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Faculty Engaged Scholars Program

Overview

The Faculty Engaged Scholars Program is an initiative of the Carolina Center for Public Service to advance faculty involvement in the scholarship of engagement. Such scholarship, while fully grounded as disciplined inquiry according to the highest academic standards, also strengthens university-community relationships and contributes to the common good.

The goals of this program are to:

• Recognize and reward faculty involved in engaged scholarship.
• Create and sustain a community of engaged scholars from diverse perspectives.
• Promote engaged scholarship at UNC-Chapel Hill across disciplines.
• Continue to build UNC-Chapel Hill as an institution committed to and demonstrating strong university-community relationships.

About the program

In the first year of the program, scholars participate in an experiential curriculum based on 14 core competencies of community-engaged scholarship. This encompasses at least five sessions: including an orientation and four day-long sessions. The curriculum covers background and current developments in the work of engaged scholarship at the global, national, state and local levels. Rather than a series of classroom-based seminars, the sessions are highly interactive and experiential, involving field visits, exposure to a number of ongoing projects, and discussions with community and faculty partners. Sessions address such topics as funding and dissemination of engaged scholarship, navigating disciplinary expectations while addressing community needs, and partnering with local communities in North Carolina and beyond.

During the second year, participants function as a learning community, sharing their work and providing critical feedback and ideas with one another. Each faculty scholar is expected to produce a product that reflects their learning and furthers their efforts. Examples include:

• Grant proposals to apply and further community engaged scholarship;
• Publications on community practice, community-based applied or participatory research;
• Applied products that promote the transfer of knowledge to and from communities, are implemented in communities, or have an impact on communities; and
• Community dissemination/translational products resulting from research such as community forums, articles, websites or presentations at state and national levels.

Each scholar will receive the following benefits:

• Financial support of up to $5,000 per year, for each of the two years (maximum $10,000) to support program participation and/or associated project costs;
• Interactions with like-minded faculty from a variety of disciplines around the issues associated with service and engaged scholarship;
• Support for their engaged scholarship from faculty and community partners who have experience in engaged scholarship; and
• Information on engaged scholarship via a series of workshops, panels and case studies given by leading UNC faculty, national experts and funding program officers.

 

Learn more about the scholars.

Read about Faculty Engaged Scholars in the summer 2009 edition of Carolina Connections.

Learn more about eligibility and the application process.