In brief
This reflective case paper traces Thompson Rivers University School of Nursing's 40-year journey from a community college to a full university, describing how faculty built a culture of scholarship using Boyer's four dimensions and Glassick's six standards. It offers a model, collaborative partnerships, dedicated...
What this article is about
Quick Answer
This reflective case paper traces Thompson Rivers University School of Nursing's 40-year journey from a community college to a full university, describing how faculty built a culture of scholarship using Boyer's four dimensions and Glassick's six standards. It offers a model, collaborative partnerships, dedicated scholarship committees, and flexible promotion streams, for nursing schools balancing teaching mandates with the discipline's research imperative.
Student takeaways
Key Takeaways
- TRU School of Nursing evolved over roughly 40 years from a hospital diploma program (pre-1973) to a two-year community college program in 1973, to a BSN-granting partner in the Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia in 1992, to full university status as Thompson Rivers University in 2004.
- Nursing faculty scholarship was shaped by participation in the multi-institution Collaborative Nursing Program of BC, which used Boyer's (1990) four dimensions of scholarship and adapted Glassick et al.'s (1997) criteria into six standards for judging rigorous scholarly work.
- Designating only a minority of faculty into "scholarly activity positions" with reduced teaching loads helped build scholarship capacity but created a perceived sense of inequity among faculty who were not given that time.
- Since 2009, TRU's promotion and tenure system has used two parallel faculty streams, bi-partite (teaching and service) and tri-partite (teaching, service, and research), with two faculty reaching Associate Professor in the tri-partite stream and eight reaching Senior Lecturer at the time of writing.
- The authors identified four substantive areas of scholarly focus and exemplars at their school: nursing education scholarship, population and community health, Aboriginal peoples' health, and nursing profession and health policy, spanning Boyer's discovery, integration, teaching-learning, and application typology.
Student summary
Why This Research Matters
This article is different from most research papers you'll read in nursing school. It isn't a study with participants and data — it's a reflective account written by three nursing faculty members at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Kamloops, British Columbia. The authors look back on 40 years of institutional change and ask a big question: what does "scholarship" mean for nursing faculty, and how do you build it, when your school isn't a large research university?
TRU's nursing program has quite a history. It started as a hospital diploma program, then became a two-year community college program in 1973. In 1989, the BC government pushed to expand access to university-level nursing education, and TRU joined a multi-institution partnership called the Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia (CNP), which eventually included 11 institutions. Through the CNP, TRU offered its first four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) in 1992. The school became part of University College of the Cariboo in 1996, when it granted its first nursing degrees, and finally, in 2004, the BC government made it Thompson Rivers University, a full university.
Each of these transitions changed what was expected of faculty. As a community college, instructors focused almost entirely on teaching students for hospital practice. As the school moved toward degree-granting and university status, faculty faced growing pressure to also produce "scholarship" — the kind of research, writing, and knowledge-building that universities need for national accreditation, and that faculty need for promotion and tenure.
To figure out what scholarship should look like in a teaching-focused school, TRU and its CNP partners drew on Ernest Boyer's (1990) well-known model, which says scholarship isn't just about discovering new facts through research. It also includes the scholarship of teaching, of integrating knowledge across fields, and of applying knowledge to real problems. The Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN) built this four-part model into its national definition of scholarship, which nursing programs must now demonstrate to keep their accreditation.
TRU's faculty also adapted six standards from Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff (1997) to judge whether scholarly work was rigorous — things like whether it was well-prepared, communicated to others through peer review, and led to a real contribution or new understanding. This gave faculty who weren't traditional researchers, but who were doing serious work in teaching, community health, or policy, a way to have that work recognized as legitimate scholarship.
The authors describe some growing pains along the way. Early on, only a minority of faculty were given "scholarly activity positions" with lighter teaching loads to pursue scholarship, which created a sense of inequity among colleagues who didn't get that time. Since 2009, TRU has used a promotion and tenure system with two parallel tracks: a "bi-partite" stream (teaching and service) and a "tri-partite" stream (teaching, service, and research), so faculty can build a career path that fits their strengths and workload. At the time of writing, two faculty had reached the rank of Associate Professor in the tri-partite stream, and eight had reached Senior Lecturer.
