The Department of Mathematics and Statistics expects its faculty to be active and engaged scholars, connected to the mathematics profession. Continued intellectual and professional growth is vital to the strength and renewal of our curriculum, and scholarly engagement is instrumental in establishing faculty as innovative and productive role models for Kenyon students.
While scholarly projects may change over time, and rates of publication may vary, faculty should be continually evolving their research programs, leading to work that is public and peer-reviewed. Additionally, a faculty member’s scholarly engagement should include an active and visible participation in a community of scholars outside of Kenyon.
Publication
We expect our faculty to pursue peer-reviewed publication. This may include print and electronic journal articles, chapters in books, entire books (including textbooks), invited and contributed papers that appear in conference proceedings, and contributions to
Publication in mathematics can be a very lengthy process because partial results are typically not publishable. Furthermore, the rate of publication varies from one academic discipline to another, from one subdiscipline of mathematics to another, and even from one scholar to another. Hence we do not want to reduce the definition of successful scholarship to a single number of publications, nor do we want to define a single pathway
We expect that the department will comment on the candidate’s scholarly track record and trajectory as well as the appropriateness of the candidate's rate of publication in letters of evaluation.
Research with Students
Creative research with students is a valuable scholarly activity. By engaging in cooperative, innovative research with our students, we expand our professional horizons and involve our students in the wonderful process of mathematical discovery. The most valuable research project is one in which the collaborators cooperatively address mathematical questions whose answers are unknown and otherwise unavailable to them. We encourage faculty to participate in research activities in collaboration with students that lead to public presentations and peer-reviewed publications. The Kenyon Summer Science Program provides an excellent opportunity for cooperative research with students.
Consulting
Additionally, we deem that professional consulting work done cooperatively with or on behalf of representatives from academia, industry, or government is a valuable scholarly activity, insofar as it is "active participation in one's field" and an "exchange of information, ideas, and techniques with [one's] peers." As is the case with other forms of scholarship, evaluation of consulting work will rely on written work (e.g., technical reports and published papers) and presentations given by the faculty member.
Other Activities
Presenting at professional conferences, editing journals or books, writing grant proposals, writing professional reviews and refereeing are valuable scholarly activities.
Due to the cumulative nature of the discipline, even the basic definitions within some subfields of mathematics are completely inaccessible to undergraduates. Since our hope is to develop an on-going conversation between our scholarship and our work with students, we feel that the "pursuit of secondary fields of scholarly interest" is particularly noteworthy when it will result in students being more actively engaged in our research or when it will result in scholarly interests that more directly impact our teaching, even if this pursuit temporarily slows the rate of peer-reviewed publication.
Service to the discipline is important as a support to other scholarly activities. This service may take many forms, including but not limited to: chairing or organizing special sessions at professional meetings, serving on the committees of professional organizations or other professional committees, and grading advanced placement exams.
10/12/2015
rev 1/2018 jp