Picturing Community Engagement: What We Say Through Images and Why It Matters

This webinar for community engagement professionals draws on research by Donahue, Fenner, & Mitchell (2015) to explore the ways that photographs convey to students, faculty, and community partners what community-engaged learning is and can be. Through content analysis of photos found on websites of service-learning at California colleges and universities, the authors found a narrow and apolitical view of service. When invited to “audience” photographs – a method of decoding images drawing on the perceptions of a group of people – students found racialized patterns of who is helped and who helps. A narrow understanding of service and racialized patterns of helping reinforce charity interpretations of service-learning.

Director, Office of Community-University Partnerships and Service Learning
@ The University of Vermont

A sociologist by training, Dr. Munkres has been with the CUPS Office since 2012, and has served as Director since January of 2013. Susan works primarily with faculty and community partners to develop pedagogically rigorous and reciprocal experiences that benefit both UVM students and community partners.

Engage the 2020 Census: Resources for the Whole Campus

Prepare as Census 2020 approaches. The April 1, 2020 census presents an opportunity to bridge students’ learning with their future careers, foster action on social issues students care about, and build the power and representation of historically undercounted communities through student and community participation. This webinar will help faculty develop course plans and staff create programming that will bring the census to life.

Building on work currently underway on campuses in multiple states, campus representatives will share their tools and strategies to engage the census.

Using Student Engagement Data to Create Institutional Change

The Experiential Record at Nazareth College is a systematic, campus-wide data collection initiative created in-house to track all undergraduate and graduate students’ participation in experiential education. Implemented last academic year, this new process enables Nazareth to gather various, independent streams of data into one place, creating a centralized knowledge hub of student engagement. Benefits to students, faculty, staff and community include: an increase in interprofessional collaboration, stronger advising and coaching of students, innovative support strategies developed for targeted student populations, stronger relationships with community partners and sustained partnerships, and increased knowledge of and access to student success stories for marketing and donor relations. Examples of dashboards and reports by way of Tableau, the data visualization tool Nazareth uses, will also be shared with participants.

Decolonizing Approaches to Inclusive Discussions and Trainings: Lessons from Indigenous Perspectives

The future of community engagement work requires a framework that is strengths-based, centers historically underrepresented groups working towards justice on their terms, and includes an analysis of power, positionality, systemic causes of disparities, needs for institutional changes, and critiques of inclusion assumptions. This session will provide decolonizing practice resources, concrete examples, and a chance to reflect on how to apply the practices to your context. Examples include an interactive session focused on how instructors, trainers, and supervisors can create environments that feel relevant, welcoming, and safe to all participants. The session is relevant to instructors, researchers, AmeriCorps Vista trainers, and Campus Compact employees and administrators in both predominantly White institutions as well as contexts with a majority of first-generation college students and large percentages of minority students, employees, and volunteers.

Associate Professor
@ University of Montana

Laurie worked as a community organizer, in after school programs, in treatment centers, and with college student leadership development in student clubs prior to becoming a professor. Laurie’s current work with the ACLU seeks to address discipline and achievement disparities for minority populations in Montana’s public primary and secondary schools. Laurie was awarded the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration Emerging Scholar Award in 2014, the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement in 2017, and the Nancy Borgmann Diversity Award in 2019. Laurie regularly trains AmeriCorps Vistas, Campus Compact staff, and Lynton Colloquium attendees on integrated frameworks for entering and exiting community partnerships that includes decolonizing approaches to engagement.

BSW, MSW, and Independent Consultant

Turquoise is a first generation descendent of the Salish and Blackfeet tribes in Montana. Turquoise works with students and institutions on resiliency, diversity, equity, inclusion, and trauma-informed approaches to support Native American, low-income, and first-generation high school and college achievement in rural and urban settings. Turquoise works at the intersections of direct support to students, conducting organizational process consulting, program evaluation, and training for school staff, teachers/faculty, administrators, and community members in Tribal and non-Tribal educational settings. Turquoise was the Montana Indian Education Association’s American Indian Support Staff of the Year Award in 2017.

Let’s play Votes & Ballots: Creating quality action plans for democratic engagement through gamification

In this webinar, participants will be introduced to Votes & Ballots, an interactive activity that takes the guesswork out of on-campus democratic engagement. Players are tasked with creating a comprehensive action plan while keeping in mind their institution’s historical voting rates (via NSLVE data), their resources, and the unique challenges faced by student voters.

