Ep. 84 - Service Shaming in Academia & How to Fix It (with Dr. Cullen Merritt)

In this powerful episode, Dr. Cullen C. Merritt, Associate Professor and Research Director at the University of Maryland, joins me to unpack the often-overlooked issue of service shaming in academia. Drawing from his eye-opening op-ed in Inside Higher Ed, Cullen explains how universities publicly promote service as a core mission—yet internally discourage faculty from engaging in it, especially when it comes to mentoring students or serving communities. 

He shares moving stories from his research, including faculty who’ve faced emotional and even physical consequences for prioritizing service. We explore why service matters, how it strengthens research and teaching, and what institutions must do to truly value it. Whether you're a current or future faculty member, this conversation offers vital insights for anyone invested in improving higher education.

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Transcript

EP 84 with Dr Cullen C. Merritt 

Leslie

Today, I am happy to welcome Dr. Cullen Merritt onto your Words Unleashed podcast. Dr. Cullen C. Merritt is an Associate Professor and Research Director of the Institute for Public Leadership in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. His research explores how managers across industries drive performance to achieve public impact. 

This includes a book project examining how organizational norms can undermine the missions of public organizations, with a particular focus on public higher education. A native of Texas, Dr. Merritt earned his PhD in Public Administration and Master of Public Administration from the University of Kansas and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Texas A&M University. So I invited Cullen on today to talk about ideas he introduced in an opinion piece that was published in Inside Higher Ed on March 17, 2025, and it was called Against Service Shaming. The one-sentence synopsis of the piece is, "Discouraging and devaluing faculty participation in service undermines the public impact of universities.” 

Wow. I think this is such an important and underexplored topic, and I wanted to know more about it and what can be done to address this issue. So, welcome, Cullen.
 
 

Cullen

Thanks, Leslie. Glad to be here. 
 
 

Leslie

So, as you know, I love to ask everybody to first talk a little bit about their path through academia and a little bit about your research and teaching interests. 
 
 

Cullen 

Absolutely. So, I really want to start at the very beginning because I've been blessed that serendipity has played a huge role in my life. So when I was an undergraduate student at Texas A&M, I was in an Africana Studies course, and sitting beside me was a student. We were just talking right before the class, and she learned that I was a political science major.  

And she said, oh, political science. There is a professor in the political science department who is 

looking for research assistance. So I ended up reaching out to this professor, and he ended up hiring me as a research assistant in my sophomore year, and it was really transformational for me. I ended up deciding to go and get a PhD because I had such a rewarding research assistantship, and I got my PhD at the University of Kansas in public administration. 

In terms of what I study, I study public management and organization theory. So, essentially, I want to help managers and organizations structure and design themselves to achieve public impact. What's the point of being an organization or a manager if you're just going to serve yourself? So I want to make sure these organizations are putting themselves in a position to serve the broader public, for example. 

And in terms of teaching, I enjoy teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level. And any course about leadership or government or governing in a global society, those sorts of topics really get me excited. And I'm very fortunate to be a professor.
  

Leslie 

Hmm. I'm so glad to hear you say that because, you know, a lot of professors these days are feeling pretty burnt out. And one of the reasons I think you've really highlighted in your opinion piece is this concept of service shaming. And it really captures something that a lot of faculty feel but don't necessarily have a name for, don't necessarily understand in a more systemic way. 

So, what exactly do you mean by service shaming? And also, what led you to study it?
 
 

Cullen 

Yes, so service shaming is the act of discouraging or devaluing faculty participation in service work. So, faculty members at research universities have three primary responsibilities. They're expected to engage in research, teaching, and service. But for whatever reason, research is first place, then teaching is second place, then there is a huge drop. 

And then service is third place. And because it is third place, faculty are expected to really do as little of it as possible and to focus the majority of their efforts on research. Now, I started studying this for a couple of reasons. One is because I experienced service shaming at my prior academic institution.

