Envisioning Public Scholarship for Our Time: Models for Higher Education Researchers

This book proposes a new paradigm of public scholarship for our time, one that shifts from the notion of the public intellectual to the model of the engaged scholar.

The editors’ premise is that the work of public scholarship should be driven by a commitment to supporting a diverse democracy and promoting equity and social justice. The contributors to this volume present models that eschew the top-down framing of policy to advocate for practice that drives bottom-up change by arming the widest range of stakeholders -- especially members of marginalized communities -- with relevant research.

They demonstrate how public scholarship in higher education can increase its impact on practice and policy and compellingly argue that public scholarship should be recognized as normative practice for all scholars and indeed integrated into the curriculum of graduate courses.

The chapters describe multiple types of public scholarship and different strategies that move beyond informing policymakers, faculty, and administrators to engage publics such as students and parents, media, the general public, and particularly groups that may have had little or no access to research. Examples include partnering with a community agency to design a research project and disseminate results; writing for practitioner or policy venues and magazines outside the traditional academic journals; serving on boards for national groups that impact decisions related to your area of research; and the use of social media.

Whether scholar, director of graduate education, or graduate student of higher education, this book opens up a new vision of how research can inform practice that promotes the public good.

Adrianna Kezar is a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California and codirector of the Pullias Center for Higher Education. Kezar is a national expert of student success, equity and diversity, the changing faculty, change, governance, and leadership in higher education.

Kezar is well published with 18 books and monographs, more than 100 journal articles, and more than 100 book chapters and reports. Recent books include Envisioning the Faculty of the 21st Century (Rutgers University Press, 2016), How Colleges Change (Routledge, 2013), Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership (Stanford Press, 2011) and Organizing for Collaboration (Jossey-Bass, 2009).

She is the project director for the Delphi Project on the changing faculty and student success and was just awarded a grant from the Teagle Foundation for institutions that better support faculty and create new faculty models.

Yianna Drivalas is a PhD student at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. Prior to graduate school, Drivalas studied creative writing and theater and taught at the community college and high school levels. She is a research associate at the university’s Race and Equity Center under the advisement of Shaun R. Harper. Her dissertation work examines White male faculty consciousness and contributions to departmental climate, with a specific focus on race and gender.

Joseph A. Kitchen is an Assistant Professor ofHigher Education in the Department of Educational and Psychological Studies atthe University of Miami. He is also a Research Associate at the Pullias Centerfor Higher Education at the University of Southern California. He waspreviously a postdoctoral scholar at the Pullias Center for Higher Education atthe University of Southern California, and a postdoctoral fellow at the ScienceEducation Department at Harvard University. Dr. Kitchen conducts quantitative,qualitative, and mixed-methods research and his research agenda spans severalareas, with a central focus on the role of college transition, outreach, andsupport programs and interventions in promoting equitable outcomes and collegesuccess among first generation, low-income, and underrepresented students.

Lorelle L. Espinosa serves as assistant vice president for American Council on Education's (ACE) Center for Policy Research and Strategy, where she is responsible for the codevelopment and management of the center's research agenda, which focuses on issues of diversity and equity in twenty-first century higher education, public finance and higher education systems, and transformational leadership. Espinosa has served the higher education profession for nearly 20 years, beginning in student affairs and undergraduate education at the University of California, Davis, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to ACE, she served as a senior analyst at Abt Associates, Inc., and as director of policy and strategic initiatives for the Institute for Higher Education Policy.