Promoting Civic Health Through University-Community Partnerships: Global Contexts and Experiences [1st ed. 2020] 978-3-030-19665-3, 978-3-030-19666-0

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Introduction and Overview (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 1-6
Civic Mission of the University (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 7-32
University-Community Partnerships in the Literature (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 33-61
Introduction of Cases (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 63-82
Defining Community (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 83-102
Autonomy and Willingness to Take Risks (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 103-120
Universities as Contested Civic Spaces (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 121-141
Institutionalisation of and Socialisation to Community-Engaged Practice (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 143-155
Measuring Impact (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 157-170
Student Engagement (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 171-178
Conclusion: Towards the Future of University-Facilitated Civic Health in Global Communities (Thomas Andrew Bryer, Cristian Pliscoff, Ashley Wilt Connors)....Pages 179-182
Back Matter ....Pages 183-187

Citation preview

RETHINKING UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY POLICY CONNECTIONS

Promoting Civic Health Through University-Community Partnerships Global Contexts and Experiences Thomas Andrew Bryer · Cristian Pliscoff Ashley Wilt Connors

Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections Series Editors Thomas Andrew Bryer University of Central Florida Orlando, USA John Diamond Edge Hill University Ormskirk, UK Carolyn Kagan Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK . Jolanta Vaičiūniene Kaunas University of Technology Kaunas, Lithuania

Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections will publish works by scholars, practitioners, and ‘prac-ademics’ across a range of countries to explore substantive policy or management issues in the bringing together of higher education institutions and community-based organizations, nongovernmental organizations, governments, and businesses. Such partnerships afford unique opportunities to transform practice, develop innovation, incubate entrepreneurship, strengthen communities, and transform lives. Yet such potential is often not realized due to bureaucratic, cultural, or legal barriers erected between higher education institutions and the wider community. The global experience is common, though the precise mechanisms that prevent university-community collaboration or that enable successful and sustainable partnership vary within and across countries. Books in the series will facilitate dialogue across country experiences, help identify cross-cutting best practices, and to enhance the theory of university-community relations. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15628

Thomas Andrew Bryer • Cristian Pliscoff Ashley Wilt Connors

Promoting Civic Health Through UniversityCommunity Partnerships Global Contexts and Experiences

Thomas Andrew Bryer University of Central Florida Orlando, FL, USA Kaunas University of Technology Kaunas, Lithuania

Cristian Pliscoff Institute of Public Affairs University of Chile Santiago, Chile

Ashley Wilt Connors University of Central Florida Orlando, FL, USA

Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections ISBN 978-3-030-19665-3    ISBN 978-3-030-19666-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: lorenzo rossi / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

We offer a brief note on terminology. As with any project that examines global experiences with respect to a particular subject, how ideas and structures are named is variable. Most prominently in this context is how the units of a university are named. The reader will note the use of the words “college,” “school,” “department,” “institute,” and “faculty” to more-or-less refer to the same thing. Rather than adopt a single word to describe all, we opted to maintain the terminology as it is used at the institution we discuss. Roughly, a “college” (popularly used in the United States) is equivalent to a “faculty” (popular in Europe). An “institute” is equivalent to a “school” or “department,” except in Russia, where the institute is equivalent to the college/faculty. We try to discuss each structural element appropriately to avoid confusion, but this brief statement should be used as a rough guide. Though we do our best to report the activities and ideas from each case university, it is always possible that we made some error in understanding or interpretation. All such mistakes are ours. Orlando, FL Santiago, Chile  Orlando, FL 

Thomas Andrew Bryer Cristian Pliscoff Ashley Wilt Connors

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Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible were it not for the willingness of dozens of university professors, staff, students, and community partners to sit for interviews, serve as tour guide on campuses, and organise generally very welcoming receptions as we visited each campus. We thank them, though they are mostly unnamed in the pages of this monograph. We also acknowledge the patience and support of Jemima Warren and Oliver Foster at Palgrave Macmillan.

