Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement

Stanford University’s Haas Center for Public Service has collaborated with 55 public, private, two- and four-year institutions since 2013 to develop an innovative holistic framework: “Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement.” The pathways describe a range of possibilities by which students can contribute to the common good: community-engaged learning/research; community organizing/activism; direct service; philanthropy; policy/governance; and social entrepreneurship/corporate social responsibility. The framework guides students in exploring how the pathways differ from each other in language, practice, and impact, and how pathways might intersect to effect social change. A free online survey surfaces student predispositions and interests toward the pathways; opens students’ eyes to lifelong career, engagement, and leadership opportunities; and assists community engagement practitioners in developing relevant programming. Presenters will share multi-institution research resulting from the survey. Survey data informs practitioners, who can place students in community settings where they have strong pathway inclinations, encourage students to explore pathways they hadn’t considered, or ensure they experience all six pathways in multiple placements during college. Each pathway provides students with experience they can use with high-impact practices in curricular and co-curricular settings, and in the workplace and civil society.

Speakers: Gail Robinson, Tom Schnaubelt, Annabel Wong

Increasing International Connections for Knowledge Mobilization

Community engagement professionals from UW-Madison will facilitate a session with EU practitioners to increase cross-country connections for knowledge exchange. With so much output around engagement within our own borders, it can be difficult knowing where to access new knowledge coming out globally, and there is much to share between countries about different ways to organize community-based research in all its forms (CBR, CBPR, PAR). In our experience, graduate students and new faculty have said they want to learn more about different models to create equitable research and class projects. The International Living Knowledge Network of “Science Shops” has a 40-year history using principles of knowledge co-creation in a ‘brokerage’ type fashion. Forging positive links with researchers in the EU and beyond would also yield mutually beneficial exchanges of information and resources in both directions, helping increase the reach of CBR and innovation projects globally. While current U.S. political polarization creates heavy headwinds for science and research, many U.S. individuals and institutions are working hard to encourage knowledge co-production, including some robust activities in CBR and Citizen Science we can share and compare.

Speakers: Beth Tryon, María Jesús Pinazo Delgado, Florence Piron, Norbert Stieinhaus, Leonardo de la Torre Avila

Measuring Mutual Benefit and Reciprocity in Community Engagement and Public Service Activities

Mutual benefit and reciprocity are arguably the defining characteristics/principles of the Carnegie Foundation’s definition for community engagement partnerships. In this session, we examine how these two characteristics/principles are often conflated as synonyms by researchers, administrators, and practitioners (Dostilio, et al, 2012; Janke, 2018), and offer definitions and measures that demonstrate their distinctiveness. We will share an emerging research program that is aimed at creating greater conceptual clarity and operationalization of these two terms in how we measure and track community engagement activities and partnerships. We explicate the terms (mutual benefit and reciprocity), describe measures developed to track these aspects of partnerships, and share initial findings of and reflections on 800+ partnerships tracked using Collaboratory(™). Participants will then engage in dialogue around the emerging results to further the development of a construct for measuring reciprocity and mutual benefit, with the hope that it will allow researchers to better establish parameters for inclusion/exclusion of partnerships in studies, allowing larger samples of “apples to apples” comparisons, help scholar-administrators establish baselines and goals for engagement, as differentiated from service. Guiding research questions: – If reciprocity and mutual benefit are two distinguishing features of CE, then how can we measure each one individually? – What types of roles and moments of community participation demonstrate reciprocity? – What outputs and outcomes demonstrate mutual benefit for community and academic partners? – In what ways do community engagement partnerships differ from public service partnerships with regards to reciprocity and mutual benefit?

Speakers:  Emily Janke, Terri Shelton, Kristin Medlin, Kristin Norris

Co-Producing Knowledge in Environmental Justice Research and Teaching

The 21st century is an era of rapid environmental change, from rising sea levels to the growth of cities. Globally, low-income communities and youth constitute a majority of the urban population and experience disproportionate impacts, yet their perspectives are often not included in the planning and design of their environments. Advancing environmental justice requires critically examining what counts as knowledge and applying inclusive and equitable approaches to nurturing knowledge in the next generation. Community-engaged teaching and research offer valuable opportunities to recognize multiple ways of knowing, such as local expertise held by community members. Yet, putting this into practice can often be challenging. Drawing upon a framework that elevates and recognizes multiple forms of knowing, this interactive session will examine how community-engaged teaching and research integrates these ways of knowing alongside more traditional forms of academic knowledge. Instructors in the fields of urban studies and civil engineering, along with a community partner focused on climate change resilience, will share their experiences in environmental justice-oriented research and teaching in the context of this framework. Working in small groups, session participants will share and reflect upon their own experiences with integrating multiple forms of knowledge through community engagement and discuss practical strategies for prioritizing inclusive ways to co-produce knowledge with community partners.

Speakers: Deland Chan, Derek Ouyang, Violet Saena, Esther Conrad

The Arc of Citizenship Bends Toward Justice When We Work Alongside Communities

This webinar provides participants with ideas and resources to work alongside community organizations in mutually beneficial and reciprocal partnerships to deepen community-engaged civic learning. Participants will learn about our educational initiatives and community experiential learning programs that focus on redressing racial and socioeconomic inequities. Presenters will highlight the development and implementation of partnerships between James Madison University and local civic actors and community organizations in the broader Shenandoah Valley on programming, including: experiential learning tours of key sites related to slavery and the ongoing struggle for freedom and rights, and the contributions of social justice movements to American society and democracy; ensuring a complete count in the 2020 Census; education and mobilization for full participation in elections; and equitable responses to community needs during the COVID-19 crisis. Participants will be guided through a design thinking based idea generation and solutions development process to identify how faculty, staff, students and community partners can work together to identify area-specific needs and connect service with political learning to address racial and socioeconomic injustices and inequities while developing an appreciation for the contributions of traditionally marginalized groups to society and democracy. The workshop will offer strategies for building relationships with community organizations and for developing initiatives that provide individuals opportunities to develop and practice civic skills. Presenters will emphasize using discussion-based pedagogy to bridge divides on race and class issues, and to synthesize content knowledge with real world experiences and action.

