This document discusses the promises and challenges of higher education community engagement. While such engagement is meant to benefit both students and communities, challenges have emerged such as negative or lack of outcomes for communities and problematic outcomes for students like reinforcing stereotypes. To address these issues, the document calls for rethinking how communities and students are engaged to focus more on community capacity building and social change, ensuring community voices are prioritized and students contribute skills to community-led projects and goals. It provides frameworks and examples for implementing these revised approaches in communities, higher education institutions, and classrooms.

1. MEETING THE CHALLENGES, AND
REALIZING THE PROMISES, OF HIGHER
EDUCATION COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Randy Stoecker

2. THE PROMISE
 To students:
 Educational enhancement
 Career advancement
 Moral/personal development
 To communities:
 Filling of resource gaps
 Allyship for equity
 Promotion of justice

3. THE CHALLENGES
 Lack of outcomes, or negative outcomes, for
communities.
 Partial problematic outcomes for students
 Reinforcement of stereotypes
 Resistance to “required volunteerism”
 Poverty tourism
 Resume volunteerism

4. CONSEQUENT QUESTIONS ABOUT THE
PROMISE
 Can we simultaneously educate students and fill
community resource gaps?
 Can we support students’ career prospects and
promote equity for marginalized communities?
 Can we support students’ moral development and
support justice for marginalized communities?

5. DIALECTICAL ANSWERS
 The more education students get from communities, the
less practical benefit communities get from students.
 The more that community work is used to enhance
students’ visibility and status, the less visible the
community and its assets are.
 The more we support justice for marginalized
communities, the more students may question their own
privilege and/or ours.

6. UNPACKING: EDUCATING STUDENTS AND
BENEFITING COMMUNITIES
 What is a community:  How we engage students in
 Geography communities:
 Identity  Individual service
 Sum+  Decontextualized activities
 Collectivity  Minimal mentoring
 What are community  How we prepare students:
benefits:  Lack of training in specific
 Problem solving issue work
 Capacity building  Lack of training in community
work
Consequence: unintended side effects

7. UNPACKING: BUILDING UP STUDENTS AND
BUILDING EQUITY FOR COMMUNITIES
 How we build up  How we prepare
communities students:
 Taking power from  To become
professionals professionals
 Eliminating one-way  To transmit and apply
“knowledge transfer” knowledge
 Dismantling hierarchies  To accommodate
hierarchies
Consequence: The privileging of charity models

8. UNPACKING: STUDENT MORAL
DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY JUSTICE
 Community justice  Student socialization
 Restorative justice  Punitive justice
 Change, not charity  Charity, not change
 Collective action  Individual achievement
 Political analysis  Depoliticized mystification
Consequence: sewing confusion and cynicism

9. TOWARD A NEW PROMISE
 A mission statement for higher ed community
engagement:
 To build community capacity…
 To create social change…
 By facilitating community access to our knowledge
resources, including faculty, staff, and students

10. UNPACKING THE MISSION STATEMENT
 What is capacity?
 Ability to find and keep volunteers (rather than higher ed
supplying them)
 Ability to develop and deploy knowledge resources
 Ability to be heard and understood
 Ability to plan and act
 What is change?
 Full distribution of opportunities and benefits
 Full distribution of decision-making power
 What is facilitating access?
 Customizing higher ed to fit community priorities
 Connecting communities to higher ed resources (science shops)

11. A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE
MISSION STATEMENT
action knowledge
Evaluate Diagnose
(CBR) (CBR)
power
Prescribe
Implement
(CBR)
(SL)
Inspired by Michel Foucault

12. DIVERGING FROM DOMINANT PRACTICES
 Project-based, not hours-based
 Skill-based, not volunteer-based
 Outcome-based, not output-based
 Change-centered, not SL/CBR-centered
 Community targeted, not individual targeted
 Commitment to the project, not the agency
 Commitment to the constituency, not the agency
 Focus on contributing, not leading

13. A NEW ETHICAL BASE
 Promote active and representative participation toward
enabling all community members to meaningfully influence the
decisions that affect their lives.
 Engage community members in learning about and
understanding community issues, and the
economic, social, environmental, political, psychological, and
other impacts associated with alternative courses of action.
 Incorporate the diverse interests and cultures of the
community in the community development process; and
disengage from support of any effort that is likely to adversely
affect the disadvantaged members of a community.
 Work actively to enhance the leadership capacity of
community members, leaders, and groups within the
community.
 Be open to using the full range of action strategies to work
toward the long-term sustainability and well being of the
community.
Source: Principles of good practice, Community Development Society, http://www.comm-dev.org/

14. PUTTING IT INTO ACTION—IN THE COMMUNITY
1. Find constituency-led efforts...
...with community change goals...
...or help them develop goals...
...and identify projects...
...that can help achieve goals.
2. Find higher ed resources...
...that can support the projects...
...and mobilize those resources...
...to do the projects...
...to achieve the goals.

15. PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE--IN THE
INSTITUTION
 Curricular flexibility
 Tenure and promotion criteria
 Resources for community organizing and
community technical experts
 Deployment of science shop strategy
 Training for faculty and staff in community
dynamics, popular education
 Expansion of classroom-based civics
education, issue education

16. PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE--IN THE
CLASSROOM
 Projects, not hours
 A limited number of projects
 Projects developed by faculty and community group
before class starts
 Students apply for projects
 Students receive appropriate training to do projects
 Technical expert mentoring (either faculty or community)