Outreach Highlights
February 2008

Symposium Looks Beyond Outreach to Scholarly Engagement

Lorilee Sandmann

What exactly are the rewards for the kind of teaching that has a direct and measurable impact on the surrounding community . . . of research that is conducted in true partnership with the community . . .and of scholarship that benefits all parties involved in that partnership?

UMass Amherst faculty members and administrators grappled with that open question October 22 at the first ever campus-wide symposium on the issue, entitled Beyond Outreach to Scholarly Engagement.

The social benefits and community development that grow from scholarly university engagement in critical public issues can be profound, said faculty members at the October 22 symposium, sponsored by the Faculty Senate Outreach Council and UMass Amherst Outreach. The personal rewards and the support that comes from colleagues and community partners can be equally gratifying, they added.

But, too frequently, the professional rewards for such work are small, or nearly nonexistent.

That was the consensus of representatives from all ten of the university’s schools and colleges who gathered for the all-day series of events. Many insisted that engagement and engaged scholarship need to be recognized concretely as important, effective and valuable in the academic enterprise – much in the same way that teaching and research are in tenure and promotion.

Provost Charlena Seymour, Faculty Senate President Ernest May, Keynote Speaker Lorilee Sandmann

It’s time, said Provost Charlena Seymour – following a morning working session involving more than 80 faculty members, deans, and outreach leaders – for academic departments across the university to initiate, review, reflect on and ultimately reward the best in such engagement.

“This process has to begin at the department level,” said the provost. “We need to connect better around these issues. We need to go back to our departments with a real commitment to work through the hard discussions.”

Vice Provost Sharon Fross, who spearheaded the conference, told a breakfast audience that many large research universities have been having an extended dialogue about the nature and value of engaged scholarship for over a decade. She added that the discussion has been especially important at land grant institutions. UMass Amherst, she said, is in the very early stages of this discussion.

“We asking whether engaged scholarship is important, and why it matters,” she said. The vice provost said that interviews with faculty members indicated that, for many, engagement with the outside community goes to the core of their teaching and research, while for others it remains a matter of “passion and personal commitment.”

Interim Chancellor Thomas Cole said that engagement is a responsibility that matters now more than ever and is especially timely in Western Massachusetts.

Throughout the day, Lorilee Sandmann of the University of Georgia helped guide the proceedings through small group working sessions, a faculty panel discussion and a key note address. Sandmann, a faculty member in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy, and co-director of the Clearinghouse and National Review Board for the Scholarship of Engagement, drew on the still-evolving land grant tradition to frame the evolving ways that scholarship is impacting communities as a part of two-way relationship with those communities.

Sandmann was quick to differentiate between traditional “outreach” in which faculty knowledge and expertise is provided to communities and citizens; “engagement” which is a deeper connection between the university and the community, characterized by mutual planning and shared benefits and “scholarly engagement” that also meets rigorous standards for documentation and peer review of methods and outcomes.

Engaged scholarship is not a component that is added to the traditional triad of teaching, research and service by which scholars are judged, but is rather embedded in all three legs of the triad, she said.