New Report Recommends Tenure Policy Reforms for the Engaged University

"A new report from Imagining America, Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University, proposes 'concrete ways to remove obstacles to academic work carried out for and/or with the public by giving such work full standing as scholarship, research, or artistic creation.'" The entire 60-page PDF document is available for free download.

We propose concrete ways to remove obstacles to academic work carried out for and/or with the public by giving such work full standing as scholarship, research, or artistic creation. While we recommend a number of ways to alter the wording and intent of tenure and promotion policies, changing the rules is not enough. Enlarging the conception of who counts as “peer” and what counts as “publication” is part of something bigger: the democratization of knowledge on and off campus. We want this report to serve as a toolkit for faculty, staff, and students who are eager to change the culture surrounding promotion and tenure. It offers strategies that they can use to create enabling settings for doing and reviewing intellectually rigorous public work.