The field of environmental science is fully embedded within the Natural Sciences Division at Kenyon College. Thus, the expectations for scholarship in environmental sciences within the Environmental Studies (ENVS) Program mirror those for the Natural Sciences Division. Depending on their expertise, we expect other faculty in ENVS may have evaluation criteria that more closely resemble statements and expectations from one of the other three academic divisions (e.g., social sciences, fine arts, humanities).  

Natural Sciences Scholarship Guidelines

Every Kenyon faculty member is expected to be an excellent teacher, an available and understanding advisor and mentor to many students, and a productive scholar who is active in his or her discipline of inquiry.   

The members of the ENVS Program fully endorse these expectations, while we also wholeheartedly agree that meeting them is extremely challenging. With this in mind, we set out to articulate the special challenges that combining science teaching and research at an elite liberal arts college poses for cutting edge research productivity and publication, particularly for junior faculty members who are seeking appointment without limit. 

First, it is the responsibility of the faculty member to recognize the way in which models for research in the sciences change as they make the transition from a research university to a small liberal arts college. Ideally, successfully negotiating this challenge results in the fairly rapid establishment of a sustainable research program. Second, the faculty member must demonstrate competence and active participation in his or her chosen discipline through publication and other forms of scholarly discourse. Finally, the faculty member must meet these challenges in light of the high teaching demands and relatively limited resources available at a liberal arts college. It is important that these challenges and their implications be understood by those who will evaluate the work of scientists at Kenyon, as well as by the scientists being evaluated. The evaluators include the Tenure and Promotions Committee of the faculty, the President, Provost, and Trustees of the College, and outside experts who evaluate Kenyon science departments and programs.

Models for Research in Environmental Science

At Kenyon, a fair and useful evaluation of scholarship in environmental science must be based on the principle that successful research programs can and do take on a variety of forms. For example, depending on the nature of the research, a successful program might involve a significant undergraduate research component relying on participation of summer science, honors, and independent study students. In other instances, the faculty research program may not include undergraduate participation but instead relies heavily on advanced theoretical and/or mathematical work with collaborators at other colleges. Rather than encouraging a "one-size-fits-all" approach to scientific research, the ENVS Program recognizes that such diversity is valuable to the faculty, students, and more generally the College. Hence the College encourages each faculty member to evaluate his or her personal strengths and interests to find the approach to scholarly engagement that works best given the available resources.

In many cases, research with student collaborators will proceed more slowly than research carried out with more mature collaborators. The Natural Science Division and the ENVS Program want to ensure that peers and others who are evaluating faculty members choosing to pursue research programs involving undergraduates are aware of the challenges involved in what might be called the apprenticeship model, described below. In particular, teaching and research within this model are inextricably intertwined, with students learning how to conduct research by doing research.

At research universities, the apprenticeship model for experimental science results in research groups, led by one or a few tenured faculty members who are primarily responsible for grant-writing activities, overall management and direction of the researchers, and interfacing with the wider academic community in the discipline or sub-discipline. The other members of the group, including post-doctoral research associates, graduate student researchers, laboratory technicians and support staff, and undergraduate research students, are all collaborators in the process of producing new scientific knowledge. The faculty members are mentors to people at each of these levels, supervising the group as a whole and being available to each researcher to guide his or her efforts. The post-docs in a group will generally be the most independent, often leading a project or working on their own program. The graduate students will work more closely with the group leader, learning to develop and implement a coherent research project leading to a Ph.D. technicians or support staff will be charged with keeping the lab equipment running and performing many tasks which require a certain amount of training and responsibility, but which are still recognized as central to the support of research activities — computer programming, network system administration, trouble-shooting and repairs, operation and maintenance of specialized equipment, etc. At a university, relatively few undergraduates participate in research and may be assigned fairly menial tasks for much of their time. Undergraduates will often be assigned to work on a part of a larger project being led by a grad student or post-doc; in such cases, the grad student or post-doc is responsible for training the younger researcher. This is a necessary and expected part of the grad student's or the post-doc's professional responsibility.

