Adding Practitioner Scholars to Our Faculties

At the same time the IT discipline is facing a challenge to the relevance of its scholarship, we also face a severe shortfall of professors. This shortfall is a long term problem that will have to be met through the use of substitutes for the conventional PhD graduate. This article argues that developing mid-career, top caliber IT professionals in "practitioner scholar" doctoral programs can help solve both problems. Practitioner scholars engage in research that is both audience-focused and academically rigorous. Faculty trained in this way can also bring balance to the classroom, avoiding the extremes of strictly academic or practitioner focused education.