11 - Climb Down from the Tower

Summary

The academics studied are more than ivory-ensconced scholars, they are multiskilled and multi-committed to serving their communities, universities, and professions. One means is by integrating research, teaching, and service activities. Research might spark a new book, class, and workshop offering. Scholars especially take their work to the people, writing articles for practitioners and providing presentations and instructional materials for schools. Some serve the field by being journal reviewers or editors. Editorial positions not only serve the field, they help you grow as a scholar, introducing you to new theories, findings, and statistical approaches and exposing you to instructively good and poor writing samples. Surprisingly, several productive scholars served administrative roles at some career point. Most did because they wanted to make their organizations and people better and more productive. All found ways to remain personally productive through collaborations and assuming more back-seat research-directing roles. Still, productive scholars prioritize research over all else and accept that they might be less good at other things. They say one should not aim to be prolific scholars but the best one can be, whether that produces five hundred or fifty publications. Each publication should represent one’s best thinking and be impactful.