2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research paper presents the results from a survey meant to help define and understand what service at the university level is and how it is valued among engineering faculty across multiple institutions. Service at the university level is often poorly defined, ambiguous, undervalued, and disproportionally loaded based on rank, gender, and race. These issues have been shown to impede research productivity, limit career advancement, diminish job satisfaction, and lead to a lack of balance between professional and personal responsibilities.
Aiming to learn more about how service is defined across multiple institutions, this research seeks to identify transparent criteria that meet institutional goals. Additionally, this study seeks to identify suggestions for reward systems that offset service commitments such as extending the tenure clock, salary enhancements, and awards for meaningful service.
The second iteration of a Qualtrics survey that was administered in multiple email solicitations and flyers through ASEE in the summer of 2024. 68 engineering faculty members representing multiple teaching focused, researched focused, or split teaching and research focused institutions completed the survey. Results from the survey were analyzed using qualitative methods to identify similarities and differences among the responses that describe how they define service, how service is and should be rewarded at their institution, and the metrics used to quantify an acceptable amount of service with respect to other responsibilities such as teaching and research.
Results show that service is defined as voluntary, unpaid work that occurs outside of teaching and research which supports the functioning and advancement of the departments, universities, professions, and communities. What constitutes this work is not clearly defined and includes participating on committees, advising and mentoring students, organizing outreach programs, and leadership positions within the institutions. One participant defined service as, “Doing things that aren’t teaching or research or leadership related. But also, could be in those realms, so it’s messy”. This quote highlights one of the most common themes with service being defined as anything outside of teaching and research. What activities count for service varies with some participants believing any community service is service and some stating it must directly contribute to the welfare of the institution. Additionally, 59% of participants receive no compensation (time, money, resources) for their service with 79% stating they believe service should be compensated. Results from this study aim to summarize and more clearly define what service is and identify metrics used to quantify and reward service that match the expectation or desires of engineering faculty.
In summary, university service is vaguely defined and inadequately compensated. These results provide insight on the ambiguity of service which is often a considerable commitment and heavily valued criteria for most tenure track positions. If service is meant to support academic institutions and is used to define personal career success, understanding and defining what service is and providing proper value for this service can help support research output, career growth, job satisfaction, and the balance between work and personal life. The preferred presentation style for this publication is a poster session.