Incentivizing Service-Learning for New Faculty Recruits
Presentation Format
Individual Presentation
Intended Audience
Administrators
Presentation Description
What is the best way to incentivize service-learning training for new faculty recruits? At the University of Southern Mississippi, we offer an annual spring semester faculty seminar in service-learning as the introduction to foundational scholarship and best practices in the discipline. “Faculty Fellows” who have participated in the seminar traditionally receive one course reassignment in exchange for the time devoted to the faculty seminar; however, this year we are changing faculty incentives from course reassignment time to stipends in order to address several problem areas. First, some departments have strict limitations on personnel and are unable to release faculty members from primary teaching responsibilities in order to be reassigned to the seminar. Some faculty members who are truly interested in service-learning were denied support at the departmental level due to the constraints of staffing for curricular needs. Second, for the faculty members who are reassigned, there is no incentive for the actual practice of service-learning in the classroom after the training is complete. In other words, as administrators we were forced to develop strategies to address faculty participants attending the seminar in “bad faith”—those who never had a real interest in or intention of engaging in service-learning and were only applying for the seminar to earn the course release. Albeit confined a minority of participants, we had nevertheless begun to see a pattern of faculty members who participated in the seminar, benefitted from the course-release, yet never even attempted to practice service-learning after they were “trained.”
This year we eliminated course releases and switched to offering stipends as faculty incentives. We stipulated that the stipends will be disbursed in two increments: half upon completion of the spring semester (seminar) requirements, and the remaining half after teaching a service-learning course within a year and a half of seminar completion. We are interested in seeing how this change in incentive affects 1) Faculty interest and participation in the seminar; 2) Level of faculty engagement during the seminar; 3) Long term faculty engagement after the conclusion of the seminar; and 4) Whether this will have any affect on the problem of “lapsed practitioners,” or faculty who do engage in service-learning after completing the seminar, but do not remain committed long term and eventually cease to participate entirely. By the time of the Gulf South Summit in April 2016, we should have some useful data from the first year of this change in faculty incentives. I hope this presentation will spark discussion, as I would welcome feedback and would love to learn more about how other universities incentivize service-learning for faculty.
Location
Room - 1220A
Start Date
4-14-2016 3:15 PM
End Date
4-14-2016 4:30 PM
Recommended Citation
Allen, Linda M., "Incentivizing Service-Learning for New Faculty Recruits" (2016). Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016. 25.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gss/2016/2016/25
Incentivizing Service-Learning for New Faculty Recruits
Room - 1220A
What is the best way to incentivize service-learning training for new faculty recruits? At the University of Southern Mississippi, we offer an annual spring semester faculty seminar in service-learning as the introduction to foundational scholarship and best practices in the discipline. “Faculty Fellows” who have participated in the seminar traditionally receive one course reassignment in exchange for the time devoted to the faculty seminar; however, this year we are changing faculty incentives from course reassignment time to stipends in order to address several problem areas. First, some departments have strict limitations on personnel and are unable to release faculty members from primary teaching responsibilities in order to be reassigned to the seminar. Some faculty members who are truly interested in service-learning were denied support at the departmental level due to the constraints of staffing for curricular needs. Second, for the faculty members who are reassigned, there is no incentive for the actual practice of service-learning in the classroom after the training is complete. In other words, as administrators we were forced to develop strategies to address faculty participants attending the seminar in “bad faith”—those who never had a real interest in or intention of engaging in service-learning and were only applying for the seminar to earn the course release. Albeit confined a minority of participants, we had nevertheless begun to see a pattern of faculty members who participated in the seminar, benefitted from the course-release, yet never even attempted to practice service-learning after they were “trained.”
This year we eliminated course releases and switched to offering stipends as faculty incentives. We stipulated that the stipends will be disbursed in two increments: half upon completion of the spring semester (seminar) requirements, and the remaining half after teaching a service-learning course within a year and a half of seminar completion. We are interested in seeing how this change in incentive affects 1) Faculty interest and participation in the seminar; 2) Level of faculty engagement during the seminar; 3) Long term faculty engagement after the conclusion of the seminar; and 4) Whether this will have any affect on the problem of “lapsed practitioners,” or faculty who do engage in service-learning after completing the seminar, but do not remain committed long term and eventually cease to participate entirely. By the time of the Gulf South Summit in April 2016, we should have some useful data from the first year of this change in faculty incentives. I hope this presentation will spark discussion, as I would welcome feedback and would love to learn more about how other universities incentivize service-learning for faculty.
Program Abstract
What is the best way to incentivize service-learning training for new faculty recruits? At the University of Southern Mississippi, we offer a faculty seminar in service-learning as the introduction to best practices in the discipline. “Faculty Fellows” who have participated in the seminar traditionally receive one course reassignment in exchange for the time devoted to the faculty seminar; however, this year we are changing faculty incentives to stipends in order to address several problem areas.