# Introduction olleges and universities are under increasing pressures to garner external funding and increase scholarly productivity. In particular, rising concerns of accountability have been associated with quantification strategies used to denote productivity of institutions, departments, and individual faculty (Sullivan et al., 2012; e.g., AcademicAnalytics.com; Google Scholar's H-Index; the Chronicle of Higher Education's Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index). Fleming (2008) describes multiple ways in which such scholarly productivity benefits universities. Foremost, public and private funders are increasingly drawn to toptier research institutions, providing direct support for research as well as generating indirect costs for facilities/maintenance of academic institutions. Further, scholarship that leads to evidence-based products or services can gain support of funders in both government and corporate sectors, and private donors are often drawn to support institutions that are vital contributors to innovation and scientific discovery. Finally, scholarship promotes visibility and attracts media attention, garnering interest of the general public as well as prospective students. This can contribute to more competitive faculty salaries and benefits, enhanced job satisfaction for faculty who balance roles of research and teaching, increased engagement within and across professional disciplines, and benefits to student learning through this immersion in research culture. Yet, promoting a culture of scholarship, particularly research scholarship, can be challenging, particularly for those colleges and universities that have traditionally focused solely on teaching. Evolving expectations may impact workload, challenge professional skills, and threaten self-concept of professionals. Some professionals believe the pathway to scholarship is ill-defined or that top-down pressures are exerted upon them in ways that deny their autonomy in the educational context (Beddoe, 2011;Fleming, 2008;Joubert, 2006;Karvinen-Niinikoski, 2005). The present manuscript examines supports and challenges in development of culture of scholarship in higher education. Specifically, we examine a shift to include greater research scholarship at one university where teaching had been the primary focus. To set the foundation for this study, we review existing literature on scholarly productivity from diverse academic fields, including studies on balancing institutional expectations for scholarship and leveraging professional networks for productivity. Then, as a case study that serves to inform other academic institutions in advancing a culture of research scholarship, we conduct interviews with faculty and doctoral students at a single college of social work to examine their expressed needs for supporting research productivity. Finally, we recommend practices that can be implemented in a variety of academic contexts to support scholarly engagement of faculty and students. We propose a framework for cultural change, and a checklist is provided for institutions to implement supports that promote a culture of scholarship. # a) Defining Scholarship Scholarship is usually defined in terms of research or the knowledge produced by academic study (e.g., Merriam-Webster.com; OxfordDictionaries.com; TheFreeDictionary.com). In his seminal work for the Carnegie Foundation, "Scholarship Reconsidered," Boyer (2000) echoes that being "scholarly" usually (p. 14). He provides a more nuanced definition, delineating four types of scholarship. The scholarship of discovery contributes to knowledge and the intellectual climate of higher learning. The scholarship of integration assists in making connections across disciplines, placing concepts in context, and elucidating research findings. The scholarship of application engages knowledge with consequential problems of the world, rendering knowledge helpful to individuals and institutions. Finally, the scholarship of teaching dictates that academic work becomes consequential only as it is understood by others. Boyer underscores that good scholarship necessitates not only engaging in original research, but also "stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively to students" (p.16). Boyer and others emphasize the importance of productivity, or the measuring of faculty member outputs, as a means for understanding scholarship in all of its manifestations. Examples might include articles or creative works published in journals, books and chapters, monographs, and so on (Horta et al., 2012). # b) Balancing Research, Teaching, & Service It is impossible to discuss scholarship without first discussing the nexus between research, teaching, and service. Following from Boyer's ideas about the intersection of these activities, Horta and associates (2012) note that conventional analyses of the connections between research and teaching define concepts too narrowly. Teaching, for instance, cannot be understood simply as course load, but also includes activities closely intertwined with research productivity, such as supervision of graduate-level students. Leveraging these linkages between research and teaching (e.g., teaching by integrating students into research-oriented activities) is key to increasing outputs of faculty members. Still, faculty face an ongoing struggle in balancing demands of research, teaching, and service. In a