In a series of regular posts, called “Growing Boldly – Insights,” leaders are sharing their perspectives on topics connected to MacEwan’s strategic vision process.
In this latest instalment, Dr. Craig Monk, provost & vice-president, Academic, looks at how scholarly activity is connected to the idea of “growing boldly.”
When I think about “growing boldly” in the context of scholarship, I first think about why students should care whether or not faculty members at an undergraduate institution actively engage in scholarly activity.
Students who choose MacEwan, whether they realize it or not, expect to study with scholars. Their expectation is not to have a professor just work from a textbook that someone else has written but to be taught by people who generate knowledge, themselves, and whose own research and creativity activity contributes to the fields in which they are instructing.
Being taught by active scholars is good for programs, good for students and fundamental to MacEwan’s value proposition. I am interested in how scholarly activity can allow us to continue to differentiate ourselves. Other universities may also have excellent researchers, but they are researchers whom students might never encounter or only encounter in senior courses. MacEwan students in first-year classes have meaningful engagement with scholars who are active in their fields, and that is an integral part of what makes us unique.
At the beginning of MacEwan Celebrates Scholarship Month, it seems apropos to talk about the importance of “teaching research.” Our faculty consistently illustrate for our students how academics pursue research and creative activity. The course requirements faculty members plan and assign for our students, and the results students subsequently uncover, may be presented so that their relevance extends outside classrooms and into the world beyond. Student Research Day on April 26 will be an opportunity to see this in action.
I would argue that the outcomes achieved as a result of the scholarly work in which our students participate are not unlike work-integrated learning or co-operative education opportunities; they ultimately help students build skills and expertise that act as the currency of professional practitioners of their disciplines.
When I speak of “teaching research,” I also want our faculty to look constantly at how our programs might allow them to teach their specific areas of expertise more regularly. This is important because I know that an active scholar’s work influences what and how they teach. It allows them to supplement and to change course material over time. Ultimately, active scholars at the cutting edge of their fields make programs more dynamic.
Creating a strategic vision under which we are “growing boldly,” I believe, is about pursuing opportunities that we did not think were there and approaching things differently. “Growing boldly” could mean embracing the technological tools we have all become much more adept at using over the past year to provide us not only with more flexibility in hybrid course delivery but also to create better conditions under which to pursue research and creative activity. “Growing boldly” could mean increasingly inviting students to engage in scholarship. It might be challenging to see always how an undergraduate student can contribute meaningfully to highly complex work, but we see here each day many examples of where it happens: where students benefit, instructors benefit and the scholarship itself benefits.
“Growing boldly” is about making a greater impact. It is about making sure our students see the entire context of their experiences as undergraduates, understanding how their work connects to the scholarship of their professors and expressing their learning and articulating their skills in ways that resonate widely when they graduate from MacEwan.
From Dr. Craig Monk, Provost & Vice-President, Academic
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