SF State’s Director of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement recognized for his impact on service-learning and community-campus partnerships throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and the California State University system.

January 25, 2010

San Francisco, CA – California Campus Compact has selected Gerald Eisman, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at San Francisco State University, as the recipient of California Campus Compact’s 2010 Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence & Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education.

California Campus Compact developed the Richard E. Cone Award in response to the recommendations of service-learning practitioners throughout California who expressed hope that creating such an award would inspire all higher education institutions to consider ways to deepen their efforts to institutionalize and sustain authentic community-campus partnerships.

“Dr. Eisman is known for his visionary approaches to securing authentic, dynamic, lasting partnerships between community and campus – not just at San Francisco State University, but throughout the entire California State University system,” said Elaine Ikeda, Ph.D., Executive Director of California Campus Compact. “We are pleased to recognize Dr. Eisman and highlight his exemplary body of work in the field of service-learning and civic engagement by presenting him with the 2010 Richard E. Cone Award.”

For more than a decade, Dr. Eisman has been a leader in the field of service-learning and civic engagement. He directed the San Francisco State University Office of Community Service Learning during the office’s infancy in the late 1990s, quickly establishing service-learning opportunities for students in more than 40 departments and 8 colleges on the campus. From 2004 to 2006, he was the Service-Learning Faculty Scholar in the California State University Office of the Chancellor, developing service-learning initiatives throughout the California State University system and creating and editing Service-Learning for Civic Engagement, a cutting-edge monograph series that explores how to connect classrooms to communities through service-learning to teach issues of social justice, gender identity and political engagement.

In his current position, as the Director of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at San Francisco State University, Dr. Eisman has teamed with a diverse array of community and campus partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to addressing the emergency preparedness needs of some of San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents, conduct participatory research projects focused on the San Francisco In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority and produce public forums that tackle touchstone community issues, including the shortage of public housing, reentry of formerly incarcerated individuals and health care for underserved populations.

Currently, Dr. Eisman and the team at the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement are developing a new initiative called NENu, a collaboration between the City of San Francisco’s Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NEN) and a growing consortium of universities that serve San Francisco communities through engagement. The goal of NENu is to develop foundational research studies, establish inter-university collaborations and expand service-learning and community-based research projects that directly respond to the needs of localized communities.

“Gerald Eisman has literally remade the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement into one of the shining lights of San Francisco State,” said Robert A. Corrigan, President of San Francisco State University, “and the vibrancy of the Institute has, in turn, created deep and enduring changes for the better in both our campus and its surrounding communities.”

About the Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence & Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education

Richard E. Cone, Ph.D., has been a voice in the national dialogue on experiential education, civic engagement and service-learning since the 1970s, and has provided a guiding spirit and voice in the development and evolution of California Campus Compact since its beginnings more than 20 years ago. For 25 years, he directed the much-lauded Joint Educational Project (JEP) at the University of Southern California from which he retired in 2002. In 1999, California Campus Compact presented Dick Cone with the first Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence & Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education. Since then, the award has been bestowed annually upon an individual who has made significant contributions to the development of partnerships between institutions of higher education and communities—partnerships through which student learning and the quality of life in communities are simultaneously improved. For more information on the Richard E. Cone Award and a list of past honorees, please visit http://www.cacampuscompact.org/html/initiatives/coneAward.html.

About California Campus Compact

California Campus Compact is a coalition of leading colleges and universities that works to build the collective commitment and capacity of colleges, universities and communities throughout California to advance civic and community engagement for a healthy, just and democratic society. Through innovative programs and initiatives, grant funding, training and technical assistance, professional development and powerful research studies and publications, California Campus Compact each year invests in and champions more than 500,000 students, faculty members, administrators and community members involved in diverse and ground-breaking activities that support and expand civic and community engagement throughout California. For more information, please visit http://www.cacampuscompact.org.

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