Service Learning: Faculty Roles & Rewards
Roundtable Discussion Resource Page

Dr. Norman Clark
North Carolina Campus Compact Service Learning Institute
Wednesday, 2/10/2003, Elon University

PowerPoint Presentation

This page was created to serve as a resource for a roundtable discussion on faculty roles and rewards in connection with service learning. The primary purpose for the roundtable was to discuss how faculty members involved in service learning can receive recognition for their efforts, especially when it comes time for tenure and promotion. Below are several examples to emulate, readings to guide you, and other resources to maximize the value of your experiences in your professional life.

• Examples of Awards
  • Service Spotlight: local monthly recognition. Appalachian State University's ACT office and SGA periodically chooses faculty and students to "spotlight," writing up short PR releases about their service to the community. This type of recognition is easy to put into practice if your campus already has a service learning office.
  • Local Annual Service Awards: Another example for ASU's ACT office. If your campus has a service learning office, an annual award for teaching is a must. This type of recognition should be valued throughout the institution, especially if the selection is competitive.
  • National Awards: Campus Compact has an annual teaching award, and on this page you'll also find a link to many other national awards.
• SL & Tenure
  • Service-Learning and Communication: A Disciplinary Toolkit: from the National Communication Association. This guide has some practical tips on pages 22-24 on how to increase the value of service learning in connection with promotion and tenure on your campus, working from the top-down and the bottom-up. There are also several assessment tools in the back, which are valuable for gaining institutional recognition.
  • Advanced Toolkit: from Campus Compact. Several pages with valuable strategies for and examples of increasing the value of service learning at the institutional level. Key pages include:
    • Specific Change Strategies
    • Faculty Development
  • Scholarship of Engagement: A clearinghouse for the assessment of the Scholarship of Engagement, this site has links to other resources, lists of assessment criteria, and feedback forms to get assistance or request a review of your scholarship.
  • Example of Tenure Application Materials: My own recent application for tenure and promotion. This shows how I argued for the value of my service learning activities, placing them into the various categories our department uses for tenure and promotion (which are the categories of scholarship identified by Ernest Boyer in his Scholarship Reconsidered).

Feedback: what can NCCC do for you? Please email us any suggestions for how North Carolina's Campus Compact can help faculty gain recognition for their efforts in service learning.