The study addresses how publicly engaged scholars develop, including the motivations and identities that contribute to an interest in engaged scholarship, and how the practice of engaged scholarship relates to the graduate school experience. The study also explores what emerging engaged scholars view as viable career pathways. Focus groups, conventional measures from related studies, and a national committee informed the study’s mixed methods design, which includes a survey instrument and interview protocols.
Preliminary Findings
Findings from this exploratory research study are critical for developing new pedagogies, new academic structures, and progressive answers to the myriad challenges faced by postsecondary education as we move forward in a socio-political climate that demands solutions. The research team drew from both the quantitative and qualitative data to develop a typology of publicly engaged scholars that manifest among seven nascent profiles:
- Cradle to Community – This profile type exemplifies a scholar that gets involved with their local community because of personal values (i.e. religious, familial). Their involvement with the community may leads to them pursuing graduate work.
- Artist as Engaged Scholar – This profile describes a local artist who uses the community as a “canvas.” The artist as engaged scholar grounds themselves in both the academy and the arts.
- Teacher to Engaged Scholar – This profile represents the K-12 teacher who enters the academy for graduate work and teaching, but remains committed to taking an active researcher role within secondary schools.
- Program Coordinator to Engaged Administrator/Scholar – This profile depicts an administrator in higher education who holds a leadership role in a center, an institute, or a consortium for campus community partnership while also holding a faculty position.
- Engaged Interdisciplinarian – This profile depicts a scholar who only lightly identifies with one specific discipline, leveraging every opportunity to borrow from different domains of inquiry for the enhancement of their community based work work.
- Activist to Scholar – This profile captures the community activist who connects with the university and uses the university as platform to further pursue their activism.
- Engaged Pragmatist – This public scholar sees the writing on the wall and suspects that publicly engaged scholarship may become prevalent within the academy. Whatever their connection to the academy their motivation is grounded more in the direction of higher education as opposed to civic engagement.