Votes & Ballots has been primarily played among students and staff, but, with an eye toward deepening faculty engagement, a Votes & Ballots: Curricular Edition is in development. Participants will learn about multiple ways through which they can incorporate Votes & Ballots into their work and be able to ask questions/offer feedback.

Campus Partnerships Manager
@ Democracy Works (makers of TurboVote)

Emily supports college campuses across the country in their work to increase civic learning and democratic engagement among student voters, with a particular focus on leveraging technology. In addition to supporting partners’ strategic use of TurboVote, Emily travels to conferences in order to facilitate Votes & Ballots, an action planning activity developed by Democracy Works that takes the guesswork out of on-campus democratic engagement. She graduated from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Journalism degree and, before joining Democracy Works, was part of the EdTech team at Scholastic. Emily’s based in Chicago for now, but she has a knack for landing in new cities and setting out to discover all they have to offer in the realms of dance, bookstores, and burgers.

Assistant Professor of Political Science
@ Oswego State University of New York

Dr. Rank teaches courses in American politics with a focus on American political history, political communication, race, and gender. In addition to traditional political science courses, she serves as the campaign manager for the campus-wide voter mobilization program Vote Oswego. In this capacity she oversees an internship program and runs a politics practicum course focused on grassroots organizing. Her research agenda focuses on the role of youth in American politics, civic engagement, and political science pedagogy. Her work has appeared in New Political Science, PS:Political Science & Politics, Journal of Political Science Education, and Citizenship Studies.

A Focus on Faculty: Practical and Research-Informed Strategies for Faculty Development in Community Engagement

As S-LCE professionals, many of us are adept in navigating the complexities of working with students, community partners, and broader members of the community. Often, our work with faculty partners and academic departments can be more daunting, in large part due to a dearth of frameworks guiding this work. Building upon the presenters’ recently released edited volume, Reconceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement, the overarching goal of this session is for participants to analyze and situate their work with faculty partners in an array of best practices, emerging with ideas, resources, and support structures that advance S-LCE faculty development on their campuses.

In this webinar, there will be a presentation with built-in opportunities for interaction. We will provide an overview of the book, and then hone in on topics most pertinent to our goals, pulling from our book chapters to offer ideas and perspectives. Through engagement in this webinar, participants will make progress toward: (1) Identifying three research-informed practices in supporting S-LCE faculty; (2) Learning approaches to reconciling and navigating factors that influence educational engagement in S-LCE (e.g., P&T practices, community tensions, student resistance); and (3) Developing strategies for engaging faculty in S-LCE on their campuses

Director of Service-Learning
@ Northeastern University

Becca began at Northeastern’s Center of Community Service in February 2013, and is now the Director of Service-Learning. Previously, Becca served as the Coordinator of Experiential Education in the Center for Engagement, Learning, and Teaching at Keene State College, in Keene, New Hampshire. She has also served as a Course Director for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida and worked at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida facilitating leadership education and development initiatives on campus both in the curriculum and the co-curriculum. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Butler University, a Master’s degree in College Student Personnel from Miami University, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from Antioch University New England.

Her scholarly research is at the intersection of leadership, change, and environmental justice with a specific interest in the justice issues facing farmworkers. For her dissertation research, she collaborated with the Northeast Organic Farming Association for Just Farming: An Environmental Justice Perspective on the Capacity of Grassroots Organizations to Support the Rights of Organic Farmers and Laborers. Becca serves as the Associate Director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research Collaborative, and her book, Environmental Justice and Farm Labor, published by Routledge, came out in 2017. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Agricultural Justice Project, and the Farmworker Health and Justice Workgroup of Coming Clean, Inc.

In addition, she does research, publishes, and presents in the field of service-learning and community engagement and a book she co-edited, Reconceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement (through Stylus Publishing, LLC), came out in 2018. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). In her free time, she loves running and being active, as well as spending time with her husband, Jonathan, her stepson, Kaiman, and her son, Thayer.

Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Innovation and Associate Professor of Graduate Psychology
@ James Madison University

A proud alumnus, Dr. Cara Meixner returned to James Madison University in 2008. Currently, Cara serves as Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Innovation and Associate Professor of Graduate Psychology. Cara teaches courses in research methods, leadership development, organizational behavior, hunger and homelessness, and gender studies. With a penchant for qualitative and mixed methods research, Cara maintains an active research agenda in brain injury advocacy and enjoys contributing to the scholarships of engagement, discovery, and teaching & learning. She’s co-author and co-editor of a new text, Reconceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement.

