Walking the Talk

Toward a Values-Aligned Academy

by The HuMetricsHSS Team

Walking the Talk: Toward a Values-Aligned Academy is the culmination of 18 months of research interviews across the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA). Conducted by the HuMetricsHSS Initiative as an extension of their previous work on values-enacted scholarly practice, the interviews focused on current systems of evaluation within BTAA institutions, the potential problems and inequalities of those processes, the kinds of scholarly work that could be better recognized and rewarded, and the contexts and pressures evaluators are under, including, as the process progressed, the onset and ongoing conditions of COVID-19. The interviews focused primarily on the reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process. Interviewees outlined a number of issues to be addressed, including toxicity in evaluation, scholars’ increased alienation from the work they are passionate about, and a high-level virtue-signaling of values by institutions without the infrastructure or resources to support the enactment of those values. Based on these conversations, this white paper offers a set of recommendations for making wide-scale change to address systematic injustice, erasure, and devaluation of academic labor in order to strengthen the positive public impact of scholarship.

References and Appendices

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    Walking the Talk

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    APPENDIX H: Appointment, Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion Recommendations

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    APPENDIX G: Faculty Annual Review Forms

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    APPENDIX F: Charting Pathways of Intellectual Leadership

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    APPENDIX E: Big Ten Academic Alliance Values

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    APPENDIX D: Interview Demographics

Metadata

  • container title
    Walking the Talk
  • publisher
    HuMetricsHSS
  • restrictions
    This license allows distribution, remixing, and building upon the work as long as the HuMetricsHSS team is credited for the original creation.
  • rights
    Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
  • rights holder
    HuMetricsHSS
  • version
    1
  • doi