study of scholarship and mentoring among nursing faculty, Turnbull (2010) identified the balancing teaching and research as an issue mentioned by every participant in the study. Although participants highly valued teaching, they said that it took time away from doing research and clinical practice. Santo and associates (2009) conducted a survey of faculty in a school of education to examine barriers and supports to scholarly productivity. Most participants in this study felt that they had inadequate time to conduct research, reporting that they could not protect periods of uninterrupted time, and that time spent on research was about one-third the time spent on teaching. Requests for release time and reduced teaching load were among the top expressed needs of faculty. Santo and associates found that faculty who chose not to pursue service-related interests were more productive in research. However, such a choice is often not an option, nor is it desirable if research productivity must come the expense of engagement with colleagues, the profession, and communities. Taylor, Fender, and Burke (2006) used an online survey to examine relationships between research productivity, teaching, and service activities of 715 academic economists. The study revealed that both teaching and service commitments had significant negative impacts on research productivity. Teaching an additional 3-credit course during the regular academic year reduced research productivity by 9.6%, and teaching during the summer had a greater impact, with a 17.7% decrease in productivity. The authors found that all forms of service had a negative impact on productivity; one committee assignment per year was associated with a 7% decrease in productivity, committee chair assignments were associated with a 17% decrease, and service in positions such as department chair or program director were associated with more substantial decreases in productivity. Yet, in discussing higher education, we must acknowledge that the key social responsibility of these institutions is to impart that education--to teach. Service engagement is also a necessity for functioning within a community context, and research is critical for advancing education and practice, as well as for promoting sustainability of academic institutions. Fleming (2008) suggests that institutional change must create conditions allowing integration of research alongside teaching, rather than placing research as a mere addition to an already heavy workload. He states that course loads and service duties may render development of a research program "functionally impossible for individuals who are not tethered to their computers and willing to sacrifice substantial portions of their life outside work to their careers" (p.13). Indeed, such integration of research and teaching already exists within higher education. Gottlieb and Keith (1997) studied the research-teaching nexus in eight industrialized countries, noting that teaching and research were not mutually exclusive activities; rather, there appear to be "research cadres" who spend more time on research (a mean of nine more weekly hours) and "teaching cadres" who spend more time on teaching (a mean of 5-7 more weekly hours, depending on the country). Both groups furthered the dual mission of higher education by contributing to research and teaching (the authors acknowledge that they did not investigate the service mission). # c) Leveraging Professional Networks for Productivity Discussion of scholarship must also address the importance of professional networks to productivity. Professional mentoring, collaboration, networking, and of scholarship within an organization as well as across organizations to build the discipline nationally and abroad. Turnbull (2008) defines mentoring as "a relationship of depth and duration between an advanced career person and a less experienced faculty person" (p. 573). She notes that this relationship may be formal or informal and may extend beyond the professional to the personal domain (i.e., for psychosocial functions), but the main intent of the relationship is to further the professional and academic development of the mentee. She states, "Academic staff who are appropriately mentored acquire academic values, are guided aptly with practical advice, learn to establish a collegial support network, and experience personal and professional growth" (p.577). In her study of nursing faculty, Turnbull found that mentoring was a productive facilitator for improving scholarly productivity, but there was little mentoring occurring--in part due to lack of qualified and experienced academics to guide junior faculty, particularly in the skills of writing and publishing. Turnbull notes that mentoring must be supported by administration and senior faculty and must permeate the organization from the top down. Turnbull concludes that mentoring is just one of many strategies needed to develop a culture of scholarship. Beyond mentoring, broader collaboration with colleagues and community partners is also a contributor to scholarship. Martinez, Floyd, and Erichsen (2011) conducted a qualitative study of highly productive scholars in the field of school psychology. The most common strategy cited by these psychologists in building their own scholarship was developing collaborative relationships with colleagues, students, and community partners such as schools. They described