The document discusses plans for the 2022 Bonner Network Meeting. It will focus on reimagining campus-wide engagement by reflecting on current practices, the changing higher education context, and theories to inspire new ideas and strategies. Participants will share creative engagement strategies and discuss challenges like enrollment declines, rising costs, ensuring equity, and uneven student outcomes. The meeting will explore the Bonner Network and Bringing Theory to Practice initiatives which aim to strengthen models of inclusive, engaged learning and catalyze systemic change in higher education. Theories of diffusion of innovations and the three horizons framework will be used to examine changes and shape future possibilities.

1. Reimagine
The 2022 Bonner Network Meeting
Facilitated by Dr. Ariane Hoy, Bonner Foundation, and Dr.
Paul Schadewald, Bringing Theory to Practice

2. Thinking Anew
About Our Campus-Wide Engagement
• Let’s take a pulse of current practices
• We’ll reflect on the broader context of higher
education and how it is changing
• We’ll share a few theories to inspire our work
and generate new ideas and strategies

4. Great Strategies
For Campus-Wide Engagement
• You all are engaging the campus in a myriad
of creative ways!
• Most campuses have at least one integrated
pathway connected with community
engagement (and many are growing them)
• You’ve been building needed infrastructure to
scale this work over decades.

5. Challenges
We’re hearing these all the time!
• Enrollment
• Cost and Debt
• Ensuring Equity
• Uneven Student Learning
• Uncertain Post-graduate Outcomes

6. •Enrollment fell by
1.1 percent, closer to
pre-pandemic levels than
the more drastic
declines that shocked
leaders over the past two
years.
•Some states experience
worse declines.
Enrollment

7. Rising Costs
•Tuition has risen 45% for
private institutions in the
last ten years. For publics,
the rate has been 20%.
•The average total student
debt continues to
hover around $30,000,
according to U.S. News
data.

8. •“A student’s chance of completing college is correlated to their
family’s socioeconomic status. Even disadvantaged students with
top-half scores have a lower chance of completing college than
advantaged students with bottom-half scores.”
Equity
•The 2016 pledge by
elite institutions to
boost enrollment of
low-income students
added just 7,713 such
students between
2015 and 2021.

9. • “The price tag for college continues to rise, while doubts about the work
readiness of college graduates are rampant.”
• “Nearly four in 10 (39 percent) college students and recent graduates
surveyed have had neither an internship nor an experiential learning
opportunity this past year.”
• “The majority of first-generation students (51 percent) missed out on
experiential learning opportunities.”
Uneven Outcomes

10. •What are your experiences and
reactions? What needs to change?

11. We are:
• a national initiative, founded in 2003,
dedicated to holistic, engaged,
inclusive education and to innovation
and change that advances it.
• community of educators dedicated to
the core purposes of higher ed
and the need to change higher ed
We believe:
• college should foster engaged
learning, personal and community
well-being, meaningful preparation
for work, and democratic
citizenship
• educating the whole student means
including all students
• these beliefs require fundamental
change in the student experience,
academic institutions, and higher
ed’s connection to the soc
BT2P

12. • What We Have Done: Since our launch in 2003, BT2P has…
• awarded >600 grants (usually small) to >500
campuses
• published 7 books and >30 newsletters
Key recent and current projects include:
• Biweekly Bringing It letters (84 sent thus far to >
4,000 subscribers)
• Multi-Institutional Innovation Grants (21 grants
to more than
100 institutions
• PLACE Collaboratory (Mellon-funded network of
twelve institutions
and twenty community partners in four cities)
• The Way Forward Grants (Luce-funded project
advancing educational
responses to the pandemic, the economic crisis,
and systemic racism)
• The Way Forward podcast Season One aired in
Spring 2021 and
has received ~ 2,500 downloads
BT2P’s History

13. Paradigm Project
The goal:
To strengthen new models of holistic,
inclusive, engaged learning and to
catalyze systemic change, not just
piecemeal innovation, across higher ed.
Why this and why now?
The bad news:
• 2020 brought long-simmering crises to
a boil
• big change is looming but still
undermined
The good news:
• the era of turmoil has been an era of
creative innovation
• HIPs, equity, civic engagement,
student well-being, engaged
learning, global learning, new
pedagogies…
The complicated news
• …but that creativity is piecemeal,
siloed in old structures, practices,
cultures that needed: transformative
integration and reimagining

14. Paradigm Project
How will the project advance
these goals
Together, we will
shift the public narrative toward a
larger vision of the personal,
social, and civic purposes of
higher ed. through telling the
stories of innovative educational
models and changemakers.
support movements that mobilize
faculty, staff, students, alums, and
others to advocate for change
and engage decision-makers to
realize it.
strengthen initiatives that point
to models of engaged, inclusive,
and integrated education.