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Contents

1 Introduction and Overview   1 2 Civic Mission of the University   7 3 University-Community Partnerships in the Literature  33 4 Introduction of Cases  63 5 Defining Community  83 6 Autonomy and Willingness to Take Risks

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7 Universities as Contested Civic Spaces

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8 Institutionalisation of and Socialisation to Community-­ Engaged Practice

143

9 Measuring Impact

157

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10 Student Engagement

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11 Conclusion: Towards the Future of University-Facilitated Civic Health in Global Communities

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Index183

Abbreviations

ASU BBC EHU HEI KTU NDGs PSGs PUC REF SDGs SOTL SU TalTech UB UCF UCH UdeC UN UT

Arizona State University British Broadcasting Channel Edge Hill University Higher Education Institution Kaunas University of Technology National Development Goals Provincial Strategic Goals Catholic University of Chile Research Excellence Framework Sustainable Development Goals Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Stellenbosch University Tallinn University of Technology University of Baltimore University of Central Florida University of Chile University of Concepción United Nations University of Tyumen

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Dormitory at University of Tyumen 75 Fig. 5.1 Home of the Division of Social Impact, Stellenbosch University 88 Fig. 5.2 City of Orlando Recreation Centre at the UCF Downtown Campus89 Fig. 5.3  Front of Avianpark Resource Centre, Stellenbosch University  99 Fig. 5.4 Community Garden in Avianpark, Stellenbosch University 100 Fig. 5.5 Police Presence in Avianpark, South Africa, Stellenbosch University101 Fig. 6.1 Park and Homeless Facility outside Arizona State University Downtown117 Fig. 7.1 Legal Aid Clinic at Stellenbosch University 131 Fig. 7.2 L.I.F.E. Project Facility in Avianpark, South Africa 136 Fig. 7.3 Swop Shop in Avianpark, South Africa 137 Fig. 8.1 Typology of Civic Campuses 144 Fig. 8.2 The Living Well, Baltimore, Maryland 148 Fig. 8.3 New American University Sign at Arizona State University 149 Fig. 10.1 Social Impact Day at Stellenbosch University 177

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Overview

Early in the presidency of Barack Obama, he was criticised for his notion that the United States was not uniquely exceptional in the world. In a media interview, he stated: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism … Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we’ve got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we’re not always going to be right” (Farley 2015). Though Obama continued through his presidency to extol various characteristics of American society and the American economy, he never veered from this underlying point. The United States is exceptional in the things in which its people take pride, but is unexceptional in its belief of exceptionality. With the same logic, we suggest what should be an obvious truth: every society on earth has its own values, ideals of the good society, and strategies through rule of law, rule of dictator, or somewhere between to implement the good society. For any one society represented through the nation-state to claim exceptionality is to acknowledge difference; to judge those who are different based on one’s own set of socialised norms, values, and practices, with the idea of not exceptionality but superiority, is ego-centric.

