer model and learned how other institutions have integrated this model into their evaluation policies. They produce a white paper in Spring 2023 to make recommendations to leadership about what they want included in promotion criteria revisions. If you have feedback on the white paper you'd like to share, please do so HERE!

The syllabus provides an overview of how to structure a think tank to reconsider scholarship at your institution.

This guide can be easily adapted to other institutions and context when you want to engage faculty in conversations around the promotion to full professor.

Watch a presentation on the evolution of public engagement scholarship at Purdue University by special guest speaker Dr. Steve Abel. For further reading on Purdue's institutionalization of the Boyer Model see the Purdue Guide.

Watch the recording of a talk by our guest Dr. KerryAnn O'Meara who discusses her take on the implications of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered model for faculty promotion, equity, and institutional transformation.