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Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service & Academic Outreach

New England Resource Center for Higher Education

The annual Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach recognizes a faculty member who connects his or her professional expertise and scholarship to community outreach. Faculty professional service and academic outreach represent an integrated view of scholarly activity in which teaching, research, and service overlap and are mutually reinforcing.

Ernest Lynton conceived of professional service and academic outreach as a reconsideration of the faculty’s service role in the same way that Ernest Boyer conceived of a reconsideration of faculty scholarship: it would find a broader application in addressing critical social issues. Lynton called for a reclaiming of a tradition of “application of the individual’s professional expertise to problems and tasks outside the campus.” As such, “professional service can constitute scholarship of the highest order, equivalent in intellectual challenge, creativity, and importance to scholarly research and scholarly teaching.” Further, this scholarly application of knowledge and expertise signaled the “inevitable overlap of professional service with applied research and also with organized instruction.”

This award recognizes professional service and academic outreach that integrates socially responsive teaching, research, and community service. Unlike traditional service-learning awards that focus on the link between teaching and service, the Lynton Award emphasizes applied scholarly activity more broadly. Faculty professional service (also known as the scholarship of engagement, outreach scholarship, scholarship for the common good, and community based scholarship) is characterized by scholarly work that is tied to a faculty member's expertise, is of benefit to the external community, reflects the mission of the institution, and is visible and shared.

Past recipients include Marybeth Lima (Louisiana State University), Richard Eberst (California State University, San Bernardino), Joseph A. Gardella, Jr. (SUNY Buffalo), Patricia A. Keener (Indiana University School of Medicine), etc.

To find out more about the Lynton Award, please visit http://www.nerche.org