Welcome and Opening Plenary Session

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 8:30 - 9:40 AM

The Penn Stater, Presidents Hall

• Dr. Timothy Eatman Associate Professor of Higher Education, Educational Sociologist, Syracuse University

Publicly Engaged Scholarship in the University of the 21st Century: Beware of Shrinking Imagination, There is an emerging citizenry of academe, a next generation of engaged scholars that aspires for transformative work grounded in their role within the academy. In the context of swift and significant changes in higher education, acknowledging their identity, aspirations, and work is central to the university's health and thriving in the future. Publicly Engaged Scholarship (PES) represents an expansive way of thinking about and conducting academically grounded work that creates spaces for academy-based scholars to leverage their expertise and resources toward solving pressing public problems in deep collaboration with partners in other sectors of the community. PES urges a “continuum mindset" which empowers engaged scholars to locate themselves with full standing squarely within the domain of scholarly inquiry. In part this means that the academy must expand dominant notions of knowledge creation to acknowledge emerging forms and artifacts of scholarship at the same level as time-honored, traditional forms.