Keynote

Publicly Engaged Scholars in the Academy of the 21st Century

In the context of swift and significant changes in higher education, acknowledging the identity, aspirations and work of the emerging citizenry of academe is central to the university's health and thriving in the future. Publicly Engaged Scholarship (PES) represents a way of thinking about and conducting academically grounded work that creates spaces for academy- based scholars to leverage their expertise and resources toward solving pressing public problems in deep collaboration with partners in other sectors of the community.  PES urges a "continuum mindset" which empowers engaged scholars to locate themselves with full standing squarely within the domain of scholarly inquiry. In part this means that the academy must expand dominant notions of knowledge creation to acknowledge  emerging forms and artifacts of scholarship at the same level as time honored, traditional forms. 

Tim Eatman uses his keynote to address some of these issues, arguing that there must be room in twenty-first century higher education for producers of knowledge to develop their work in ways that interrogate the "Ivory Tower" mentality that still pervades. 

In his role as Faculty Co-director of the national consortium Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA), Tim has developed perspective on what it means to create spaces where "hearts and spirits meet minds for deep impactful, sustained knowledge creation and healing." His keynote will present findings from Imagining America's widely known report of the Tenure Team Initiative on Pubic scholarship entitled, "Scholarship in Public Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University," and another IA research study in process that explores the aspirations and decisions of graduate students and early career publicly engaged scholars.

Presenter

Timothy Eatman, Co-Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA)

Last Updated: March 10, 2014