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Research models and practices change rapidly. While evidence of such changes includes cross-campus collaborations and multi-authored scholarship, faculty development opportunities also signal what is to come. In this case study, authors representing diverse disciplines examine what faculty development programs reveal about the future of academic research. The authors offer an analysis of faculty support programs across the country as a foundation, and then provide an examination of initiatives in place at their four-year regional comprehensive institution in the United States. The authors then report on the outcomes of these programs for research productivity, with a focus on opportunities that were available to all faculty across the university. Finally, the authors offer perspective on the future of academic research based on findings from examining these programs. The authors suggest that the future of research will focus on (1) collaborative design(s) of research-related support, (2) support structures and programs that encourage and facilitate cross-campus and interdisciplinary research collaborations and sharing, (3) incentive for integrating areas of research with teaching and service, and relatedly (4) programs that encourage faculty to span academic research with industry or community partnerships and collaborations, especially ones that can generate revenue or produce future research, development, or funding streams.

This chapter narratively examines the value of scholarship grants to seven underrepresented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students who attended the same research comprehensive university. The scholarships that the students in our convenience sample received were awarded by six National Science Foundation grant programs in the United States. A literature review tracing the effects of scholarships, instrumentalism, and the core purpose of education sets the context for this narrative investigation. The four pillars comprising the theoretical framework are value, experience, story, and identity. The seven stories of impact that emerged from the narrative inquiry reveal multiperspectival insights into the value of scholarships to students' lives, careers, and selves. Moreover, we also explore how scholarship recipients established their sense of value in autonomous and committed ways while promoting their personal welfare and seeking the common good of others. All of these important considerations contribute to the national and international literature relating to diversity, higher education, STEM careers, and the power of scholarship grants to transcend instrumentalism privileging workforce demands.

The Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund was established by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, UK, with the declared aims of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning and raising the status of teaching among higher education institutions. This paper considers the three strands of the initiative – subject, institutional, and individual – and uses findings from a variety of evaluation studies to assess the impact of this state sponsored policy. The difficulties in creating cultural change within higher education are discussed. The paper argues, with cautious optimism, that there is evidence of increased attention being paid to teaching in higher education in England, in part, as a consequence of this funded initiative, but that the evidence for wholesale cultural change remains difficult to interpret.

In this paper teaching excellence awards are evaluated, with an eye to improving them.

Literature is reviewed and an analytic framework developed in Canada is modified to apply to the University of Sydney's Vice Chancellor Outstanding Teaching Award. Data come from 60 respondents familiar with the Sydney award and web research on the Australian Group of Eight research‐intensive universities.

Among the conclusions reached are that the Sydney award is supported even by those who have been unsuccessful in applying for it, that awards alone do not make teaching the equal to research in a university that identifies itself as a research university, awards that integrate into the university's strategic direction are powerful, and that awards that have a continuing profile ease that integration.

Along the way, several contentious points are discussed including the relationship of awards to promotion and the importance of pedagogic awareness of the reflective practitioner in picking out outstanding teachers who can articulate their approach to benefit others and to integrate with the larger purposes of the university beyond their own classroom.

Some practical means to enhance the impact of teaching awards are identified.

This chapter critically engages with ways that teaching excellence has been operationalised in practice. Specific focus is on developing individual teaching excellence, rewarding of success and recognition of teaching excellence and the building of evidence around what works in teaching for the benefits of students. We consider the daily interactions with students that form the basis of frameworks of teaching excellence before arguing that operationalisations of teaching excellence are highly context specific and operate at the level of institutions and the whole higher education sector. We discuss the criteria that underpin teaching excellence awards. This includes governance as well as development frameworks. After considering the complex links between research and teaching and the importance of the disciplinary dimension of teaching excellence, the chapter finally looks at the skills and attributes commonly associated with individual teacher excellence and argues that these are exceptionally difficult to pin down let alone measure. It concludes with some reflections on some of the challenges faced by institutions as they seek to develop the quality of teaching whilst meeting the requirements of the TEF.

This paper explores who among the AACSB categorization of academics conducts the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research within business schools and how AACSB-accredited business schools capture SoTL research as part of their portfolio of intellectual contributions.

This study adopts a qualitative-method research design by collecting primary data through surveys, semi-structured interviews and secondary data in policy documents focused on AACSB-accredited business schools in Canada and the United States.

The findings establish that scholarly and practice academics who possess rigorously acquired research skills due to their terminal degrees are most likely to conduct SoTL research. The results also reveal an even split among respondents regarding whether their AACSB-accredited business school captures SoTL with their journal ranking frameworks.

Based on the findings, two recommendations are offered to foster more SoTL research at AACSB-accredited schools. First, higher education leaders (e.g. business school deans) can further inculcate a culture of SoTL research at the department and institutional levels by creating communities of practice (CoPs). Second, AACSB-accredited business schools could adopt more inclusive journal ranking frameworks to capture better and incentivize SoTL research.

This is the first known study to explore how AACSB Standards 3 and 8 are implemented and operationalized regarding SoTL research. Understanding how these standards are adopted and implemented could help institutional leaders, standard setters and administrators better facilitate SoTL research.

This chapter considers the opportunities and challenges for HE to develop, support and celebrate excellent teaching. Drawing on conceptualisations of teaching excellence in quality frameworks and in the literature, it considers how teaching quality has traditionally been interpreted, suggesting (as in Chapter 2) that there is a need for more nuanced and comprehensive understandings of teaching excellence to be developed, demonstrated, recognised and rewarded, to reflect the complex nature of teaching excellence across the academic career profile. It considers how institutions might build and communicate shared understandings of excellence in teaching and promote a culture in which excellence at all levels of teaching is valued in the same way as research. It discusses the ways in which the professional learning and support needs of academics can be met at various stages of the academic career, to develop in teaching faculty and education leaders a sense of being appreciated, connected and competent in their contribution and commitment to teaching excellence.

Collaborations between faculty from the teachHOUSTON program and physics department have led to an increase in the number of highly qualified physics teachers produced by the University of Houston. Faculty were able to systematically build the physics teacher preparation program through the following endeavors: streamlined degree plans, a physics inquiry course, an internship program, a scholarship program, and induction activities for the first three years of their teaching degrees. This has resulted in preparing approximately three physics teachers annually. Prior to this collaboration, the University had not produced any physics teacher graduates in the previous decade.

This chapter traces the career trajectories of the teachHOUSTON science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers since the inception of the program. It asks whether the National Science Foundation (NSF) investment of millions of dollars in STEM education produced more STEM teachers of high quality for the diverse, urban area. The chapter is filled with descriptive statistics and stories. Two major findings are that the teachHOUSTON program produced double-digit physics teachers when the Greater Houston area had not had a freshly prepared physics teacher in over a decade. Additionally, teachHOUSTON graduates have distinguished themselves by being named recipients of several awards such as beginning teacher of the year awards, district teacher of the year awards, among other distinctions. teachHOUSTON alumni are also serving in a variety of leadership capacities for high-need public school districts. The chapter ends with a discussion of the program's strengths as well as the areas in which it continues to grow. Three new NSF grants allow for continued improvement and transition this work into two additional books proposed in this three-volume series.