The University of South Alabama is a comprehensive coeducational state-assisted institution that explicitly recognizes that the expansion of knowledge is central to the functioning of any university.  The University of South Alabama encourages and supports basic and applied scholarship as well as instructional scholarship for the purposes of increasing knowledge, enhancing classroom instruction, and contributing to the personal and professional development of students, faculty, alumni, and the immediate and extended community served by the University. Scholarship is broadly defined to include all investigative efforts that lead to the origination, integration, application and transfer of knowledge pertinent to the various disciplines and expertise within the University community. A program of sustained scholarship is the responsibility of each faculty member.  The University is responsible for using its resources and processes to encourage, support, and reward scholarship.

Basic scholarship includes both original and integrative research.  Original research involves investigation that seeks to increase human knowledge and experience in the various disciplines and fields of expertise within the University. Integrative research seeks to combine and extend what is known in the various disciplines in new and useful ways by discovering linkages between known, causal, intervening, and outcome variables.

Applied scholarship includes research efforts seeking to find solutions to problems in society while simultaneously contributing to the improvement of practice within each discipline, and among disciplines in an interdisciplinary context. This will be accomplished by applying the results of original and integrative research to practical problems within and among the disciplines.

Instructional scholarship is research that enhances the educational value of instruction within and beyond the University through the integration of current basic and applied scholarship with classroom instruction.  This may include, but is not limited to, peer reviewed scholarly activities such as authoring textbooks.  Although each faculty member has a primary responsibility for the design and conduct of scholarly activities, the University endeavors to encourage scholarly activity in a variety of ways including providing incentives, facilities, funding, and reassigned time to faculty. In addition, the University rewards scholarly activity on the part of the faculty through the systematic consideration of such scholarship within the context of tenure, promotion, and merit pay decisions.