Engaging Scholars in the Scholarship of Engagement: Advancing Research and Publication Knowledge and Creative Production

The practice and study of the scholarly application of pedagogies of engagement are important to the service-learning field because a significant aspect of faculty culture is the pursuit of an active scholarly agenda. This facet of faculty life often manifests as "traditional research," which may unfortunately work at cross purposes with the civic engagement and service-learning efforts in higher education nationwide. In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to redefining faculty work in ways that position scholarly pursuits to align with community needs. Portland State University has institutionally responded to these changing faculty needs by revising the promotion and tenure guidelines, creating a centralized faculty development unit, and implementing the Scholarship of Teaching and Research Team (STRT) program. Now in its seventh year, STRT increases faculty scholarly productivity and supports faculty research in the areas of the scholarship of "teaching and learning" and of "engagement." This chapter presents the programmatic tenets of the STRT model and shares the results of our research on the impacts of this program on faculty. [authors]