© The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_1

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No society is perfect, meaning no society is without challenges in the implementation of its strategies to achieve the ideal good society. Societies that arc towards exceptionality in freedom struggle with individuals who and groups that abuse that freedom to inflict harm on others; societies that arc towards exceptionality through limitations on freedom struggle with individuals who and groups that strive to break through authoritarian restrictions on individualism. Both kinds of societies struggle with clear definitions of human rights, and both equivocate regarding appropriate sacrifices to ask of its people to further the ambitions of the society. Further, both struggle with those who seek to enrich themselves through unethical and corrupt practice. For societies across the ideological spectrum, “perfection” is always a distant goal that is never reached. Universities are critical actors that help societies strive towards perfection, through teaching, research, and, the focus of this book, engagement with various segments of the community on the local, national, regional, and international levels. In these pages, we do not judge, rank, or rate the universities profiled throughout, nor the societies in which they are embedded. This is a goal of this text; it is comparative without judgement. However, we do assess the profiled universities, but only through honest reflection, given the unique experiences that define the lenses of the authors. We do not claim to be unbiased in our vision of the “good university,” and our unique biases may be revealed throughout the text. When we are aware of them, we will call them out in the interest of transparency. In cases where we are not aware of our biases, we ask readers to question our words and to use them for their own critical reflections. This is the primary goal of this text: to provoke and promote reflection, discussion, and deliberation among readers and their associates, such that universities around the world, across societies and societal contexts, are indeed doing what they can and think they should do in relationship with community for the promotion of civic health. In the balance of this introduction, we introduce the major themes from the book and preview what we consider to be the biggest questions for the global higher education community in the years ahead, as they relate to university-community engagements and civic health. Nine chapters follow this, plus the conclusion. Chapter 2 presents a general discussion of how the civic mission of the university has been advanced, theoretically and practically, in different parts of the world. This is a discussion that comes at a time when this part of the mission is simultaneously promoted through outside recognition (Carnegie Foundation

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2015), application of innovative pedagogy (Bryer 2014; Shaffer, Longo, Manosevitch and Thomas 2017), and held up by concerned stakeholders as suffering (National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement 2012), while also being overshadowed by mostly economic interests that give rise to scenarios such as the shuttering of liberal arts programmes in rural campuses (Smith 2019), concern for high costs of higher education (The Economist 2018), and concern for political bias in civic action (National Association of Scholars 2017). As such, the chapter presents a civic mission at a crossroads and presents a set of typologies: civic versus un-civic university (Goddard, Hazelkorn, Kempton and Vallance 2016); humaniversity versus impact university (Campbell and Hwa 2015); multiversity versus transversity (Scott and Awbrey 1993). In Chap. 3, we offer a review of university-community partnership literature, linked mostly to the disciplines we uncovered in our case universities as, essentially, carrying the torch of such partnerships. The literature is drawn from a review of scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) journals across disciplines, though limited to English-language journals. We introduce our case universities in Chap. 4. Our cases come from different parts of the world, though not exhaustive. We present core attributes of each university, including historical development, size, programmes of study, mission, and other elements important for the discussions that follow. The case universities are from North America (University of Baltimore, Arizona State University, and University of Central Florida), Europe (Edge Hill University, Kaunas University of Technology, Tallinn University of Technology), Eurasia (University of Tyumen), Africa (Stellenbosch University), and South America (University of Chile, Catholic University of Chile, and University of Concepción). In addition to these primary cases, we introduce other select examples from other institutions throughout the text. In Chaps. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, we discuss the critical themes that emerged in our interviews with professors, students, staff, and community partners at our case universities. We examine the variations of how “community” is defined by our case universities in Chap. 5. Ultimately, we distinguish between two kinds of universities: those we label as having a hard integration with community, which tend towards having a clear notion of communities being served, apart from academic communities, and where there is some level of being embedded; and, those we label as having a soft integration with community, which tend towards having a

