The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education

A Summer Research Institute for Departments and Academic Programs with Minors and Majors in Community Engagement

There are by now over fifty academic programs – majors and minors – focused on community engagement, broadly defined, scattered across higher education. The question, though, is what does this mean?

Join faculty, administrators, staff, students, and community partners involved with institutions that offer formal academic programs – majors and minors – focused on community engagement, broadly defined, for a free, three-day summer research institute on what it means to minor or major in community engagement.

Boston University Campus

June 25-27, 2010

Conference registration is now closed, as we have reached our maximum capacity.  Please contact Dan Butin at

dan.butin@merrimack.edu if you would like additional information or have questions about the conference.

Click here for Brochure & Agenda

Click here for Resources

Audience Faculty, administrators, staff, students, and community partners working within or developing academic programs focusing on community engagement, broadly defined. This is a unique opportunity to learn with, and from, campuses that have institutionalized community engagement through the creation of a major or minor.  The institute will foster exchange of experiences, practices, and philosophical/theoretical perspectives, as well as the development of research to strengthen practice. Space is very limited (to 50 or so participants) in order to foster discussion.

Costs  This is a free Institute. There is no registration fee, as we want you to attend. This is an institute for you. You are responsible for covering your travel and housing costs. We will provide lunches as well as all resource packets.

Goals

  • Develop a set of resources for individuals (faculty and administrators) engaged in developing, strengthening, and/or expanding majors or minors in community engagement
  • Foster networking and sharing of best practices, funding opportunities, and collaboration across already existing and developing majors or minors in community engagement
  • Initiate a set of research projects – much of which would be driven by the participants’ needs and interests – on the state of the field of practice and theory within majors or minors in community engagement. To this end, we anticipate securing grant and foundation funding for future conferences and research, submitting proposals to complementary conferences (e.g., AERA, ASHE, AAC&U, IARSLCE) to report-out our work, and collaborating on proposals for edited books, guest-edited journals, and other opportunities for disseminating our research.

Resources  (more forthcoming)

Resource Sharing We will ask all participants to provide us with as many resources as possible that other programs and individuals can use to develop and/or strengthen their own minors and majors. This may include course syllabi, program descriptions, program proposals, etc. Our goal is to share – in person and on the website – as much information as possible to support your programs. 

A Note on Terminology: There is no single way to talk about the multiplicity of options and approaches to community engagement in higher education: community service-learning; civic action; undergraduate research; public scholarship; community-based research; participatory action research; civic engagement; community studies; public service; social action. This is part of the problem in defining and linking the field. It is also, though, a potentially powerful opportunity to bring a wide-ranging set of intellectual traditions and perspectives to bear on the critical question of institutionalizing community engagement within the academic structure of higher education. We, as such, do not want to be hobbled by semantics. Instead, we want to leverage your knowledge and practices to better understand and support what we all do.

This Institute is generously sponsored by Merrimack College’s School of Education and Boston University’s Center for Character and Social Responsibility.

 www.merrimack.edu/communityengagement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Resources:
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