This book outlines how undergraduate students engage with civic and community projects and how this can be encouraged by their universities. It also explores how universities can build on this involvement and develop undergraduates' civic and democratic capacities, including programmatic strategies and conceptual frameworks for understanding the students' activities. As higher education across the globe experiences increasing student numbers it is important to understand how students engage with civic and community service.

Examines the roles that social workers have played in the expanding efforts by universities to respond to the social, economic, educational, health & civic needs of their local & regional communities.

Examine how your university can help solve the complex problems of your community Community Outreach Partnership Centers (COPC) sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have identified civic engagement and community partnership as critical themes for higher education. This unique book addresses past, present, and future models of university-community partnerships, COPC programs, wide-ranging social work partnerships that involve teaching, research, and social change, and innovative methods in the processes of civic engagement. The text recognizes the many professions, schools, and higher education institutions that contribute to advancing civic engagement through university-community partnerships. One important contribution this book makes to the literature of civic engagement is that it is the first publication that significantly highlights partnership contributions from schools of social work, which are rediscovering their community roots through these initiatives. University-Community Partnerships: Universities in Civic Engagement documents how universities are involved in creative individual, faculty, and program partnerships that help link campus and community-partnerships that are vital for teaching, research, and practice. Academics and practitioners discuss outreach initiatives, methods of engagement (with an emphasis on community organization), service learning and other teaching/learning methods, research models, participatory research, and “high-engagement” techniques used in university-community partnerships. The book includes case studies, historical studies, policy analysis, program evaluation, and curriculum development. University-Community Partnerships: Universities in Civic Engagement examines: the increasing civic engagement of institutions of higher education civic engagement projects involving urban nonprofit community-based organizations and neighborhood associations the developmental stages of a COPC partnership problems faced in evaluating COPC programs civic engagement based on teaching and learning how pre-tenure faculty can meet research, teaching, and service requirements through university-community partnerships developing an MSW program structured around a single concentration of community partnership how class, race, and organizational differences are barriers to equality in the civic engagement process University-Community Partnerships: Universities in Civic Engagement is one of the few available academic resources to address the importance of social work involvement in COPC programs. Social work educators, students, and practitioners, community organizers, urban planners, and anyone working in community development will find it invaluable in proving guidance for community problem solving, and creating opportunities for faculty, students, and community residents to learn from one another.

There seems to be renewed interest in having universities and other higher education institutions engage with their communities at the local, national, and international levels. But what is community engagement? Even if this interest is genuine and widespread, there are many different concepts of community service, outreach, and engagement. The wide range of activity encompassed by community engagement suggests that a precise definition of the “community mission” is difficult and organizing and coordinating such activities is a complex task. This edited volume includes 18 chapters that explore conceptual understandings of community engagement and higher education reforms and initiatives intended to foster it. Contributors provide empirical research findings, including several case study examples that respond to the following higher educaiton community engagement issues. What is “the community” and what does it need and expect from higher education institutions? Is community engagement a mission of all types of higher education institutions or should it be the mission of specific institutions such as regional or metropolitan universities, technical universities, community colleges, or indigenous institutions while other institutions such as major research universities should concentrate on national and global research agendas and on educating internationally-competent researchers and professionals? How can a university be global and at the same time locally relevant? Is it, or should it be, left to the institutions to determine the scope and mode of their community engagement, or is a state mandate preferable and feasible? If community engagement or “community service” are mandatory, what are the consequences of not complying with the mandate? How effective are policy mandates and university engagement for regional and local economic development? What are the principal features and relationships of regionally-engaged universities? Is community engagement to be left to faculty members and students who are particularly socially engaged and locally embedded or is it, or should it be, made mandatory for both faculty and students? How can community engagement be (better) integrated with the (other) two traditional missions of the university—research and teaching? Cover image: The Towering Four-fold Mission of Higher Education, by Natalie Jacob

Civic Education Across the Curriculum offers faculty in all disciplines rationales and resources for connecting their service-learning efforts to the broader goals of civic engagement. Campuses promoting engagement are beginning to tie service-learning practices to their civic mission of preparing students for participation in a diverse, democratic society. There are, however, few resources for faculty—especially those in fields not traditionally linked with civic education—to think about how civic engagement might be incorporated into their own disciplinary perspectives and course goals. This volume distills a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on citizenship into usable conceptual frameworks. It provides concrete examples of course materials, exercises, and assignments that can be used in service-learning courses to develop students’ civic capacities, regardless of disciplinary area. This volume will assist faculty in their own curricular work as well as enable them to combine their individual initiatives with others across their campus.

Community-Based Research and Higher Education is the long-awaited guide to how to incorporate a powerful and promising new form of scholarship into academic settings. The book presents a model of community-based research (CBR) that engages community members with students and faculty in the course of their academic work. Unlike traditional academic research, CBR is collaborative and change-oriented and finds its research questions in the needs of communities. This dynamic research model combines classroom learning with social action in ways that can ultimately empower community groups to address their own agendas and shape their own futures. At the same time it emphasizes the development of knowledge and skills that truly prepare students for active civic engagement.

Numerous studies have chronicled students lack of trust in large social institutions, declining interest in politics, and decreasing civic skills. This book is a comprehensive guide to developing high-quality civic engagement experiences for college students. The book defines civic engagement and explains why it is central to a college education. It describes the state of the art of education for civic engagement and provides guidelines for designing programs that encourage desired learning outcomes. In addition, the book guides leaders in organizing their institutions to create a campus-wide culture of civic engagement.