Do Regional Associations Meet the Career Needs of Teacher-Scholars?

Faculty members in tenure-track positions must demonstrate proficiency in teaching and scholarship, although different types of higher education institutions carry different sets of expectations and requirements in these areas. Teacher-scholars, who integrate teaching and research through diverse means, largely work at teaching focused institutions. Even in such teaching-focused institutions, however, there has been a growing demand for faculty to have high levels of scholarly productivity, typically in the form of peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations..At the same time, teacher-scholars, due to limited resources, do not have great access to national conferences, leading them to rely more heavily on regional conferences to display their scholarly work. This study examines the utility of regional associations in meeting the career needs of teacher-scholars. Examining conference programs from the Pacific Sociological Association for five recent years, and comparing them to the national conference (the American Sociological Association) we show that teacher-scholars rely heavily on regional conferences to highlight their successes, often extending beyond scholarship. Regional conferences also offer a more flexible program than the national conference for defining the work of teacher-scholars. While teacher-scholars and Ph.D. granting faculty alike engage at both the national and regional conferences, both conferences tend to perpetuate a hierarchy of academia that emphasizes more traditional standards of scholarly success.