Open AccessCreating Engaged Departments: A Program for Organizational and Faculty Development
Author(s) -
Kecskes Kevin J.,
Gelmon Sherril B.,
Spring Amy
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
to improve the academy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-4822
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-4822.2006.tb00456.x
Subject(s) - incentive , public relations , service learning , academic department , leverage (statistics) , community engagement , civic engagement , university faculty , faculty development , political science , higher education , professional development , medical education , sociology , pedagogy , politics , medicine , machine learning , computer science , law , economics , microeconomics
Portland State University encourages faculty participation in service‐learning by providing faculty with individual incentives to support and reward them. Now, in recognition of this central role of the department in higher education, administrators interested in creating sustained civic engagement initiatives on campus are looking to the department as a strategic leverage point for change. This chapter investigates a yearlong engaged department initiative and finds that a collective approach can (re)connect individual faculty to their initial motivations for engaging in the profession, to a community of scholars, to their students, and also to their surrounding community.