The authors also flag a real concern: many of TRU's most experienced scholars, the ones who built this culture from nothing, are approaching retirement. They argue this makes mentoring new faculty and helping them access strong doctoral programs an urgent priority, not just for TRU, but for nursing schools across Canada facing similar faculty shortages.
For nursing students, this paper is a useful window into how academic nursing actually works behind the scenes. Since only about 30% of nursing faculty across Canada hold permanent positions, and over a third of those are past age 50, the profession is facing real workforce pressure at the very level that trains new nurses. Understanding how a school like TRU built its scholarship culture — through committees, mentorship, flexible promotion tracks, and partnerships with other institutions — shows that a career in nursing education is possible outside major research universities, and that "scholarship" can take many valuable forms beyond traditional lab-style research.
Source abstract
Study Overview
The move to advance the qualification of nurses has necessitated the expansion of baccalaureate degree level nursing education to colleges and other less research-intensive post-secondary institutions in Canada and beyond. Shifts in the post-secondary institutional contexts of nursing education necessitate a re-thinking of the mandate and purpose of scholarship in nursing and how it can be sustained. Over a span of forty years, Thompson Rivers University School of Nursing has evolved from a community college program to one situated in a university college, and most recently within a new university. In this paper, we describe the purpose and process of developing our faculty scholarship within these distinct institutional forms. We offer our retrospective and perspective on how faculty in different types of institutions must contribute to the research mandate of the discipline of nursing and bring renewed strengths to other forms of scholarship required to advance the profession in the 21st century. We also describe how scholarship as a way of being is integral to sustaining quality academic environments for nursing education. This reflection adds to the growing literature describing challenges of renewal, resources, and relevance within nursing education around the world. A deeper understanding and examination of these challenges brings the promise of strategic direction in policy arenas for the sustainability of the professoriate and its capacity for both educating the nursing workforce and developing the discipline.
Evidence appraisal
Main Findings
- TRU School of Nursing evolved over roughly 40 years from a hospital diploma program (pre-1973) to a two-year community college program in 1973, to a BSN-granting partner in the Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia in 1992, to full university status as Thompson Rivers University in 2004.
- Nursing faculty scholarship was shaped by participation in the multi-institution Collaborative Nursing Program of BC, which used Boyer's (1990) four dimensions of scholarship and adapted Glassick et al.'s (1997) criteria into six standards for judging rigorous scholarly work.
- Designating only a minority of faculty into "scholarly activity positions" with reduced teaching loads helped build scholarship capacity but created a perceived sense of inequity among faculty who were not given that time.
- Since 2009, TRU's promotion and tenure system has used two parallel faculty streams, bi-partite (teaching and service) and tri-partite (teaching, service, and research), with two faculty reaching Associate Professor in the tri-partite stream and eight reaching Senior Lecturer at the time of writing.
- The authors identified four substantive areas of scholarly focus and exemplars at their school: nursing education scholarship, population and community health, Aboriginal peoples' health, and nursing profession and health policy, spanning Boyer's discovery, integration, teaching-learning, and application typology.
Practice transfer
Clinical Relevance
- Nurse educators working in teaching-focused colleges or university colleges can build legitimate scholarly identities without a research-intensive university setting by aligning scholarship with their existing teaching and practice roles.
- Nurses considering academic careers should understand that promotion and tenure criteria at some institutions recognize non-traditional scholarship, such as policy briefs, blog posts, and practice innovations, alongside peer-reviewed publication.
- Clinical preceptors and practice educators may find their contributions to student learning and curriculum innovation counted as "scholarship of teaching" when evaluated against the six adapted standards described in this paper.
- Nursing programs facing faculty shortages and an aging faculty demographic should proactively invest in mentorship structures connecting senior scholars with early-career faculty before mass retirements erode institutional scholarship knowledge.
- Nurse leaders building new degree-granting programs can consider TRU's collaborative model, shared resources and mentoring by established universities, as one template for developing scholarship capacity, while recognizing that context and governance will differ elsewhere.
