Revisiting Faculty Service Roles – Is “Faculty Service” a Victim of the Middle Child Syndrome?

Abstract

While the academy continues to remain interested in documenting the quality and extent of a faculty member’s teaching and research activities, the documentation and assessment of faculty service activities and the scholarship of service is an arena that has not received extensive consideration in higher education, particularly in the health sciences. Through indirect and direct mechanisms, faculty members are given the message that teaching, research and service continue to be the stated central goals of higher education. 1 Over the last two decades, there have been numerous resources, approaches and methods developed that allow faculty members and administrators to work collaboratively in documenting professional activities associated with teaching and research. However, faculty service and the scholarship of faculty service apparently has suffered from a “middle child” syndrome, and consequently may have been lost in our efforts to evaluate faculty workload and its effectiveness.