from Ariane Hoy at the Bonner Foundation

1. Greencastle, Indiana
Community Engagement:
Conceptualizations, Evidence, and Campus Change
Monday, April 22, 2018 • Ariane Hoy, Bonner Foundation

2. • In pairs, take a minute or two to share
why you chose a career in higher ed
• Please share your name and discipline
Introductions

3. • Deep experience at Stanford
• Civic engagement inside & outside of college
• Master’s: “Moving Community Engagement Out
of the Margins”
• Doctorate: “Catalysts of Learning and Stewards of
Place: A Study of Change in Engaged Universities”
I Also Chose Teaching & Learning

4. • Founded in 1990
• 70+ colleges and
universities
• A unique holistic,
developmental
approach
• More than 15,000
graduates
About Bonner

5. Our Time Together
• The conceptualization & evolution of
community engaged learning
• Evidence, HIPs, & the Gold
Commitment
• Change narratives: how faculty and
institutions are transforming education

6. The evolution of
Community
Engaged Learning

7. The Pioneers
• As chronicled by Tim Stanton,
Dwight Giles, and Nadinne
Cruz (1999), academic
service-learning started with
“a small, loosely connected
circle of practitioners, who in
the 1960s began exploring
how community action and
academic learning could be
integrated” (p. xv).

8. Their Inspiration
• Founding missions
• A critically different philosophy of
education
• Paolo Freire & Myles Horton
• Jane Addams and the Settlement
House Movement
• W.E.B. DuBois
• John Dewey

9. Early Definitions
• A 1977 report to the American Council on Education: service-
learning could be two-dimensional: economic or financial, and/
or educational or psychological
• Robert Sigmon (1979) articulated three principles in Synergist:
(1) that those being served (i.e., the external community)
control the services;
(2) that those served become better able to serve and be
served by their own actions;
(3) that those who serve be learners with significant control
over what is expected and learned

10. Early Practice
• Early theorists and practitioners often
invoked educational theorists like Bandura
(1977), Coleman (1977), Freire (1970),
Kolb (1984), Argyris and Schön (1978),
Resnick (1987), and Schön (1983, 1987),
locating it in experiential education.
• Until its 1980s growth, “service-learning
advocates were a small, marginal group
within higher education,” who feared
losing their jobs for this work (Stanton,
Giles, and Cruz, 1999, p. 5; Cruz, 2016).

11. Concerns about the “Me” Generation
• Freshmen increasingly identified “being
very well-off financially” as their aim,
while “developing a meaningful
philosophy of life,” “participating in
community affairs,” “cleaning up the
environment,” and “promoting racial
understanding” declined (Astin, 1977,
1993, 1997)

12. The Rise of Student Leadership
In 1984, a young graduate of Harvard College named
Wayne Meisel set foot from Colby College in Waterville,
Maine to visit campuses on a walk to Washington, DC,
intent to find out if and how college students were engaged
in surrounding communities (Hartley, 2009a; 2009b;
Hackett & Meisel, 1986; Hollander & Hartley, 2000).

13. National & Community Service Act of 1990

14. A New Vision for Faculty
In 1990, Ernest Boyer, Former Chancellor of the State
University of New York and President of the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching calls for a
revision to the conceptualizations of scholarship in (1990)
Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate
• the scholarship of discovery
• the scholarship of integration
• the scholarship of application
• the scholarship of teaching and learning
• the scholarship of engagement

15. The New American College

16. A New Pedagogy
• “Undergraduates…would participate in field
projects, relating ideas to real life. Classrooms
and laboratories would be extended to include
health clinics, youth centers, schools, and
government offices. Faculty members would
build partnerships with practitioners who
would, in turn, come to campus as lecturers
and student advisers” (Boyer, 1994, p. 5).

17. Faculty & Knowledge Production
“If teaching is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then the practice
of teaching must be seen as giving rise to new forms of knowledge.
If community outreach is to be seen as a form of scholarship, then
it is the practice of reaching out and providing service to a
community that must be seen as raising important issues whose
investigation may lead to generalizations of prospective relevance
and actionability. If we speak of a scholarship of integration--the
synthesis of findings into larger, more comprehensive
understandings--then we are inevitably concerned with designing.
The scholarship of application means the generation of knowledge
for, and from, action.” (Schön, 1995, p. 7).

18. Implications for Teaching

19. Democratic Community Engagement

20. Full Participation & Diversity
Research has also suggested that low income students and students of color, in
particular, are left out of these high-impact practices unless intentionality is
part of the campus climate and programs (like Bonner and others). Moreover,
institutional support for community engaged learning and engaged teaching is
often important for women faculty and faculty of color (see Full Participation
Catalyst paper). As the Carnegie Foundation has suggested, community
engagemed learning offers untapped possibilities for alignment with other
campus priorities and initiatives to achieve greater impact—for example:
•First-year programs that include community engagement;
•Learning communities or residential programs in which community
engagement is integrated into the design;
•Diversity initiatives that explicitly link active and collaborative
community-based teaching and learning with the academic and social
inclusion and success of historically underrepresented students.