Executive Director, Center for Experiential Learning
@ Loyola University Chicago

Patrick M. Green, EdD is the Executive Director (founding director) of the Center for Experiential Learning at Loyola University Chicago and a clinical instructor of experiential learning. Dr. Green received his doctorate in education from Roosevelt University (Chicago, IL), and his research interests include the intersections of experiential education. He is coeditor of Crossing Boundaries: Tension and Transformation in International Service-Learning (Stylus Publishing, 2014) and Re-conceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement: Exploring Intersections and Models of Practice (Stylus Publishing, 2018). Dr. Green serves as an Engaged Scholar with National Campus Compact and, having served on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSCLE), currently serves as a Scholar-in-Residence with IARSLCE.

Associate Director, Center for Service Learning
@ The University of Kansas

Emily Eddins Rountree, PhD, is the Associate Director for the Center for Service Learning at the University of Kansas and leads faculty development and community partner engagement for KU. Dr. Rountree came to KU from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where she was charged with creating and developing ODU’s service-learning initiative as the first service-learning professional at the institution. She’s received several major grants to develop service-learning projects that address sea level rise, climate change, and conservation, one with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the other from Virginia Sea Grant. She also recently published an edited volume, entitled Reconceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement: Exploring Intersections, Frameworks, and Models of Practice. Dr. Rountree received her PhD and MS in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources from Colorado State University. With a fellowship from the Center for Collaborative Conservation, she completed her research on international service-learning in rural Panama. She chooses to work in service-learning because of its complexity, global-local significance, and the belief that collaborative processes between universities and surrounding communities can enact real social and environmental change.

Building Democratic Skills Through Deliberative Dialogue

In the face of ever-increasing polarization and divisiveness, there is a great need and desire for an effective, accessible, and inclusive tool for diverse people to engage across difference in pursuit of common ground for action on major social issues. A Deliberative Dialogue Forum brings people together in a small gathering to deliberate about challenging public issues. The process is guided by a neutral moderator and a discussion guide that presents multiple approaches to addressing the problem. Deliberative Dialogue provides an effective framework for mutual understanding and a common purpose that allows people to discuss difficult issues, weigh options, and ultimately take action.

This workshop will provide an overview of the National Issues Forum deliberative dialogue model and allow participants to engage in a brief practice Forum. Since 2013, NC Campus Compact as trained over 550 faculty, staff, students, and community members from 71 colleges and universities, representing 12 states, to moderate deliberative dialogues.

Executive Director
@ North Carolina Campus Compact

Since 2015, Garvin has been the Executive Director of North Carolina Campus Compact. She served as Associate Director of North Carolina Campus Compact from 2005-2014. Garvin leads the Compact’s deliberative dialogue initiative and has trained hundreds of faculty, staff, students, and community partners across the state and country in this method. She is a member of the Service Year NC Advisory Council and the Advisory Committee on Civic Health for the Institute for Emerging Issues. Garvin was named a 2016 White-Riley-Peterson Policy Fellow to study afterschool/expanded learning policy and develop and implement state-level policy projects in partnership with the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs (NCCAP) and the national Afterschool Alliance. Garvin holds a Master of Social Work with a concentration in social and economic development and a specialization in management, as well as a B.A. in political science, both from Washington University in St. Louis.

Shelton Professor of Political Science
@ Queens University of Charlotte

Dr. Maggie Commins is the Shelton Professor of Political Science at Queens University of Charlotte. Her teaching and research interests are in U.S.-Latin American relations and U.S. immigration policy. She integrates deliberative dialogue and experiential learning into her courses, encouraging students to learn and practice skills that help them to be more comfortable and effective in community engagement.

Associate Director of the Kernodle Center for Service Learning Community Engagement
@ Elon University

Bob Frigo is the associate director of the Kernodle Center for Service Learning Community Engagement and an instructor in the Department of English at Elon University. He provides leadership for the co-curricular service-learning programs in the Kernodle Center, and coordinates civic and political engagement efforts at the university. Frigo has previously worked at North Carolina State University, Georgia Southern University, Savannah College of Art and Design, and the University of Birmingham. He holds an M.A. in Irish Literature from Queen’s University Belfast, an M.Ed. from the University of South Carolina, and a B.A. in English from Marquette University.

