Teacher-Scholar Model Working Group Report
In general, there appears to be universal agreement that the Teacher-Scholar Model defines faculty who embrace the following practices:
- Active participation in both teaching and scholarship
- Meaningful student engagement in faculty scholarly activity
- Inclusion of scholarship in teaching to create vibrant learning experiences for students
Consequently, the Teacher-Scholar Model working group’s most important task was defining a Teacher-Scholar Model appropriate for all Cal Poly faculty using diverse perspectives to assist us. The working group has characterized four areas of scholarship appropriate for Cal Poly faculty. We relied on the oft cited Boyer report (1990) because it encompassed the possible scholarship that takes place at a comprehensive institution such as Cal Poly:
- Scholarship of Discovery encompasses those scholarly activities that extend the stock of human knowledge through the discovery or collection of new information, such as through basic research.
- Scholarship of Application encompasses scholarly activities that seek to relate the knowledge in one's field to the affairs of society drawing upon existing knowledge for the purpose of crafting solutions to problems that will affect people or our planet.
- Scholarship of Teaching encompasses scholarly activities that are directly related to pedagogical practices. Such scholarship seeks to improve the teaching and advising of students through discovery, evaluation, and transmission of information about the learning process as it relates to teaching methodology or learning outcomes, learning theory development, development and/or testing of educational models.
- Scholarship of Integration encompasses scholarly activities that are primarily interdisciplinary or interpretive in nature. It synthesizes, interprets, and connects the findings in a way that brings new meaning to those facts.
On nationwide faculty surveys (e.g. COACHE) that compare us to more scholarly-focused institutions, our faculty listed time limitations as the most important barrier to their scholarly activities, a perception that was not shared by faculty from other institutions. Therefore, when it comes time to benchmark our aspirations and actual accomplishments, it will be important to compare ourselves with more realistic TSM peers with similar teaching loads, such as the other CSU campuses.
Quantitative measures of scholarly and creative activities, such as grant and award summaries from Sponsored Programs and departmental or college databases on faculty scholarly activities, indicate that the CSU system is an appropriate peer group as Cal Poly ranks at the bottom of the top third of grant awards. However, Cal Poly has increased grant acquisitions more rapidly than our CSU peers. Further, Cal Poly ranks first among CSUs for the amount of grant money directed toward student wages. This data indicates that Cal Poly faculty members involve more students in their scholarly activities than their CSU peers..
The balance of the working group’s contribution will be drawn from semi-quantitative data such as the FSSE, NSSE, COACHE, and the Cal Poly student and faculty/staff surveys. Soon we will also have results from department chair surveys, which will reveal the time and money departments commit to the TSM and the scholarly activities of faculty.
Preliminary results suggest that there is a varied characterization of scholarly activities that embody the TSM at Cal Poly, but there appears to be universal agreement that scholarly activities of faculty contribute significantly to student learning.
-Scott Steinmaus, Professor, Biological Sciences
Chair, WASC Teacher-Scholar Model Working Group