Faculty notes
Educational Relevance
This paper by Duncan, Mahara, and Holmes (2014), published in Quality Advancement in Nursing Education, is a reflective, narrative case account rather than an empirical study — worth flagging explicitly with students and junior faculty who are learning to distinguish research designs. There is no sample, data collection, or analysis plan; instead, the authors, all TRU faculty, offer an insider retrospective on 40 years of institutional transition: from a hospital diploma program to a community college program (1973), to a partner in the Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia (CNP, from 1989), to University College of the Cariboo (first nursing degrees, 1996), and finally to Thompson Rivers University (2004).
For appraisal purposes, this piece functions as institutional case history and position paper, closer to expert opinion or reflective-practice literature than to primary research. It is valuable for what it documents concretely — institutional dates, structures, and policies — but should be read with attention to authorial position: the writers were architects of much of what they describe, so the account foregrounds the framings that justify the choices made.
The theoretical backbone is Boyer's (1990) four-dimension model of scholarship (discovery, teaching, integration, application), which CASN has built into national accreditation expectations. The most transferable contribution is the authors' description of the CNP Scholarship Committee's adaptation of Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff's (1997) six standards, used to legitimate non-traditional scholarly output (teaching innovation, policy analysis, community dissemination) with the same rigor expected of discovery research. This is directly useful for programs building promotion and tenure criteria in teaching-intensive institutions, and pairs well with CASN's 2013 scholarship position statement for a session on scholarship typologies.
Discussion-worthy tensions to raise with students or faculty include: the equity implications of "scholarly activity positions" that gave some faculty course release while others received none; the bi-partite/tri-partite promotion and tenure structure adopted in 2009 as a compromise between full research expectations and teaching-centered realities; and the cited national data (only about 30% of Canadian nursing faculty hold permanent positions, and 38% of those are over age 50) that frames the urgency of faculty renewal as a program-sustainability issue, not just an individual one.
For classroom use, this article works well in graduate nursing education, health-professions education, or academic leadership courses to illustrate how scholarship frameworks translate into concrete institutional policy — committees, newsletters, mentoring seminars, promotion criteria — rather than remaining abstract. Instructors should pair it with a critical discussion of self-report bias in reflective case writing, and invite comparison against their own institution's scholarship expectations, especially in colleges or teaching-focused universities facing similar tensions between educational mandate and disciplinary research demands. The absence of comparative or empirical outcome measures (publication counts over time, funding growth, faculty retention rates) is a clear opportunity for follow-up empirical research building on this narrative foundation.
Critical appraisal
Limitations
- This is a single-institution reflective and narrative account, not an empirical study, so it lacks systematic data collection, sampling, or independent verification of the outcomes described.
- The account is written from the perspective of the authors themselves, who were participants in and architects of much of what is described, introducing potential self-selection and reporting bias.
- The paper draws primarily on institutional memory and internal documents rather than a structured research methodology, limiting reproducibility and formal appraisal against research-quality criteria.
Classroom use
Discussion Questions
- How did TRU's four decades of institutional transition, from hospital diploma program to college to university college to university, shape the way faculty conceptualized scholarship at each stage?
- What tensions arose from creating "scholarly activity positions" for only some faculty, and how might these tensions be managed differently in a teaching-intensive nursing program?
- How do Boyer's (1990) four dimensions of scholarship, discovery, teaching, integration, and application, apply differently in a teaching-centered university compared with a research-intensive one?
- Why might the six standards adapted from Glassick et al. (1997) be useful for evaluating scholarship of teaching and practice, and not only traditional discovery research?
- What role did external partnerships, such as the Collaborative Nursing Program of BC and mentoring by established universities, play in building TRU's scholarship capacity, and what might other nursing schools borrow from this model?
- How does the bi-partite and tri-partite promotion and tenure model balance equity and flexibility for faculty with different scholarly interests and workloads?
- What risks does an aging, retirement-approaching faculty cohort pose to a nursing school's collective scholarship knowledge, and how might mentorship structures mitigate this risk?
- In what ways can practice-based scholarship, such as policy briefs, blog posts, and community dissemination, be considered as rigorous and valuable as peer-reviewed publication, according to the authors?
- How might national accreditation requirements, such as CASN's scholarship expectations, create particular challenges for colleges and university colleges transitioning into degree-granting institutions?
- What does the phrase "scholarship as a way of being," used by the authors, suggest about how scholarship should be integrated into everyday faculty roles rather than treated as an add-on?