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more loose or variable definition of community and more ad hoc relations with community stakeholders that are driven potentially more by the individual interests of academic staff than by institutional directive. Those universities with a harder integration (as they exist on a continuum) include Stellenbosch University (South Africa), University of Central Florida (United States), Arizona State University (United States), and, to a more variable extent, the University of Baltimore (United States), Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), University of Tyumen (Russia), and University of Concepción (Chile). Universities with a softer integration include Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia), Edge Hill University (United Kingdom), and University of Chile (Chile). In Chap. 5, we also consider different strategies for engaging with these variably defined communities. Specifically, we consider engagement strategies of the individual scholars working outside or within formal university processes, teaching enrolled students and/or community members outside tuition-paying students, and research on versus with community members. Reflecting upon the nature of civically or community-engaged work of universities, we encounter a potential paradox. For instance, within a university maintaining a harder integration with community, we find a professor who prefers to work outside the formal channels of the university to engage with certain stakeholders through his or her research and teaching. We question some factors that might contribute to a university’s and individual’s inclination to engage with civic and community issues in Chap. 6. Specifically, we examine the kind of autonomy an institution, and professor within the institution, has, and the relationship to institutional or individual willingness to take risks by engaging in certain civic, policy, or political issues. We present a matrix (Table 6.1) of willingness to take risk based on the level of contestation of the civic, policy, or political issue, and the degree of autonomy held by the institution or individual. Examples from the case universities elucidate the matrix categories. Whereas we focus on civic risk-taking in Chap. 6, including research, teaching, and other activities that might occur off campus or in partnership with community groups, in Chap. 7, we consider civic action on the university campus itself. Specifically, we consider the geographic space of the university campus as a contested civic space. We examine different ways in which individuals living or working on a university campus might be alternatively empowered or manipulated, or some of both, depending on the political sensitivity of an issue. We outline four strategies potentially

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employed by university leadership to either allow for or mitigate against certain kinds of participation of professors, staff, and students in civic and political activities: (1) controlled participation, (2) tokenistic participation, (3) symbolic or fake participation, and (4) authentic participation. As with the previous chapter, we provide examples to demonstrate the applicability of these categories. In Chap. 8, we consider the formal and informal mechanisms through which civic and community-engaged practice becomes embedded to varying degrees within the fabric of the university. We define four types of civic campuses (Fig. 8.1) based on the level of formal institutionalisation of and informal socialisation to the idea and practice of civic and community-­ engaged work. These four types of campuses are the grassroots civic campus (high socialisation, low institutionalisation), full integration civic campus (high socialisation and high institutionalisation), ad hoc civic campus (low socialisation and low and institutionalisation), and the decoupled civic campus (low socialisation and high institutionalisation). Examples are provided, though we recognise that most campuses, including those of our case universities, will exist not fully within one of these categories, but will cross over, as levels of socialisation and institutionalisation are both to be seen as existing on a continuum. In Chap. 9, we examine how universities measure the impact of their civic work. We present no typology of practice within the chapter, but we do observe the variability in levels of formal measurement, and the challenges that align with potentially competing university objectives. These challenges are particularly acute in considering the promotion and annual evaluation of professors, given the pressure to succeed in “traditional” metrics of academic success (e.g. peer reviewed publications, grants, et cetera) while also affording them some opportunity and possibly incentive to engage in “non-traditional” civic or community-engaged work. Finally, in Chap. 10, we explore ways in which our case universities provide space for students in particular to become active citizens through their university experience and, potentially, take those lessons into the future when they might be active citizens in their communities, wherever they live. Much emphasis is placed here on the act of student as volunteer, as several universities facilitate volunteerism and provide some institutional framework to support volunteer initiatives. These chapters represent not only key themes that emerged in the course of our visits to our case university, but represent the critical concerns that the higher education community around the world must

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c­onsider as the expectation that a university be somehow civically and community connected and engaged is growing in societies around the world. We do not present here a “perfect model” of the civically and community-­engaged university. Indeed, quite the opposite: we find health in the variation of approaches, all set within different political, historical, and cultural constraints. We believe that universities around the world can learn from each other about how to be adaptive to and civically responsive and responsible for their communities and broader society; this means American university leaders and professors can learn from their Russian counterparts; South African university leaders and professors can learn from their Chilean counterparts, and so on. To establish this crosstalk is our aim, not to judge or dismiss or criticise. We hope insights from our exploration are valuable.

