Content with Topics : Engaged Scholarship

Campus Compact Action Statement to be Celebrated in Boston

Campus Compact will be celebrating the more than 350 signatories on our Action Statement during a Summit of Presidents and Chancellors on March 20, 2016 at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. Over 350 Campus Compact member presidents and chancellors have already signed the Campus Compact 30th Anniversary Action Statement, a document containing strong language about the public obligations of higher education that commits campuses to taking specific steps to deepen their engagement for the benefit of students, communities, and the broader public. The document concludes with a commitment by each signatory to create…

Creating a Great Campus Civic Action Plan

Campus Compact has made available guidance for campuses engaged in designing campus action plans. The plans emanate from commitments made in the Campus Compact 30th Anniversary Action Statement. In signing the 30th Anniversary Action Statement, presidents and chancellors make a public commitment both to its principles and to developing a plan to put those principles into action. The framework available on the Campus Compact website provides a shared foundation for Compact members to approach Civic Action Plan (CAP) development while encouraging creativity, flexibility, and boldness. Our guide for “Creating a Great Civic Action Plan” is a useful starting point and…

Community Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship: A Bigger Umbrella

If we imagine all the ways our campuses can engage with the larger community, we can think of a pretty large umbrella. It may include service-learning, community-based research, problem-based learning, civic work and others. Recently, social entrepreneurship has been an increasingly important presence on campuses. Ashoka U, the higher education arm of Ashoka, a four-decade old incubator for social entrepreneurs recently found social entrepreneurship courses and programs in over two hundred campuses. Articles about social entrepreneurs have appeared in major media outlets. Fixes, a series co-written by David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg for the New York Times, features articles on…

Explore 30th Anniversary Conference Program

The full conference program is now available! Learn more about the many exciting opportunities for learning and networking at Campus Compact’s 30th Anniversary Conference this March in Boston. For three days, administrators, faculty, and other higher education leaders will convene for a critical dialogue about past and present efforts to achieve our shared goals and how we can move higher education to more fully embrace its public purposes. Don’t miss out on this special opportunity to join your colleagues across the country – Explore conference details and register today!

Now Accepting Applications for 2016 Newman Civic Fellows

The nomination period for Campus Compact’s Newman Civic Fellows Award, which recognizes community-involved student leaders, is now open!Campus Compact member presidents and chancellors are encouraged to nominate a student for this special recognition.The Newman Civic Fellows Award honors the late Frank Newman, one of Campus Compact’s founders and a tireless advocate for the civic engagement of higher education. You can learn more about the 2015 Newman Civic Fellows here.In the spirit of Dr. Newman’s leadership, we are seeking nominations of undergraduate or graduate students who are proven leaders with both the motivation and ability to make substantial contributions toward public…

The Engaged Dissertation: Exploring Trends in Doctoral Student Research

This study explored the extent to which doctoral students are conducting community-engaged scholarship and investigated the characteristics of their degree-granting institutions. The research utilized the most immediate work of doctoral students by examining completed dissertations. Analysis showed which graduate students are pursuing community engagement through their scholarship, whether they are increasing in number, and the fields of study and institution types with which they are affiliated. By identifying who is producing engaged scholars, best practices can be identified in the future. In addition, the findings revealed which disciplines and institution types have room to increase their output of community-engaged research….

Scholarship of engagement and engaged scholars: Through the eyes of exemplars

How do leaders of the scholarship of engagement (SOE) experience and define this field? To gain insights into these differing understandings of SOE, this study explored the perspectives of a group of elites, exemplars within the field of the scholarship of engagement. Framed in social constructivism, this study explored the exemplars’ socially and culturally mediated experiences, beliefs, and symbolic interactions. Key findings suggested that the exemplars’ journey and their understandings of SOE were interrelated to their current positionality. Two interrelated but different groups emerged from the data, representing a university-centric enclave and a community engagement-centric enclave. These two groupings suggested…

Measuring and Articulating the Value of Community Engagement: Lessons Learned from 100 Years of Cooperative Extension Work

The Cooperative Extension System was created in 1914 with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act. Cooperative Extension was the first formal nationwide structure created for university–community engagement. Expectations for Extension as an engaged institution have changed over time. Once seen chiefly as a source of private value for program participants in local communities, Extension is now also expected to provide public value for those not directly involved in Extension programs. After 100 years of community engagement efforts, Cooperative Extension has learned lessons about measuring and articulating the value of engagement related to professional development, program development, funding, structure, and organization…

Scholarship Perceptions of Academic Department Heads: Implications for Promoting Faculty Community Engagement Scholarship

After North Carolina State University developed recommendations for departments and faculty to integrate learning, discovery, and engagement through the scholarship of engagement, the issue was raised: “What do department heads think, and how do they support engagement especially during promotion, tenure, and reappointment of engaged faculty?” This study found that 75% of departments say they value community- engagement scholarship when making promotion and tenure decisions, 73% of the departments include standards to reward community-engagement scholarship, and 20% of the departments have no expectations for faculty to be community-engagement scholars. When asked if community engaged participatory research was valued, it ranked…

Partnering to Survive: Reflections on the Pursuit of Campus-Community Initiatives Prior to Tenure

How does a early career faculty member survive the pursuit of campus-community initiatives? This article draws on experiences gained through a unique faculty position that combines community engagement with full academic responsibilities. The article provides lessons learned through adventures in applied teaching, negotiated criteria for tenure and promotion, and the cultivation of community relationships that have culminated in a truly “civic scholarship.” Sherman, D.L. (2013). Partnering to Survive: Reflections on the Pursuit of Campus-Community Initiatives Prior to Tenure. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 17(4), 155-174.

Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action

This special issue of Progress in Community Health Partnerships (PCHP), “Maximizing Community Contributions, Benefits, and Outcomes in Clinical and Translational Research,” seeks to advance the field of community-based health research by providing information, tools, and understanding of the accomplishments, best practices, and challenges that community and academic partners have experienced in their engagement with National Institutes of Health-funded Clinical and Translational Science Awardees (CTSAs) and other research entities. Shepard, P.M., Idehen, A., Casado, J., Freeman, E., Horowitz, C., Seifer, S., & Hal Strelnick, H. (Eds.). (2013). Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 7(3), 231-233.

Design in the Public Interest –The Dilemma of Professionalism

Part One is an overview of concepts of professionalism in design. It concludes with an overview of emerging trends in academic and professional practice, such as non-profit community design advocacy projects like Design Corps, and numerous practices engaged in what the Cooper-Hewitt Museum calls ―Design for the Other 90 Percent. Part Two focuses on the design process itself, arguing for approaches that favor Design Engagement rather than Design Assistance and offering principles that can foster community collaborative design practice.Corser, Rob. (2011). Design in the Public Interest –The Dilemma of Professionalism. Imagining America. Full Text.

Making Value Visible: Excellence in Campus-Community Partnerships in the Arts, Humanities, and Design

This study, commissioned by Imagining America, sets forth what practitioners themselves believe to be the characteristics of excellence in campus-community partnerships in the arts, humanities, and design. The report finds that at the core of excellence is learning and knowledge-making through reciprocal relationships. Sociable learning yields three types of negotiated complexity that seem to be intrinsic to the experience of excellent partnerships: a sense of spatial mobility, an aesthetics of practice, and richly detailed documentation.Koch, C. (2005). Making Value Visible: Excellence in Campus-Community Partnerships in the Arts, Humanities, and Design. Imagining America: Arts & Scholars in Public Life. Full Report.

Publicly Engaged Scholarship in the Humanities, Arts and Design

This pamphlet provides an overview of how colleges and universities are expanding and deepening the role that publicly engaged scholarship in the humanities, arts, and design can play in contributing to positive change in the communities and regions within which higher education institutions exist. Through the lens of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, the only national coalition working explicitly at the nexus of publicly engaged scholarship and the humanities, arts, and design, author Jamie Haft exemplifies the range of work as it is practiced through courses, projects, programs, centers, institutes, and institution-wide initiatives. Haft, J. (2012). Publicly Engaged Scholarship…

Participatory action research as a tool in solving desert vernacular architecture problems in the Western Desert of Egypt

The aim of the research is to introduce a methodological approach applying participatory action research (PAR) as a tool to help save the future of the currently deteriorating desert vernacular architecture in Egypt. To benefit from local know-how, a desert vernacular model house was constructed using PAR methods that engaged the local community throughout the design and building phases. As this is an international problem, the research developed several techniques within PAR, applied in a flexible way, giving the opportunity for further application in similar vernacular settlements suffering from similar problems. Dabaieh, M. (2013). Participatory action research as a tool…

Bridging the gap of knowledge and action: A case for participatory action research (PAR)

What is the purpose of knowledge? Is it an end product only, or a means for action for change? Who is expected to take action – the researcher, research subjects, both, or some unknown others who may come across the knowledge produced? The larger question then is: is it health research, or research for health, equity and development? This article raises these concerns in context of a study conducted in Pakistan entitled Women’s Empowerment in Muslim Contexts (WEMC). It proposes, especially, in resource poor countries, combining health research with Paolo Freire’s view of participation and change, and sees action by…

The New Public Humanists

In this guest column for PMLA, the author describes new trends in public and engaged scholarship in the humanities. Ellison, J. (2013). The New Public Humanists. PMLA, 128(2), 289-298. Full Text.

Integrating community-based participatory research and informatics approaches to improve the engagement and health of underserved populations

This study compared 5 health informatics research projects that applied community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches with the goal of extending existing CBPR principles to address issues specific to health informatics research. Researchers found that benefits of applying CBPR approaches to health informatics research across the cases included the following: developing more relevant research with wider impact, greater engagement with diverse populations, improved internal validity, more rapid translation of research into action, and the development of people. The authors then created several principles that extended an existing CBPR framework to specifically address health informatics research requirements. Unertl, K. M., Schaefbauer, C.L., Campbell, T.R.,…

The Spatial Politics of Affect and Emotion in Participatory GIS

This article examines how the authors’ participatory research with the Maijuna people of the Peruvian Amazon resulted in many positive, affective, and emotional results outside of the final map product. Although the project was initiated as an attempt to produce a map that the Maijuna could use in pursuit of land rights, methodological choices made by the authors also produced positive emotions in participants, political bonding, and community-wide education. This article argues that researchers should begin engaging in more affective and emotional thinking when constructing their research methodologies, to both improve the results of their project and to mitigate potential…

Who’s publishing what? Publication patterns in seven community engagement journals.

This conference presentation shares a three phased research study that investigated the following questions: (1) What types of articles are published in the community engagement journals? (2) Who is publishing in the community engagement journals? And, (3) How rigorous is the research published in the community engagement journals? The findings of this study are discussed. Implications of the findings for authors, community engaged scholarship journals, and the field of engaged scholarship are also discussed. Doberneck, D. M., & Schweitzer, J. H. (2012). Who’s publishing what? Publication patterns in seven community engagement journals. Proceedings from the 13th Annual National Outreach Scholarship…