Changing Our Brains: Transforming a Traditional View of Scholarship and Teaching

The purpose of this essay is to capture, in its earliest stages, the influence that formal recognition of Boyer’s multiple domains of scholarship within faculty evaluation standards had on a select group of colleagues within a disciplinary diverse academic unit at a mid-sized, comprehensive university. A process is described whereby the combination of a book discussion group, a newly approved faculty contract recognizing Boyer’s multiple domains, and a genuine commitment from a disciplinary diverse group of colleagues to the academic mission of the unit, resulted in a transformation in attitudes toward scholarship and teaching. Scholarship of teaching and learning was viewed as the key element leading to the formation of a team approach to a scholarship of teaching and learning project within a group that had traditionally pursued research separate from instruction, and individually rather than collectively.