15. By design, students in the Bonner
Program are mostly low-income. About
half are First Generation.
By design, students in the Bonner
Program engage in a sequence of
proven practices linked with
post-graduate success.
Cohort Model

16. Our Impacts
Our studies found a positive
impact of the four-year cohort
experience on:
•Retention and Completion
•Belonging
•Campus Satisfaction
•Civic and Political Learning
•Academic Learning
•Career Discernment
•Post-Graduate Well-Being

17. 65% of current Bonner Scholars are
students of color.
64% of current Bonner Scholars have an
EFC of less than $4K
Our Students

18. Mitchell and Chavous found that cohort programs (academic or
co-curricular) that center social justice can impact students positively.
Change Agents
Characterization % (7 campuses)
Charity 51.7
Social change 9.1
Empowering others 15.7
Participatory democracy 1.6
Social justice 3.8
Effective programs include a
focus on:
• Social Perspective Taking:
teaching students to
acknowledge personal
differences and interact with
different individuals.
• Reflecting on Social
Problems: like challenging
issues and taking
responsibility to address
them.
• Engage in Social Action:
finding and implementing a
solution and acting on
community and social issues.

19. Emerging Models
Bringing Theory to Practice
● Have an established foundation of significant and innovative work
reflecting inclusive, holistic, and engaged education that bridges
boundaries within institutions, among higher education institutions, and /
or with the community.
● Aspire to broader change within their own institution but may be
constrained by current cultures, practices,or structures.
● Point to possibilities for change in higher education and are willing to
share their stories for shared learning, action, and movement-building.
● Seek to build relationships with other innovative higher education
networks and leaders

20. Emerging Models
Bringing Theory to Practice
Emerging Models / BT2P Conversations include:
● Bonner Network, esp. Pathways Project
● PHENND (Philadelphia HIgher Education Network for Neighborhood
Development)
● James Madison University
● Georgetown University
● College Unbound

21. Emerging Models
Bringing Theory to Practice with Bonner!
● Communities of practice among participants for shared learning and work.
● Connection with a broader network of changemakers within and outside of the
Bonner network.
● Opportunities to situate individual work within a broader context of higher
education innovation and movements for change.
● Strengthened capacity to tell story of individual projects and their impacts to
multiple audiences.
● Possibility for other forms of engagement, including shared writing, conference
presentations, grant proposals, and organizing initiatives with other campuses
and networks.

22. ● What’s hopeful from our work?
How might it shape the future?

23. Theories of Change
Use as a lens to examine or reflect differently
• Diffusion of
Innovations -
Everett Rogers
• Three Horizon
Theory - Bill Sharpe

24. Diffusion of Innovation

27. Stages of Institutionalization
Student
Volunteerism
Faculty
Experiments
Departments Evidence
Senior Support
Opinion
Leaders
Policies, Culture,
$, Core
Integrative
Structures
Mission
Individual
Adopters

28. Change Perspectives
Bringing Theory to Practice
David Scobey, How Does Change Really Happen in
Higher Ed?
https://bttop.org/how-does-change-really-happen-
in-higher-ed/
Three Horizons Framework
https://matchboxstudio.medium.com/kate-raworths-thr
ee-horizons-framework-intro-a-guide-for-workshop-use
-5e25235c587d

29. Higher Ed. Change
David Scobey, How Does Change Really Happen in Higher Ed?
Challenges Assumptions:
● Higher education is inert and incapable of change
● Change requires disruptive innovation, like technologies,
● Change requires particular leaders
Instead:
● HIgher Education is rich with change and creative innovation
● Often this change is siloed and is stymied by practices, cultures, and structures
● Networked collaboration points a way forward
● “When change comes, it is by weaving together the external challenges and opportunities facing higher
education with our own capacities for creative collaboration.”
Connection to Bonner:
The Bonner Network is an example of networked collaboration.

30. Three Horizons

31. Three Horizons

32. A — What is business as usual? What are the key characteristics of the
prevailing system?
B — Look back — how did we get here? What values, practices led to this?
C — Why do we believe it needs to change and is failing? How fast do we
want to see it decline?
D — Is there anything valuable about the old system we would want to retain
rather than lose?

33. Three Horizons

34. E — What is the future we want to bring about? What are its key characteristics?
F — What are seeds of that future visible in the present? Give specific examples
G — Looking back — whose work are these present possibilities built on? What history, values
and culture are embedded within them?
H — How could these “seeds of that future” grow and spread? Who is already working on this.
I — What are visions of the future being pursued by others? Could we collaborate with them?

35. ● What seeds are you tending or hope
grows through our collaborations?
What practices do we leave behind?