I should say that I had a great relationship with folks there, but I nonetheless experienced service shaming. And this came in the form of feedback on an annual review. So I got praise on this annual review when it came to research, teaching, and service, but there was an additional comment in the service section that stated for the purposes of getting tenure, you may need to scale back in your mentoring of students outside of the classroom. And this really puzzled me because I felt that I was meeting and exceeding the requirements associated with my job,  first and foremost. 

But when it came to service, I always felt that universities were here to serve people, in this case, students. So, to be criticized for leaning into serving a population that universities exist because of, it felt really contradictory to me. And it really puzzled me because I felt I was being criticized for doing something that was tied to my job responsibility. The second reason I started to study 

this was because when you look at the mission statements of universities, they all say in some form or fashion that universities are here to research, to engage in discoveries that serve the public, to teach, and to serve, to ensure that the work that we are doing is being transmitted into the broader public. That mission typically trickles down into the promotion and tenure standards that guide the work that faculty do. So there was huge misalignment there to me. Why are we discouraging faculty members from engaging in service when all universities, if not all of them, most of them are anchored in the tripartite responsibilities that should govern what we do, research, teaching, and service. 
 
 

So that misalignment puzzled me. It did not make sense to have mission statements and documents value service, but then to be a part of a culture that essentially said my service does not matter. And I don't think this is some isolated thing where it's just me. If you walk around the halls of the academy and you speak with faculty members, one of the common threads is that we all know that service is devalued. 

We all know that service does not matter as much as the other responsibilities that faculty and universities are supposed to carry out. They may say on paper that it matters, but in practice, we do not have cultures in the academy that support and empower and value service.
 
 

Leslie 

Well, especially at Research One universities, right?
 
 

Cullen 

Yes, absolutely. And here's what's really interesting about this, Leslie, at research universities, it's all about publish or perish. And that mentality has led us to say, okay, how can we create more space for research? And we do that by kicking service to the side.
 
 But if you take a hard look at service, service actually empowers research. When we engage in our community, for example, when we ensure that the research that we do is infused within the broader community, we learn from the broader public. We learn from people who are impacted by our research, and that informs our research. And that's just one example. 

In my belief, I think that research, teaching, and service are inextricably linked. They're synergistic with one another. So when you say that service doesn't matter what you're also saying indirectly is that research doesn't matter because in my opinion service can help elevate research and quite frankly it should otherwise we are a bunch of ivory tower academics who are writing really interesting papers that will not resonate with the public and will not have meaning in society.
 
 

Leslie 

Yeah, I love that point you make that service can make teaching and research better, and they're interconnected, and they're equally important. So, how did you actually go about doing this research? 

Cullen 

So first, I think I start off by reflecting on the experience I had with service shaming. And I really wanted to make sure that I wasn't embarking on this research agenda simply because I was frustrated with a comment that I received on my annual review. Although that can be part of the motivation, I have to be really, really interested in this work beyond one particular incident. And I realized in talking very casually with colleagues and other friends in the academy that this is a widespread issue. 

And I really wanted to be at least one person who played a role in addressing service shaming. So I started a research project where I interviewed faculty members at one university. This was a 

pilot study. I just wanted to talk with folks to really learn from them and to see if the work I was doing was worth a full-scale research study. 

After conducting interviews with dozens of faculty during this pilot study, I realized that I wanted to study more of it because I was really gaining interesting insights from faculty members at research universities. In my second wave of interviews, I ended up interviewing many more faculty members across two additional universities. And by the end of my data collection, I had 

What I did learn was that the experience that I had with service shaming is not confined to me, that it is quite widespread. I learned that service shaming not only has an impact on universities and how they operate, it impacts faculty in very intense ways. It's demoralizing, it is overwhelming, and it prevents them from really being transformational in their work. I also learned how service shaming impacts students negatively and impacts the broader communities that universities and faculty members are intending to serve. 

