Disciplinary+variations

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**Disciplinary variations in faculty expressions of publicly engaged scholarship during promotion and tenure ** Diane Doberneck, Researcher, National Collaborative for the Study of University Engagement, Michigan State University [connordm@msu.edu]

John Schweitzer, Professor, Michigan State University [schweit1@msu.edu]


 * Keywords:** Faculty expressions, engaged scholarship, promotion and tenure, Biglan classification of academic disciplines


 * Conference Track:** Faculty


 * Format:** Research/Scholarly paper

Faculty expressions of scholarly outreach and engagement vary tremendously. Using Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, this study revealed statistically significant disciplinary variations by type of engaged scholarship, intensity of activity, and degree of engagement.
 * Summary**

More than twenty years after Boyer’s (1990) //Scholarship Reconsidered// and fifteen years after Diamond and Adam’s (1995) //The Disciplines Speak// both raised awareness about different ways of defining, conducting, and rewarding disciplinary differences, disciplinary differences related to scholarly outreach and engagement remain largely unexplored empirically.

This study was an interpretive content analysis of faculty members’ promotion and tenure forms from one research-intensive, Carnegie-engaged, land-grant institution in the Midwest (Krippendorf, 2003). Analysis focused on identifying patterns in the data related to disciplines by making use of Biglan’s (1973a) classification of academic disciplines as the theoretical framework. In this study, the Biglan classifications were used to examine different dimensions of faculty members’ engaged scholarship, including types of engaged scholarship, intensity of activity, and degree of engagement (Doberneck, Glass, & Schweitzer, 2010; Doberneck, Glass, & Schweitzer, 2012; Glass, Doberneck, & Schweitzer, 2011).

By using the pure-applied dimension during analysis, faculty members in applied disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their pure discipline colleagues. By using the life–non-life dimension during analysis, faculty members in the life disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their non-life discipline colleagues. By using the soft-hard dimension during analysis, faculty members in the hard disciplines were statistically more likely to report scholarly outreach and engaged activities than their soft discipline colleagues. When interactions between the dimensions were explored, the data revealed that applied-hard disciplines conduct more scholarly outreach and engagement activities than their applied-soft colleagues and that pure-soft disciplines conduct more scholarly outreach and engagement activities than their pure-hard colleagues.

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