In the context of a liberal arts college, this hierarchy is collapsed into many fewer levels (i.e., two). In an active laboratory there will generally be one professor leading the group, one or a few upper-level undergraduate researchers, and possibly one or a few relatively inexperienced undergraduate researchers. In this setting, undergraduate students are given a more central role in conducting research, providing these students with superior training and experience that can be critical for their future success. The upper-level undergraduates may help in the initial training of the new recruits, but the mentoring and specific training needed for the new undergraduates to contribute to the research program are the responsibility of the faculty member. In addition, that faculty member assumes the responsibilities of a technician and support staff, maintaining and repairing equipment, ordering supplies for both lab and field work, and tracking chemical use. This work can take many hours per week. Finally, the faculty member is the primary person who writes the grant proposals, prepares the papers for publication (sometimes co-authored by the student researcher), and stays current in the field, through reading literature and interacting with peers at conferences.

Given the challenges of running such a program, one might ask why scientists at Kenyon should take this approach to scholarship. The answer is that encouraging such work is advantageous both to our students and to our scientific communities. If we do not, Kenyon undergraduates will lose out on the early stages of the scientific apprenticeship and miss opportunities to engage in research that seeks to expand the boundaries of what is known. In addition, the organization of research in this apprenticeship model depends on the contribution of scientists to the training and mentorship of new researchers. For Kenyon to discourage such work (or fail to support it) would be particularly troubling because teacher/researchers, such as those most sought by Kenyon in the faculty recruiting process, are among the most able and accomplished mentors and teachers in our disciplines. The combination of excellent research mentoring and significant research involvement, which science students can receive at a college like Kenyon, leads to the disproportionately large representation of liberal arts college graduates among the scientific elite.

There are different models for successful engagement in scientific research at a liberal arts college. The goal of this document is to recognize that diversity and make explicit the need to provide support and encouragement for a range of different styles in approaching scientific scholarship. It is clear that some faculty members in the sciences are engaged in outstanding scholarly work without the involvement of undergraduates. However, publishable research with students is exceptionally valuable to Kenyon and should also be rewarded in the evaluation process. In fact, it is becoming almost an expectation for students to be competitive when applying for graduate programs and fellowships. Kenyon and its evaluators should at all costs avoid encouraging science faculty to forego establishing a research program involving undergraduates at Kenyon merely in order to assure higher rates of publication.

Establishing a Scientific Research Program

The science community at Kenyon acknowledges that in most cases it will take time for scientists who are beginning their careers at Kenyon to develop a program which will result in published research. (At Kenyon, published scholarship in the sciences includes journal articles, chapters in edited volumes or books, books, and electronic publications.) Especially in the first few years of a scientist's career at Kenyon, most of the scientist's time will be taken up with the development of lecture and laboratory classes in addition to the establishment of a sustainable research program. Furthermore, for some faculty circumstances may warrant extended start-up periods before the publication of results should be expected. For example, scientists in highly theoretical fields may shift their efforts significantly in order to involve students in their work and to integrate their results into their teaching.

Besides the College's provision of start-up and other faculty development funds, building a successful research program typically requires a great deal of time, ingenuity, and patience. The researcher may have to procure additional funds, buy and assemble equipment, deal with computing needs, and learn to use the equipment by applying established techniques and/or developing new techniques to suit his or her research questions. In addition, most science professors at Kenyon have very little to no technical support, so they must spend a great deal of time and effort to maintain and upgrade their equipment themselves.

Establishing a research program is so important for the faculty member and, where possible, for student involvement in research, that it must be considered a major criterion for successful completion of the reviews leading to and culminating in appointment without limit. Thus, the issue is not solely publication for the sake of having published research conducted during graduate school. The important issue is building a research program at Kenyon that results in student engagement leading to publishable research that establishes a foundation for continued research productivity and mentorship beyond the granting of tenure.

Components of Scholarship in the Natural Sciences Division for Environmental Science 

Publication

Although the rate of publication will be much more modest for science researchers at liberal arts colleges than it is for university researchers, Kenyon recognizes the many benefits of publication-quality research and thus expects its members to pursue peer-reviewed publication, including print and electronic journal articles, chapters in books, entire books (including textbooks), and contributions to science literature for wider circulation (books, magazines, web encyclopedias, etc.). Given the widely varying time and resource requirements for these different types of publications, as well as the variation in typical publication frequency for researchers within each of the science disciplines represented at Kenyon, there is no recommend minimum requirement for the number and type of publications necessary for successful appointment without limit. However, the Division would consider the absence of peer-reviewed publication to be problematic, both for tenure and for further promotion.