I really enjoyed these interviews because I felt that faculty members were real with me. I always try to create an environment when I'm engaging in interviews where folks feel that they can be comfortable and trust me with information. And because of that, the vulnerability that faculty members engaged in when they were sharing their insights led faculty members at its worst to cry and even break down because service shaming really affected them in such a deep way and they felt that they were being stifled as people oftentimes mainly because when universities devalue service they may be in turn devaluing the people who are performing the service as well. 

So I learned so much from these interviews. 
 
 

Leslie 

That is a fantastic point. It's definitely a big part of why a lot of people go into this work in the first place. And I just realized that some of the people listening may or may not be faculty members yet. And I know when I was a grad student, the idea of service was very fuzzy. 

So what qualifies as service even?
 
 

Cullen 

Yeah, that's a great question. I think faculty members have a hard time defining service. So, service can refer to any activity that extends beyond research and teaching that helps universities operate. So, there is service to one's campus. 

So, there may be a committee or an initiative to, say, support students. That would constitute service. There's also service to one's discipline. Faculty members are in different academic fields. 

I'm in public administration, so I oftentimes serve by reviewing journal articles that end up being published and having an impact on society, or mentoring PhD students to become scholars and to be transformational in their own right. And then there's also, importantly, service to the broader public, and this is what really excites me because this is where we take our research and infuse it into the public. Maybe we have research findings that can inform how government operates or how a non-profit organization operates, or maybe there is a pressing societal issue that requires expertise from a professor to address that issue. It could be homelessness. 

It could be climate change. It could be a global pandemic. Those are the types of things that service centers on. 

Leslie 

Okay. Thank you so much for clarifying. So it's basically anything that's not research and teaching and is meant to serve the public. 

Cullen 

Yes. And I'll provide a really good example of this. We all remember the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was scary stuff. 

We're all on Zoom calls, we're trapped in our homes, we're walking the streets wanting to avoid any possible human contact, and we were all eagerly awaiting a vaccine. So research is what created the vaccine, and that's great. I'm glad we had scientists and folks who specialize in this area who created a vaccine that has kept us safer. It is service, however, that brought that vaccine to the public. 

It is service that ensured that people were able to receive the vaccine. And here's the beauty of service in this instance. The vaccine actually doesn't matter much if we don't have service to ensure that the vaccine is disseminated to the broader public. And that's a really important example for me because no one's going to argue that a vaccine doesn't matter. 

But what we can argue is that a vaccine cannot have a proper impact without service. So in this instance, we can really see how service really elevates research and allows the public to benefit from research. 
 
 

Leslie 

That's fantastic. That's such a great example. And just, you know, you mentioned also, in your interviews, sometimes people would break down crying and get very vulnerable. And I know that some of the people you interviewed had some serious emotional or even physical consequences from service shaming.

So, what are some various examples that you heard from your interviews? 

Cullen 

Yeah, you know, I'll start, Leslie, by saying that what was really sad about a lot of these interviews is that you have very elite professors. These professors are wonderful at research, teaching, and service. They are triple threats, and they are very motivated to do all aspects of their job very effectively. And so, when I was speaking– and I have two examples that I'll share–One example of a triple threat was someone in the study I named Rihanna, and she really cared about her research, but she did not want her research to solely be consumed by faculty members, and so she wanted to create public-facing publications. These publications would be spoken in layman's terms, language that is easily palatable. It would be work that the public would be enticed to read, perhaps because it was not some long scholarly article. 

And when she was preparing to go up for promotion and tenure, she was essentially told that you got to stop the service publications. These service publications don't count. They don't matter. And for Rihanna, who was very much committed to public service, it angered her deeply. 

She said that it led her to rage, and it exacerbated health problems that she was experiencing. So in this instance, we really see how devaluing service is an attack or can be perceived as an attack on who you are, on your values, on the things that you care about. And in this case, Rihanna cared deeply about ensuring that her research was connected to the broader public. In another example, there was a professor who I named Kendra. 

She was deeply committed to social equity. I conducted interviews just in the years after George Floyd was murdered, and universities really cared deeply about social equity, and she cared about social equity. Well, she was an assistant professor, not yet tenured, and she wanted to devote a lot of her time engaging in service to ensure that her academic unit was being socially equitable, and she was told basically, it's publish or perish. You need to focus on your research. 

