Resources

Institutional Change & Policy Development

Having official guidelines to consider streamlines the evaluation process for both the evaluator and the faculty member. While implicit recognition of other forms of scholarships does happen, these tend to be informal. Having observable, definable, formal structures verifies that the University not only encourages ES and CE, but actively enables it to occur. It also minimizes perceived risk by faculty considering these forms of scholarship.

These resources focus on the broader systemic changes needed at the university level to value and support engaged scholarship.

• Guidebook for the Engaged University - Beyond the Academy
  • This is a very thorough analysis on creating an effective university that values engaged scholarship not just by word of mouth, but also within its institutional infrastructure. It discusses not only formally recognizing ES within RPT and hiring processes, but also through professional development, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and recognition.

• Incorporating Community Engagement in Faculty Reward Policies - Campus Compact
  • This conference handout proposes what to include in the recognition of CE within promotion and tenure procedures. It also provides findings based off of the revisions that the units of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro had made.

---

Guidance for Faculty & Dossier Preparation

These resources offer practical advice for faculty on how to document and present their engaged work for review.

• Engagement Scholarship Consortium: Preparing and Evaluating Engagement Dossier
  • This Consortium provides advice in preparing dossiers. It suggests that framing is essential to preparing it, including the definition of the issue, community partners and their reciprocal role, documentation of metrics, and how to effectively disseminate. While including a narrative framing in presenting the dossier to RPT committees, lack of training in reviewing such scholarship has been a significant barrier in getting that ES recognized. This also discusses different levels of impact and recognizing that effective ES takes several years to become widespread. Dr. Williams references The Guide, which serves as a tool in assessment.

• The Community-Engaged Scholarship Review, Promotion, and Tenure Package: A Guide for Faculty and Committee Members - Jordan et alii
  • This document, while published before the Rutger’s rubric, explains each dimension of quality CE scholarship, examples of documentation to look for or prepare, and how to promote a systemic culture that recognizes CE scholarship. It advises ways to train evaluators how to interpret CE dossiers, and extensively provides examples, evidence, and methods of documentation for research and teaching.

---

Evaluation Rubrics & Criteria

These resources provide specific frameworks, dimensions, and questions for assessing the quality of engaged scholarship.

• Engaged Scholarship Rubric - Rutgers University
  • This piece indicates that it is for evaluating ES for promotion and tenure purposes. It proposes some questions for RPT committees to consider in evaluating the faculty’s research and considering the personal statement. They’ve identified eight criteria for evaluation: the faculty’s goals, preparation, methods, impact, presentation, reflection, collaboration, and conduct. It also provides observable indicators of expectations.

• Four Dimensions of Quality Outreach - Michigan State University
  • This piece focuses on outreach led by faculty, specifically as they pertain to community partners. This uses the dimensions of significance, context, scholarship, and impact. It provides subsections in this criteria with questions to consider during evaluation. It also proposes qualitative and quantitative measurements to consider per dimension.