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Community Engagement Knowledge Hub

Developing Tenure, Promotion and Merit Review Guidelines for Community-Engaged Scholarship

**Slide deck introduction to this toolkit to come

The UW Community Engagement TPMR Toolkit Project

The UW Project to Build Tri-Campus Capacity for Community Engagement aims to improve the UW’s capacity to engage with community partners. The 2025–2026 Community Engagement TPMR Toolkit project is funded as part of that broader effort.

Welcome to our evolving resources page!

Here you can find a curated, condensed set of resources that provide initial support for academic units across the University of Washington’s three campuses as they update their tenure, promotion, and merit review (TPMR) guidelines to recognize and support community-engaged research and teaching as scholarship. These resources, which include links with paired descriptions, will help build a shared understanding of community-engaged scholarship (CES), highlight examples of TPMR guidelines from within UW and beyond, and offer guidance for incorporating CES in TPMR review.

Over the 2025–2026 academic year, we will continue to expand this collection into a robust toolkit that provides examples and templates for documenting and evaluating CES, guided by institutional-level policies and UW’s broader mission. This includes metrics, document templates, and policy exemplars that offer models for unit-level criteria, reviewer support, faculty resources, and approaches to iterative assessment. .

Below you’ll find frameworks and emerging project materials—including a summary, annotated bibliograpy, diagrams, and timelines—developed through this toolkit effort. Jump to the page sections below:

  1. UW Context
  2. Why Recognize Community-Engaged Scholarship in P&T Reviews?
  3. Three Models of Community-Engaged Scholarship in University TPMR Processes
  4. Criteria for Evaluating Community-Engaged Scholarship
  5. Recognizing the Diversity of Scholarly Products in Community-Engaged Scholarship
  6. Resources for Aligning TPMR Processes to Support Community-Engaged Scholarship
  7. UW Community Engagement TPMR Toolkit Project Team

 

UW Context

In October 2025, Provost Serio charged UW academic units to review and update their promotion and tenure guidelines “ensuring policies are current, equitable, and reflective of the diverse ways our talented faculty contribute to the university’s mission. The goal of this review is to affirm that the full range of faculty activities may be considered in tenure and promotion—not to expand the existing requirements, but to ensure clarity and inclusivity in their application.” The provost’s memo covers 10 areas of scholarship, including community engaged scholarship (CES).

We are pleased to note that UW has made significant strides in updating tenure, promotion and merit review (TPMR) processes, from voted upon adjustments to Faculty Code that recognize community engagement as a form of scholarship to UW’s Carnegie classification as a community-engaged institution. 

a timeline of efforts to improve promotion and tenure processes at the UW to support community engaged scholarship
Over the past 8 years, the UW’s faculty and administrative leadership have all been collaborating to understand and align promotion and tenure processes to support community-engaged scholarship. This work recently accelerated with the capacity-building project and the Provost’s charge to align P&T criteria.

Additionally, some of the UW’s units have already revised their promotion and tenure guidelines to address community-engaged scholarship (CES): 

  • Department of Dance, College of Arts and Sciences, UW Seattle
  • Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Built Environments, UW Seattle
  • School of Educational Studies, UW Bothell
  • School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW Tacoma
  • School of Public Health, UW Seattle

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Why Recognize Community-Engaged Scholarship in P&T Reviews?

Community-engaged scholarship (CES) is increasingly recognized as both a legitimate scholarly pathway and central to higher education’s public mission. UW’s Summer 2025 “Research Makes America” campaign illustrates this commitment by highlighting funded community-engaged research and its impact on communities nationwide. Yet, TPMR structures at many research universities—including UW to varying degrees—lag behind these aspirations, creating misalignment between institutional mission and faculty evaluation practices.