Knowledge check
Quiz
1. Over what span of years does the paper describe Thompson Rivers University School of Nursing's institutional evolution?
- 10 years
- 25 years
- 40 years
- 100 years
Rationale: The abstract and paper state: "Our reflection over a span of 40 years in the life of a post-secondary institution involves a process of conceptualizing and building capacity for scholarship..."
2. What theoretical framework for scholarship, adopted by CASN, most heavily informs the paper's discussion?
- Boyer's four dimensions of scholarship
- Benner's novice-to-expert model
- Roy's adaptation model
- Watson's theory of human caring
Rationale: The paper states: "The CASN (2013) definition of scholarship is based on Boyer's (1990) conceptualization, with the requirement that each nursing program... demonstrate all forms, including discovery, teaching, integration, and application."
3. In what year did the government proclaim that University College of the Cariboo would become Thompson Rivers University?
- 1989
- 1996
- 2000
- 2004
Rationale: The paper states: "In April of 2004; the Government of British Columbia proclaimed that UCC would become Thompson Rivers University (TRU), Canada's newest university..."
4. According to the cited CNA & CASN (2013) statistics referenced in the paper, what percentage of nursing faculty in Canadian schools of nursing hold permanent positions?
- 30%
- 50%
- 70%
- 90%
Rationale: The paper states: "only 30% of nursing faculty in Canadian schools of nursing are employed in permanent positions and of those, 38% are over the age of 50 years (CNA & CASN, 2013)..."
5. What multi-institution partnership allowed TRU's School of Nursing to develop and offer its first baccalaureate curriculum?
- The Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia (CNP)
- The National League for Nursing
- The Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- The International Council of Nurses
Rationale: The paper describes: "Visionary nursing education leaders had already begun planning a collaborative nursing program... the development of the Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia (CNP)."
6. Whose criteria did the CNP Scholarship Committee adapt to describe six standards for evaluating scholarly work?
- Glassick et al. (1997)
- Boyer (1990) alone
- Benner et al. (2010)
- CASN alone
Rationale: The paper states: "the CNP Scholarship Committee worked with and adapted Glassick et al.'s criteria to describe six standards to extend scholarly work in areas where faculty were already engaged."
7. What two faculty streams does TRU's promotion and tenure model use, based on differing scholarship accountabilities?
- Bi-partite and tri-partite
- Junior and senior
- Clinical and academic
- Tenured and adjunct
Rationale: The paper describes: "two distinct but equivalent streams for the expression of scholarship and faculty progression, known as bi-partite and tri-partite roles, with faculty accountabilities for teaching and service in the former and teaching, service, and research in the latter."
8. As of the paper's writing, how many nursing faculty had achieved the rank of Associate Professor in the tri-partite stream?
- One
- Two
- Five
- Eight
Rationale: The paper states: "two faculty members have achieved the rank of Associate Professor in the tri-partite stream, and eight have achieved the rank of Senior Lecturer."
9. Which of the following is NOT listed as one of the four substantive areas of scholarship focus in the paper's exemplar table?
- Nursing Education Scholarship
- Population and Community Health
- Aboriginal Peoples' Health
- Global Pandemic Preparedness
Rationale: The paper's Table 1 lists Nursing Education Scholarship, Population and Community Health, Aboriginal Peoples' Health, and Nursing Profession and Health Policy as the four areas of focus; pandemic preparedness is not mentioned.
10. What concern do the authors raise in the "Ponderings" section about their faculty's demographic profile?
- Too many early-career faculty without teaching experience
- A late-career, retiring faculty cohort threatening continuity of scholarship
- Overrepresentation of part-time faculty
- Lack of diversity in gender among faculty
Rationale: The paper states: "we recognize the impact of a late career demographic profile of current tenured faculty on the faculty life cycle; one that urgently requires new strategies for sustaining and extending our scholarship and research."
Study cards
Flashcards
What is the title of this paper?
"Confronting the Social Mandate for Nursing Scholarship – One School of Nursing's Journey," by Duncan, Mahara, and Holmes (2014).
Which institution's journey does the paper describe?
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) School of Nursing in Kamloops, British Columbia.
What was TRU's School of Nursing before it became a two-year college program in 1973?
A hospital diploma program.
What multi-institution initiative helped TRU develop its baccalaureate nursing curriculum?
