Strategies For Enhancing The Scholarly Productivity Of Engineering Technology Educators

Abstract

Scholarship is now a requirement for promotion and tenure at most institutions with Engineering Technology (ET) programs. ET faculty that have previously focused only on teaching are now required to demonstrate evidence of scholarly activity on an annual basis. To underscore the importance of the scholarship issue, the Engineering Technology Council (ETC) of ASEE states in its 2003-2006 Strategic Plan’s Goal # 5: “The ETC will develop guidelines and promote appropriate scholarship for engineering technology educators.” Many ET educators sincerely want to engage in scholarly activities, but lack the experience in this arena because of the nonexistence of the scholarship culture within many ET programs. It is, therefore, incumbent on the ET community to develop strategies to facilitate the growth of scholarly activities among ET faculty. Indeed, the mantra for the ET community with regards to scholarship should be: “Scholarship, You can do it, we can help!” In a recent paper, the author and his collaborators, as members of the ETC Task Force on Scholarship, developed guidelines for scholarship in ET and proposed a faculty workload model. The current paper focuses on strategies that will encourage, facilitate, and provide support for the growth of scholarship in ET. Some of the “ways and means” for increasing scholarly productivity that are currently being implemented in the College of Applied Science and Technology (CAST) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) are discussed. These include: developing a college scholarship website, developing a scholarship mentoring program, developing web-based venues of dissemination and peer review, developing grant proposal and scholarly writing workshops, and identification and cultivation of support resources for scholarship. The early results and experiences from implementing some of these strategies at RIT are discussed and recommendations are offered that would be of help to other ET programs interested in cultivating the scholarship culture within their programs.