References Bryer, T.A. 2014. “Beyond Job Creation and Service Learning: Putting the Public Back in Public Affairs Education.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 20 (2): 233–252. Campbell, J. and Y.S.  Hwa. 2015. “The Spirit of Community Engagement.” International e-Journal of Community & Industry Engagement, 2 (1): 1–10. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Elective Community Engagement Classification. 2015. Farley, R. 2015. https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/obama-and-americanexceptionalism/ Goddard, J., E.  Hazelkorn, L.  Kempton and P.  Vallance. 2016. The Civic University: The Policy and Leadership Challenges. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. National Association of Scholars. 2017. Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics. https://www.nas.org/projects/making_citizens_ report National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement. 2012. A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities. Scott, D.K. and S.M.  Awbrey. 1993. “Transforming Scholarship.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 25 (4): 38–43. Shaffer, T.J., N.V. Longo, I. Manosevitch and M.S. Thomas. 2017. Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Smith, M. 2019. “At Struggling Rural Colleges, No Future for History Degrees.” New York Times, 13th January 2019. The Economist. 2018. “All Must Have Degrees.” 3rd February 2018.

CHAPTER 2

Civic Mission of the University

There is not one single “ideal” of a civic-oriented university, particularly when looked at from a global, comparative perspective. This is so, first, given the different perceived and actual functions of universities across societies but also given different conceptions of what is properly “civic” and appropriate civic action across societies. The “good citizen,” to borrow the book title from Russell Dalton (2016), appears differently in the United States compared to Russia, or Chile, Lithuania, or South Africa. The good university, as it were, is conceived differently, even if the rhetoric is similar if not exactly the same across places. We explore this rhetoric in later chapters. For now, we consider from a more conceptual and theoretical plane the idea of a civic mission of the university. As is appropriate given our focus, to start from concept and theory as if it were divorced from practice is injurious and can lead us down a path of questionable relevance. We thus start from practice or practical, or instrumental, need, with vignettes from numerous places, and then link these concerns to the more normative descriptions of and prescriptions for higher education institutions. It is not our aim in this chapter to espouse normative or values-based theories that champion a particular role of the university, lest we fall into the trap identified by Bryer (2014) in which a single narrative about the role of higher education institutions is stood on a pedestal whilst all other narratives are cast aside as wrong-headed or heretical. Thus, by starting with practical © The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_2

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concern, we strive for a balanced presentation of real situations, unfiltered through any particular values-based lens—civic, economic, or otherwise. Calls for pursuing a civic mission, or something like it, have over time been instigated by some external forces or conditions. These forces might be singular events (or a singular event as a culmination of trends), or a collection of trends that are interpreted as troubling to theorists, practitioners, and others. Benjamin Barber (1998) opened a provocative essay about the civic mission of universities addressing such trends and leaving in the path a scathing critique of American higher education institutions (178): The modern American university is embroiled in controversy, fuelled by deep uncertainty over its pedagogical purposes and its civic role in a “free” society. At times the college establishment seems to know neither what a free society is nor what the educational requisites of freedom might look like. Nonetheless, both administrators and their critics have kept busy, for like zealots (classically defined as people who redouble their efforts when they have forgotten their aims), they have covered their confusion by embellishing their hyperbole. They wring hands and rue the social crises of higher education—apathy, cynicism, careerism, prejudice, selfishness, sexism, opportunism, complacency, and substance abuse—but they hesitate when faced with hard decisions, and prefer to follow rather than challenge the national mood.

These words, written in the late 1980s, are still relevant in 2019. Though, the idea of promoting freedom and taking stands to challenge the national mood is one that is perhaps easier to vocalise and a bit more complex in practice. It is also fraught with political landmines. For example, a higher education policy proposal in the State of Florida (United States) would mandate an annual survey of professors, administrators, and students to assess openness to competing perspectives and truth claims. This raises the question about what is legitimate other speech, and what is, within the context of a liberal education, on the surface and deep within anathema to the ideals of liberal education itself. Is a far-right, white nationalist who preaches hate and discrimination a legitimate other voice that should have a welcoming environment on a university campus? Should university campus buildings be open for rent and utilisation by any person or group in society, without explicit endorsement or support from an organised student organisation or faculty member sponsor? In later chapters, we will explore this issue more with regard to how universities have managed such situations and the notion that, if students are well

