This $100,000 grant built the foundation for the New England Equity & Engagement Consortium (EEC) of faculty leaders and administrators across the campuses to create resources that support community engaged faculty work and support a commitment to building and maintaining diversity in the faculty. This initiative used an innovative strategy to diversify the professoriate by promoting awareness and support for the more inclusive criteria for tenure and promotion now stated in the Massachusetts State College Association union contract. This project furthered the ongoing “big-three” goals of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education to support programs that boost completion rates, close achievement gaps, and attract, enroll and graduate students from underserved populations. In turn, this project sought to transform student success and empower classroom and campus leadership.

This first grant resulted in several outcomes: Consortium members researched best practices on how to systematically evaluate and reward community engagement practices through the T&P process. These were then turned into resources that were shared across the consortium and via a statewide symposium. A symposium, Advancing Equity Through Public Engaged Scholarship: Transforming Faculty Reward Policy and Practice, was successfully planned and held as a virtual symposium with 320 registrants and approximately 200 attendees. Additionally, each campus held various workshops. At Salem State, we held three workshops for 30 faculty members that helped them frame their community-engaged work for review by T&P committees. Our team also held a T&P evaluator workshop for deans, department chairs, and T&P committee members.  A major institutional milestone occurred during President Keenan’s State of the University address in which he recognized that valuing community-engaged teaching and scholarship in the T&P process is one of the top strategies SSU is using to diversify and support faculty. This recognition highlighted the institutionalization of this grant work.

For access to resources and materials in support of this work, please click here.

Publication:

Risam, R., Santana, C., Vincent, C., Lynch, C., Reiff, J., Gonsalves, J., Unus, W., Bellinger-Delfeld, D., & Jackson, A. (2022). Confronting the Embedded Nature of Whiteness: Reflections on a Multi-Campus Project to Diversify the Professoriate. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 22(7). https://doi.org/10.33423/jhetp.v22i7.5271

Presentation:

Vincent, C., Lynch, C., Reiff, J., Jackson, A., & Santana, C. (2021). Diversifying the Faculty: Pathways toward Equity and Engagement, a Massachusetts Initiative. Virtual session presented at 107th AAC&U Annual Meeting.