A Message from the Vice President

This message is intended for our friends and partners both on and off campus. We hope you will visit the site often, for it is our most important communication tool in our dual role as UA’s leader in engaged scholarship and intercultural relations.

While the terms “scholarship of engagement” or “engaged scholarship” — the terms are interchangeable — have been around for years, they may not be familiar to everyone. They were first used by Ernest Boyer in a 1996 article published in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement as Boyer sought nothing less than to redefine the role of higher education. He advocated a move away from scholarship as the “application of academic expertise” to a scholarship that creates partnerships between higher education institutions and communities. He further argued that engaged scholarship integrates the often-conflicting faculty roles of teaching, research and service, seeing them instead as different aspects of a common purpose. Since Boyer, engaged scholarship has come to mean collaboration between knowledge professionals on campuses and the lay public for mutual benefit.