Dear Dr. Usitalo, Interim Dean Kiesow, and members of the Northern State University Promotion and Tenure Committee,
I am truly honored to apply for promotion to associate professor. I cannot imagine a more rewarding way to expand my contributions to academia, my discipline, and the legacy of Northern State University (NSU). I am especially excited about continuing to contribute to the development of the Department History and Social Science. This webpage serves as my tenure dossier and in the collection of artifacts on my webpage you will find all of the required materials in support of my request for promotion and tenure. In this letter, I will introduce the contents of my dossier and briefly outline my contributions and accomplishments in the areas of teaching, research, and service. Additional information supporting my promotion and tenure can be found within my narrative statements on this page.
I joined NSU in Fall 2015 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and am currently in my sixth year here as a member of the History and Social Sciences department in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). I have spent the last five years working to strengthen the Sociology program through engagement in teaching, research, and service. I believe the work I have done so far, as shown through the evidence provided in this portfolio, demonstrates excellence in teaching during my time in rank as well as satisfactory performance in research and service. My teaching responsibilities have been within the Sociology department and within those five years I have been the person primarily responsible for teaching the online general education course of Introduction to Sociology (SOC 100) under the South Dakota Board of Education (SDBOR) goal number three (Social Science). I have also taught face-to-face sections of SOC 100 every semester, many of the core courses within the Sociology major, and a variety of electives both within and outside my areas of expertise. As part of my teaching responsibilities I have taught eight new course preparations, completed courses with honors contracts, conducted independent studies with students, and served on honors thesis and graduate committees. All of my courses were designed to be academically rigorous, build student power and autonomy, and were devoted to including the diverse stories and voices that are present in today’s society. A review of my student and peer evaluations will demonstrate a consistently high rating of effectiveness as well as a commitment to improvement and professional growth.
My scholarly activity revolves around understanding stories and how they filter through our culture in different ways, particularly through three different lenses: (a) better understanding how mass mediated narratives shape our conceptions of what is possible within day-to-day life, (b) understanding the ways in which the intersections of identity, especially race, class, gender, and sexuality, are presented and shaped within mass media narratives, and (c) how do audiences, particularly fan audiences whom presumably enjoy and endorse what they are consuming, understand, contextualize, and reformulate mass media narratives through fanworks and fan communities. The publications and presentations I highlight in my dossier demonstrate my ability to develop and implement a viable and relevant research agenda. In my time in rank at NSU, I have published three refereed journal articles, 1 invited book review, 1 encyclopedia entry, and 1 letter to the editor completed. I have also presented my research at regional, national, and international conferences with a total of 17 presentations, 4 of which were invited. The research that I am currently working is threefold: the first project looks at the representations of disability in video games and the cultural receptions of those portrayals, the second project is investigating narratives around consent in fanfiction, and the third project is a collaboration with Dr. Stephen Congly at the Calgary Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology to complete a content analysis of gender and its use in the literature in liver disease as well as some areas of gastroenterology. These examples and my full dossier will demonstrate a commitment to scholarship and its dissemination in professional circles.
The last section of my dossier will highlight the wide range of service in which I have engaged. Service is something that is very important to me and I feel it is too often overlooked. My service includes participation at the department, college, and university, as well as involvement and leadership in professional organizations. I have served on a number of committees, taskforces, and work groups across the college and campus. In my department, I serve as the Sociology assessment coordinator, taken a leadership role in rewriting the Sociology curriculum, developing other curricular proposals (e.g., Social Work Minor, Native and Indigenous Studies Minor), served on three different hiring committees, and assisted in Sociology’s 7-year program review. For my service at the college and university levels, I have served on several CAS-specific committees and have been the CAS representative on the Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory Committee, the Assessment Committee, the Academic Technology Advisory Committee, and was elected to a three-year term in Fall 2020 to serve as the CAS representative on the Academic Affairs Committee. I was also asked to co-chair Criterion 3 Teaching and Learning: Quality, Resources, and Support for our Higher Learning Commission four-year assurance argument. I have been active in two professional organizations and have stepped into leadership roles for both. I also serve as a reviewer for a number of journals and conferences.