This misalignment is reflected in faculty and staff perceptions of institutional support for CES. In 2024, faculty and staff leads for the Tri-Campus Initiative to Build Capacity for Community Engagement conducted a UW-wide survey to evaluate the development of and support for community-engaged work. The survey revealed that, overall, faculty and staff do not feel supported by current P&T criteria. Out of 100 responses from faculty and staff (86 and 14, respectively), more than half (56%) of faculty/staff said they do not feel supported (1) or feel somewhat supported (2), and only 24% of faculty/staff felt very supported (4) by their units. For more information, see the “Faculty and Staff Professional Development and P&T Report.”   

CES advances both institutional goals and societal impact. However, as UCLA’s Recognizing Community-Engaged Scholarship in Academic Personnel Review (Staub & Maharramli, 2021) report observes, “university cultures and structures for evaluation have not changed… creating impediments and disincentives for community-engaged scholarly work” (p. 8). Blanchard and Furco (2021) similarly note that legacy evaluation systems at R1 institutions often relegate CES to “service” rather than “research and scholarship,” undervaluing it relative to traditional outputs. This disconnect suppresses faculty engagement, disproportionately affects women and faculty of color (Staub & Maharramli, 2021), and hinders the recruitment and retention of scholars committed to public impact (Ozer et al., 2023).

Integrating CES into TPMR is thus an urgent priority, aligning evaluation practices with public mission and addressing inequities in how diverse scholarly contributions are recognized.

**An annotated bibliography will be available here soon
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Three Models of Community-Engaged Scholarship in University TPMR Processes

UCLA’s 2021 report, Recognizing Community-Engaged Scholarship in Academic Personnel Review (Staub & Maharramli, 2021), provides one of the most comprehensive institutional roadmaps for integrating CES into TPMR. The report identifies three primary models for incorporating engaged scholarship into review:

  1. Opt-in Supplemental Review, where faculty undergo standard review with the option to submit a CES-focused supplemental review evaluated by qualified peers;
  2. Continuum of Scholarship model, which normalizes engaged scholarship across research and teaching while allowing faculty to locate their work along a flexible continuum; and
  3. Decentralized Criteria within an Institutional Framework, in which the institution affirms CES as scholarship while schools and departments define discipline-specific criteria and standards.

Based on peer institution analysis, the UCLA report recommends a hybrid approach: adopting the continuum of scholarship campus-wide while enabling schools and divisions to establish discipline-aligned decentralized evaluation criteria. Opt-in supplemental review is not recommended due to the additional burden it places on community-engaged scholars to produce “extra” materials on top of a traditional dossier. The report also proposes supportive infrastructure—including a campus policy statement recognizing CES, training for reviewers, templates for faculty, and a CES tracking platform through their Collaboratory instance—to ensure consistent yet flexible evaluation practices.

a visual of 4 models of incorporating community engaged scholarship into P&T processes
A depiction of UCLA’s three models, with a hybrid fourth model suggested for the UW.

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Criteria for Evaluating Community-Engaged Scholarship

CES can be evaluated through a variety of traditional and non-traditional academic methods. Common dimensions for evaluating CES include:

  • Scholarly Rigor – methods, theoretical framing, and contributions to the field / discipline (see Ellison & Eatmon, 2008; Blanchard & Furco, 2021) 
  • Partnership Quality – reciprocity, shared authority and decision-making, co-creation, and sustained engagement 
  • Product Diversity – a range of dissemination products and approaches such as articles, policy briefs, exhibitions, curricula, datasets, and multimedia outputs, among others.  
  • Evidence of Impact – academic (citations, grants) and community (policy change, capacity building) indicators 
  • Integration across Mission Areas – how research, teaching, and engagement reinforce each other 

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Recognizing the Diversity of Scholarly Products in Community-Engaged Scholarship

CES generates a wide range of scholarly products that extend beyond traditional, double-blind peer-reviewed publications that may sometimes have limited audiences. As recognized by national disciplinary guidelines such as the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture’s White Papers, faculty contribute valuable knowledge through academic, applied, and community-based outputs. These can be peer-reviewed or non-peer-reviewed, and non-peer reviewed scholarly products, e.g., creative and practical work “can be considered scholarly publications if they are disseminated beyond first-hand encounters with partners or policymakers.” (UC Berkeley example, cited in Ozer et al., 2023). Acknowledging this diversity is essential for fully capturing scholarly impact, supporting faculty working in community contexts, and ensuring that promotion and tenure guidelines reflect the breadth of scholarly contributions. The categories below offer a framework for understanding the range of products that may emerge from CES, recognizing that many projects produce outcomes across all three.

