Contents
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Performance & Tenure Guidelines
The new definition of scholarship has broadened the range of activities
that could fulfill the scholarship expectation. Annual PROF (performance)
reviews and the department-based Promotion & Tenure review process
are the settings in which scholarly activities, along with other aspects
of professional accomplishment, are assessed.
The university's new P&T guidelines include these points (Weiser
and Houglum, 1998):
- Performance of assigned duties (other than scholarship) is distinct
from scholarship; these are the two primary areas of faculty evaluation.
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Service, if it falls within an individual’s
assigned duties (such as Extension work), is a primary area of evaluation.
Service that is not part of assigned duties is a secondary area of
performance evaluation.
- Teaching, research, and outreach are vital University missions
but are not scholarship in themselves. Each can involve intellectual
work, in any of several forms (discovery, development, integration,
artistry), that is creative, peer-validated, and communicated; components
of a faculty member’s work that meet those criteria are scholarship.
- Creative work of teachers and Extension educators in developing
education materials, methods, or programs or in conducting research
in their subject-matter discipline will become scholarship if the
work is validated by peers and communicated.
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Extension work is often site-specific and therefore
the appropriate peer group for validation and audience for communication
are not necessarily national or international, so P&T guidelines
require "distinction in scholarship as evident in the candidate’s
wide recognition and significant contributions to the field or profession"
without specifying the appropriate geographic extent of the recognition
and contributions.
Staff Chair and Field Faculty Concerns
Staff chairs and other field faculty tend to have more concerns about
the scholarship expectations than campus-based Extension faculty. Field
faculty concerns include:
- … whether the forms of scholarship submitted by Extension faculty
will be deemed acceptable by their P&T committees;
- … in cases where Extension educators’ time has been taken
away from client service in order to conduct scholarly activities, whether
this constitutes a net gain or loss for clients (and whether clients
will perceive it as a net loss or a quality enhancement).
Faculty Approaches
Extension faculty in many departments reportedly are inclined to take
a cautious, conservative approach to meeting their scholarship requirement
– carrying out traditional academic research and submitting it to
scholarly journals, rather than research that might fit a broader definition
of scholarship but which might risk the disapproval of P&T committees.
Administrator Views
In contrast to those views, Extension administrators generally believed
that the scholarship requirement could be fulfilled by a thoughtful and
systematic approach to Extension program development and delivery –
thus formalizing activities that Extension professionals normally undertake
rather than adding a new burden.
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