Faculty for the Engaged Campus

Community-based teaching and research are gaining recognition and legitimacy in schools and graduate programs of public health. The critical issue is how to institutionalize and sustain them as core values and practices. Having a cadre of faculty with the commitment and competencies to link their scholarship with communities is essential to achieving this goal. However, there are a number of persistent challenges to those who seek community-engaged careers in the academy: (1) There are few professional development pathways available; (2) Peer reviewers in a given faculty member's discipline or profession who can understand and assess the rigor, quality and impact of their community-engaged scholarship are not readily identifiable; (3) There is no accepted method or vehicle for peer reviewing, publishing and disseminating products of community-engaged scholarship that are in forms other than journal articles (e.g., resource guides, policy briefs, educational CD-ROMs) and (4) There are no clearly defined or accepted roles for community partners in faculty development, review, promotion or tenure. Faculty for the Engaged Campus, a national initiative of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, aims to strengthen community-engaged career paths in the academy by developing innovative competency-based models of faculty development, facilitating peer review and dissemination of products of community-engaged scholarship, and supporting community-engaged faculty through the promotion and tenure process. The initiative is supported by a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education in the U.S. Department of Education.