Rewarding Faculty Publicly-Engaged Scholarship in Promotion and Tenure Policies at Carnegie Classified Community Engagement Institutions: A Descriptive Analysis

Community-engaged scholars have carried out the core academic mission of their institutions through their publicly engaged teaching, research, and service. Community-engaged colleges and universities have varied in how they value engaged scholarly work. For more than two decades, community-engaged scholars have called on the academy to reconsider promotion and tenure policies to more fully value publicly engaged research. The purpose of this descriptive study is to analyze self-reported institutional data on promotion and tenure policies and practices at 353 institutions that received the Carnegie Elective Community Engagement Classification. The aim is to broaden our understanding of the recognition and reward of participatory community-engaged research beyond single or multiple qualitative case studies. Our findings show that most institutions offer examples of how community-engaged scholarship is recognized in policies and connected to teaching, research and service. However, relatively few provide consistent or comprehensive definitions of community-engaged scholarship. These findings offer both general and discrete examples of institutional policies that both institutions and faculty may find useful as they seek to recognize and reward community-engaged scholarship. This study also sets out areas for future empirical research on the recognition and reward of community-engaged scholarship.