Braving the Wilderness: How Vulnerability Can Be a Pathway for Social Change

As community engagement leaders, we navigate institutional power, internalized conditioning and patterns of entitlement through seen and unseen hierarchal systems. During this interactive webinar, you will learn a framework to give language and understanding for how fear and power imbalances impact our capacity to communicate and connect with people across power and dominance. Instead of retreating and protecting, we will explore what it means to remain “value-based” and vulnerable as you build and deepen authentic relationships across these barriers as the foundation for systemic and transformative justice. You will be asked to reflect on times you have braved the wilderness advocating for change to systems that perpetuate fear and power imbalances. And the times when you haven’t. What have you learned from those experiences? How can those experiences help each of us as leaders to advance change within the context of our community engagement work centered on equity and inclusion? Please note, this workshop will invite participants to share their personal experiences and stretch their comfort zone.

Director, Center for Community Engagement
@ California State University, Office of the Chancellor

For more than 20 years, Judy has been leading and implementing innovative service learning and community engagement initiatives that support the unique needs and interests of higher education institutions and their surrounding communities. As the director of the CSU Center for Community Engagement (CCE), Judy delivers, inspires and sustains high-quality learning opportunities by promoting programs and initiatives that create inclusive spaces for authentic relationships to occur, and that honor personal growth, self-empowerment and life-long learning. Since 2010, her office has successfully supported the expansion of service learning by 93% in STEM disciplines. Judy’s family emigrated to Massachusetts from the Azorean Islands in the 70s, she is a staunch New England Patriots fan and believes that combining mindfulness and meditation with equity work fosters understanding and healing.

Founder and President
@ Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation

Nanci Luna Jiménez is recognized regionally, nationally, and internationally for her highly effective and insightful training, inclusive facilitation, and dynamic speaking with groups of diverse ages, industries, and cultural backgrounds. She founded Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation (LJIST) in 1994 to design and deliver programs to encourage individuals in their process of personal transformation, releasing individual initiative to create a more just and equitable workplace and world.

Nanci facilitates individuals and groups to look freshly at where they might be stuck while supporting them to make transformational changes they envision through: personal healing, cross cultural communication, group consensus, organization inclusion, and short- and long-term planning and implementation.

Of Puerto Rican and Chicana heritage, Nanci was born in Detroit, MI, and raised in Detroit and Tucson, AZ. Nanci thrives doing Bomba—an Afro-Puerto Rican dance and drum tradition—traveling, hiking, weight lifting, training for half marathons and practicing yoga—on and off the mat.

Consultant, Center for Community Engagement
@ California State University

serves as the STEM VISTA Program Coordinator with the Center for Community Engagement at the Chancellor’s Office for the California State University System.  The STEM VISTA Program’s mission is to eliminate the disparities of race, class and gender in STEM undergraduate degree programs.   She previously worked for 18 years as a Service-Learning Coordinator at Cal Poly Pomona’s Center for Community Engagement with a focus on increasing service-learning opportunities and faculty development.  Christina received her Bachelor’s of Arts in Psychology and Social Behavior from UC Irvine and her Master’s Degree in Higher Education from Claremont Graduate University.  As the proud daughter of Cuban refugees and a mother of seven children, she is deeply committed to working in collaboration with others to address inequity.

Designing Asset-Based Educational Experiences

Using participatory facilitation methods, this 60-minute interactive webinar will introduce Dr. Tara J. Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth Model as a framework for discovering and embracing every student’s unique assets, knowledge and talents and explore ways we can transform teaching and learning experiences that welcome students’ whole selves and actively honor diverse ways of knowing, being, and learning. Facilitators will share a variety of examples of how our campuses are incorporating the model and designing asset-based educational experiences.

VISTA Program Manager
@ California State University Office of the Chancellor

High Impact Community-Engaged Learning Practices and Processes

This webinar will focus on three practices that facilitate achievement of high impact community-engaged learning (service-learning). Participants will develop a deeper understanding of cultivating reciprocal relationships, using a project management approach, and educating about context. Each practice will be paired with processes to provide options for implementation. Examples will be drawn from the development of service-learning at St. John Fisher College as the founding director of the program and a stand-alone service-learning course called Social Change through Service. A faculty colleague will provide additional illustrations.

Assistant Director, Institute for Civic and Community Engagement
@ St. John Fisher College

Lynn Donahue is the Assistant Director of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at St. John Fisher College and the founder and director of the College’s community-engaged learning (service learning) program. Under Donahue’s leadership, Fisher engages 700 undergraduate and graduate students per year in community-based projects, embedded in course curriculum, to address the client and capacity-building needs of the College’s community partners in education, poverty, health, and sustainability. She is a published author and trainer on topics including reciprocity, pedagogy and assessment, engaged scholarship, project management, and leadership. Lynn Donahue is also the recipient of several grants to enhance children’s social-emotional learning and awards for her participation in community and civic engagement.

