Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Rewarding Multiple Forms of Scholarship (review)

KerryAnn O'Meara, Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and R. Eugene Rice, Senior Scholar at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, bring to their edited volume both research and practice regarding the topic of redefining the concept of scholarship to change faculty work and its rewards. The volume revisits the seminal work of Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990), and asks whether efforts to redefine scholarship have in fact resulted in changes in institutional policies and practices over the intervening 15 years. To answer that question, the editors compile essays by scholars, faculty, and academic leaders to present a history of the movement, campus studies of institutions attempting to refine scholarship and reward faculty contributions, results from a national survey of chief academic officers, and principles of best practice.

In the three chapters of the first section, "Context," leaders in the field provide an in-depth historical and conceptual framework for the movement to redefine scholarship. In chapter 1, Rice chronicles the history of the movement, emphasizing the revolutionary influence of Boyer's work in broadening the definition of scholarship to include teaching and learning, engagement, discovery, and integration. A second chapter, authored by six leaders in the field of higher education, highlights key issues related to each of the forms of scholarship, nicely integrating concrete milestones and personal recollections. Readers will be especially interested in chapter 3, as it is here that the movement is contextualized and the focus shifts to the problems and obstacles institutions face as they attempt to "change" perception of and rewards for scholarship. Robert M. Diamond outlines the barriers to redefining scholarship and five general strategies for overcoming them. Kenneth J. Zahorski offers a candid account of his experience at St. Norbert College as the campus attempts to redefine scholarship and revise tenure and promotion criteria. Particularly useful are the "lessons" that the author includes, as they reveal just how challenging and arduous the entire "redefining" process can be. Jerry G. Gaff concludes the chapter by examining the Preparing Future Faculty program, raising important questions about how a new generation of faculty will react to multiple forms of scholarship and how multiple forms of scholarship will affect underrepresented faculty.

The campus study format of the second section—nine chapters authored by college and university academic leaders—offers lessons learned from a variety of institutional types. The campus studies are remarkably diverse, inclusive, and wide-ranging, featuring stories of redefining scholarship in small liberal arts colleges; comprehensive, doctoral, and research universities; and a for-profit institution (University of Phoenix). Whether in liberal arts colleges (e.g., Franklin College and Madonna University) or an HBCU (e.g., Albany State University) that have traditionally emphasized teaching and service, or at research and doctoral universities (e.g., South Dakota State, Kansas State, Arizona State) that have traditionally emphasized research, what the reader is struck by is the power of institutional mission and culture as well as internal and external audiences to drive or impede reform. For example, when asked to support, engage in, assess, and reward multiple forms of scholarship, faculty members seemed to fall along a continuum—from describing heightened anxiety about expectations to increased excitement about opportunities to enlarge their work. Sometimes, it is internal constituencies—senior faculty, a department chair, a provost—that either spearhead or dampen the momentum for reform. But equally often it is external audiences—boards of regents, disciplinary associations, other eminent universities—that put limits on innovative reform. Readers will learn a great deal from cases written by academic leaders from their own institutional type. In addition, readers will find wonderfully illustrative examples of the contributions to students, learning, and the community from faculty scholarships of teaching, discovery, engagement, and integration.

The final section of the book, which contains chapters by both editors, points to valuable research perspectives, principles of good practice, and aspirations...