INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
T he challenge of creating a culture of scholarship has shaped how we reserved for publishing academics, but rather as a practice that can – and should – infuse the daily work of teaching and learning. The key has been to take Ernest Boyer’s model of scholarship seriously and make it practical for our context [Boyer argued that academia extends beyond approach both faculty development and student learning at Acsenda School of Management (ASM). We have come to see scholarship not as something solely traditional research into four areas: discovery, integration, application and teaching]. For us, scholarship is not only about discovery through traditional research, but also about the application of knowledge, integration across disciplines and the scholarship of teaching. This broader definition has opened doors for faculty whose careers began in industry rather than academia, while helping students see themselves as contributors to knowledge, not mere recipients of it. What this really means is that, at ASM, scholarship is an everyday practice: visible, iterative and deeply connected to teaching. Having spent a decade in academia, publishing in traditional research settings, I have seen the value of expanding that definition so scholarship can thrive in a teaching-oriented environment. It is the space where ‘pracademics’, those who bridge practice and academia, naturally thrive.
A broader definition When Boyer proposed expanding the definition of scholarship in the 1990s, his goal was to rebalance higher education’s overemphasis on pure research. His four-part format recognised the many ways academics create and share knowledge. This framework resonates strongly in management and professional schools, where many faculty bring deep industry experience, but may not publish regularly. At ASM, it gave us both a language and a structure to legitimise the kinds of scholarly work our faculty were already doing but had rarely named as such. For example, an instructor redesigning a capstone course to better support students may not see this as research. However, through Boyer’s lens, it is clearly the scholarship of teaching. Similarly, faculty who draw on professional experience to publish applied insights or case studies are practising the scholarship of application. By adopting Boyer’s model, we shifted the conversation from “Do you publish?” to “How do you contribute?” That small change has made a big difference. It acknowledges the realities of a teaching-intensive environment while raising expectations for professional growth and reflection. Faculty are encouraged to document post-event reflections, contribute to our internal Scholarly Bites series and view their classroom innovations as part of a broader academic dialogue. This approach has also reframed scholarship as something iterative and developmental. Instead of a binary view of scholarly versus not scholarly, we talk about a “contributions ladder”. A faculty member might begin with reflective practice, build toward presenting at a teaching conference and eventually publish applied research. Each step is valued and contributes to the institution’s scholarly culture. Faculty scholarship in practice Once we reframed scholarship using Boyer’s definition, the next step was figuring out how to make it visible and achievable for faculty whose primary responsibility is teaching. Many of our instructors come from professional and industry backgrounds. They bring invaluable expertise in areas such as finance, hospitality and international business, but they do not always see themselves as scholars. The risk is that scholarship becomes something abstract, detached from their day-to-day work.
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Business Impact • ISSUE 6 • 2025
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