themselves as active participants in research groups, and they shared article authorship with a small number of colleagues on clusters of publications. These productive scholars advised others to form partnerships and take different roles on different projects (e.g., leader, follower). Martinez and associates (2011) note that highly productive scholars collaborate with their own mentors as well as with graduate and undergraduate students. The synergy cultivated by these scholars was not limited to professional networks, in that they also sought to establish connections across their own projects (e.g., using common methods in multiple studies) and products (e.g., grant applications, presentations, reviews, original research articles, lesson plans). Maryath (2007) conducted a study of the most productive authors in the field of educational psychology, asking these authors to provide insights on their strategies for successful scholarship. The most common attribution for being highly productive was collaboration, noted by over half of the sample. This included being mentored, mentoring others, collaborating on projects, and collaborating for mutual feedback on the writing process. In their study of scholarly productivity among academic economists, Taylor, Fender, and Burke (2006) found that co-authorship was associated with higher productivity; increasing the number of coauthors by one initially increased average annual research productivity by 22.5%, but the impact diminished over addition of multiple coauthors. Although most studies provide support for the idea that professional networks promote productivity, some researchers caution that these associations are complex, depending on the measure of collaboration (e.g., connectedness, network size), type of productivity (e.g., presentations, publications, grants), and time frame for measurement (e.g., 2 years, 5 years; Katerndahl, 2012). Katerndahl (2012) suggests that managing collaborative networks may require effort and take time to cultivate, and that judicious use of collaborative networks is needed to improve overall scholarly productivity. A final consideration in building and managing professional networks concerns travel to professional meetings, particularly in the interest of building networks beyond one's own institution. Fleming (2008) notes that travel allocations at many colleges and universities stagnate at under $1,000 annually per faculty member. While this may be sufficient to cover a modestly priced domestic conference, it is insufficient for international travel-a necessary expenditure to maintain credibility of the institution within global research forums. This also limits ability of mid-career faculty to gain international prominence necessary for advancement to the upper echelons of their discipline--a time in the research career shown to be associated with wavering productivity and job satisfaction (Taylor, Fender, & Burke, 2006;Santo et al., 2009;Selingo, 2008). Engaging these faculty in personally fulfilling and productive scholarship may be enhanced through competitive travel grants, formal mentoring (given and received), awards for peer-recognition of accomplishments, and other activities to promote meaningful connection with academic communities at their home institutions and beyond. # d) The Current Study As is evident from prior literature, a key struggle in scholarship involves balancing research, teaching, and service, with teaching load linked to reduced productivity-as conventionally defined. The literature also indicates that successful scholars collaborate in multiple ways and with students, junior colleagues, peers, and senior colleagues or mentors. The current study is intended to delve further to identify challenges to scholarship as well as potential strategies to promote scholarly productivity. The study is part of a broader effort to build research infrastructure within a college of social work at a large, public university. We interviewed about strengths and challenges in building a culture of scholarship. # II. # Methods This project was granted exemption from full review by a university internal review board on human subjects research. # a) Sampling & Participants Participants were faculty and students from a single college of social work within a public university in the Southeastern United States. The college had a long history supporting quality teaching, with many senior faculty who had been hired for their skill as teachers and whose scholarship concentrated on teaching. In recent years, newer research-oriented junior faculty were recruited, and the college sought methods of building research infrastructure to support integration of research, teaching, and service. Thirty-seven faculty (all faculty) and seven doctoral/postdoctoral students (students their first year at the college) were invited to participate in voluntary needs assessment interviews in the Fall of 2013. Of those invited, 23 faculty and all 7 students participated (68% response rate). Participants included 2 tenured faculty, 13 tenure-track junior faculty, 6 research faculty, 2 clinical faculty, and 7 doctoral/postdoctoral students. Eight participants were licensed social workers. Participants included 23 females and 7 males. They ranged in age from 26 to 63, with an average age of 39 years. Seventy percent were White, 17% Black, and 13% Asian. Non-participants received at least two