What is public scholarship?
What is public scholarship? What does it mean to be a public scholar? Or a publicly engaged scholar? Or to do community engagement? These are valid questions. Thankfully, and for simplicity’s sake, I’ve counted no less than two dozen published definitions and explanations. Just try googling ‘public scholarship’ or ‘public engagement.’ Woof. Public scholarship can […]
Why do we assume the public is not interested in our research? Thoughts on the knowledge deficit model.
There is much to be said about the knowledge deficit model and its impact on how researchers and scientists think about communicating with the public. Get this: scientists more or less hold negative feelings about the public’s base scientific knowledge. To add insult to injury, researchers who already have negative views about their potential public […]
Public engagement, reappointment, tenure and promotion
The incentive structure for research faculty at institutions of higher education in the United States and beyond hinges on knowledge creation through traditional research outputs (e.g., peer reviewed articles, books, conference presentations). Research faculty are awarded reappointment, tenure and promotion based on a criteria of high productivity in research, teaching, and service. This is not […]
where to begin?
the road to public engagement is fraught with road bumps but also with miles of open, beautiful road. the work is hard, time consuming, and can be thankless. but the reward can be substantial. not financially, of course. though this process could be parlayed into grant writing and consultations, among other things. what i think about, and […]
a catalog of research and inspiration
i am constantly and consistently doing research and reading about public scholarship as a part of my journey to become more forward facing as well as to guide researchers and scholars on their own unique public scholarship journey. to support the proposition that academics are content curators, i created a curated catalog of information for […]
academics as content curators
let me ask you something. on any given day, how many web browser tabs do you have open, saving articles and pieces you will eventually read because it sounds interesting/important/informative? and i am not going to even ask if you use multiple web browsers. is there a better way to keep track of all the […]