Academic products represent peer-reviewed or otherwise scholarly contributions that advance disciplinary knowledge. These are the most widely recognized forms of scholarship and typically undergo competitive, editorial, and/or peer-review processes. These can also include emerging models of peer review by practitioners or community experts for CES. 

Examples include: 

  • Peer-reviewed, competitively selected, or invited articles 
  • Book texts, book chapters, and monographs 
  • Conference presentations, abstracts, and proceedings 
  • Grants, competitive contracts, and gifts 
  • Honors and awards 
  • Indigenous scholarly activities (e.g., curation or creation of artistic or cultural exhibits; significant oral dissemination; policy development; CES under the ownership of Indigenous nations) 
  • Non-peer-reviewed or non-traditional peer-reviewed articles 
  • Exhibitions or displays that are peer-reviewed, competitively selected, invited, or curated 

Applied products demonstrate the use of disciplinary or scholarly expertise to address public needs, influence policy, shape practice, and/or improve conditions in community or civic contexts. These outputs frequently bridge academic knowledge with real-world implementation and may be produced independently or in collaboration with partners.  

Examples include: 

  • Copyrights, patents, and inventions 
  • Reports (governmental, technical, specialized, etc.) 
  • Policies (writing, advocacy, or expert testimony in courts or legislative settings 
  • Designs 
  • Consultancy, training, and technical assistance 
  • Leadership or membership on boards of professional or community organizations related to one’s scholarly or teaching areas 
  • Guides and handbooks 
  • Educational materials, curricula, and instructional activities 
  • Professional licensure 

Community products are created for and with community partners. These outputs support civic needs, cultural expression, public dialogue, policy influence, and social transformation. They embody the relational nature of CES and often serve as primary evidence of scholarly impact, especially when disseminated beyond first-hand encounters. 

Examples include: 

  • Creating and sustaining partnerships with communities 
  • Community-attained grants or funding; community awards 
  • Community presentations, seminars, and workshops 
  • Community events, displays, or exhibitions; facilitation of community-based or public artistic projects 
  • Community reports 
  • Websites 
  • Newsletters 
  • Public forums, workshops, and seminars (e.g., TED-style talks, media interviews) 
  • Public-focused writing (white papers, op-eds, etc.) 
  • Participatory, community-based, or community-engaged production and dissemination of knowledge, social justice work, or activism 
  • Creative works such as exhibitions, performances, cultural interventions in civic / popular forums (including electronic media), films, and/or documentaries 

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Resources for Aligning TPMR Processes to Support Community-Engaged Scholarship

These curated lists highlight key resources—most published within the last eight years. While extensive, they are not exhaustive and will continue to evolve.

Resources mentioned in the above toolkit are also listed here for your reference:

**An annotated bibliography will be available here soon.

These are general resources created by teams at the University of Washington, many of whom are affiliated with the UW Tri-Campus Community Engagement Project.

UW-related (CES)

UW-related (Teaching)

The below examples are frequently cited as best practices. The table below summarizes key features from each (for example, Minnesota’s voluntary CES review committee).

Many professional and academic societies provide guidance and resources for CES.

Many community engagement networks, associations, and entities provide resources as well.

 

UW Community Engagement TPMR Toolkit Project Team

The 2025–2026 Community Engagement TPMR Toolkit effort is funded by the UW Tri-Campus Community Engagement Project in the Office of Strategic Initiatives.  

  • Rachel Berney, PhD, Associate Professor, College of Built Environments (she/her) 
  • Catherine De Almeida, PLA, ASLA, Associate Professor, College of Built Environments (she/her) 
  • Jen Davison, Project Director, Community Engagement, Strategic Initiatives Office (she/her)

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