This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. Many corners of the academy are actively working to build bridges between research in the ivory tower to outcomes and needs in the community. Our study seeks to unify two such efforts – community-based/service-learning research and open access scholarly communication. Open access is an implicit value in community-based and service-learning research, and is part of the symbiotic relationship value, but has not been explicitly discussed, framed, or embraced as a value or goal. We explore existing literature on the desire for research-informed practices from community members and practitioners, the current state of open informational practices from scholarly publications dedicated to work happening in community spaces, and make recommendations for good practices for editors, publishers, researchers, and institutions looking to link the work of scholars to the needs of the community and evaluate impact.
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. Service learning and community engagement (SLCE) have become near ubiquitous across U.S. higher education. While much scholarship has demonstrated positive student learning outcomes of SLCE, there has been unequal consideration towards understanding the experiences of communities involved. Because community voices and perspectives have been largely missing from literature, this paper, drawing on a community-based case study, and neoliberalism as a theoretical framework, uniquely explores the significance of SLCE at one institution from the vantage point of community members, notably local residents. As a result of the community contributions shared, this paper offers a way of thinking about SLCE “from nonprofits to neighbors” with an aim of (re)imagining SLCE with those who have often been left out of research.
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of community service participation on undergraduates’ social capital development, including whether any potential effects are conditional by students’ race/ethnicity, parents’ or guardians’ education, and social class. I used a propensity score analysis on a multi-institutional sample of students enrolled at 69 colleges and universities in spring 2021 to construct matched pairs of students who did and did not participate in community service (n = 8,964). The results of ordinary least squares regressions suggest that community service has significant and positive effects on students’ social capital development; however, while the results were uniform for students based upon their parents’ or guardians’ education and social class, the results were not uniform based upon students’ race/ethnicity.
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. This introduction provides an overview of the conceptual framework for this special volume. It outlines the origins of the "core commitments and building blocks of civic identity," identifies how each of the contributions connect to this framework, and offers some insights on how such a framework might help advance the field of community service-learning and related efforts.
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. This article argues that current approaches to civic learning tend to normalize whiteness. It describes how a team in Massachusetts developed a framework for civic learning through a lens of racial equity and provided professional development opportunities based on this framework. Civic learning for a multiracial democracy cannot be done in a manner that fails to embrace the cultural wealth and lived experiences of all students. The approach described in this article offers an alternative way of thinking about civic learning that can inform other efforts or be replicated in other locations.
Universities are not merely bystander institutions to democracy but deeply implicated in, and essential for, its success.It is imperative in this moment …universities…vindicate their obligations to this most precious and fragile form of self-governance. Ronald Daniels, What Universities Owe Democracy, (Preface, x)Democracy is in danger.We are at a crossroads.The house is burning and universities which serve as critical foundational pieces of democracy are in crisis and in the midst of a "democratic recession" (Daniels et al., 2021;Diamond, 2015;Myln, 2022;Tierney, 2021).These are but a few of the headlines that saturate our news feed on a daily basis.They speak of the watershed moment that we find ourselves and the motivation for the clarion call made in What Universities Owe Democracy by Daniels, Shreve, and Spector.
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of community serviceparticipation on undergraduates’ social capital development, including whetherany potential effects are conditional by students’ race/ethnicity, parents’ orguardians’ education, and social class. I used a propensity score analysis on a multi-institutionalsample of students enrolled at 69 colleges and universities in spring 2021 toconstruct matched pairs of students who did and did not participate in communityservice (n = 8,964). The results of ordinary least squares regressionssuggest that community service has significant and positive effects on students’social capital development; however, while the results were uniform forstudents based upon their parents’ or guardians’ education and social class,the results were not uniform based upon students’ race/ethnicity.
This article contributes to the civic identity development literature by exploring how a scholarship program emphasizing entrepreneurship and economic revitalization can facilitate engagement across difference in pursuit of shared anti-poverty commitments. Drawing on theories of entrepreneurial action, civic identity development literature, and a mixed methods approach, we propose a framework for how students conceptualize identity, race, and poverty as entrepreneurs of connection. The role of uncertainty is central to entrepreneurial action and a hallmark of community engagement. Combining an inquiry into their own sense of identity in relationship to their peers and community partners, students contribute to the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by making connections at the interpersonal, organizational, and systems levels. Students merge an understanding of their personal identities and situational context to build trust with diverse peers and community partners. Entrepreneurs of connection take action with community partners to pursue innovative solutions with a focus on social change.