Don't worry about all of this service stuff. And I believe she stated in her interview, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing here, that she was resigned to the fact that if she is doing it the wrong way in the eyes of other folks, then she would just have to fail at her job. She was very motivated to live according to her values, and she would rather live according to her values and risk not getting tenure than get tenure and not value social equity through service. So we see two examples here, and in both cases, the future of their careers was impacted, potentially, right? 

You have folks who, again, deeply care about their work. They're very motivated to engage in all aspects of their job. They are actually living up to the missions of their universities by engaging in service, and yet they are being given every signal that service doesn't matter. So these are examples of very direct forms of service shaming. 

Service shaming can be direct in that you're told, hey, don't engage in this service work. It could also be indirect, where you're getting cues from the broader environment that service doesn't matter, even though you may not be told that directly. And so in these examples, you see that Oftentimes our faculty mentors, our administrators, have no shame in flat-out telling you that, hey, I know we say we value service essentially, but in order to advance and get tenure, you need to push that to the side. And I think that's hugely problematic, especially in a time where we need the service contributions of faculty members. 

Leslie

Absolutely. I mean, I definitely feel like, you know, in my experiences, service was often presented as a burden to be passed around, like various responsibilities, committee assignments. It's like who would take it on and who was not going to take it on. And it was all tied up in like, this is additional work that's not going to benefit you. 

So I think that that's pretty standard from what I'm hearing. And so when it comes to junior faculty members, like you mentioned, what would you say to folks who really do care deeply about service, but they're told to say no to everything? That's a very common adage. I'm guilty of telling my clients that as well, right? 

It's like, do all the things that you need to do to make sure that you can create a sustainable path. And that often means cutting out things like additional service. So, how do people kind of find that balance, especially when they're pre-tenure? 

Cullen 

Yeah, this is a great point, Leslie, because I always encourage faculty members to be strategic. At the end of the day, if one cares about advancing to associate professor with tenure or advancing beyond that, we all know the currency that we're judged by, at least at research universities, is going to be research. But I have some tips to kind of navigate beyond this basic strategic thinking. First, I always encourage faculty members to manage their energy, not just their time. 

So one of the reasons service is discouraged is because it is believed to be a time suck. That you spend all this time engaging in service, and it's taking away from research. One of the things I learned in my interviews with faculty members is that, yeah, maybe service does take considerable time, but when faculty members enjoyed it, it brought energy and a life to them that made up for all the lost time. So they would finish, say, engaging with the community, and maybe it took all weekend to execute some project that interfaced their research and their service. 

together when they were engaging with the public. And maybe they were tired, but when they would reflect back, they would think, wow, this was really amazing. And even though they lost time, the energy that they gained from authentically engaging in service they cared about brought them so much energy that it actually ended up making them productive. I'm very much guilty of this as well.

There are service activities that I engage in where most people would say, don't waste your time on that. But as a faculty member, you have to know yourself. Other people do not know you more than yourself. If you find that this is something that gives you joy, if you find that this is something that perhaps allows you to integrate your research, teaching, and service. 

If it gives you energy, then be strategic in how you carry it out, but pursue it because the energy that you will gain from being authentic in a service space will actually elevate you in your job and you'll become more productive when it comes to research, teaching, and service. Next, I would say always look for intersections, right? I think research, teaching, and service can coexist effectively. 

And when faculty members are strategic in ensuring that when they're engaging in service that their research and teaching also benefit, then what you'll find is that not only do they become better scholars, but all aspects of their responsibilities become informed by another responsibility. The service informs the research, the research from there informs the teaching, and so on. And next, this is very important. I think it's so critical for faculty members to find their people. 

We do not have to be stuck in our academic departments engaging with the faculty members we see every day. And even if you have the most amazing faculty members that you're colleagues with, even if you have the most amazing mentors who are guiding you within your academic unit, make sure you are getting out. Get out across campus. Connect with other people. Get involved in an academic association or a conference that interests you and find people who empower you to be yourself. 

