Assessing academic contributions in landscape architecture: Fid-Bau Portal

Assessing academic contributions in landscape architecture

Milburn, Lee-Anne S. / Brown, Robert D. / Mulley, Susan J. / Hilts, Stewart G.

AbstractThere is an increasing demand for research in landscape architecture to inform design decision making. The role of the faculty in departments of landscape architecture has changed from one of educating professionals to one that includes contributing to research and to the development of the discipline. This paper develops a framework for assessing the contribution of faculty in landscape architecture. It proposes a reconsideration of Boyer’s [Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ, 1990; Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ, 1996] scholarship framework by clarifying the definition of scholarship as research, and identifies research, teaching and service as contributions to academe. Furthermore, it proposes that design, teaching and service can be either topics of research or products of research, but are not, by definition, research. This framework clarifies the issue of how design fits into the academic environment, and provides concrete guidelines for the assessment of both traditional research activities and non-traditional activities such as design. Boyer [Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ, 1990; Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ, 1996] identifies six main criteria that should be considered in the review of scholarship: clear goals; adequate preparation; appropriate methods; significant results; effective communication; and reflective critique. These criteria have been adapted in light of the argument developed by this paper for peer review, new or substantially improved insight, and universal accessibility as the overarching criteria for contributions to academe. The result is a set of detailed checklists for the assessment of published research and of other contributions to academe (such as teaching and design), which are communicated through other vehicles.