Research & Scholarship Community Engagement Resources

Community Engagement 101

Campus Resources

Partnership Guidance

Partnership Tools

C+C Climate Action Solutions Community Engagement Introductory Workshop, April 30, 2024
C+C Climate Action Solutions Community Engagement Advanced Workshop, September 23, 2024

How can I use engaged scholarship in promotion and tenure?

Learn more about community-engaged promotion and tenure
two students and professor looking at archival material in accordion folder

Engaged scholarship involves a variety of research and dissemination activities, vital to the mission of higher education, that are intentional, mutually beneficial, and connect deeply with a community or public audiences through teaching, research, and/or dissemination.

Engaged scholarship is often multi-disciplinary, involving scholars and community partners across traditionally siloed disciplines and domains. This type of scholarship often integrates research, teaching, and/or service in ways that are hard to fit into traditional paradigms. In addition, the work can require significant relationship-building to create long-term trusting relationships or substantial investment in community work, to connect with various publics. 

View the unedited recording of our first Campus + Community event, Valuing Engaged Scholarship in the Tenure and Promotion Process. (Note, we had some technical difficulties. Apologies, and thanks for sticking with us!)

two students speaking with a professor in outdoor setting

Promotion and Tenure Engaged Scholarship Resources

UCSC

University of California

Professional Organizations

Higher Education

Please email us if your department has updated its engaged scholarship guidelines or if your department wants to incorporate best practices in their reviews.

How can I involve my students in community-engaged work?

Learn more about involving students in community-engagement

Student experiences outside of the classroom and in communities transform research and scholarship from theory into practice. These invaluable experiences are facilitated through a handful of venues on campus. However, there is significant capacity for research to develop meaningful relationships locally, regionally, and abroad. The resources below will help you center communities’ needs and desires while empowering students’ capacities and ethical engagement.

Resources to involve students

Engagement in practice at UCSC

Critical service-learning approaches

Community-engaged pedagogy

How can I publish my community-engaged research and scholarship?

Learn more about publishing your community-engaged findings

Engaged scholarship generates a variety of products, some of which have not traditionally been recognized in the tenure and promotion process because they are not published in peer-reviewed venues.

Although public scholarship like opinion pieces or news articles that interview and quote scholars are generally recognized as important contributions to society, there are less well established assessment standards for the scholarly products of engaged research – including reports, briefs, websites, maps and story maps, theories of action, social media campaigns, community-based convenings, community-based art and creative works, collaborative art and performance, engaged technology and tech solutions, and others.

In addition, engaged scholarly products may include multiple co-authors and co-conveners, including community partners who contribute to the work in significant ways.

Publishing resources

Publishing your findings

Co-authoring articles with community partners

Toolkits

Please email us if you have a resource you’d like us to include.

Additional Reading

Books and Resources About Community-Engaged Research

Fine, Michelle, and Maria Elena Torre. 2021. Essentials of critical participatory action research. American Psychological Association.

Hoffman, Andrew J. 2021. The engaged scholar: Expanding the impact of academic research in today’s world. Stanford University Press

McLaughlin, Milbrey and Rebecca A. London. 2013. From data to action: A community approach to improving youth outcomes. Harvard Education Press.

Special Journal Issues Compiling Engaged Research

Get Involved

National and State Organizations to Support Engaged Research

LEAD California – a statewide nonprofit organization supporting half a million university and college students, administrators, faculty, staff, and community members who, with our resources, expertise, training, and connections are creating innovative ways to ensure a healthy, just, and democratic society. 

Imagining America – The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues.

International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) – The Association promotes high quality trans-disciplinary research across a wide range of approaches and forms and builds the capacity of scholars, practitioners, and community partners to engage in such research.

Urban Research Based Action Network (URBAN) – URBAN is a multidisciplinary, distributed network of scholars and practitioners committed to articulating and strengthening the collaborative methods and impact, sharing findings, raising the visibility, developing career pathways and increasing the acceptance within the academy of community-based research. 

Last modified: Jan 16, 2025