Assistant Professor & Program Director, Gerontology
@ St. John Fisher College

Professor Marta Rodríguez-Galán received her B.A. in licensure studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain; her M.A. in Hispanic studies at the University of Rhode Island, and her Ph.D. in sociology at Northeastern University. Her dissertation project was awarded the Farnsworth Trust Fellowship in Aging Policy Research (2006-2007). For the past few years, she has been conducting research in the areas of aging, health, social engagement, and family, with a particular focus on Hispanic/Latino/a communities in the United States. In her current research project on Latina grandmothers who are raising grandchildren, professor Rodríguez-Galán explores the interconnections of gender, immigration and the life course, and how these shape the women’s interpretations of the mother/grandmother role. Her work has been published in journal articles and book chapters in the field of social gerontology.

Associate Professor
@ St. John Fisher College

Speak up: How to work change in your community

This webinar will teach participants how to engage in making change in their city, state, and country by becoming an advocate. The workshop will lead participants through the advocacy process, including:

• Why we should speak up for the issues that matter
• How to effectively make your voice heard
• How to engage your elected officials
• How to share powerful stories.

Staff Attorney
@ Central West Justice Center

Attorney Gina Plata-Nino joined the Central West Justice Center in January 2016 to manage the Food Security Outreach Project, a collaboration between CWJC and the Worcester County Food Bank. The goal of the project is to help clients successfully navigate and become enrolled in SNAP benefits with the help of Food Security volunteer advocates. Previously, she worked as a corporate associate in southeast Asia and as a law clerk at the Massachusetts Appeals Court for the Honorable Cynthia Cohen and Mark Kantrowitz. She also founded a nonprofit organization called Oon Jai, which works to alleviate poverty in southeast Asia.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Director of the Urban Action Institute
@ Worcester State University

Adam Saltsman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Director of the Urban Action Institute (UAI) at Worcester State University. His research and teaching focus on urban inclusion and exclusion, migration, asylum, and displacement, and food security. As Director of the UAI, Adam creates experiential learning opportunities for students to practice civic engagement with community partners in the City of Worcester. Adam draws on many years of applied experience with international and domestic organizations to incorporate advocacy and leadership skill-building into his teaching.

The Power of a Plan: How a Civic Action Plan can Create Significant Impact

Why should your institution create a Civic Action Plan? How do you move your plan from words to action? Creating a Civic Action Plan has been transformational for SUNY Buffalo State College and the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). The plan itself and the process of developing the plan has led to deep and broad conversations and impacts about important issues of reciprocity in community engagement, faculty and staff recognition for this work, and institutional structure and effectiveness. This webinar will provide inspiration and honest feedback from colleagues at Buffalo State and UNI about the initial reasons for creating a civic action plan, the process of creating the plan, the challenges encountered, and the unforeseen tremendous impact the plan has already had at both institutions. We will answer your questions about the process, and encourage you to set up a framework for success through a civic action planning process. Staff from Campus Compact of New York and Pennsylvania will provide reflections on the process across other institutions and from Campus Compact.

Director, Civic and Community Engagement
@ State University of New York – Buffalo State College

Laura Hill Rao is the director of the Buffalo State Civic and Community Engagement Office (CCE). She is responsible for supporting academic, co-curricular, and institutional level community engagement efforts. Buffalo State is deeply committed to its mission as SUNY’s urban-engaged campus, and Rao leads many of the campus’ efforts to provide students with academic and civic learning opportunities connected to addressing community priority, collaborating to lead the institution’s efforts in the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities/Democracy Collaborative Anchor Learning Network, support the college’s commitment to Buffalo’s West Side Promise Neighborhood. Rao holds an M.S. in Environmental Education from Lesley University and a B.A. in Psychology from SUNY Buffalo. She taught environmental and experiential youth programs for a number of years before moving into educational program administration.