I've been very fortunate to be tied to academic associations and connected with folks across campus who see what I care about and they tell me do not make yourself small. If service is something you value, then you pursue it. And so we don't have to accept negativity. We don't have to accept people coming to us and saying that service doesn't matter. 

We can be very proactive in ensuring that we're finding people that uplift us and that support us, 

and perhaps most importantly, care about us as people and not just scholars.

Leslie 

Absolutely. I love the idea of using humanistic values and really kind of looking at our work in a holistic way. And how do we integrate all of the different pieces so that one is not seen as taking away from the other, but it's actually adding value to the other. And I think that that's a really, really big almost like a mindset shift for the academy. 

And I'm curious for you too, like in deciding to write an op-ed piece and publish it in Inside Higher Ed, which is obviously the terrain that this is all happening, like this is, I'm assuming, very controversial. And I'm curious,  first of all, how did you decide to write an op-ed? And then after that, how has it been received? Have you received any opposition to it?
  

Cullen 

Wow, this is great. So I started writing an op-ed mainly because in working on a book project, I thought that the op-ed would push me to think about the core elements of this work. It's very easy in writing a book or engaging in any project to lose the force for the trees. And the nice thing about an op-ed, as you know, Leslie, these are short pieces where you have to make your points clear. 

You have to stand on business, right? You have to mean what you say. And that really challenged me to be clear and fearless in my language. And as somebody who spent a large portion of my career writing peer-reviewed academic articles, I really needed to develop the craft of writing in plain spoken language because that's what's going to make this work real. 

In terms of your next question, there has been opposition. I will say for the most part, very respectful opposition. I typically hear things when I present at invited presentations or conferences, faculty members will say things along the lines of, This doesn't make sense. How can a research university exist if we do more service? 

And my response to that comment, for example, is, well, my work is actually not about asking faculty to do more service. Not at one point do I say faculty need to do more service. What I've challenged universities to do is to value it more. So whether someone is doing a lot or a little, that work is valued.

And I'm motivated in large part to really upend inequitable service structures where women and racial and ethnic minorities are being asked to do more service. And throughout the history of the academy, or at least in the past 10 years or so, we have told those individuals, oh, just say no, just say no to service. And it simply doesn't work. Because you can say no to 10 things, but if you're being asked to do 10 other service responsibilities, then there are still disproportionate expectations. 

So if telling faculty to say no doesn't work, then something else has to change. Our systems need to value service more. And when universities value service more, it washes away those inequities. All the work that perhaps a female professor is doing in the service space, when that is valued, when it comes to promotion and tenure, for example, then inequities, again, are more likely to be washed away. 

But I want to go back, I got on a tangent there, you got me excited, but I want to go back to your question about opposition, and how do I navigate that? And there are three things I focus on. The first is I encourage others and myself to know my why. Why am I doing this research? 

Why do I care about this subject matter? And when I focus on why I am doing it, then I'm able to deal with the opposition. Because if I care so much about addressing service shaming, then I feel I should care less about what other people think about it. My goal is to focus on my why and to ensure that service in the academy is being valued. 

And I welcome the criticism or disagreement that comes from that. Next, you have to know your who. Who are you wanting to impact, right? I'm wanting to impact faculty members. 

I'm wanting those who engage in service to be honored and recognized and valued for the necessary work they are doing to uphold our institutions and to shine a light on how universities can serve society. Service is very hard work, and I want that motivated faculty member who does not feel that they're being valued to be valued. I want that student who is a PhD student who is considering joining the academy but is thinking, man, I don't know about this because all the service I care about, all of this work would not matter, it would not be valued. I'm doing it for 

them. 

And then lastly, I think it's always important to not push away those who confront your research in a negative way. I believe that it's so important to use different perspectives as a learning opportunity. So even if folks are saying, man, this is controversial, how dare you study this? What you're studying is never going to work. 