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prepared, such hate speech would never be invited to campus as legitimate speech. The problem comes when an invitation is made. Ultimately, the concern is one of defining the public responsibility of universities, consisting of highly educated scholars and philosophers, to actively advise governments, non-profit or social purpose organisations, businesses, and society writ-large on how to form a more perfect society. The definition of the perfect society is variable across countries and over time. Some governments in the world exercise more direct or indirect control over their universities than others, which can have the effect of freeing, muting, or censoring certain speech and activities on campus. The myriad “types” of universities, such as public (state owned) or private (for and not for profit), catholic or religious and secular, teaching or research universities, among other classifications, also add an important level of complexity to the matter. This too is an issue to which we will return. However, within this context, we have not only the question of university responsibility and government control but trust of the people in the institutions, which can be very complicated. For example, are universities considered neutral, independent institutions made up of neutral, independent scholars and philosophers? This independence can potentially make universities “enemies” of the state, and either friends or enemies of the people depending on the popular perception of the state. Alternatively, are universities considered to be extensions of the state, where professors teach and research only what is directed by politicians and technocrats? Or, are universities seen as a complete mystery, agendas unclear, accountability unclear, but big “players” in a community or region? One example of the dilemma of public perception of universities is suggested by the experience of Brexit. British voters approved a 2016 ballot question that launched the process to begin negotiations for the removal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union. This act alone shocked government, civic, and university leaders throughout the country and, indeed, around the world. For universities, two questions emerged: What will be the impact of Brexit on student enrolment as well as on external research funding? Second, and to the point of this chapter, what could universities have done differently to educate voters? Why were universities not trusted as they, with great consensus, advocated for the UK to stay in the EU? The minister of education in Wales raised the issue in these terms: “At a UK-level, the pro-EU campaign of universities was too easily dismissed as one of self-interest, almost exclusively focused on income. This is not to

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exempt politicians and government from criticism, far from it. But it is certainly incumbent on universities to reflect on the distance between campus and community exposed by the referendum” (BBC 2016). This disconnection between university and community perhaps ought not to come as any surprise. Universities in many places around the world have, if we can say as such, suffered the indignity of bowing to market pressures and forces, at the expense of other missions (Bryer 2014). Fethke and Policano (2012) argued as much when advocating that “unless public universities become more efficient, they will not survive in their current form” (8). They argued for universities to become more entrepreneurial. These forces come at a cost, as Barber (1998) wrote: “Today … the focus on performance, standards, global competition, and outcomes has largely eclipsed the linkage to citizenship” (178). Continuing, he wrote (178): Our society has pretty much abandoned the notion that education is above all a training ground for citizenship, the place where we acquire the arts of liberty. On the contrary, we train for job competition and we train for the vocations, and occasionally we uphold ivory tower intellectualism as an end in itself, but we do not educate for citizenship.

Market forces dictate what university degree programmes to terminate, as in the case of a university president appointed for his business experience and who proceeded to lay off 50 professors through programme closure mostly in the humanities (Zamudio-Suarez 2018). They lead consultants to public university system officials to openly ask, what is the value of paying through salary for the publication of any more articles interpreting the work of William Shakespeare? (Bryer 2014). They lead to students being treated as consumers and institutional biases that favour measures of financial return and cost-savings rather than citizenship cultivation or even knowledge creation and dissemination (Bryer 2014; Zemsky and Shaman 2017). Brewer (2013) discussed threats to social science within British universities as “the audit culture and marketization in higher education” (6). Resulting public disinvestment and increasing competition are pushing public universities to be more business-like, which requires that they engage in more top-down strategic planning with more adaptive strategies to market demand in order to create value, measured as what g ­ overnment/students are willing to pay minus costs of delivery/production (Fethke and Policano 2012). Market forces are not the only factors that drive a potential wedge between universities and the communities they might be able to serve.