invitations to participate, and were primarily tenured faculty (n = 7), clinical/teaching faculty (n = 5), and research faculty from a single college-affiliated institute (n = 3). # b) Interview Procedures & Prompts Interviews were conducted by the author as part of an organizational needs assessment to assist in building college infrastructure. Prompts helped to structure the interviews, but a conversational tone was maintained via a recursive model of interviewing (Minichiello, Sullivan, Greenwood, & Axford, 2004; Turnbull, 2010), through which prior conversations were permitted to influence structure and content of the research interview. Participants were asked to provide an overview of their research content and methods, followed by specific prompts about their scholarship goals, activities, professional networks, challenges, strengths, and needs. Some prompts addressed issues to be used in providing individualized mentoring to interviewees (e.g., career trajectory). Other prompts addressed more general infrastructure needs of the college. The latter will be the focus of this study. # Examples of relevant prompts include: ? What challenges do you face in your pursuit of your professional goals? ? What are some things that the college can do to support you? ? What are the college's most pressing needs in building research infrastructure? Interviews took less than one hour each to complete. # c) Field Notes, Transcription, & Analysis The interviewer kept detailed field notes during each interview, and these were transcribed immediately following each interview. Transcripts were analyzed using MaxQDA software, using techniques of provisional coding (Saldana, 2009) and grounded theory (Straus & Corbin, 1991). Provisional codes were developed based on each interview prompt (e.g., "infrastructure needs," "professional development"). The author read through each transcript applying/adjusting provisional codes and developing new codes as appropriate. Axial coding was used to identify dimensions of codes, develop memos, and establish relationships among these. Selective coding was used to integrate and refine ideas into recommendations for action. # III. # Findings Regarding challenges in scholarship, gaps in support, and infrastructure needs, a number of themes were prominent. These include having sufficient time to balance research and service workloads, enhanced staff support and research tools to assist in scholarship, cultivating a culture that facilitates professional discourse, and accessing opportunities for professional growth and development. # a) Balancing Research, Teaching, & Service Workloads The primary challenge to scholarship discussed by faculty was 'time.' Faculty members described having a wealth of opportunities for independent and collaborative work, but noted that heavy service commitments precluded taking advantage of such opportunities. They attempted to be strategic to in choosing which opportunities to pursue, but they noted that it was sometimes difficult to say 'no' to requests. It was noted that benchmarks for teaching quality within the college had always been high, and that greater expectations for research productivity--in conjunction with heavy service loads--presented a weighty burden on faculty. Faculty indicated that they desire a culture that values strong teachers and quality research, as well as good 'citizens' in performing service for the college. Faculty felt that improvements could be made in balancing expectations if faculty were encouraged to view their contributions as investments in the future of the college. They also desired strong, decisive measures to protect time and minimize interruptions (e.g., reduce labor-intensive service for junior faculty, promote effective use of meeting time, enact more judicious use of emails). An example of one such recent innovation by the college is 'blocking' one day a week to hold faculty committee meetings (i.e., all meetings college-wide are held on a single day of the week, with rotation of committees on different weeks), which was positively received by faculty. # b) Staff Supports & Tangible Resources Faculty were appreciative of recent additions to college infrastructure, including one-on-one mentoring from a dean for research, budget support from a grants manager, and editing and graphic design from media staff. Regarding the former, faculty and students expressed that periodic review of their professional goals and career trajectories was helpful, as was ad-hoc review of draft manuscripts and proposals. It was suggested that tools or templates for tracking progress may enhance this type of individualized support, helping to clarify direction and priorities for professional activities. Such tools and/or focused discussions could also be utilized in small-group contexts for shared developmental turning points, as in recently implemented meetings for those faculty undergoing pretenure review. Some faculty noted that media support could expand to include assistance in translating research to practice through applied tools (e.g., curricula, online media). One such effort that is in progress includes distilling faculty publications into PowerPoint presentations posted on the college Website so that findings are more accessible to practitioners, policymakers, and the general public. Faculty also mentioned that media staff could support faculty through training or