Scholarship Redefined

Associate Professor of Psychology Mary Lou Klotz, who received the Susquehanna University Teaching Award for 1998, typifies the role of University faculty as teacher-scholars.

The new model goes beyond the traditional definition of research-based scholarship of discovery – the creation of new knowledge, typically evaluated by publication in a book or refereed journal. "People still do this and they should still do this," says former Dean of Arts and Sciences Laurie Crumpacker. "But we've begun to realize that it's too limited." The opinion reflects an increasingly strong, though still controversial, move to view faculty as teacher-scholars. "It's no accident that we put the word 'teacher' first. It is uppermost in our minds when we focus on what is best for undergraduate students," adds Crumpacker "Scholarship is what we're passionate about; it's trying to find answers to questions that intrigue us and that brought us into the profession in the first place," says Associate Professor of History Linda McMillin. An essential complement, she stresses, is "trying to help students discover and pursue their own intellectual passions."

Discovery, Integration, Application, Teaching
Much of the redefinition of scholarship has been prompted by the ideas of the late Ernest Boyer, the highly respected president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching from 1979 to 1995. Boyer's 1990 special report, Scholarship Reconsidered, encouraged the higher education community to recognize and value appropriately the many, diverse forms of scholarship applicable to undergraduate education. Traditional research geared to the advancement of knowledge, he argued, should also be joined by the scholarship of integration to make connections across disciplines, the scholarship of application to focus on the two-way relationship between theory and practice, and the scholarship of teaching to both educate and entice future scholars.

Applied ethics and the theory of knowledge are among research interests for Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jeff Whitman.

Vitality in the Classroom
The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) – The International Association for Management Education, which accredits the University's Sigmund Weis School of Business, has also recently broadened its definition of scholarship. The new standards encourage intellectual contributions by faculty that are designed to improve teaching, curriculum and the overall student experience, says James Brock, dean of the Sigmund Weis School.

"Faculty who are on top of their disciplines and contributing to their fields bring a vitality to the classroom," says Brock. And being taught by such faculty "causes students to know things they might not otherwise know and makes them a part of a larger community," points out Susquehanna President Joel Cunningham.

At Susquehanna the vitality arises from talents as diverse as that of Professor of Mathematics Ken Brakke, an active contributor to the National Science Foundation's Geometry Supercomputer Project, to Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of Women's Studies Susan Bowers, whose current projects include a book-length manuscript on 20th-century women writers.

Other scholarship at the University focuses directly on teaching innovation and enhancement. In the Department of Accounting, for example, Associate Professor Jerrell Habegger and Ed Schwan, who holds the Tressler Chair in Accounting, collaborated on a project aimed at teaching ethics in the accounting classroom with an honor code. Habegger also studies ways to assess the effectiveness of new teaching methods, and the entire department has worked on revamping the curriculum to help students meet a new 150-hour requirement of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

"Focus: Ecuador" was the first in a new series of University programs to combine interdisciplinary Core curriculum courses with short-term travel/study abroad.

Or consider the work of Assistant Professor of Political Science Brooke Harlowe, who directs the University's interdisciplinary international studies major. In addition to conducting research and publishing on political and economic issues in Ecuador, Harlowe led Susquehanna's "Focus: Ecuador" pilot program in 1997 and has been instrumental in securing Department of Education grant funding to expand the Focus initiatives. Building a rich web of connections among science, social sciences, humanities, business and the arts, the programs combine a semester of on-campus study with short-term travel and study in Ecuador, South Africa, the Caribbean and Australia.

Fostering Teamwork
1997-98 was an especially productive year in the faculty in the University's three schools. Collectively, faculty published six books, 152 articles and made 116 conference presentations — a 22 percent increase over the previous year.

Much of this scholarship was collaborative work with students. Two dozen students presented research findings at the annual meetings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Sciences, the Eastern Psychological Association in Boston, and the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute.

Long a hallmark of graduate education, collaborative research adds significant value for undergraduates, says Crumpacker. A prime example is the three-year-old Summer Research Partners Program, directed by Associate Professor of Biology Tom Peeler. The University uses income from the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment to fund stipends for five students who work with faculty mentors in biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. University development grants and outside grants fund faculty participation.

The program immerses students in the group process of research, analysis and presentation. Corin Tierney '01, for example, assisted Professors of Physics Fred Grosse and Richard Kozlowski on studies investigating the atmosphere of the moon. "I was expected not to just know how to do it, but to want to know how things worked," says Tierney.

"Employers and graduate schools tell us this collaborative experience is the model they want," stresses Crumpacker. "They want people who are able to be good team members."

Assistant Professor of Music David Mattingly, conducting a lesson with Gail Derrer '00, is active as a teacher, performer and scholar.

Juried Exhibits and Major Performances
In the School of Fine Arts and Communications, applied scholarship in the form of juried exhibits and major performances – 35 by faculty in the past year alone – are powerful examples to students preparing for professional positions in art, music, theatre and communications.

Consider the work of Assistant Professor of Music David Mattingly whose numerous solo piano perfomances include the Autunnale Festival of Contemporary Music in Bergen, Norway. Mattingly, who published a collection of works by Karol Szymanowski in 1997, also focuses scholarly attention on innovations in undergraduate teaching, including a course on examining music through analysis of design and tonal structure.

Charles B. Degenstein Professor of Communications James Sodt is developing a new computer-based tool to map and track business activity in the information industries. The program will present data in a new way to help strategists, merger and acquisition specialists, and analysts make informed decisions. The project will be of special interest to students pursuing the University's new emphasis in corporate communications. Exposure to such tools, says Sodt, can help give students a greater awareness of their industry and its future.

Sodt is using his 1998-99 sabbatical leave to pursue the long-term project. "More and more, sabbaticals contribute to faculty members' professional scholarly development and their roles as teachers," stresses Crumpacker. And because the result of a sabbatical is typically "new energy, new creativity, new ideas, it makes faculty better contributors to our community in every sense of the word."

Exploring Faculty Roles and Rewards
One does not have to look far on Susquehanna's campus to find examples of the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching encouraged by Ernest Boyer in Scholarship Reconsidered. But as the examples abound, at Susquehanna and at other colleges, they also pose new questions. A follow-up work published in 1997 by the Carnegie Foundation, Scholarship Assessed, challenged the educational community to carefully evaluate the new forms of scholarship. Such critical assessment is needed to assure the rigor long associated with peer-review standards applied to research and discovery.

Associate Professor of History Linda McMillin, whose own research focuses on medieval history, chaired a recent project to examine faculty workloads, roles and rewards.

The issue is important because promotions and tenure are typically based on the traditional measures of scholarship, such as publication in refereed journals. "The real issue is, how do we assess these things?" says Warren Funk, vice president for academic affairs. "How do we determine what is good, what is bad, what is worth doing?"

To help answer such questions, Susquehanna recently joined with 16 other institutions in the Associated New American Colleges (ANAC) consortium in a study to examine faculty workloads, roles and rewards. The study included surveys, focus groups and time studies to analyze faculty work patterns. A December 1997 report recommends that the University more clearly articulate what is expected of faculty in the areas of research and service.

"It's very important that we define it in our local context, not for Penn State or not for Harvard, but for Susquehanna," says Linda McMillin, chair of the project. "Most of our faculty don't necessarily define themselves in very narrow ways. They are really interested in making larger intellectual connections within their fields and beyond their fields and in education in general," she adds. "And that's one of the strengths of a place like Susquehanna."