Director of Community Engagement & Associate Professor @University of Northern Iowa

Dr. Julianne Gassman is on faculty at the University of Northern Iowa in the School of Kinesiology, Allied Health & Human Services. Dr. Gassman is an Associate Professor in the Leisure, Youth and Human Services Division, the Campus Executive Director of the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance and the Associate Director of Camp Adventure™ Child & Youth Services. Dr. Gassman has taught in the area of nonprofit management for the past eight years and has sixteen years of teaching in leisure, youth and human services. She is the author/co-author of four books, including: Leadership Cases in Community Nonprofit Organizations Managing for Excellence: Programs of Distinction for Children and Youth Contracting Child Care: A Case Study of the Military Child Care Act and Camp Adventure™ Youth Service Camp Leadership: A Staff Development Approach

Professor of dance and coordinator of the dance program
@ SUNY Buffalo State

Joy Guarino is a professor of dance and coordinator of the dance program at SUNY Buffalo State, teaching studio technique, choreography, and dance theory courses. Professor Guarino is also the College’s Faculty Coordinator for Service-Learning. Ms. Guarino earned her MFA from Temple University and holds a NYS Teacher’s Certification in Dance. She has combined her passion for dance and community welfare to develop a unique higher education program and conduct her scholarship that focuses on kinesthetic learning, dance/movement integration, service-learning, and community engagement. As a practitioner and consultant in the arts-in-education profession, both personally and as a mentor for her students, she is committed to finding innovative and practical ways of designing and implementing meaningful arts curricula for diverse populations. Her creative work accentuates the use of mixed media and audience participation with a civic engagement purpose. She has presented her choreography locally, nationally, and internationally. She enjoys working collaboratively with professionals, students, and community partners all over the world; achieving extensive knowledge and experience in the field.

Building Student Dispositions for Community Engaged Learning

This webinar introduces dispositions as a framework for students’ community-engaged learning. Dispositions are filters made up of values, beliefs, cultural backgrounds, and prior experiences that shape how we take in information and make sense of it. Too often, student orientation to community-engaged learning is a checklist of signing waiver forms, logging volunteer hours, and meeting minimum requirements. While logistics matter, the heart of preparation for engaging with community is bringing and developing a set of dispositions that foster positive cognitive and affective growth. While many dispositions can contribute to such growth, focusing on a small set of strategic dispositions provides a robust frame for making sense of community-engaged learning experiences. The webinar is structured around six dispositions: open-mindedness, humility, appreciation of community cultural wealth, intellectual curiosity, empathy, and commitment. These dispositions are particularly vital for community engaged learning designed to promote critical thinking and social justice.

Director, Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good
@ University of San Francisco

David Donahue joined the McCarthy Center as Senior Director in 2015. Before coming to USF, David was the Interim Provost and Associate Vice Provost at Mills College in Oakland, California, and worked there for more than twenty years as a professor of education. David earned his doctorate in Education from Stanford University after earning a Bachelor’s of Arts in History as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. David is a widely-published scholar on topics including service-learning in higher education, human rights, diversity and personal identity. He came to USF committed to the continuation of building a strong community while leading the McCarthy Center in its mission of helping inspire and prepare USF students for lives and careers of ethical public service.

Director of Community-Engaged Learning, Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good
@ University of San Francisco

Star Plaxton-Moore is the Director of Community-Engaged Learning. Star directs institutional support for community-engaged courses and oversees public service programs for undergraduates, including the Public Service and Community Engagement Minor. She designed and implements an annual Community-Engaged Learning and Teaching Fellowship program for USF faculty, and other professional development offerings that bring together faculty and community partners as co-learners. Her scholarship focuses on faculty development for community-engaged teaching and scholarship, student preparation, assessment of civic learning outcomes, and community engagement in institutional culture and practice. Star holds an MEd from George Washington University and is currently completing course work for an EdD in organizational leadership at USF.

Program Manager of Community-Engaged Learning
@ University of San Francisco

Jacqueline Scott Ramos is the Program Manager of Community-Engaged Learning and oversees the Community Empowerment Activists program. Prior to USF, she worked for over 10 years at UCSF and Stanford—promoting positive health and biopsychosocial outcomes for those affected by poverty, HIV/AIDS, incarceration, substance use, mental illness, gentrification, and violence. Her current research identifies the disruptors to harm for incarcerated and justice-involved youth and transitional age youth and examines the health and social lived experiences of public housing residents undergoing privatized redevelopment and renovation. Jackie is a poet, public health researcher, social justice practitioner, and educator, and native to SF’s
Mission district and an alum of USF.

Associate professor and chair of Environmental Studies
@ University of San Francisco

David Silver is an associate professor and chair of Environmental Studies at the University of San Francisco where he teaches classes in urban agriculture, Golden Gate Park, and food, culture, and storytelling. For nearly a decade, he has been researching, writing, and building a multimedia history of the farm at Black Mountain College. He lives with his family in Oakland, CA.