CETLS and the BMCC Library invite applications for the 2023 Reenvisioning Scholarship Faculty Fellows Program, which is made possible through funding provided by CUNY Faculty Affairs.
The Reenvisioning Scholarship program will engage faculty from across BMCC in rethinking traditional notions of scholarship, introduce new ideas about scholarship from ongoing conversations in the national higher education community, and consider the culture and values we as a faculty would like to intentionally strive for.
Fellows will take part in a workshop facilitated by Humane Metrics Initiative (HuMetricsHSS) (Wednesday and Friday, January 11 and 13, 11am-1pm), as well as engage in conversations with other faculty fellows and facilitate conversations with their respective departments during spring 2023.
Stipend: $500
Commitment:
- January 11 and 13, 11am-1pm
- Participate in Re-envisioning Scholarship workshop facilitated by HuMetricsHSS and share information with department/disciplinary colleagues
- Spring 2023
- Participate in dialogue series (2 x 90 minutes) with faculty fellows and share information with department/disciplinary colleagues
- Facilitate one or more departmental or disciplinary conversations on re-envisioning scholarship (using information gained in HuMetricsHHS workshops)
Applications due December 21, 2022 December 14, 2022. We seek to include at least one representative from each department or discipline. All faculty are welcome to apply, with priority given to full-time faculty.
What are we doing?
The Re-envisioning Scholarship faculty development program will draw on the work of HuMetricsHSS, an organization founded by scholars in 2016 and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (over $1 million). HuMetrics engages colleges and universities in transforming their cultures of scholarship: “Shifting from abstract standards of excellence to enacting values-inflected purposeful work has the capacity to transform the culture of higher education—making scholarship more meaningful for those who undertake it, more valuable for the communities engaged by it, and more transparent to those who need to evaluate it” (Nature, 2020).
This fellows program builds on the CETLS and Library programming of the past year, including four events exploring various topics about how to reconceptualize the conventional notions of scholarship valued in the academy:
- A discussion of Boyer’s model of scholarship, which includes three other types of scholarship in addition to the traditional scholarship of discovery.
- A panel discussion of research grounded in community engagement and activism, archival work, and podcasts, all of which fall under the category of scholarship of application/engagement, often not eligible to be included in tenure and promotion..
- A conversation about the demand academia places on scholars to produce books and articles and ways we can push back against persistent and taxing pressures.
- A panel discussion about how projects like sustained work within communities and publishing in open access platforms are rigorous, thoughtful, and impactful and should count as scholarship toward tenure and promotion.
We aim to further the energies of these successful CETLS and Library events through continued conversations with Reenvisioning Scholarship fellows, as well as the larger faculty community, as a way to highlight the important work faculty are already doing at the college.
Why are we doing this?
Through this Reenvisioning Scholarship project aimed at creating transparent, clear tenure and promotion guidelines, we look to establish a foundation and process for reenvisioning scholarship at BMCC, beginning with an examination and exploration of Boyer’s four categories of scholarship in the community college context. Currently, P&B committees at BMCC rely primarily on a very narrow definition of scholarship: peer-reviewed scholarship of discovery. This excludes scholarship that is particularly relevant to community college faculty, students, staff, and local communities, including:
- scholarship of application (also called engagement or outreach)
- scholarship of integration
- scholarship of teaching and learning
BMCC faculty are engaged in these more expansive and equally important scholarship activities, which currently fall outside of, or on the periphery, during the tenure and promotion process. For example, our mid-career, as well as pre-tenure, faculty are:
- Conducting studies on behalf of governmental and non-governmental agencies
- Podcasting in their areas of expertise
- Working with organizations to affect change in local communities, grounded in their scholarly expertise and disciplinary knowledge
- Training community members and scholars in disciplinary practices
- Creating databases of primary sources for scholars
These examples fall outside the acceptable scholarship of discovery and generally don’t include traditional peer review. Boyer’s scholarship categories, as well as the efforts of scholars continuing this work in advocating for public scholarship, provide a path forward for BMCC faculty to re-envision their scholarship beyond this currently narrow view.
Planning committee members:
jean amaral, associate professor and open knowledge librarian
Gina Cherry, CETLS Director
Michelle Ronda, Associate Professor, Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice
RaShelle Peck, Assistant Professor, Ethnic and Race Studies
