University of Oregon’s mission statement articulates the importance of our role in serving the public. The Values-Aligned Scholarship and Teaching initiative will help ensure that we have both the encouragement and evaluation structures in place to reward public-facing and public-serving research and teaching.
We invite applications for Values‑Aligned Scholarship and Teaching (VAST) Fellows, a two‑year faculty fellowship program designed to support department‑level leadership in aligning scholarly and teaching practices with the university’s public mission and shared academic values.
The VAST Fellows program centers on modernizing how universities recognize, support, and reward impactful, community engaged, and values‑aligned academic work. The program focuses on helping departments make this work visible, rigorous, and sustainable within existing academic structures.
Selected faculty members will serve as a VAST Fellow for a two‑year term. Fellows will work in close coordination with their department head, campus partners, and Office of the Provost personnel to advance locally appropriate, discipline‑specific approaches to values‑aligned scholarship and teaching.
The Fellows
Six faculty members (representing six different academic departments) will be selected to serve as Provost’s Fellows to explore the topic of values-aligned scholarship in their home departments and, if department faculty are willing, facilitate an expansion of faculty review and promotion criteria to include values-aligned research/creative activity and teaching.
Values-aligned scholarship and teaching include:
- Community-engaged scholarship
- Public benefit, public-serving research
- Scholarship that influences public policy
- Scholarship or creative activities that fuel enterprise creation, innovation and economic impact
- Digital scholarship to disseminate research to a general audience
- Teaching in collaboration with, and providing benefits for, external organizations
The VAST Fellows program is intended to:
- Support faculty leadership in advancing scholarship and teaching that demonstrably serve the public good
- Help departments articulate and document values‑aligned work in ways that are clear, rigorous, and reviewable
- Build departmental capacity for mentoring, reflection, and peer learning around public impact, innovation, openness, and scholarly responsibility
- Contribute to institution‑wide learning about how academic values can be operationalized in everyday faculty work
- Communicate externally about the value and breadth of values-aligned scholarship and teaching at UO
Compensation for serving as Provost’s Fellows for Values-Aligned Scholarship will be $5,000 for a two-year term ($2,500 per academic year).
Timeline and Responsibilities
The application deadline is June 15, 2026 (including endorsement by the department head). Fellows will be selected and notified by July 15, 2026.
VAST Fellows are expected to engage in a combination of departmental, mentoring, campus‑level activities and media communication over the two‑year fellowship period.
Core expectations include:
1/ Departmental Leadership
- Work with the department head and colleagues to examine how values‑aligned scholarship and teaching show up in departmental norms, mentoring practices, and review processes.
- Help the department identify concrete, discipline‑appropriate examples of values‑aligned work and how that work can be clearly described and evaluated in unit policies. Proposed revisions to unit policies should be proposed and put to department faculty vote, in line with standard policy revision processes, with support from the Office of the Provost.
- Fellows will research peer universities’ policies, standards, and promotion/tenure bylaws governing and encouraging publicly engaged research (and teaching, if desired). Sources can include, for example, guidance provided by professional associations in each field, the Charting Pathways of Intellectual Leadership toolkit, and peer universities’ tenure and promotion policies.
2/ Mentoring and Community Participation
- Participate in a campus‑wide cohort of fellows and related workshops or convenings.
- Share experiences, challenges, and effective practices with other VAST Fellows across disciplines, building a community of practice.
3/ Documentation and Knowledge‑sharing
- Over the course of the 2026-27 academic year, each Fellow will gather examples of values-aligned scholarship and teaching to present in a short, informative working paper (up to five pages) to inform faculty colleagues how values-aligned scholarship policies can be expressed in their respective fields. The working paper should be completed by May 1, 2027.
- Contribute brief reflections or materials that capture lessons learned, with the goal of supporting future departments and faculty.
- When appropriate, engage in public outreach and media-related communications about UO’s values-aligned initiatives.
Specific activities and emphases may vary by discipline and department, but all fellows should expect to be active participants for the full two‑year period.
The Fellows will convene with an onboarding workshop conducted by Office of the Provost in Fall 2026 and meet for periodic check-ins with Provost Office staff during academic year 2026-27. The check-in meetings will be no fewer than one per quarter and no more than once/month, for about one hour each. One of the meetings during the academic year will be devoted to mentoring faculty within the context of values-aligned scholarship and teaching.
During the following academic year 2027-28, Fellows will meet for periodic check-ins and work with the department head to secure a positive vote of department faculty on appropriate review and promotion policy revisions. While recognizing that a positive vote is not guaranteed, the expectation is that fellows will be working collaboratively with department faculty to devise policy reforms that attract support. The Office of the Provost will provide guidance for the policy revision process as needed.
The final product of the six Fellows, due May 1, 2028 for public dissemination, will be a collaborative, informative article describing our process and outcomes in fostering values-aligned scholarship and teaching.
Who may apply:
Full time, tenure-track or career faculty (research or teaching). You must not be on sabbatical during the fellowship. We seek to appoint fellows from departments where the department head is interested in values-aligned scholarship and teaching.
How to apply:
Three elements are required to apply:
- Statement of Interest. In 400 words or less, describe why you are interested in fostering values-aligned scholarship (and teaching, if relevant to your position and department) in your department. Describe any experience, skills, or capital you have that would enable you to successfully attract support from departmental colleagues for policy reforms.
- Current CV.
- Department head endorsement. Your department head may endorse more than one faculty member from the department. Ask your department head or supervisor to endorse your fellowship application with the following statement:
"As department head for [insert department name], I am willing to support [applicant] to engage with their departmental colleagues around values-aligned scholarship. I will provide assistance in fostering appropriate unit tenure and promotion policy revisions as a result of this fellowship work. I understand that fellows are stipended for their time and effort through this fellowship by the Office of the Provost."
Apply to:
The department head/supervisor nominations should be emailed directly from their uoregon.edu email account to Troy Elias (telias@uoregon.edu) by June 15, 2026, with the subject line: VAST Fellows Department Head Endorsement.
For self-nominations, send your statement of interest and CV to Troy Elias (telias@uoregon.edu) by June 15, 2026. Statements of interest can be submitted in the body of the email, or as a .docx or PDF attachment. CVs should be in .docx or PDF format.