Members of the N3EC created professional development resources and workshops to help evaluators and candidates for reappointment (for tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty), tenure, promotion, and post-tenure review operationalize new language in the Massachusetts State College Association’s collective bargaining agreement that recognized community-engaged work as a form of scholarship.
Diversifying the Faculty: Pathways toward Equity
Participants: DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld (Fitchburg State University), Joanna Gonsalves (Salem State University), Asher Jackson (Fitchburg State University), Cynthia Lynch (Salem State University), John Reiff (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education), Roopika Risam (then Salem State University), Christina Santana (then Worcester State University), Wafa Unus (Fitchburg State University), Cindy Vincent (Salem State University), Elaine Ward (Merrimack College)
This project led to the formation of the N3EC. The grant focused on then newly-adopted language in the collective bargaining agreement for the nine Massachusetts state universities that required evaluators to consider community-engaged research, teaching, and service in reappointment, promotion, tenure, and post-tenure review. The project aimed to move campuses from contract language towards informed practice. We created resources to help evaluators (faculty peers, chairs, and administrators) understand the principles underlying community-engaged scholarly work and ran workshops for evaluators and candidates for personnel action to assist with application of the new language. The project recognized that faculty of color tend to be drawn to community-engaged work in higher proportions than their white counterparts and explicitly connected its work to the creation of a more supportive environment for faculty of color. The project concluded with a day-long virtual symposium on September 21, 2020, co-sponsored by Southern New England Campus Compact, which included 320 faculty and administrators, mostly from Massachusetts public colleges and universities.
Outcomes
Funding
Higher Education Innovation Fund, Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
Symposium
Advancing Equity through Publicly-Engaged Scholarship (2020)
Publication
Roopika Risam, Christina Santana, Cindy Vincent, Cynthia Lynch, John Reiff, Joanna Gonsalves, Wafa Unus, DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld, and Asher Jackson. “Confronting the Embedded Nature of Whiteness: Reflections on a Multi-Campus Project to Diversify the Professoriate.” Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice 22, no. 7 (2022). doi:10.33423/jhetp.v22i7.5271.