The Collaborative Nursing Program of British Columbia (CNP), initiated around 1989.
In what year did TRU's School of Nursing offer its first generic baccalaureate program?
1992.
When did the institution, then University College of the Cariboo, grant its first nursing degrees?
1996.
What year did the institution officially become Thompson Rivers University?
2004.
Whose framework for scholarship, discovery, teaching, integration, and application, underlies CASN's national definition?
Ernest Boyer's (1990) four dimensions of scholarship.
What six-standard framework did the CNP Scholarship Committee use to evaluate scholarly work?
Standards adapted from Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff's (1997) criteria for scholarship.
What were "scholarly activity positions" at TRU, and what tension did they create?
Positions with reduced teaching loads for faculty pursuing scholarship; they created a sense of inequity because only some faculty received this privilege.
What year was TRU's School of Nursing Scholarship Committee established?
2000.
What informal faculty development activity did the Scholarship Committee run to nurture new scholarly ideas?
"Tea-time seminars" focused on developing "half-baked ideas."
What are the two faculty progression streams in TRU's promotion and tenure model?
Bi-partite (teaching and service) and tri-partite (teaching, service, and research).
How many nursing faculty had reached Associate Professor in the tri-partite stream at the time of writing?
Two.
How many nursing faculty had reached the rank of Senior Lecturer at the time of writing?
Eight.
What percentage of Canadian nursing faculty were in permanent positions, per the cited CNA & CASN (2013) data?
About 30%.
What proportion of those permanent faculty were over age 50?
38%.
What four substantive scholarship focus areas did TRU's School of Nursing identify?
Nursing Education Scholarship, Population and Community Health, Aboriginal Peoples' Health, and Nursing Profession and Health Policy.
What key challenge do the authors raise about their faculty's demographic profile?
A late-career, retirement-nearing faculty cohort that threatens continuity of scholarship without deliberate faculty renewal and mentorship.
What phrase do the authors use to describe how scholarship should function in faculty roles?
Scholarship as "a way of being," integrated into teaching and practice rather than treated as an add-on.
Search-ready answers
Frequently asked questions
Is this article a research study with data and results?
No. It is a reflective, narrative case account by three Thompson Rivers University faculty describing their institution's 40-year history, not an empirical study with a sample or statistical findings.
What is Thompson Rivers University's nursing program history?
It began as a hospital diploma program, became a two-year community college program in 1973, joined BC's Collaborative Nursing Program to offer its first BSN in 1992, gained degree-granting university-college status in 1996, and became Thompson Rivers University in 2004.
What is Boyer's model of scholarship?
Ernest Boyer's (1990) framework describes four forms of scholarship: discovery, teaching, integration, and application, which the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN) uses in its national scholarship definition.
Why is scholarship difficult for nursing programs in teaching-focused colleges or university colleges?
These institutions often lack the dedicated research funding, time allocations, and infrastructure that research-intensive universities have, making the traditional discovery form of scholarship harder to sustain.
What is a "scholarly activity position"?
A faculty role at TRU with reduced teaching workload, created to allow time for scholarship; it was seen as helpful for building capacity but also created a perceived sense of inequity among faculty.
What are bi-partite and tri-partite faculty roles?
Two parallel promotion and tenure streams at TRU: bi-partite faculty are evaluated on teaching and service, while tri-partite faculty are evaluated on teaching, service, and research.
Does the paper report a nursing faculty shortage in Canada?
Yes. It cites data that only about 30% of Canadian nursing faculty hold permanent positions, and 38% of those are over age 50, adding pressure from a wave of impending retirements.
What kinds of scholarship count besides published research, according to this paper?
The authors describe policy briefs, practice innovations, mentoring junior faculty, community-based dissemination, and blog posts as valid, valued forms of scholarship alongside peer-reviewed publication.
What does "scholarship as a way of being" mean in this paper?
It reflects the authors' conclusion that scholarship should be woven into everyday teaching and practice roles rather than treated as a separate add-on activity for a select few faculty.
Who wrote this paper and where was it published?
Susan M. Duncan, Star Mahara, and Victoria Holmes of Thompson Rivers University published it in Quality Advancement in Nursing Education – Avancées en formation infirmière (2014).