Documenting Professional Service: A Progress Report

Abstract

A growing number of institutions are turning the rhetoric of their mission statements into reality by recognizing professional service and outreach as important institutional priorities, and including such activities in their faculty reward system. This creates an urgent need for adequate documentation that makes the activities visible and susceptible to peer review. This article is a progress report on a pilot project involving faculty from four institutions in the development of professional service portfolios. It describes a number of early insights emerging from the project, and suggests a framework for portfolio content.