Recognizing Research Impact: The Dean's Role

• Traditional evaluation systems often fail to capture influential scholarship that reshapes academic fields and generates discussion beyond standard publication metrics.
• Redefining how impact is measured challenges deans to look beyond citations and toward influence that drives societal progress.
• Making impact recognition explicit ensures that meaningful influence is acknowledged, rewarded, and embedded in institutional culture.

Transcript

Sharon Alvarez: [00:13] It's important for faculty to have the opportunity and space to think about this. We haven't traditionally incorporated real-world impact into our work, as sad as that sounds, it's true.

[00:32] But if we take a few minutes to really concentrate and ask ourselves, we wrote this because we saw a gap, we saw a need for this particular paper, this particular body of work. How is this impacting practice?

[00:50] That's something that's really important for faculty to be able to do, but don't often do, and aren't often given the time and luxury.

We haven't traditionally incorporated real-world impact into our work.

[01:00] One lever that the deans have is through faculty reporting and assessment. Deans can ask that question. In fact, we just revamped ours at my school.

[01:13] The first question we ask is, what is the impact of your work on scholars, on practice, on the community?

[01:22] The faculty, they're the heart, they're the front lines of this particular work. What the deans can do is, in fact, influence.

[01:34] They can suggest, they can conduct strategic hiring, that is in areas that have an impact, that are at the front lines. It's a slow process, but it's a process that has to happen, and that change will happen.

One lever that the deans have is through faculty reporting and assessment.

[01:53] I had a paper that was particularly influential. Two years after it was published at the Academy of Management, in my domain, there were 13 pre-conference workshops being held on the topic that my paper had influenced.

[02:14] That has never appeared in a faculty review, ever. That has never appeared in anything that counts for promotions, for tenure, for salary.

[02:28] It's never appeared anywhere. And yet, the reason that I was hired is because I've had that kind of influence.

[02:36] So, somewhere it's appearing in somebody's calculus, but not in anything that's written or acknowledged explicitly. We need to make that much more explicit.