Scholarship Unbound: Perspectives on Scholarship by Community College and Liberal Arts Faculty

• In Event: 66.039 - Faculty Careers in Different Contexts

Abstract

Drawing from a multi-method, qualitative study of 50 faculty participants’ experiences at four types of institutions, we examine if, how, and why our 28 participating community college and liberal arts faculty members engage in scholarly activity at levels exceeding the expectations and norms of their institutional types. Through educational philosopher David Hansen’s (1995) conceptual lens of vocation as a “crossroads between public obligation and personal fulfillment” (p. 3), we analyzed the role of scholarship in our participants’ professional (and personal) identities. We provide cases of participants who have constructed careers that run counter to conceptions of faculty life in these settings and discuss implications around an improved understand of the role of scholarship in a variety of institutional contexts.

Authors

• Aimee LaPointe Terosky, Saint Joseph's University

• Leslie D. Gonzales, Michigan State University