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Public engagement is often found at the heart of universities’ mission statements and is key to their institutional identities, but it is rarely central in their promotion and tenure processes. Indeed, in their analysis of P&T guidelines from more than 120 universities, Juan Pablo Alperin and colleagues found very little reference to publicly engaged research.
This lack of recognition makes success difficult, if not impossible, for faculty with publicly engaged research programs. More often than not, it serves as a disincentive for faculty to pursue this kind of work, curbing their efforts to develop public partnerships in research and beyond, thereby limiting universities’ capacity for meaningful public engagement.
If universities genuinely want to realize their potential to solve societal challenges, they must create mechanisms to recognize publicly engaged research in the P&T process. In 2020, the Provost’s Office at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign formed a task force to address this issue. We strategically chose both faculty who were champions of publicly engaged research and faculty who had little experience with it and who were often skeptical. This heterogeneity sometimes created disagreement, but it is what led to the development of a rigorous process to recognize the societal impact of publicly engaged research.
At the heart of Illinois’s new Publicly Engaged Research Option (PERO) pathway for promotion and tenure are two mechanisms designed to evaluate societal impact. The first is the integration of products for the public (e.g., policy reports, training manuals and museum exhibits) and metrics of their societal impact (e.g., changes in state legislation, use of training manuals by local agencies and attendance at exhibits) into the P&T dossier.
Working with their unit executive officer (EO), at least two years prior to promotion, faculty taking the PERO pathway specify the public products their research will generate and the means of evaluation in a memorandum of understanding. This nonbinding MOU is reviewed by a faculty advisory committee and signed by the faculty member, EO and dean to ensure shared expectations. An added benefit is that faculty develop a systematic plan for their research over the next few years.
The second PERO mechanism reflects the task force’s conviction that the perspective of the public is essential to any evaluation of societal impact. When faculty opt for the PERO pathway, two of the five required letters from external evaluators must be from experts outside academia who can objectively evaluate the societal impact of the faculty member’s publicly engaged research. Faculty are asked to identify the relevant types of experts (e.g., a school superintendent or government agency director) and provide a rationale as to why they are appropriate in the MOU. We developed structured invitations for these experts to support them in writing a pertinent and detailed appraisal of the societal impact of the research.
Although the PERO pathway overlaps to some extent with the traditional P&T pathway, the evaluation of societal impact at the heart of PERO represents an unfamiliar paradigm for the academy. Thus, we are working to develop awareness, knowledge and acceptance of its affordances across the Illinois campus. Most notably, a faculty advisory committee is in place to assist faculty members, along with their EOs, in developing the PERO MOU. As part of this process, the committee provides a review of the MOU, to which faculty then respond. The committee will also give guidance to P&T committees making decisions about PERO candidates and help colleges develop more specific guidelines that align with the campus guidelines.
We formally launched the PERO pathway last year. We had many thoughtful conversations with faculty across disciplines who are eager to define how public engagement fits within their scholarly work. In turn, we received and evaluated a handful of formal MOUs reflecting the spirit of publicly engaged research—that is, research done with the public, benefiting the public and generating generalizable knowledge. Those cases will begin to move through the P&T process soon.
Interest in the pathway continues to grow across our campus. Almost all colleges and schools, including the Colleges of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences; Education; Engineering; Fine and Applied Arts; Liberal Arts and Sciences; and the School of Social Work, are exploring how to incorporate it.
As with all innovations, this one has skeptics and critics. Some see PERO as lowering the bar for promotion and tenure. Indeed, we heard this objection from a few of our colleagues. However, PERO faculty must develop public products with demonstrable societal impact and integrate them with their traditional disciplinary products (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles and grants), which are still required but to a lesser extent than in the traditional pathway. This sets a high, if not higher, bar—but one well worth it. PERO promises to change units’ recruitment calculus, making them more willing to recruit candidates who conduct pioneering publicly engaged research that does not fit the traditional profile. And we hope these candidates see PERO as a major draw for joining the Illinois faculty.
Others have said that faculty entering this unknown territory will not have the benefit of a supportive culture and that the PERO pathway is therefore too risky. Yet, we must start somewhere.
Importantly, we are developing guardrails and support systems for PERO on our campus—for example, our MOU and the feedback from the advisory committee are essential in providing guidance and establishing expectations for faculty members, EOs and P&T committees. Over time, we will revise our system to reflect both the challenges and opportunities presented by PERO, developing new strategies to better gauge societal impact—for example, by designing projects up front or harnessing new technologies to capture data that better reflects societal impact.
PERO represents an innovative approach to one of the most pressing questions for leaders in higher education right now: How can research universities stay true to their mission while shifting practices that will, in turn, manifest the transformative power of research through engagement with the public? A new pathway toward tenure is a significant step forward. We expect most faculty will continue to take the traditional P&T pathway, but for those with publicly engaged research programs, PERO is essential. As our task force showed, faculty governance through consultation and shared decision-making is key to developing pathways that best fit local institutional culture. Through mutual commitment and collective action, we can strengthen the role of publicly engaged research and help restore public trust in higher education—reaffirming the university’s place as a force for the common good.
