Engaging+departments,+engaging+scholars

**Engaging departments, engaging scholars** Carrie Williams Howe, Director, Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning, University of Vermont [carrie.williams@uvm.edu] Kimberly DePasquale, MS candidate, former Coordinator of Community Based Learning, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont [kimberly.depasquale@uvm.edu] Alan Tinkler, Program Coordinator, Assistant Professor, University of Vermont [alan.tinkler@uvm.edu] **Keywords:** Engaged department initiative, faculty research, promoting engaged scholarship

**Track:** Faculty roles and professional development

**Format:** Team presentation
 * Date & time: **Thursday 3:20-4:30
 * Location: **Salon 8

**Summary:** Encouraging faculty members to pursue research on service-learning and engagement is a challenging endeavor when such research is often considered less valuable. This presentation will share how involvement in “engaged department initiatives” (Battistoni et.al., 2003) has inspired new and veteran scholars to explore research questions related to engagement. Over the past five years, four units at The University of Vermont have strategically integrated service-learning throughout their curriculum and worked to institutionalize the value of engagement within their culture. While the reasons for entering into these initiatives were different, and the activities varied, each of them pursued scholarly research initiatives connected to this work.

This presentation will briefly describe each participating unit, the steps they have taken toward engagement, and the research endeavors/questions they have pursued. Findings will not be covered in detail for each of these studies, but will be briefly described with further information available. Instead, our results/findings will focus on the role of the engaged department initiative in fostering a research agenda, and the characteristics of each participating unit that we believe have impacted the extent to which engaged scholarship is pursued: characteristics of engaged faculty members (tenure status, demographics, etc.); presence of external funding; extent of rewards/awards for faculty members; level of support and engagement from key administrators; evidence of cultural value-shifts; connections between engagement and disciplinary focus of unit; and evidence of conversations and/or action around tenure and promotion. In addition, key strategies to promote faculty interest in such scholarly endeavors will be shared.

**References:** Banta, T. & Blaich, C. (2011, January/February). “Closing the assessment loop.” //Change//, pp. 22-27.

Battistoni, R. G. (2003). //The Engaged Department Toolkit.// Providence, RI: Campus Compact.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Gelman, S. (2002). “How do we know our work makes a difference? Assessment strategies for service-learning and civic engagement.” //Metropolitan Universities: An International Forum//. 11(2), pp. 28-39.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">O'Meara, K. (2006). Encouraging multiple forms of scholarship in faculty reward systems: have academic cultures really changed? //New Directions for Institutional Research//, pp. 77-94.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Please click here to access a PDF of this page: **

**Please join the conversation about this session! To do so, please click on the "Edit" tab at the upper right, scroll back down to here, and lead the comment with your name.**

Colleagues - thank you for attending our session at the conference. As promised, I am attaching our presentation materials. If you have any questions, please feel free to post or contact us. Sincerely, Carrie, Kim, and Alan