I have to have the professionalism to put my feelings aside, listen to them, and even if I disagree with them, maybe there's something that they are saying that I could learn from that can help shape my research. Now, I should be clear in stating that I don't think the critics should define your research in terms of, you know, I'm not going to change the trajectory of my book. to satisfy some dissenting party. What I'm saying, however, is that we have to be open to feedback as scholars, and those who have a different perspective in me could perhaps help me fine-tune this research in ways that allows me to better realize my why and to better impact the people that I'm wanting to benefit in conducting this work. 

Leslie 

Totally. I mean, if you don't know how folks are going to counter your ideas, then your actual analysis is not going to be thorough enough. So, I mean, it's almost like a process of peer review. It's just they're saying these things to your face. 

Cullen 

Absolutely. Right? And what I'll say, too, is I actually get excited about potentially negative feedback because that means I have piqued someone's interest. And I want feedback because that shows that your work is relevant or on the path to being relevant. 

And again, I view any type of feedback, whether praise or constructive criticism or criticism that is not constructive, I view this as an opportunity to grow as a scholar. 

Leslie 

Yeah, no, I think a growth mindset is so, so important, especially in this day and age where things are getting so hard in academia. I wanted to return to your point about valuing service. So I think that sounds fantastic, but I also am curious about what does that look like concretely, right? What does it mean for department chairs or deans or provosts to value service when it comes to things like tenured promotion? 

Cullen 

So leadership matters here. If I am pointing out in service shaming an issue that is really negatively affecting the academy, we cannot ignore the role that our leadership in universities must play in addressing service shaming. So, you got it right. Deans, department chairs, provosts, other leaders within universities, they have a responsibility to ensure that one, service shaming does not occur, but second, that's not enough. 

We also have to ensure that there are systems in place that uplift service. And systems are certainly these formal institutions, but really they're also these informal actions that give greater credibility to service. And so I have some things for us to think about here. First, one of the things that leaders can do is to make sure that their language values service. 

So this could be something as simple as when your department chair or dean, for example, ensure that in faculty meetings and conversations, in emails and dialogue, that you're uplifting service just like you're uplifting research and teaching. That sends a signal that it matters. Oftentimes, we could have a dean who cares deeply about service, but if they never talk about it, If they don't make it a part of their daily communications, then the signal that they are sending into the broader environment is that service doesn't matter. So we have to watch how we speak and value our communication in uplifting service. 

Next, hiring matters. Even at research universities, we need to ensure that we are hiring faculty members who care about all three components of a university's mission. And this requires vetting. 

This requires thoughtful reflection when we're hiring. We should not just hire an all-star researcher just because they're an all-star researcher. They need to be someone who also values service. And what might this look like in practice? 

Let's say that this particular individual that an academic unit is hiring, let's say they don't enjoy 

themselves engaging in much service. That may be passable. However, what makes it a problem is if that particular faculty member doesn't value the service that others do. So I'm not sitting here saying that everybody has to engage at the highest levels of research, teaching, and service. 

What I am saying is, regardless of the distribution of our work, we need to be hiring people that value research, teaching, and service when it comes to supporting their colleagues and creating a culture in their academic units. And so we have to do better when we're interviewing people, for example, and asking them questions about service, asking them how do they go about ensuring that service matters. I've served on many faculty search committees. We talk about the research that faculty members do, the teaching that faculty members do, but service rarely comes up. We have to change that.
 
 Next, I would say that we have to ensure that PhD students are socialized to value service. So, the thing about devaluing service is, it doesn't just start when faculty members are at the faculty stage. We start getting signals pretty early on as PhD students that we should not be dedicating our time to service. 

So we need to ensure that in our courses, in our conversations with PhD students, that we are shining a bright and positive light on service and all that you can do with service. While there are committees that are valuable, even though oftentimes faculty members criticize committees, service can extend far beyond committees. As I stated earlier, service is also about how we can impact the public. So, if we could ensure that our PhD students know what service is, know how broad it can be, and if we teach them how to value it, then we are creating a pipeline of people who can give service a bright future in the academy. 