Speakers:  Jamie Williams, Carah Ong Whaley

Honoring Ways of Knowing for Biocultural Restoration and Resilience in the Face of Climate Change

Our civic engagement work with and in diverse communities is authentic to the extent that we honor and amplify the ways of knowing of our partners, be they experts from community-based organizations, communities of color, or the indigenous cultures of our places. Shared respect for different ways of knowing is the foundation for mutually beneficial, lasting and transformational partnerships. Four case studies will highlight the process of honoring community ways of knowing. Participants will reflect on their “amplifying” of the diverse ways of knowing of their community partners, and their “humbling” of their own academic ways of knowing. They will identify existing strong partnerships that provide a bracing foundation for biocultural restoration, environmental justice, community resilience, and climate change. Key Learning Outcomes: Attendees will learn: 1) to amplify diverse ways of knowing and humble their own specialized knowing 2) to prioritize other ways of knowing in building authentic partnerships 3) to identify strong partnerships for biocultural restoration, environmental justice, community resilience and climate change. 4) to value students’ diverse ways of knowing

Speakers:  Atina Pascua, Robert Franco, Denise Pierson, Ulla Hasager

Innovations for Teaching the Deliberative Experience Online: Our Experiences and Experiments using Common Ground for Action and Online Conferencing Tools

Until very recently, deliberative democracy has mainly meant in-person, face-to-face discussions. However, the current crisis has created an opportunity to innovate by experimenting with moving deliberation online. We will share insights we gained from hosting a national week of cross-campus online deliberative dialogues using Common Ground for Action (CGA), a series of weekly campus based online deliberations, and from several experiments in campus, community, and classroom deliberations using CGA and video conferencing software. Specifically, session attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a short demonstration of CGA, and then we will discuss how to integrate a variety of methods of online deliberation into university classrooms and campus-community deliberative events, how to structure syllabi and assignments for students to get the most from their deliberative experience, and explore best practices with seasoned forum conveners. Presenters represent the diversity of civic engagement in democratic practice across different disciplines at colleges and universities (2-year;4-year), the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums Institute.

Speakers:  Kara Dillard, Kara Lindaman, John Theis, Verdis Robinson

Avoiding Microaggressions within Service-Learning and Community-Engaged Learning

Community-engaged experiences provide the opportunity for faculty to collaborate authentically and reciprocally with partners who often represent historically disenfranchised communities where policy, resource allocation, and deficit-based communication strategies had an impact on growth, perception and development. This recipe results in implicit bias that exists in everyone, and as a result, microaggressions occur. That is exactly what happened on our campus and in our community. As Community Engagement professionals, during our support of faculty service-learning instruction and implementation, we started to see and hear an increasing number of microaggressions from faculty members, community partners and students. In response to these microaggressions occurring within service-learning experiences on our campus we developed workshops for students, faculty, staff and community partners to dedicate time and space to explore their journey with these concepts and to arm them with tools and strategies to address bias in community engagement work and to respond to microaggressions when they occur. This interactive session provides attendees hands-on learning about implicit bias, microaggressions, microresistence strategies and lessons learned from one campus’s journey to involve all community engagement stakeholders in these conversations. Participants will explore how they can engage their campus and community in opportunities to learn about microaggressions and microresistance and to develop strategies for their own community-engaged work to address these issues.

Speakers:  Kirsten Case Fuller, Julie Dierberger, Latrina Parker

The Quest for Authentic Community Engagement: How Market Forces Shape Community Engagement and What to Do About It

It is no secret that market forces play an important role in shaping almost everything in the world, and the higher education civic engagement movement (CEM) is no exception. Market forces have created pressures within higher education that have created the “entrepreneurial university” driven by neoliberalism, which imbues the business creed across the university. How did this happen? What does it mean for the CEM? How does it shape the quest for authentically building just, neighborly communities centered on equity and voices of those most marginalized? What can be done about it? This multidimensional session involves a historical background from an activist urban historian, followed by a panel of practitioner/scholars sharing their perspectives about how to do authentic engagement work within this context. Practical suggestions for how to incorporate this work into Civic Action Planning will also be explored. There will also be an opportunity for people to think collaboratively about what agency they have in countering these market forces and formulate concrete actions for when they return to their campuses. The point is to motivate civic engagement professionals to know their history, understand the forces shaping higher education, and how they can respond.

Speakers: Gavin Luter, Jamie Ducar, Henry Taylor, Kent Koth, Ken Reardon

Innovative Ways to Meet Campus-Community Needs through National Service

National Service programs like AmeriCorps and VISTA have a long-standing history with Campus Compact, across networks, regions, and the country. Compacts are finding creative solutions to campus-community problems to address student basic needs, co-creating student learning experiences, and much more. Join us for this call to learn just a few ways that our National Service members are helping Campus Compact fulfill its mission.

Speaker:  Monique Ellefson