Ernest Boyer's Well-Known Carnegie Foundation book, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, issued the call for a redefinition of scholarship throughout the academic world. He proposed a new para-digm of scholarship with multiple interlocking elements. Boyer and others, encouraged the notion that scholarship is more than pure research; it is the discovery, integration, application, and transmission of knowledge. Pursued at times for its own sake, knowledge is of the greatest value when it is systematically reviewed and then integrated into the pedagogy of the classroom and laboratory. Rice in particular notes that the open, diverse, and democratic system of higher education in the United States does not by its nature accept the old world exclusivity of scientific professionalism.

As early as 1989, the Center for Instructional Development at Syracuse University, funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., initiated a redefinition and assessment of scholarship in all disciplines. These initiatives launched a sweeping examination of the faculty reward system as it related to institutional mission. The final result was a list of activities that educators should consider in preparing guidelines to evaluate scholarly work for tenure, promotion, merit, and reward. Numerous scholarly associations joined to expand the Syracuse results in a major publication issued by the American Association of Higher Education in 1995. The overall thrust of this effort was to foster a broader and more flexible definition of scholarship.

The Scholarship Landscape in Civil Engineering: A Bridge Between Rhetoric and Reality is the result of work by a special Task Force of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to consider appropriate definitions of scholarship and faculty work in Civil Engineering at colleges and universities. The main objective of the Task Force, which commenced its work in May 1997, was to raise fundamental issues for Civil Engineering educators by offering a broader definition and understanding of the professional work of faculty.

One premise of this effort is that the next few decades will be more creative, demanding, and rewarding for Civil Engineers. The pace of change is bound to accelerate, so academic departments must develop the appropriate environment to help the next generation of Civil Engineers understand the global context of their professional activities. At the same time, there exists uncertainty as to an appropriate definition of the work of Civil Engineering faculty. Hence, it is now necessary to reconsider and revise the conventional definitions of scholarship in light of contemporary and steadily changing standards of assessment.

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