Ernest Boyer's Scholarship: An Administrative View.

For a communication studies administrator, the scholar envisioned in Ernest Boyer's "Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate" is an instructive guide to faculty and administrators pondering the balance or relationship between teaching and research. It is an immodest claim that each discipline teaches well but broadly from life. To a degree, this is a facet of the scholarship of teaching envisioned by Boyer. Faculty today value teaching. Pedagogical digging should be viewed as valued research. Boyer's position on the research of teaching has prompted South Dakota State University (SDSU), and particularly the College of Arts and Science to approach research, scholarship, and creative activity in an invigorating way. Boyer's historical analysis of scholarship through the ages makes clear that a nation of teachers primarily dependent on research prowess for advancement is not new. He contends that faculty today have grown into a society of elitists; implicitly he discredits undergraduate teaching. The profession must continue to foster a cadre of scholars who study teaching itself. A close reading of Boyer suggests that the greatest rewards for good teaching, and the greatest love for good teaching come from faculty in liberal arts colleges. Faculty must define themselves as faculty of liberal arts colleges. The system fo. faculty evaluation used by SDSU and the Board of . Regents allows for considerable latitude and this latitude must be used to reward teaching and scholarship on teaching. The basic speech course can be the home of great teaching. (TB) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Boyer's Scholarship 1 ERNEST BOYER'S SCHOLARSHIP: AN ADMINISTRATIVE VIEW MICHAEL R. SCHLIESSMANN COMMUNICATION STUDIES AND THEATRE SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESENTED AT THESPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION CONVENTION NOVEMBER 20, 1994 U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Olin e of I ducattonal ReSearr h and Improvement I DI ICATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) ylt t,s dor urnerti nas been reproduced aS ecented Iron the person Or orgenrialoon orgtnatong tt I Kama/ changes have been made to tmprOve reprOdurtIon qualtt Fonts 01 view or OPInIOnS Meted in IhtS dOc u men! do not necessardy represent olticial °FPI onsittOn or pOttCy PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY BEST COPY AVAILABLE :\r\ 2 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Boyer's Scholarship 2 ERNEST BOYER'S SCHOLARSHIP: AN ADMINISTRATIVE VIEW As an administrator I often have non-teaching time I feel compelled to fill. Often these times can by filled with bureaucracy. These minutiae are critical to the department, the university and to the system. I also believe these are often for the betterment of individual faculty. In caught-up times I read in my office, retaining a more comfortable chair beside an open bookcase for the pleasure. The book du jour is there, often prominent, often under clutter. It is usually an escape book, not completely necessary to academe or administration. The present attendee on the escape shelf is Loren Reid's Professor on the Loose (1992). Neil Postman (1969 & 1979) has been read. It strikes me that these books about us are about doing something--teaching. It also strikes me that Professor Reid's exhibition of the pi sor on the loose is similar to the scholar that Ernest Boyer envisions. It is an immodest claim that our discipline teaches well but broadly from life its ownself. To a degree, this is a facet of the scholarship of teaching envisioned by Boyer. Our professoriate is loose upon the undergraduates of our institutions, conserving and subverting, reconciling values with knowledge, individual experience with broader culture and perhaps perception with reality. We, Boyer and us, in our collective beliefs value teaching. Pedogogical "digging" should be viewed as valued research. Boyer's position on the research of teaching has prompted South Dakota State University (SDSU), and particularly the College of Arts and Science to approach research, scholarship and creative activity in an invigorating way. As a land grant institution perennially faced with decisions about promotion and tenure, our university has wrestled with the decisions and weight of decisions that have