And lastly, it's important that we all call service shaming out and respectfully, of course. So, if you as a faculty member or a dean are in a promotion and tenure meeting and service is not being appropriately valued, that's where we all have to take it upon ourselves as leaders and say, hey, I noticed in discussing this person's promotion and tenure case that we've not spoken about how they say engaged in the community and apply their research to impact the public in some transformational way. We have to ensure that in high-stakes environments that we are uplifting service and giving credit to the great links that faculty members go to in order to bring about impact to society through their service.
 
 

Leslie 

Thank you so much for elucidating those points because I think that that's the biggest question is like, we know it's a problem, but how do we go about addressing it? And so I think those are really tangible, concrete steps that departments and leaders can take, as well as just faculty members that care about this stuff, which should be everyone. But I have one final question for you that is bigger than the academy. 

So we are in a moment where higher ed is clearly under attack. There's a lot of societal distrust of academics, of knowledge, of science. And I'm curious about your thoughts about how service might help universities actually start to regain public trust. 
 
 

Cullen 

Yeah, that's a really great point. So, Leslie, I don't think the general public knows what we do. I think when it comes to being a faculty member, the general public, and this is not their fault, but whether it be watching TV or seeing other caricatures of professors elsewhere, there is a very narrow mindset when it comes to the great work that faculty members do. Now, we can sit here and blame it on the public. 

We can say they should be reading more about what we do. They should know more. They should not make assumptions about what we do. But I actually don't think it's their fault. 

I think it's the Academy's fault. And one of the things that service does is it gets us out into the community, right? At least service to the public does. It allows us to interface with society and allows us to interface with common people who otherwise may not be interested in the work of the academy. And I think of many areas where this is happening right now, it could be in the health field or in education or in my field, public administration and public policy, faculty members are getting out into the community and doing great work, and we need to do more of it. When we think about how our research can interface with the public, then we're putting ourselves in a position to be valued by the people we are intended to serve. 

Going back to the missions of universities, these are oftentimes state-funded institutions. Many of these institutions receive federal funding, although that's being limited in these times, so we owe it to the broader public to not just be unto ourselves in the academy. And so I think service really gives us the opportunity to get out of our offices, get out of our classrooms, and to engage with people who we hope our work will impact and people who may not understand what specifically professors do or what universities do. I also think, too that getting out in the public puts us in a position to learn from them. 

You know, I don't like the notion that it's our job to solely teach and educate the public. We have to also understand that they can teach and educate us. They can ensure that our research is grounded in reality. And so I think, again, in these two ways, service can really help ensure that we are connected with the public and give the work that we are doing a better reputation. 

Again, it can help the public, but then it puts them also in a position to help us. And when people see what we do, I think there's greater appreciation for the fact that so many scholars really care about ensuring that their work is of great public value. 

Leslie 

Totally. Yeah. Like you said before, why do all this work if people don't know about it? Right?
 
 

Cullen 

Absolutely. 

Leslie 

So this has been such a great conversation, such amazing points that you've made. Really, really important topic here. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm just wondering what's the best way for listeners to connect with you and to find out about your book? 

Cullen 

Absolutely. So, please stay connected with me or get connected with me on social media. So I'm on LinkedIn. Just look up my name, Cullen Merritt. 

There are not a lot of Cullen Merritts out there. So you'll come across my profile. And I'm also on Blue Sky. And then lastly, I would also encourage you to go to my website, CullenMerritt.com. 

So C-U-L-L-E-N-M-E-R-R-I-T-T dot com. And you'll get, in addition to, you know, my email address, you'll get to see a lot of good information about the work that I'm doing in my biography, my resume slash CV, and in other components that are on my website. So you can find me there. 

Leslie 

Fantastic. So listeners connect with him, follow him. I'm sure your book is going to really make a big splash. So, thank you again for doing this work. Thanks for your time, and take care. 

Cullen 

Thanks, Leslie.