“The Elon Teacher-Scholar-Mentor Model”

Preamble: The purpose of the Elon University Teacher-Scholar-Mentor Statement is to declare our shared values and understanding for the faculty role and career at the institution. Faculty may use this statement to support and frame the development of materials that reflect on their activities, efforts, training, and role as educators for Elon University.

Teacher-Scholar-Mentor Statement

Elon fosters a community of faculty scholars who are deeply committed to the potential of their disciplines to enhance our understanding of the human condition and the world.

As teachers, scholars, and mentors, we the faculty are dedicated to modeling the intellectual values we seek to impart to our students, including a learned, reflective, and critical approach to life. In these roles, we take joy in the process of inquiry and sharing our knowledge with others. As active members of the academy, faculty participate in professional activities that keep us current and engaged, while enlarging the intellectual and practical opportunities available to students and the broader Elon community. We are teacher- scholar-mentors who dedicate our talents, experiences, and leadership skills to activities that sustain, develop, and improve the entire institution.

Elon University is dedicated to teaching both undergraduate and graduate students in and out of the classroom. As faculty, we strive to instill in our students a commitment to intellectual endeavors, a life-long devotion to learning, and the ideals of citizenship. We share with our students a sense of the history, literature, and vitality of scholarly inquiry that emerges from disciplinary depth and expands to interdisciplinary inquiry. All faculty recognize and share their responsibility to concurrently convey and cultivate a foundation of established knowledge. Our ultimate goal is to foster informed critical thinking, creative expression, and a desire to serve the common good through guided collaboration.

The challenge to be engaged learners exists beyond the borders of the institution and often benefits from faculty support. While classrooms, laboratories, and studios are the traditional focal points of an intellectual community, scholarly inquiry extends beyond these environments. As teacher-scholar-mentors, we the faculty are committed to improving the content and pedagogy of our teaching. By developing educational and academic advising environments in which all persons are respected and informed engagement is valued, we challenge students to develop the skills necessary to understand complex issues and topics. By critically reflecting on mentoring strategies and by creating opportunities for mentored experiences, we strive to amplify the quality and depth of student learning. As an avenue for ongoing excellence in high-quality mentoring, we value professional development, intentional approaches, and time spent crafting mentoring frameworks applied to our professional work.

Elon recognizes, values, nurtures, and provides support for innovative pedagogical approaches that strengthen the linkages between knowledge and experience through programs such as international study, community-based learning, cooperative learning, leadership training, research that engages our students, internships, and civic engagement. Because of this broader view of faculty engagement with and mentorship of students, our university encourages productive interactions that expand the boundaries that separate traditional teaching, scholarship, and professional activity. For example, we may experiment with community-based learning projects that combine classroom learning with direct applications in the local community, we may use our professional consulting expertise to develop case studies for the classroom or we may employ web-based technologies to guide and enhance student internship experiences with employers located across the country. One of the strongest connections between disciplinary expertise and student experience occurs when we mentor students in professional development and/or in the process of scholarly inquiry, encourage and support their presentations at student research forums and professional disciplinary meetings. Scholar-mentor activities combine traditional teaching, experiential education, and professional expertise to mold graduates ready to take their place as working members of their profession or to continue their academic journey in graduate or professional school.

Our ability to model intellectual engagement is based on our intentional and continual development as professionals. While we share common goals, every Elon faculty member possesses unique gifts, skills, training, perspectives, and approaches that enrich the academic community. The university recognizes and values the differences among individual faculty members and encourages each to grow and develop as a unique teacher-scholar-mentors. Thus, the Elon faculty reflects the comprehensive nature of the institution and the variety of our disciplines in that we are scholars, mentors, philosophers, theoreticians, researchers, artists, writers, educators, and professional practitioners. At Elon, professional activity is broadly defined as any activity involving the serious practice of disciplinary expertise. Scholarship is essential to an intellectually vibrant and enriching community, and it represents a fundamental form of professional activity. Other forms of professional activity include service to the profession, developing new research skills, taking special courses, attending workshops related to one’s discipline, attending workshops on teaching pedagogy, continuously pursuing opportunities to develop interpersonal skills, which are paramount to our ability to uphold inclusive excellence, and attending conferences, performances, or exhibits. As we mature professionally, we may serve as consultants, accept leadership roles in disciplinary organizations, and mentor both our early career and peer colleagues.

Scholarship is a creative process of inquiry and exploration that adds to the knowledge and appreciation of disciplinary or interdisciplinary understanding. It is a serious exercise of what is being taught in the education of students: clear goal setting, adequate preparation, intense inquiry, and critical reflection. Elon University encourages and recognizes a broad array of scholarly endeavors, just as it has adopted a broad view of faculty engagement with students. Scholarship adds significantly to our understanding by 1) discovering or uncovering new knowledge or insights, 2) generating new theories and techniques that guide discovery, 3) integrating knowledge within or across disciplines, 4) applying knowledge responsibly to solve problems, and 5) developing pedagogical innovations that facilitate the dissemination of knowledge.

Distinct differences exist in the types of scholarly activities that are valued both within and between disciplines because of the unique historical development of each discipline. However, across all disciplines, recognized scholarly work shares some common features:

•  It results in a product, presentation, exhibition, or performance that expands knowledge, skills, or understanding that can be shared with others.

•  It extends beyond the limits of the institution.

•  It develops and/or expands the expertise of the faculty member and their contributions within the institution and in the greater community including scholars, artists, researchers, and professional practitioners.

•  The work is reviewed by those outside the institution who have appropriate expertise.

The tangible results of scholarship include academic publications, presentations at professional meetings, grant proposals, artistic performances, musical scores, screenplays, art exhibits, computer software, patented inventions, professional manuals, video productions, and other work determined by each faculty member’s academic department. Scholarship is also reflected in pedagogical innovations (such as textbook ancillaries, laboratory manuals, experiential activities, and the study of how we both teach and mentor our students) that are shared outside of Elon. Works of synthesis that translate knowledge for those lacking expertise or summarize current understanding for those with expertise further represent important scholarly work valued by the institution. Elon University is a relationship rich intellectual community committed to providing a dynamic and challenging curriculum that emphasizes learning across disciplines and encourages students to put knowledge into practice. As faculty, we model a life of learning and valuing meaningful relationships through our engagement with and intentional mentoring of students as they navigate their own scholarly accomplishments, career, and civic development. When we do this work, we invest in both student success and our colleagues’ success across many domains of the higher education experience. As a part of a vibrant academic community, we embrace the mission of the university by sharing with our students and colleagues the joy of mental, physical, and spiritual transformation. Mentored guidance provides crucial support to become informed and caring citizens of the global community.

Elon faculty embraces the idea that teaching, scholarship, and mentoring are often inseparable because scholarship is a foundation of teaching, and our mentorship can weave together the boundaries of our classrooms and scholarly endeavors. We affirm that our use of faculty scholarship as an expression of high impact teaching, can facilitate both deep student engagement, productive professional activities and create a pathway for mentoring in a meaningful relationship. Our scholarly, service, mentoring, and professional activities connect us to vital intellectual communities beyond the walls of Elon, ensure our continuing development as enlightened seekers, contribute to the body of knowledge and wisdom, and renew our enthusiasm to engage students. The Elon community is committed to creating an environment that allows the faculty to excel as teachers, scholars, and mentors.