Research and Discovery

Our goal is to be a national and international leader in legal research and scholarship to support the role of law in society and using the law and legal systems to solve contemporary problems.

Strategy #1: Support faculty in being productive and engaged scholars throughout their careers.

Critical tasks	Indicators of Success
Foster a culture in the College of Law that encourages all faculty to maximize research productivity.	Increased scholarly output by law faculty. In progress. Increased number of faculty who make presentations to students, faculty, and others at the University of Iowa and beyond. In progress. Increased number of faculty who participate in workshops and reviews of one another’s scholarship. In progress. Increased time for faculty to pursue scholarly activities by reducing faculty service responsibilities, consistent with collegiate needs and administrative interests of faculty. In progress.
Establish practices that facilitate scholarly productivity and dissemination of scholarship.	Adopt practices to keep faculty informed of opportunities to secure support for their research and to encourage faculty to pursue external support. In progress. Adopt practices to recognize faculty members for scholarly achievements. In progress.

Critical tasks

Indicators of Success

Foster a culture in the College of Law that encourages all faculty to maximize research productivity.

Increased scholarly output by law faculty. In progress.
Increased number of faculty who make presentations to students, faculty, and others at the University of Iowa and beyond. In progress.
Increased number of faculty who participate in workshops and reviews of one another’s scholarship. In progress.
Increased time for faculty to pursue scholarly activities by reducing faculty service responsibilities, consistent with collegiate needs and administrative interests of faculty. In progress.

Establish practices that facilitate scholarly productivity and dissemination of scholarship.

Adopt practices to keep faculty informed of opportunities to secure support for their research and to encourage faculty to pursue external support. In progress.
Adopt practices to recognize faculty members for scholarly achievements. In progress.

Strategy #2: Position Iowa Law’s faculty scholarship to affect and engage with approaches taken by other scholars, lawyers, policy makers, and the public.

Critical tasks	Indicators of Success
Enhance the visibility of faculty research among scholarly, professional, judicial, policy-making and public audiences.	Increased promotion and dissemination of faculty scholarship, especially to academic and professional communities and to the general public as appropriate with faculty scholarship embraced as part of the UI’s identity as the “Writing University.” In progress. Increased collaboration between faculty and staff in promoting awareness of faculty research in traditional media, social media, and other media outlets. Complete. Increased number of faculty gaining platforms for discussing their ideas, and achieving greater recognition, through membership in learned societies. In progress. Increased number of citations of faculty research and scholarship in the work of other scholars, as well as decisions by policy makers or courts. In progress. Increase in variety of communication channels in which faculty ideas appear. In progress.
Support direct faculty involvement in promotion of research and policy ideas to other scholars, lawyers, policy makers and the public.	Increased number of faculty (with a goal of most faculty) presenting or promoting their research or law-reform activities to other scholars, lawyers, policy makers, or the public. In progress. Increase number of training opportunities to support faculty in disseminating ideas and expertise. In progress.
Encourage faculty to engage in collaborative work, including interdisciplinary and co-authored publications.	Increased number of faculty involved in cross-disciplinary or collaborative research projects. In progress. Increased number of scholars from other UI-colleges meaningfully engaged with the College of Law and more institutional-level collaborations around substantive programs. In progress.
Support and promote the College of Law as a center of scholarly discussion and inquiry.	Increase attendance for scholarly presentations and similar events, whether in person or online, across a broad audience of students, faculty, and scholars. In progress. Increased engagement of the law library by research scholars globally and visiting faculty. In progress.