assistance in reframing grant proposals and technical reports into publishable manuscripts. Faculty suggested several other areas for strengthening staff support. These included more focused development and follow-through in assisting faculty to apply for foundation funding, more routine and comprehensive maintenance of information-technology resources (e.g., annual universal updates for common software, training on conferencing options), staffing to book faculty travel, and data management staff to assist in quality assurance of field placements and academic courses. Numerous faculty noted a need for statistical consulting; specifically, they desired consultants who were knowledgeable not only in statistics, but who also were familiar with norms for publishing in social science journals. Regarding new resources that could be developed, a number of faculty shared their experiences from colleges where pre-and post-award staff handled 'everything but the science' of grants management. Representative resources include a shared network drive with sample proposals for different funding agencies, templates for common proposal inclusions such as budgets and organizational capacity statements, tip sheets with cost breakdowns for expenditures, and information on review criteria for various funders. A worksheet with the timeline for proposal development could outline tasks to be performed and dates for completion. Faculty noted that at some institutions, support staff assist not only with budgets and letters of support, but also in tasks such as literature review and formatting of references. Staff could also assist in organizing individual reviews of proposals by peers or full 'mock reviews' involving colleagues from within and across disciplines to provide input on grant proposals. # c) Scholarly Discourse One of the most commonly mentioned needs for promoting a culture of scholarship in the college was the need for more discourse among faculty and PhD students about their own work. Faculty wanted more presentations of individual faculty research, which they suggested could be adjacent to other events on the college calendar (e.g., prior to faculty meetings) or done as a series of brief presentations in a half-day. Some faculty suggested that events be mandatory, while others suggested that individual researchers call ad-hoc meetings of interested collaborators when they needed feedback or wanted to recruit co-authors. Doctoral students also wanted to learn more about faculty research, including greater exposure to statistical analyses and methodological design. Greater visibility of faculty and student research through brownbag presentations, displays of research posters in common areas, and linked articles and briefs on the college's Webpage could promote use and citation of one another's work, promoting the college as a whole. Many faculty also mentioned development of ongoing writing groups to encourage exchange of ideas, constructive critique, collaboration, and shared accountability for development of regular writing habits. However, several faculty noted that such efforts had failed to keep momentum in the past. Some faculty had experimented with project-specific writing groups, daylong or multi-day writing 'boot camps,' and online writing forums. These were all viewed as helpful. Both junior and senior faculty expressed a need to build synergy from overlapping interests among faculty members. Junior faculty desired conceptual input and guidance from senior colleagues, while senior faculty hoped to have junior colleagues who could assist on project teams. As one means of addressing this and other needs pertaining to professional discourse, the college has recently implemented funding for interdisciplinary work groups. These workgroups bridge disciplines across the university and bring faculty and doctoral students together for regular discussions. Developing these types of intentional relationships # d) Professional Development Opportunities Faculty suggested numerous areas for their own professional development, many of which pertain to methodological skills (i.e., structural equation modeling, social network analysis, grantsmanship, time management). Additional topics of interest included advanced methods like multilevel/hierarchical modeling and causal inference (e.g., propensity score analysis, instrumental variable analysis), statistical 'refreshers,' intermediate and advanced qualitative methods, survey design for large-scale data collection, innovative methods such as GIS, and meta-analysis or systematic review. Faculty were also interested in training on project management, specifically managing teams of faculty and student researchers; this is an essential component of growing one's own research endeavors. Doctoral students were interested in learning more about their career options, including different types of faculty appointments (e.g., research, clinical, tenure-track), government and nonprofit jobs, and the job search process. Some were interested in working toward independence and positioning themselves for competitive funding, such as early career development awards. Others wanted to learn about funding opportunities suited to graduate-level work, such as dissertation grants, travel funding, and other small grants. Doctoral students also wished for more exposure to quantitative and qualitative analyses, as well as training in how to write