What are the characteristics of quality community-engaged scholarship?

Quality and significance of scholarship are the primary criteria for determining faculty promotion and tenure. Quality and significance of scholarship are overarching, integrative concepts that apply equally to the expressions of scholarship as they may appear in various disciplines and to accomplishments resulting from various forms of faculty work, such as research and teaching.

A consistently high quality of scholarship, and its promise for future exemplary scholarship, is more important than the quantity of the work done.

The following 8 characteristics are intended as the basis for the evaluation of the quality and significance of Community-Engaged Scholarship (CES):

  1. Clear Academic and Community Change Goals
  2. Adequate Preparation in Content Area and Grounding in the Community
  3. Appropriate Methods: Rigor and Community Engagement
  4. Significant Results: Impact on the Field and the Community
  5. Effective Presentation/Dissemination to Academic and Community Audiences
  6. Reflective Critique: Lessons Learned to Improve the Scholarship and Community Engagement
  7. Leadership and Personal Contribution
  8. Consistently Ethical Behavior: Socially Responsible Conduct of Research and Teaching

(Jordan, 2007). Reprinted here with permission from Community-Campus Partnerships for Health.