The links in the above menu (or in the pull-down menu if this portfolio is being viewed through the mobile web) can be used to navigate to various parts of the portfolio. All internal links and evidence, barring presentation and course PowerPoints and Panopto course videos, are provided as PDFs. Any links that would take you away from this portfolio (e.g., links to outside organizations) are set to open in a new browser tab while internal links will open within the same tab. I am currently submitting this portfolio for tenure and promotion to the status of associate professor.
Teaching: In this section, you will find my teaching statement that indicates my teaching philosophy, various instructional methods, as well as how I have updated my teaching methods based on student feedback and new pedagogical tools and research. Following my statement, you will find my evidence of teaching excellence presented in chronological order including semester student opinion of instruction (SOIs) summaries provided by my chair, full SOIs for all courses I have taught, syllabi for each course taught, peer and chair observations completed throughout my time in rank, a selection of sample assignments and course content such as PowerPoint, lecture notes, and course videos, and online content and quality assurance reviews for my online Introduction to Sociology (SOC 100) and other online classes.
Research: In this section of the portfolio, you will find my research statement which indicates my past and current research interests, current research projects, and plans for future research. I have provided evidence of my scholarly performance in rank through 3 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, 1 invited book review, 1 encyclopedia entry, and 1 letter to the editor completed along with explanations of my contributions to collaborative works. Where available I have included impact statements for each publication. I have included conference presentations, roundtables, and panels I have participated in, with information on conference prestige and impact. I have included links to the programs for all conferences I have attended as well as copies of the PowerPoint presentations.
Service: In this section, I have included a brief statement on past and current service undertaken at NSU, how I believe my service directly ties into my teaching and research, as well as any evidence regarding these activities. I have included this information specifically on service to the department, university, and the discipline.
Curriculum Vitae (CV): This page is my updated CV as of August 2020.
Annual Performance Evaluations (APEs): On this page, you will find my APEs, including comments from my chairs Dr. Steven Usitalo and Dr. Jon Schaff, when available. I have also included the applicable professional development plans (PDP) attached with academic years 2016-2017 (3-year PDP) and 2018-2019 (6-year PDP).
Letters: This section includes letters of support for my promotion and tenure.
Taken together, my materials represent a commitment to my career as a teacher scholar. I consider the work my colleagues and I do to be important work that supports the students, the university, and the community. I take my position as an educator very seriously and strive to find ways to interconnect my teaching, research, and service to create a body of work that has meaning and longevity. When I was awarded the 2020 NSU Outstanding Early Career Faculty Award in May 2020, I felt an increased commitment to giving back to the university community which had embraced my efforts so far. NSU has offered me a wide variety of excellent experiences, particularly in allowing me freedom to experiment with teaching pedagogy and practice in the classroom. I come out of the classroom energized by my interactions with the students, even on the “bad” days when I might feel ill, or have other issues acting as stressors, or even on the days in which the students don’t participate. I actually end up appreciating teaching even more on those “bad” days simply because I can walk out of the classroom feeling better and more optimistic. I greatly appreciate the opportunities that working at NSU has provided in getting to know and truly connecting with my students, to experiment in the classroom, to research things about the social world that are often dismissed by academics, and to learn about and support the university and my discipline I have been afforded in the past five years at NSU. I look forward to spending many more years with the faculty and staff of the College of Arts and Sciences and the History and Social Sciences department. I hope the committee finds my promotion and tenure materials demonstrate my commitment and merit tenure status and promotion to associate professor. I thank you in advance for the consideration of my letter, dossier, and supporting materials. I am happy to provide further evidence or answer any questions, if necessary.
Sincerely,
Kristi Brownfield, PhD
Assistant Professor of Sociology
History and Social Sciences