A review of U.S. tenure and promotion guidelines in media and communication and their support for engaged scholarship

Abstract

People within academia choose their path because they want to make positive differences in society, in their community or practice. A diversity of venues and methodological approaches should be accepted within academia, because theoretical, critical, and applied approaches toward knowledge-making can inform one another to help society make sense of its complex problems and evaluate solutions to those problems. Nontraditional scholars such as consultants, engaged scholars, and artists frequently choose to disseminate their artifacts in venues (e.g., educational videos, podcasts, reports) other than academic journals or books with the goal of connecting nonacademics with their work (Miller, 2022). Engaged scholars often prefer to form partnerships with nonprofit institutions, the government, and other institutions to enrich communities by providing realworld solutions or stimulating dialogue (Waisbord, 2020). In this essay, I argue that applied, outreach, and consulting work should fall under the umbrella of engaged scholarship. Educational researcher Ernest Boyer’s (1990) work is often cited as the catalyst for recognizing the value of engaged scholarship. Van de Ven (2007) described engaged scholarship as a “participatory form of research for obtaining the advice and perspectives of key stakeholders... to understand a complex social problem” (p. ix). Van de Ven (2007) stated engaged research should address and resolve a particular problem; moreover, scholars should not emphasize creating generalizable information, since engaged scholarship concentrates on helping community-based programs. Engaged scholarship is the application or exchange of intellectual, artistic, and professional expertise, knowledge, skills, or resources to benefit external nonacademic stakeholders that may involve collaboration between academics and nonacademics (Miller, in press). Yet colleges and universities constrain academics from doing this type of work by creating tenure and promotion guidelines that state what types of scholarship count and do not count. A complex faculty rewards structure within academia often disadvantages scholars who select paths that counter interpretations of acceptable scholarship output such as a journal article or book publication. Engaged scholars criticize tenure and promotion documents for not properly acknowledging such approaches (Van de Ven, 2007). Historically, university and departmental leadership rely on proxies such as journal outlet and productivity to assess a candidate’s performance (Saaty & Ramanujam, 1983). Long-held beliefs and norms need to be readdressed at this moment in time based on momentum supporting engaged approaches (Waisbord, 2020).