Developing and sustaining a culture of scholarship:

The culture of scholarship is best described as an environment of creativity and productivity that extends from active investigations designed to create, advance, or transform new knowledge. This new knowledge becomes scholarship when it is assessed by peer-review and made public. The culture requires active support by the administration as reflected in a dynamic infrastructure, a well-defined method of evaluation, and a system of rewards that adheres to the established evaluation criteria. In addition, the culture is facilitated by a contingent of productive senior faculty members who sustain the environment and are available to mentor junior investigators as they develop independent careers. This manuscript begins with a brief overview of the development of scholarship in American academia followed by examples of the common expressions of scholarship in pharmacy education and how they are encompassed by the definition. Subsequent sections discuss the support and development of research, an analysis of the rewards to faculty for scholarly activities, and the relationship between scholarship and professional pharmacy education. The final section includes recommendations that colleges, as well as AACP and ACPE, can pursue to further develop and sustain a culture of scholarship in pharmacy education.