21. The 2020 Carnegie Classification
“Community engagement describes activities that are
undertaken with community members. In reciprocal
partnerships, there are collaborative community-campus
definitions of problems, solutions, and measures of
success. Community engagement requires processes in
which academics recognize, respect, and value the
knowledge, perspectives, and resources of community
partners and that are designed to serve a public purpose,
building the capacity of individuals, groups, and
organizations involved to understand and collaboratively
address issues of public concern.”

22. The Evolution of a Movement
1984 - COOL
1985 - Campus
Compact
1987 - Echoing
Green
1990 - Bonner
Scholars Program
1991 - Community
Service Act
1993 - National
Service Trust Act:
AmeriCorps
late 1990s - Learn &
Serve America
promotes the
spread of service-
learning
in K-12 and HE
2004 - Center for
Information &
Research on Civic
Engagement
2005 - Liberal
Education and
America’s Promise
Initiative
2014 - Bringing Theory
to Practice has given
more than 300 grants,
generating more
evidence
2008 - Emergence of
HIPs
1971 - NSSE 1999-2004 - Large
Scale studies produce
evidence of impact of
service and service-
learning
2012 - A Crucible
Moment
2015 - AAC&U
announces Signature
Work challenge, 10th
anniversity of LEAP

23. Changing & Expanding Forms
• Service (volunteerism, roles on
boards, etc.)
• Service-learning
• Community-based research
• Immersions (local service trips,
international trips, etc.)
• Internships
• Applied research
• Oral histories
• Community economic
development
• Land-grant work and scientific
research (for a public purpose)
• Social enterprise/
entrepreneurism
• Consulting with nonprofits
and government agencies
• Public policy and program
analysis
• Business and job development
• Public history
• Arts…

24. Mounting Evidence,
High-Impact Practices,
and the Gold Commitment

25. Large Scale Studies
• Undergraduate participation in service substantially enhances
academic development, life skill development, and civic
responsibility (Astin and Sax, 1998)
• A large-scale, longitudinal study involving 12,376 students at 209
institutions demonstrated that even when pre-college service
participation is controlled, students’ undergraduate participation
in service is positively associated with a variety of cognitive and
affective outcomes (Astin, Sax, and Avalos, 1999).
• Even one-semester service-learning classes showed significant,
consistent, and modest effects on undergraduate student
personal, civic, cognitive and academic outcomes across multiple
campuses (Eyler and Giles, 1999).

26. Link to Student Success
• Kuh demonstrated that involvement in purposeful activities promotes
student learning outcomes like interpersonal competence, practical
competence, cognitive complexity, knowledge and academic skills, and
humanitarianism(Kuh, 1995).
• In a landmark study by 2000, positive impacts on 11 dependent measures
were found including academic (GPA, writing skills, critical thinking skills),
values (commitment to activism and to promoting racial understanding),
self-efficacy, leadership (activities, self-rated ability, interpersonal skills),
career plans, and post- graduate involvement (Astin et al., 2000).
• Service-learning supports student retention and persistence (Astin & Sax,
1998; Finley, 2011; Furco & Root, 2010; Markus, Howard, & King, 1993;
Roose, Daphne, Miller, Norris, Peacock, White, & White, 1997;
Vogelgesang, Ikeda, Gilmartin, & Keup, 2002).

27. The Emergence of High-Impact Practices
• Building on the evidence of engaged learning, efforts for
curriculum and institutional change have tested and fostered the
replication of proven practices, drawn from data like the National
Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).
• HIPs have been demonstrated to lead to greater gains in students’
learning, retention, and persistence (Brownell & Swaner 2010;
Finley, 2012; Finley & McNair, 2013; Kuh 2008; Kinzie & Kuh,
2004; Kinzie et al., 2008; Manning & Kuh, 2005).
• The best-known HIPs are first year experiences, intensive writing,
service- learning, project-based learning, internships, learning
communities, intensive learning about diversity and global
contexts, undergraduate research, and capstones.

28. Characteristics of a HIP
• They are effortful
• They help students build substantive relationships
• They help students engage across differences
• They provide students with rich feedback
• They help students apply and test what they are learning
in new situations
• They provide opportunities for students to reflect on the
people they are becoming
(Kinzie, Weight, & Hoy, 2015; Kuh, 2008; O’Neill, 2010)

29. Students Don’t Know the Labels
“…I have teachers that take us out of the
building. I don't know what it's called. It's
called--it's called something here. They take
you out of the building, and you go learn
about like the vegetable gardens that they
have growing here, among the Hmong
society...So there's a lot of professors here
that teach differently.” (Finley, 2012).

30. maybe we don’t know
how much is happening?
“And the research project I chose was a little creek
around here [that] used to be horribly polluted...I
got to go out and find out that there are actually
people who care, people trying to make a real
difference for the whole ...I got to interview these
people [about the creek] and talk with them and it
changed my perspective on the world...I was amazed
at the willingness of these people to talk to me for a
silly little research paper, but they had passion and
wanted to talk about this stuff. (Finley, 2012)

31. HIPs Have Multiplier Effects
especially for students of color
and first generation students

32. Implications
• In 2015, the LEAP Challenge called on
colleges and universities to build integrative
pathways where all undergraduates to
complete a substantial cross-disciplinary
project in a topic significant to the student
and society, as part of the expected pathway
to a degree(AAC&U, 2016).

