Community Engagement and Institutional Culture in Higher Education: An Investigation of Faculty Reward Policies at Engaged Campuses

Through an examination of the 2006 applications for the Elective Classification for Community Engagement from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, this study explores the ways in which promotion and tenure policies reward community-engaged scholarship. Evidence from the applications and from campus documents reveals examples of significant shifts in policy that reflect cultural changes. At the same time, there is evidence of persistent and deep-seated resistance to change that values and legitimizes community-engaged scholarship. Campuses that have revised their promotion and tenure guidelines to incorporate community engagement across the faculty roles seem to have institutional identities defined by commitments to the stewardship of local communities. (authors)