Grant Writing

Although publication has a special importance in faculty evaluations of scholarship, Kenyon emphasizes that there are other forms of scholarship that are valuable and even comparable to peer-reviewed publications. One such form, currently listed second in the legislation for scholarly evaluation, is receipt of grants. Grant writing is a very time-consuming process requiring considerable expertise and insight into one's field. The process is usually discipline-specific, and college-wide support for grant writing is generally not available. Furthermore, given that external funding is so competitive, individual research grant proposals (e.g., proposals to such agencies as the NSF) face more stringent review processes than those typically involved in journal publications. Consequently, funded research grant proposals are indications of successful research programs, and the formative experience gained from submitting even a non-funded grant proposal could be at least as beneficial as that gained from the review process of a journal publication. In light of these facts, the receipt of individual research grants is seen as significant scholarly work.

Participation in division-wide grant-writing efforts (e.g., HHMI or Fairchild proposals) is also a form of scholarship. Such efforts require time and expertise, and they often result in enhancements of equipment and other resources for scholarly research and teaching. Evaluations of scholarship should consider faculty contributions to division-wide grants, in addition to work on proposals to fund individual research programs.

Presentations, Invited Lectures, Conference Papers, Posters

Presentations, lectures, conference papers, and posters at local, national, and international meetings are valuable forms of scholarship. These activities indicate that a faculty member is engaged in an ongoing research program that is open to critique by peers in the scientific community. In the sciences, faculty often deliver papers at national meetings, describing ongoing but unfinished research. These might take the form of a poster or a talk and allow for formative feedback from other scientists. Kenyon recognizes that such presentations indicate research progress, as well as being an important means of staying current in one's field. Moreover, there are certain cases where an invitation to present at a conference or an institution might be especially important. In fact, there are some conferences where an invitation to attend is a significant accomplishment - a recognition by peers of one's contribution to the field. Such accomplishment should be carefully considered when weighing scholarly activity.

Editorships

Editorships of professional journals and newsletters are worthy scholarly activities, however, not to the exclusion of original work that furthers the knowledge base in one's field. Typically, editorial positions are held by those academicians who are already recognized as major contributors in their field, and the College should also recognize this achievement.

Reviews of Grants and Manuscripts

As with editorships, invitations to review grant proposals, manuscripts, and books indicate a level of accomplishment that the College will likely have already recognized. Nonetheless, the work involved in these reviews should be considered valuable scholarly activity.

Environmental Science Scholarship Guidelines 

In general, Kenyon recognizes that individual faculty have differing strengths and resource requirements, and that the dedication to one's field manifests itself in various ways at various times in an individual's career. Certain faculty members may have numerous presentations and fewer publications. A professor could be very up-to-date in the field as a result of ongoing activities at conferences and workshops. Or a professor might have numerous publications and very few presentations. Evaluation of scholarship should consider the full virtue of the person. 

Given this, the environmental sciences at Kenyon agrees on the following points about our own expectations for our scholarship:

  • We fully support the above statement on scholarship of the Natural Sciences Division, including the expectation that our faculty publish peer-reviewed work.

  • We acknowledge that it takes a substantial investment of time for scientists beginning their careers at Kenyon to develop a research program. In light of this, we emphasize the value of writing grant proposals to procure research funds, as we recognize that this activity lays the foundation for a long-term, productive research program, as well as its continuation. In addition, ENVS supports a substantial junior leave program as an aid to scholarly productivity of our younger colleagues. This large block of time will be valuable in furthering research in the department, and in the development of the research programs of our junior faculty.

  • Research programs that incorporate students should be especially valued. At the same time, we acknowledge that some research approaches are more accessible to undergraduate students than others.

  • Generally, publications resulting from research as a Kenyon faculty member will carry more weight than publications resulting from post-doctoral or other work.

  • We value work done in collaboration with investigators both within and outside Kenyon.

  • Finally, we recognize the value of scholarly activities that span both the teaching and research arenas (such as the construction of research-based web tutorials, and participation in the Kenyon Summer Scholars programs) and those activities that link scholarship to the wider community (such as the Brown Family Environmental Center and the Kenyon Farm). This acknowledges the artificial division between teaching and research.