35. Conceptual Model

40. Change Narratives:
Faculty and
Institutions

41. Why Did It Take 15 years?

42. The Long-Range Perspective

43. Everett Rogers on The Diffusion of Innovations
Lessons from a Study of Change

44. The Change Process

45. Centralized and Decentralized Diffusion

46. Looking for Changes in Culture

47. Characteristics of Opinion Leaders
• Usually socially accessible
• Higher rank or social status
• Frequent contact with expertise (including outside)
and change agents
• Less risk averse
“Opinion leaders gain part of their perceived expertise
regarding innovations by their greater contact across
their system’s boundaries” (Rogers, 2003, p. 317).

48. Building Engaged Departments
• Bob, Social Work, leveraged research to drive
support
• Chris & Spoma, Brought their 1990’s experience
as practitioners with the charge to build an
engaged Communication Studies department
• Ben, Left a museum career to build an engaged
Public History department, shouldering the
challenges of being the first in his department

49. Building Cross-Cutting Collaborations
• Thia, an English professor who took an assigment
to teach the First Year Experience to a campus-
wide signature program in public engagement
• Jim, let the needs of the local city drive new
coursework and projects in Environmental
Sustainability, and across departments
• Marianne & Stephen, teamed up to rework their
Communication Studies and Sociology courses to
focus on poverty, housing, and food Justice

50. Building Blocks

52. Curriculum MappingSource: https://www.eab.com/research-and-insights/academic-affairs-forum/expert-insights/2017/

53. Promising Practice: Learning Circle
Meeting 1 Discuss An Overview of Capstones and Signature Work by AAC&U
Discuss capstones currently at the institution and integrated with civic work.
Meeting 2 Discuss Creating the New American College by Ernest Boyer
Discuss A New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology by Donald Schön
Discuss the conceptualizations of an engaged institution and scholarship and how they apply to your campus.
Meeting 3 Discuss Democratic Engagement White Paper by John Saltmarsh, Matthew Hartley, and Patti Clayton
Discuss The Scholarship of Community Partner Voice by Sean Creighton
Discuss the concepts of democratic community engagement and strategies for producing knowledge in partnerships between faculty,
students, and community.
Meeting 4 Discuss Taking Stock of Capstones and Integrative Learning by
Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and NSSE
Discuss Going Beyond the Requirement: The Capstone Experience by Peggy Redman, Director of the La Verne Experience at the
University of La Verne Boyer
Discuss viable reasons (i.e., learning outcomes) and avenues for creating capstone courses at your institution.
Meeting 5 Discuss Civic Engagement in the Capstone: The “State of the Community” Event by Charles C. Turner, CSU Chico
Discuss Civic Engagement through Civic Agriculture: Using Food to Link Classroom and Community by D. Wynn Wright,
Michigan State
Discuss the take-aways from these articles about effective community-engaged capstones.
Meeting 6 Discuss Putting Students at the Center of Civic Engagement by Richard M. Battistoni and Nicholas V. Longo
Discuss College Graduates’ Perspectives on the Effect of Capstone Service-Learning Courses by Seanna Kerrigan, Portland State
Discuss opportunities for student voice and leadership in the capstone design and courses.
Meeting 7 Discuss Doing Less Work, Collecting Better Data: Using Capstone Courses to Assess Learning by Catherine White Berheide
Discuss Generating, Deepening, and Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied Learning by Sarah Ash,
North Carolina State University, and Patti Clayton, PHC Ventures
Discuss the integration of critical reflection and assessment of student learning in capstones.

54. Recommendations
• Presidents: use mission, rhethoric; provide budget and top-down incentives
• Provosts/Deans: use learning outcomes to drive curriculum & course
(re)design; work for tenure changes; build and leverage data and scholarship to
drive change
• Directors (Centers): external links with fields, grants and incentives,
partnerships with Student Affairs; faculty development
• Civic Engagement Centers (Administrators): institional alignment, brokering
and managing deep partnerships, track and report projects, data, and results
• Faculty: link civic outcomes with course/disciplinary priorities & objectives; link
with research agendas & teaching (as well as service); collaborate with centers
and Student Affairs programs; participate in change processes
• Students: get involved; advocate for student and community voice; inspire
peers and faculty to get involved; demand links with credit; pilot new programs

55. Next Generation Literature

56. Contact Info
• Bonner Website: www.bonner.org
• Bonner Wiki: bonner.pbworks.com
• CCPH Community Engaged Scholarship Resources: https://
ccph.memberclicks.net/community-engaged-scholarship
• Ariane Hoy: ahoy@bonner.org
• Bonner Basecamp for Faculty: https://3.basecamp.com/
3116205/projects/1214595 (lots of other articles & resources)
• Bonner Basecamp for Pathways & Community Engaged
Capstones: https://3.basecamp.com/3116205/projects/1214610