University Education Dilemma: Challenge of Incorporating Alternate Views of Scholarship and Teaching

“At no time in our history has the need been greater for connecting the work of the academy to the social and environmental changes beyond the campus. And yet, the rich diversity and potential of American higher education cannot be realized if campus missions are too narrowly defined or if the faculty reward system is inappropriately restricted. It seems clear that while research is crucial, we need a renewed commitment to service, too.” – Ernest Boyer – Scholarship Reconsidered (1990) The coauthors of this forum are currently involved in a project that applies a faculty member’s expertise, provides students with a hands-on learning experience, and provides a resource constrained municipality a valuable service. The Village of Forest Hills (The Village) is a small (population less than 400) municipality located in Jackson County, North Carolina. The Village does not employ a town engineer, planner, or manager. The Village does maintain a small road system. Being located in the Appalachian Mountains, the topography dictates the need for many culverts throughout The Village. The Village has no inventory of culverts and other drainage structures, no condition report of roads and drainage structures, which ultimately results in a rather poor process for managing The Village’s infrastructure. To improve this process, with the approval of the City Council, Council member Dr. Ronald Mau (coauthor) approached Dr. George Ford (coauthor) about starting a systematic approach to documenting The Village’s infrastructure and condition of the infrastructure to assist in managing, budgeting, and improving The Village’s infrastructure. The Village of Forest Hills is not unique. There are many small municipalities lacking the resources to employ professional staff on a full-time basis, and on a project-by-project basis professional fees may be a burden. Obviously, some projects will require paying for the necessary professional services. However, there are many ways the expertise of engineering and construction management faculty can be used to assist small municipalities and provide educational opportunities for their students. However, in some cases the incentives within institutions of higher learning do little to encourage this assistance. The application of a faculty member’s expertise that improves the region and surrounding communities near a campus are not traditionally valued in the tenure and promotion process. The trend in higher education as pointed out in a piece published in ASCE’s Leadership and Management in Engineering by Yates (2012) is for small and medium-sized universities to move away from being teaching universities to moving toward being more research-intensive institutions. In addition, some of these universities have stated Ernest Boyer’s model of scholarship provides the guiding principles for scholarship at their particular university. When fully considering Boyer’s model, the trend toward a more research-intensive focus and the statements endorsing Boyer’s model appear to be in conflict. The institutionalizing of Boyer’s model appears to be difficult for administrators to fully grasp and incorporate in the tenure and promotion process. Implementing processes described by Braxton et al. (2002) may be too aggressive for some administrators to adopt. The public, governments, students, and prospective students all seem to have a renewed interest in the research versus teaching dilemma as state budgets are cut, tuition continues to rise, and student debt increases. The popular press often mentions the limited use of rather esoteric academic research and the need to better employ the resources within institutions of higher learning. Boyer’s model seems to be more relevant than ever, yet few institutions appear to be ready to fully incorporate the model and evaluate faculty accordingly. Civil engineering and construction management faculty possess a skill set that could play a larger role in improving their communities, providing real-world projects to their students, and ultimately provide what many would argue is a better use of a university’s greatest asset, its faculty. These faculties possess many skills that many municipalities (particularly smaller municipalities) may lack. However, without the proper incentives, the ability to leverage these resources will continue to be more limited than necessary. The traditional approach of research and the focus on research dollars dominates the view of many administrators. Institutions historically have attempted to move-up in the Carnegie classification where the research-intensive institution is considered the highest level (McCormick and Zhao 2005). However, as budgets become tighter and available research dollars shrink, the competition for research dollars becomes more intense and faculty at smaller schools have an increasingly harder time competing with faculty at highly regarded Research I institutions. Several issues appear to be on a collision course (budgets, research dollars, institutional mission, and tenure processes). Administrators need to carefully consider the external environment, the mission of their perspective university, their universities niche in the student body as well as research capabilities, resources, support, and faculties’ strengths, abilities, and competence. “Finally, we need a climate in which colleges and universities are less imitative, taking pride in their uniqueness. It’s time to end the suffocating process in which colleges and universities measure themselves far too frequently by external status rather than values determined by their own distinctive mission” (Boyer 1990, xiii) The faculty is the heart of any educational program. According to Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Engineering Accreditation Commission (ABET EAC 2012) criteria, “The faculty must be of sufficient number; and must have the competencies to cover all of the curricular areas of the program. There must be sufficient faculty to accommodate adequate levels of studentfaculty interaction, student advising and counseling, university service activities, professional development, and interactions with industrial and professional practitioners, as well as employers of students. The program faculty must have appropriate qualifications