Faculty Attitudes and Perspectives About Community Engaged Scholarship at an Engaged Instistution
Abstract
Community engaged scholarship has become a method for higher education institutions to respond to public and societal needs. Decades into the establishment of the “engaged institution,” studies reveal that higher education presents challenges for faculty to effectively succeed in academia while pursuing a community engaged scholarship agenda. This study employs the use of a constructivist grounded theoretical approach to explore faculty attitudes and perspectives on community engaged scholarship and the role the engaged intuition may have in their views. This study found that faculty were introduced to the term by their institutions but their views and understanding of community engaged scholarship stem from the community engagement model most closely aligned with their discipline. Their motivations for engaging in any form of community engagement were intrinsic, and their ethical convictions were a factor in their approach to their engagement. While the institution did not appear to have an impact in effectively incentivizing or increasing their engagement, institutional messaging was viewed as a meaningful factor to inform their perception of the value of community engaged scholarship within the institution. The institution’s competing demands of faculty time and priorities also impacted the amount of engagement faculty chose to undertake. The study also revealed the importance for understanding how community engaged scholarship may be employed, evaluated, and understood differently per discipline to assist in further articulating and operationalizing its integration in faculty research, teaching, and service. Other themes that emerged were the importance of insider-outsider dynamics in the community, the influence of socio-political environments on faculty engagement, and faculty’s positionality in relation to the community they engage with.
Subject Area
Higher Education Administration|Educational leadership|Education
Recommended Citation
Gonzalez, Azuri Lizeth, "Faculty Attitudes and Perspectives About Community Engaged Scholarship at an Engaged Instistution" (2020). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI28262222.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI28262222