Analysis of the Newcomb Scholars program at Tulane University offers a case study in the development of civic identity through participation in a four-year curricular program with community engagement and service-learning grounded in feminist pedagogies and theories. Each year, twenty intellectually curious and ambitious undergraduates are selected to participate in an academically rigorous interdisciplinary learning experience centering feminist leadership. Using data from a recently completed 10-year evaluation of the Newcomb Scholars program, this article considers how these students’ civic identity is forged because of curricular and co-curricular experiences and persists in post-graduation settings. Evaluation data includes longitudinal survey responses, participant grade data, and demographic information of program participants. Our analysis examines how the components of the Scholars program adhere to the five building blocks for developing a healthy civic identity and shares results from the program’s 10-year assessment (Schnaubelt, et al 2022). Special focus is placed on participants' commitment to feminism as a political issue, a defining element of a healthy civic identity. Significantly, the study found nearly 77% of respondents to the alumnae survey agreeing that they are currently engaged in some level of feminist work and 95% of respondents identifying as a feminist. The cohort structure is also a focus. It keeps the Newcomb Scholars together for curricular and co-curricular experiences across four years, allowing them to practice the building blocks of a healthy civic identity in the context of an enduring community. Further, we discuss the challenges the program has experienced due to institutional and organizational constraints. Finally, we offer thoughts on how to address these concerns within a context of national democratic threat and decreased trust in higher education.
It is one of few statements upon which Americans left, right, and center agree: The nation faces a civic crisis. Polarization, rage, and militancy vie with cynicism, disengagement, and despair in the much-vaunted battle for America’s political soul—all while trampling grace, deliberation, and cooperation underfoot. What can and should our institutions of higher education do to address this situation? Such a question demands at least as many responses as there are distinctive functions of higher education. This article explains one effort to answer it with reference to the sector’s most visible—and arguably most essential—field of endeavor: undergraduate teaching and learning. The Third Way Civics initiative (3WC) unites institutions across the country in an experimental approach to civic learning in college, centered on a one-semester, credit-bearing course on American political and social development across time. Orchestrated by the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC) and funded by MHC, the Teagle Foundation, and Lumina Foundation, 3WC directly fosters the embrace and development of several core commitments and building blocks identified by MJCSL guest editors as essential to healthy civic identity, including commitments to liberal democracy, personal integrity, and public-minded self-reflection, and building-block capacities for engaging constructively across differences and for active, collaborative acquisition of democratic knowledge, habits, and skills. In these ways, 3WC responds not only to pundits’ predictions of a civic apocalypse, but to what surveys reveal to be a growing (and far more hopeful) desire among students for a practically democratic education: one that positions them for economic success but also prepares them for lives of public purpose and productive citizenship.
This paper demonstrates that, after deliberation, college students showed immense moderation potential and affective depolarization, especially even given their homogeneity as a bloc within American politics and within the overwhelmingly liberal sample for this paper. These findings offer optimism for future research in homogeneous groups through understanding that group polarization, while a very worrisome phenomenon, can be avoided with the right precautionary measures. It is clear that college students are capable of engaging constructively across differences and that deliberation, through Deliberative Polling in particular, can serve to build the capacity to do so.
Expanded conceptions of I-Other relationships in critical service learning impact ideas of self, ways in which self is understood to be autonomous or relational, and holistic concepts of self and other/s. This manuscript engages core ontological questions in contemporary service learning: Can social epistemological and ontological approaches assist in questioning oppositional framings of us and them that are both the cause and the consequence of exclusion and individualism, such as “us doing for them” or “us thinking of them”? Two distinct conceptions of self+other emerged from a recurrent service-learning course offered to graduate architecture students: a “dichotomic conceptualization” of self/other, and a “synechistic conceptualization” of self-in-other. Architecture students interrogated their roles as designers and community members and their own lived experience as they intersect issues of racial identity, education, and socio-economic status. We conclude that a synechistic service learning approach counteracts narcissistic and competitive approaches in architecture and design education.
