Active Scholar

The following definition of "active scholar" establishes a minimum standard at the College level for all full-time faculty on continuing contracts. This definition will be used solely for the purpose of assigning teaching loads. Assignment of an active scholar teaching load is a decision process which is entirely independent of the granting of promotion and tenure, the annual performance appraisal, or the awarding of merit-based raises. Those faculty who qualify as active scholars at the time of the annual performance review will be granted a 9-hour load for the next two semesters. Those faculty who do not meet the definition will be assigned a 12-hour teaching load. New tenure-track hires will be classified as active scholars. A positive recommendation for reappointment through the RPT process for untenured faculty will mean that active scholar status has been retained.

An "active scholar":

A. Is a major contributing author¹ on: a refereed national or international proceedings; or
refereed² academic or professional journal article, textbook or professional book in the
previous 12 months.
    or
B. Is, in the past three years, a major contributing author¹ of three or more of the
following refereed², published and publicly available professional works, including at
least one * work:

1. academic, professional or pedagogical journal articles*
2. research monographs*
3. scholarly (professional) books*
4. chapters in scholarly (professional) books*
5. textbooks*
6. national or international proceedings from scholarly meetings*
7. publications in trade journals or in-house journals*
8. book reviews*
9. written cases with instructional materials*
10. papers presented at academic or professional meetings
11. instructional software
12. other publicly available materials describing the design and implementation of new curricula or courses
13. regional proceedings from scholarly meetings
14. other (with documentation)

Date of acceptance and date of publication/presentation may span a considerable time frame.
Each contribution may only be counted once, in the year of publication or in the year of
acceptance.

1 Major contributing author is defined as follows:

(1) for journal articles, textbooks or professional books with one, two, or three authors, all authors
may qualify as major contributing authors;

          or

(2) for all other multiple-authored works, the authors are assumed to have provided equal
contributions unless they all indicate a different distribution. Works with three or more authors,
therefore, have no major contributing author unless the authors specify otherwise. However,
contributions from two or more works can be combined to qualify as a major contributing author.
For example, an author who is one of three authors on two works be equivalent to a major
contributing author (33% + 33% = 66%).

Note that in some situations the order of authors' names does not indicate degree of participation.