Reimagining tenure and promotion for creative faculty: the Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework

Abstract

ABSTRACT Faculty members interested in creating creative scholarship face advancement obstacles due to few known tenure and promotion standards. This study involved qualitative semistructured interviews with U.S. communication and media creative faculty members producing scholarship spanning multiple mediums. Interviewed scholars primarily expressed their scholarship's contributions involved local community engagement. Yet creative scholars perceived departmental leadership preferred to rely on artistic and professional standards to evaluate the quality of their work rather than engaged criteria. Participants felt such criteria too narrowly constrained them and delegitimized the value of their work. The results provide evidence that creative scholars struggle when communicating their work's value and documenting their scholarship achievements. Guidance is provided through the formalization of a Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework conceptually made up of four evaluation concepts rooted in the engaged and creative scholarship literature: (1) collaboration, (2) outreach, (3) peer review, and (4) innovation.