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Place-based community engagement in higher education : a strategy to transform universities and communities

While an increasing number of universities have or are committed to engaging their campuses in their surrounding communities, many recognize they lack the strategic focus and resources to maximize and sustain their impact on those communities. Place-based community engagement provides a powerful way to creatively connect campus and community to foster positive social transformation. In developing community engagement strategies, most universities and community organizations face significant challenges in deciding who to partner with and why. Frequently this leads universities and community organizations to say "yes" to too many opportunities which significantly limit their ability to pursue long-term impact. Focusing on an established geographic area can make it much easier to decide where to deploy resources and which partnerships to prioritize and thus increase their ability to form strong and sustainable partnerships that are of greater value to all stakeholders. This book presents the emerging model of place-based community engagement as a powerful process for attaining more positive and enduring results in their local communities as well as stimulating wider engagement by campus constituencies. Drawing upon the concept of collective impact and using data-driven decision making, place-based initiatives build long-term partnerships based upon a shared vision. Done thoughtfully, these place-based initiatives have attained impressive results. Drawing upon on the case studies of five institutions that have implemented place-based community engagement initiatives, the authors provide guidance on the opportunities, challenges, and considerations involved in putting a place-based approach into effect. By sharing the experiences of these five institutions, they describe in detail the routes each took to turn their place-based initiatives from concept to reality, and the results they achieved.

Online EBSCO Academic Comprehensive Collection

Interview with Kent Koth and Andrew Seligsohn, The Gathering, Golden, Colorado, 2017

In May 2017, Stanford University's Haas Center for Public Service co-sponsored a four-day meeting of scholars and practitioners involved with service-learning and civic engagement in higher education. This meeting became known as "The Gathering: An intergenerational dialogue among service-learning "pioneers" and those who will build and sustain the field in the future." The Gathering was held twenty-two years after a December 1995 Wingspread conference that brought together a group of service-learning "pioneers" to reflect on the field's early history and recommend measures for strengthening policy and practice. The 1995 Wingspread meeting resulted in the publication of the book, "Service-Learning: A Movement's Pioneers Reflect on its Origins, Practice and Future," (Stanton, Giles & Cruz, Jossey-Bass, 1999). As the field has experienced significant growth over the past two decades, the time was right to bring together some of the original pioneers from the 1995 Wingspread conference with a group of younger, "next generation" service-learning and civic engagement scholars. Together, they engaged in a cross-generational dialogue and exploration to reflect on the current state of the service-learning and civic engagement field, now fifty years after its emergence in higher education in the 1960s.

Interview with Kent Koth and Emily Janke, The Gathering, Golden, Colorado, 2017

In May 2017, Stanford University's Haas Center for Public Service co-sponsored a four-day meeting of scholars and practitioners involved with service-learning and civic engagement in higher education. This meeting became known as "The Gathering: An intergenerational dialogue among service-learning "pioneers" and those who will build and sustain the field in the future." The Gathering was held twenty-two years after a December 1995 Wingspread conference that brought together a group of service-learning "pioneers" to reflect on the field's early history and recommend measures for strengthening policy and practice. The 1995 Wingspread meeting resulted in the publication of the book, "Service-Learning: A Movement's Pioneers Reflect on its Origins, Practice and Future," (Stanton, Giles & Cruz, Jossey-Bass, 1999). As the field has experienced significant growth over the past two decades, the time was right to bring together some of the original pioneers from the 1995 Wingspread conference with a group of younger, "next generation" service-learning and civic engagement scholars. Together, they engaged in a cross-generational dialogue and exploration to reflect on the current state of the service-learning and civic engagement field, now fifty years after its emergence in higher education in the 1960s.