Hiram Fitzgerald of Michigan State University (left), answers a question from the audience at the Dec. 1 forum on the scholarship of engagement, as John Laird, physics and astronomy, and Radhika Gajjala, communication studies, look on.

Faculty debate aspects of engagement

“Engaged” was the operative word Dec. 1 when BGSU faculty and staff met to discuss how the University can serve the needs of the state and society while preserving the identity and integrity of the academy.

President Sidney Ribeau hosted a forum with invited guest Hiram Fitzgerald, assistant provost for university outreach and engagement at Michigan State University and a national leader on issues related to the implementation of the scholarship of engagement. Fitzgerald spent the day meeting with administrators and campus faculty leaders to relate what MSU is doing and discuss BGSU’s efforts. His forum presentation was titled “Advancing Knowledge to Serve Society: Scholarship-Focused Outreach and Engagement” and dealt primarily with community-based scholarship.

About 60 faculty and staff members participated in the forum to begin to respond to the call by legislators for higher education to justify its subsidization by providing tangible service to society. As Ribeau told the gathering, “The academy has come to a new juncture where we’re being asked to look at things in a different way from in the past. We have an opportunity—a mandate, in fact—to use our intellectual capital in new ways and to answer the question ‘How does what you do serve the greater good of society? If we’re going to fund you, how do you legitimize that?’ And how do we integrate that into teaching, learning and service?”

Fitzgerald emphasized that, in order to truly be of service and consequently instill respect for their work, a key question for academics conducting community-based research must be: “Have we left the community with the knowledge it needs to sustain the effective preservation of programs we’ve created?”

Questions raised
It was clear from the ensuing discussion that there are many questions to be resolved—about reward and incentives, academic rigor, research agendas and impact on junior faculty, to name a few of the topics addressed.

BGSU, or even Ohio, is not alone in dealing with this challenge. Fitzgerald, who is on the Public Service Task Force on Engagement of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, noted that “there is no difference between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration” in terms of demand for accountability from higher education. “That’s why the Kellogg Commission was created,” he said, referring to the commission created in 1996 by NASULGC to help define the direction public universities should go in the future and to recommend an action agenda to speed the process of change.

The commission was charged not only with defining and bringing to public attention the kinds of changes occurring at public universities today, but also with analyzing necessary reforms and suggesting ways to accomplish them and monitor the results. In its “Renewing the Covenant” report, while validating the need for more engaged scholarship, it also noted that society today tends to give far greater value to research that has the possibility of commercialization than that which expands the boundaries of knowledge, and cautions against this trend.

Deanne Snavely, associate dean of the Graduate College and chair of BGSU’s Task Force on the Scholarship of Engagement, moderated the discussion, which included a panel composed of task force members John Laird, physics and astronomy; Radhika Gajjala, communication studies, and Wendy Manning, sociology. Faculty members expressed great concern for what the changes might mean for both research agendas and recognition in terms of tenure and promotion.

Reshaping scholarship and its reward system
“How is this reshaping traditional scholarship?” Gajjala asked, adding she hopes there will still be the same level of rigor in assessment of scholarly activities and a preservation of the traditional hierarchies.

Fitzgerald pointed out that “scholarship defines the institution of the academy.” Simply doing community projects is not the answer: “We’re not a social service agency,” he said. “Our job is to teach and to discover. We must preserve our identity as scholars. Even community work must be scholarship based.”

However, he also called for broadened respect for a number of methodologies and a recognition that no one methodology can answer all questions. “I’m not calling for devaluing anybody but valuing everybody.” The academy must find ways to reward the scholar whose work is community based just as much as the bench scientist, he said, adding that community-based scholarship is not for everyone, and he would not want to take a basic researcher away from his or her work to do community work.

This prompted Manning to ask how that fit into the ways in which faculty have been trained to attempt to publish their work in the highest-tier journals, to which Fitzgerald responded that if someone is doing his or her best work, it should be valued in the academy whether published in top or secondary journals.

Provost John Folkins added that selectivity and quality are not always synonymous when speaking of scholarly journals, but others objected.

Laird said this paradigm shift brings concerns about maintaining standards for the University when moving beyond measures scholars have access to now. “I’m reluctant to give up measures I understand and know how to use,” he said. “How do we assess quality after I leave the research domain?”

Manning concurred, posing a hypothetical situation: “A community might think my project was great, but others in my field might not think it was well conducted. How do we weigh and compare the two assessments?”

These are all questions that will need to be addressed. Manning also pointed out that one problem with widening the reward system to less traditional forms of scholarly activity is that the merit pool does not grow concurrently. With shrinking state and federal support for higher education, the question becomes more urgent.

Jane Rosser, assistant director of Partnerships for Community Action, said scholars need to “find a way to tell the story differently” to represent their work, and that institutions must work to remove the “risk factor” from faculty who wish to do community-based research so they will feel secure that they are not jeopardizing their futures by engaging in it.

Wendy Manning, a member of the Task Force on the Scholarship of Engagement, emphasizes a point during the discussion on assessment of faculty activities.