Abstract

The purpose of this research was to survey faculty in the apparel and textile design discipline in the United States regarding the change in the acceptance of creative scholarship for tenure and promotion decisions at institutions of higher education. In 2002, researchers surveyed experts in the area of textile and apparel design in order to develop a definition of creative scholarship (Adams & Meyer, 2011). This research was followed by a survey of faculty in the apparel and design discipline in the United States (Adams and Meyer). In 2012, researchers reviewed tenure and promotion documents to determine whether or not institutions of higher education in the United States had redefined scholarship to be more inclusive and give more weight to creative or public scholarship, as was suggested by Boyer in 1990, or whether these institutions have continued to fall behind and discourage scholarship in these areas (Adams and Meyer, 2014). Several of the institutions that were included in the original research had made changes in tenure and promotion documents to be more inclusive of creative scholarship. The researchers have questioned whether or not these changes were due to cultural changes at those institutions in regards to creative scholarship, or whether these changes were only paying “lip service” to creative scholarship.