for journals, perform revisions, and so on. Doctoral students wanted to build their own teaching skills through hands-on experience. IV. # Conclusions Our findings yielded numerous insights on how to build a culture of scholarship in higher education. As in other studies (Santo et al., 2009;Turnbull, 2010), balancing workloads between research, teaching, and service was one of the most frequently mentioned challenges to scholarship for faculty. In particular, service loads-largely unexplored in existing academic literature-presented a challenge to faculty. This is important to note, specifically in reference to institutes of higher education that are undergoing organizational change; service is likely to increase exponentially for organizations in flux. Faculty also advocated for more deliberate protection of time for research activities, as well for staffing and resources to assist in managing research activities. Continued support of media staff, grants management staff, and technology staff were seen as essential to research productivity. Faculty also wanted tools to support grants development, including templates for budgets, grant preparation timelines, and so on. Faculty and doctoral students desired more engagement of students in faculty research, an effort that might be aided by early training of incoming students on performing literature reviews, preparing posters, and other basic aspects of research. This type of engagement is absolutely essential to leveraging the connections between research and teaching, as suggested by Boyer (2000) and Horta et al. (2012). Both faculty and students wanted more active exposure to scholarly discourse, including workshops or discussions to build synergy among scholars with common research interests. Based on these findings, we propose five general recommendations for building a culture of scholarship. These include protecting time for research, building staff supports, engaging students in faculty research, developing research resources, and cultivating professional growth and discourse. Each is discussed in more depth below, and Table 1 provides a summary of specific strategies within each of these five areas. # a) Protect Time for Research One of the most salient needs for increasing a culture of scholarship involved protecting time for research. This can be accomplished in numerous ways, including strategies like relegating committee meetings to specific days of the week, using email more judiciously, and encouraging faculty to tenaciously guard time in their own schedules for writing and research. Meeting time can be used more effectively if agendas are clear and materials are distributed in advance, committee membership is streamlined, and processes are established for handling some tasks outside of meetings if full committee discussion is not warranted. Faculty were especially adamant that time of junior faculty should be well protected, with faculty who had already achieved tenure not only taking on a greater share of the service load of the college, but also acting as mentors and advocates to minimize labor-intensive duties for junior faculty. Creation of a research culture may require reduction in teaching loads. Yet, reduction of teaching load solely through faculty buy-outs may put disproportionate numbers of adjunct faculty in university classrooms, changing the nature of students' educational experiences (McMurtry & McClelland, 2997). Fleming (2008) points out that class size is a key determinant of workload, observing that more researchintensive institutions often adopt a less personal approach to teaching. That is, students interact less with professors and more with teaching assistants or support staff, and these persons play a key role in grading assignments, providing feedback on papers, fielding inquiries by phone and email, and providing academic counseling. This approach may sacrifice regular direct student access to professors, which is likely to impact quality of the educational experience. Increasing research may also limit faculty service to local communities. Thus, striking a balance that allows quality teaching, community-engaged service, and innovative research is indeed a challenge. One of the most elusive aspects of balancing research, teaching, and service is achieving high valuation among faculty and administrators for each of these essential components of higher education. This would allow some faculty to strategically select commitments that inspire their passions as well as promote institutional growth. Whether this might take the form of separate research-oriented and teachingoriented "cadres," as those identified by Gottlieb and Keith (1997), or some other more integrated structure would be a good topic for further exploration. Recognizing and rewarding achievement in all three areas of research, teaching, and service is a necessary step to creating a culture in which faculty appreciate their collective contributions to the overall vitality of higher education. # b) Build Staff Supports Building staff supports help alleviate faculty workloads with dedicated staff who lend specialized expertise in areas including fiscal management, grants management, editing and media development, data management, statistical analysis, and information/technology. Staff can assist in identifying funding opportunities, serving as a liaison with foundation funders, gathering letters of