Learning Objective #1: Select scholarship strategies applicable to the learner’s own employment setting from the institutional and community-based study results

Learning Objective #2: Formulate a comparable plan for a study of nursing faculty scholarship in a different nursing program employment setting as applicable

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The American Association of Colleges of Nursing proposed a definition of scholarship in the discipline of nursing in 1999 based on Boyer's view of the scope of academic work. Employment settings and circumstances, however, may influence how nursing faculty achieve scholarship outcomes that are important to promotion and tenure success. In Part I of a three-part study, 15 nursing programs located in Master's Comprehensive I-type institutions with unionized faculty identified strategies faculty used to achieve scholarship outcomes within the categories of discovery, teaching, application, and integration. They also designated feasibility and institutional value responses for 30 literature-based strategies that might be considered in promotion/tenure decisions. The program respondents reported on 184 faculty, typically full-time, in a tenure-track, with a PhD, a 1:10 faculty:student clinical ratio, and a 12-credit hour workload. The primary outcome of scholarship was publication or presentation (92%). Research was the common strategy funded by a variety of sources, moreso when involving group activity (81%). The scholarship strategies were then compiled into a 64-strategies survey given to one 21-member faculty group (90% return) regarding interest for a personal faculty scholarship plan, from which a 27-strategies survey was sent to 100 community agencies (42% return) regarding their interest in partnership with this faculty group individually or collaboratively to achieve the scholarship outcomes. Of 64 strategies, the three highest ranked of the one faculty group were related to research collaboration in evidence-based and interdisciplinary areas. Of 27 strategies, the two highest ranked from the community agencies were teaching groups some aspect of the faculty specialty area (79%) and engaging students in a service learning project at the agency (69%). The model, its surveys, and detailed results may facilitate direct use of the strategies by others and application of the three-part model to other types of nursing program settings.