Challenges and Solutions for Building Effective Faculty Research in Research-Emerging and Research-Intensive Universities

Faculty development for research in schools of social work has become a priority in the last decade. Historically, social work practice, not research, had been the focus with tenure and promotion heavily based on pedagogical concerns. Today, as social work doctoral programs proliferate, and the research base of the field rapidly expands, there is a great deal of strategic interest in faculty development for research. Academic social work is confronting a major shift in expectations for faculty, fierce competition for grants, an emphasis on publishing in high impact journals, an expansion in statistical methodologies and an increasing commitment to collaborative research teams, i.e., team science. There has also been an explosion of marketing strategies used by Schools of Social Work to highlight their research portfolio, their faculty conducting innovative research, and to market their schools to attract strong PhD students and faculty. In response to this changing environment, Schools of Social Work have developed many successful strategies and learned lessons that can shape research infrastructures for the future. This roundtable will be led by experienced researchers in the field who also serve in research leadership roles in their respective schools and departments of social work. It will begin by discussing how capacity building varies by program context – i.e., by such variables as organizational leadership roles, available resources, size, faculty composition, and research intensiveness. Next, presenters will review five main areas each starting with panelists' knowledge and lessons followed by questions to elicit other viewpoints and perspectives from the participants. 1) Organizational culture and context: What conditions are most favorable for facilitating and supporting a research emerging or research-intensive environment? 2) Faculty development: What are the best practices for upgrading research competencies and sustaining research motivation? 3) Mentorship and incentives: What do we know about these two widely used approaches for enhancing research productivity? 4) Administrative infrastructure: What are the robust and time-invariant features of a dynamic administrative research environment? 5) Outcomes, benchmarks, and impacts – What are the indicators of success beyond publications and grants and what are strategies for highlighting faculty and the findings produced by their research? This panel of five Associate Deans for Research of schools of varying levels of research intensiveness (Carnegie Classifications spanning R1 to R2) will reflect on their unique and practical challenges. This discussion will be situated within the broader context of the Grand Challenges, which has produced a debate about how social work programs can develop faculty researchers who are prepared to address complex social issues. This roundtable seeks to contribute to that debate by providing a shared understanding of effective capacity, culture, and outcomes for social work faculty research. We will discuss strategies for assessing research culture and benchmarks for evaluating cultural shifts and indicators of success. Consistent with this year's thematic focus on inequality, the discussion will be informed by a social justice framework where impact is measured not just by numbers but also by topical foci, inclusiveness of research teams, and the social justice implications of research results.