support, developing budgets, assembling and formatting proposals, and other tasks essential to grantsmanship. Editing, media, and information/technology staff can assist in translating research products into user-friendly formats and making these accessible to a variety of audiences. Statistical consultants can assure that faculty have timely and appropriate designs for proposals, presentations, and publications. Technology staff can assure that software updates, video and teleconferencing, and meeting set-up require minimal efforts from faculty other than a simple scheduling request. # c) Engage Students in Faculty Research Assuring that students are motivated, prepared, and engaged in research with faculty members contributes to growth for the students as well as to efficiency and expansion of faculty efforts. Colleges can implement strategies for recruiting doctoral students whose interests and skills align with existing faculty specialty areas. This might include individualized efforts to reach out to specific students or particular schools, matching of college funds with faculty grant funds for sponsoring students on faculty research projects, and developing funded practicum opportunities that can be marketed to a strong graduate student cohort. Incoming students can be prepared to engage in research through universal, brief training sessions on topics such as literature review, preparing abstracts and PowerPoint slides, and presenting findings in poster and oral formats. Dorrance and associates (2008) demonstrate that modest efforts on the part of faculty and staff organizers can improve faculty-student research partnerships and promote productivity of both faculty and student researchers. Training may also be used to improve engagement of international students in the academic and local community, with specific attention to address language and cultural barriers, transportation, peer support, and connection to community partners. # d) Develop Research Resources Research resources can serve as tools and models for development of scholarly products. This includes housing sample proposals and review criteria from a variety of funders on a shared drive or Intranet, developing boilerplate models for grant budgets and organizational capacity statements, developing templates and tip sheets for budget development, sample letters of support, timelines for grant development, and so on. Protocols can be developed for soliciting individualized peer feedback or mock reviews for grant proposals, including opportunities for graduate students to assist in organizing reviews. # e) Cultivate Professional Growth & Discourse Perhaps most essential to scholarship is engagement of faculty with one another for discussions about their own research, learning about innovative methodologies, and opportunities for collaboration, networking, and professional growth. Foremost, exposure to faculty and student research should be multifaceted, including brownbag presentations, posters in common areas, articles and presentations on faculty Webpages, and workshops for collaborative development of scholarly products (e.g., writing groups, topical interest groups). Particular attention might be devoted to group meetings at shared turning points such as mentoring groups for incoming faculty, discussion groups on pre-tenure review, and ongoing professional development workshops on methodology, career development, and workplace issues. Ironically, though faculty express a lack of time to conduct research, they nevertheless demonstrate interest in increased discourse around their work. Briar-Lawson and associates (2008) note that moving faculty from being solo scholars to teams of researchers requires strategies such as identifying intersecting interests and hiring both tenure-track and research faculty with corresponding interests and priorities of the faculty as a whole. An important part of creating synergy and fostering development of a culture of scholarship is having faculty at varying ranks with overlapping interests, which allows non-duplicative collaborative partnerships, mentoring, and shared connections to local, national, and international partners. Attesting to dynamics of collaboration aiding in productivity, Worley (2011) conducted a study of academic 'stars' (i.e., highly productive scholars) in the field of criminal justice. These faculty members emphasized importance of working with students and other faculty not only to share a workload, but also to cultivate inspiration and interests, to help direct one's path toward successful endeavors, and provide diverse perspectives that inform highquality scholarship. Senior faculty can provide conceptual and academic leadership to assist junior faculty grow toward independence, and junior faculty can provide an energizing force with new perspectives on the field. Aside from informal mentoring, more deliberate approaches that provide systematic feedback might be considered; this could include mentoring committees (if faculty size permits) as well as focused attempts to assure that junior faculty are connected with colleagues who can provide support for achievement of professional goals. Finally, professional travel is central to promoting visibility of researchers on a state, national, and international level. Conference attendance helps strengthen professional networks among those working in the same field as well as across