By: Hailey Colwell
While some faculty members at the University of Minnesota get federally-funded research grants, others turn to the community when looking for research opportunities.
But University officials have discouraged some faculty members from conducting community research, which is often a less-lucrative option for the University.
The Faculty Senate’s Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee met with representatives from the University’s Public Engagement Council in April to discuss faculty members’ concerns around the issue.
The committee is looking into whether discouraging faculty members from pursuing certain grants is a violation of their academic freedom.
The PEC was created in 2011 to advise University members on public engagement issues, which have increased in number as the University pursues relationships with surrounding communities as part of its land-grant mission.
Three faculty members told the PEC that they had been discouraged to pursue community-based research grants. The organizations they wanted to work with had caps on how much they could reimburse the University for research costs, said Associate Vice President for Public Engagement Andrew Furco.
Faculty members who rely on community-engaged research are concerned that though they’re expected to regularly publish research, the University is prohibiting them from going after the types of studies they need to do, Furco said.
At the meeting, other faculty members raised questions on whether limiting community-engaged research is unfair to professors in the arts.
Carl Flink, committee co-chair and director of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, said at the meeting that the PEC should focus more on working with arts faculty because of the particularly important role community research plays for them.
Faculty members who’ve done community research have said they feel disadvantaged because there is no set way to review their research. Their departments have told them to list their community work as engagement or outreach in their portfolios even when the work was research-based, they said.
The committee is looking into whether guidelines should be established for reviewing professors’ community work.