fields with common content interests. Topical interest groups at conferences provide opportunities for leadership in the field, as well as for forging bonds for multi-site projects, co-authored papers, and so on. For students, conference travel provides valuable engagement with the profession and with models of scholarship. To this end, travel stipends and competitive travel grants can promote scholarship for faculty and student researchers. # f) A Framework for Cultural Change Implementing these recommendations may support a culture of scholarship, but cultural change requires integrative framing to bring all involved parties along in the change process. In academia, routine challenges of organizational change may be compounded by sharp philosophical and social divisions between research-oriented and teachingoriented faculty. Trowler (2005) suggests social practice theory as a framework for improving faculty receptivity and promoting implementation of change initiatives. Specifically, Trowler emphasizes engaging in shared activities and communities of practice, negotiating identities through relational processes, construction and signification of meaning through discourse, identification of tacit assumptions and implicit theories that may influence the culture, understanding rules of appropriateness and development of recurrent practices that reinforce cultural change, and using technologies to facilitate change of the constructed worldview. Trowler underscores that, while policy science is used for topdown prescriptive initiatives, policy scholarship situates understanding of change in the cultural and ideological milieu of those persons and institutions involved. Creating shared processes and understandings in the change process helps assure that change initiatives will fall on ground that is "fertile" rather than "hostile" (p. 27). Further, invoking a theory of change such as social process theory provides the "radar and improved diagnostic and prescriptive tools" (p. 29) to assist during the change process. # g) Limitations & Summary Findings from our interviews are limited in that they draw from a single college of social work at a public academic institution. Thus, findings may not apply to disciplines beyond social work or to smaller colleges and universities. However, it may be those smaller colleges and universities that will most likely benefit from some of the strategies suggested here, in that these are the institutions that may be in most need of infrastructure development. Another limitation is that faculty at this institution are predominantly assistant professors, and there was some selection bias, with tenured faculty, clinical faculty, and research faculty less likely to participate in interviews. Thus, patterns identified here may attest to development needs as perceived by junior tenure-track faculty more than by other faculty. Given previous findings that both productivity and job satisfaction may dip for mid-career scholars (Taylor, Fender, & Burke, 2006;Santo et al., 2009;Selingo, 2008), future research might examine challenges and facilitators of scholarship among tenured faculty and those faculty who are not on the tenure track. These findings, in conjunction with promising practices from extant literature, provide concrete suggestions for building a culture of scholarship directed toward engagement, support, and professional fulfillment for faculty and students. ![of Scholarship in Higher Education across departments, especially those involving students as well as junior and senior faculty, are intended to set the foundation for funded research as well as for expanding connections to community agencies and resources.](image-2.png "") © 2015 Global Journals Inc. (US) © 2015 Global Journals Inc. (US)Volume XV Issue XI Version I * Investing in the future: Social workers talk about research LBeddoe British Journal of Social Work 41 2011 * Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate EBoyer 2000 Carnegie Foundation NY * Advancing administrative supports for research development KBriar-Lawson WKorr BWhite PVroom JZabora JMiddleton BShank MSchatz Social Work Research 32 4 2008 * An internal medicine interest group research program can improve scholarly productivity of medical students and foster mentoring relationships with internists KDorrance GDenton JProemba JLarochelle JNasir GArgyros SDurning Teaching and Learning in Medicine 20 2 2008 An International Journal * Making the leap? Transformative processes, academic freedom and engendering a research culture in Ontario colleges and small teaching-centered universities. The Public Sector Innovation TFleming Journal 13 2 2008 * Institutional supports for faculty scholarship: A national survey of social work programs SFreedenthal CPotter MGrinstein-Weiss Social Work Research 32 4 2008 * The academic research-teaching nexus in eight advancedindustrialized countries. Higher Education EGottlieb BKeith 1997 34 * An output perspective on the teaching-research nexus: An analysis focusing on the United States higher education system HHorta VDautel FVeloso Studies in Higher Education 37 2 2012 * Advances and challenges in developing research capacity in social work JJenson KBriar-Lawson JFlanzer Social Work Research 32 4 2008 * Academic-practice partnerships in practice research: A cultural shift for health social workers. 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