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The perception of universities as elite institutions not connected to the concerns of the “common” person, labourer or worker, and where the experiential knowledge of this constituency are not perceived to be seen as credible, is a wedge that has segmented universities in the United States and elsewhere for more than a century. Indeed, university professors have been and continue to be caricatured as aloof. Gelder (2011) captured some of these caricatures in this regard within a historical review of populist sentimentalities and the role of higher education institutions (6–7): “An educated fool is the most hopeless of all fools,” announced the Progressive Farmer while recounting the story of a Boston professor who could not fit through his front door with an open umbrella until a laborer across the street solved the “terrible dilemma into which the philosopher had fallen.” Adopting a harsher tone, another radical newspaper complained of “learned jack asses who add a string of big letters to their insignificant names” and pride themselves on speaking foreign languages rather than disseminating useful information to common people. In Kansas, a radical newspaper accused institutions of higher education of cultivating “a surface mysterious sort of pretence to fool the uneducated into believing that a college education is too deep to fathom.” These concerns fuelled Populist criticism of the “priestly” aspects of higher education, such as the caps and gowns worn during commencement ceremonies.

In a keynote talk at the annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration, Bryer (2016) warned of the walls constructed throughout society that are also barricading professors and students within universities and separated from the lives and livelihoods of the masses. His call to action was as follows: Universities, and specifically public service programs at universities, must take as a mission to breakdown walls within their institutions and between their institutions and the broader community. They must take as part of their mission to create discord by upsetting the safety of life behind walls; they must redefine the idea of access to university education to include not only access for underserved populations to become enrolled students to earn degrees; access means taking the educational process outside the walls and confines of tuition-paying or fee-generating students.

He further argued this general point at an inaugural lecture given at the University of Central Florida on the occasion of his promotion to full

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professor. The “priestly” gowns, as Gelder observed in his historical review, were similarly portrayed as an elitist separation from the people. To make his point, about half way through his lecture, Bryer removed piece-­ by-­piece articles of his academic regalia and formal clothes that were found underneath. “Without our uniforms, who are we? Without the air of pretence around us, what do we become? When we are not wearing the regalia, nor the jacket and tie, or freshly pressed shirt, how is our judgment accepted in society? Do we have the capacity to walk as one, all for one, with the vast majority of people on this earth who are not Doctors of Philosophy?” (Bryer 2017: 3). Quoting extensively from that lecture, Bryer concluded with the following thoughts (6): At the end of the day, the professor and the people are the same. We bleed the same blood, celebrate the same human moments such as birth of a child or success at school or work, get knocked down and suffer the indignities of the same diseases, and so on. At the same time, we are different. We have the privilege to earn a salary to devote our lives to thinking and philosophy. This difference does not mean we are one for all, that we know best what the people need to know or want to know. The people may confound us from time to time. One scholar observed as much in a historical analysis of progressive intellectuals, champions of democracy and empowerment of the people, who turned late in their careers to arrive at completely opposite conclusions. They witnessed that the people whom they spent a career seeking to empower failed to meet their expectations. We are all for one. Our expectations may not suit the people. We cannot apply our one view to all and expect obedience to it. But the people can confound us. To express confusion when citizens make decisions at the ballot box that run counter to rational expectation is natural, but we cannot translate the confusion into the erection of walls. Quite the opposite, we must open the doors, break down the walls, not to “enlighten” the people and make them aware of their “mistakes in judgment” but to enlighten the professoriate such that we can better understand the complex human dynamics that are shaping our world, outside our campuses, and unhidden by our gowns.

This is a potentially bold statement. It is a normative statement, in any case, and reveals the biases of at least the first author of this monograph. More instrumentally, the statement implicitly points towards the importance of relationships between university and community, particularly with respect to civic health. The form and function of those relationships, how-

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ever, is highly contextualised. As an interviewee from Arizona State University (ASU) in the United States—a university profiled more deeply in later chapters—said, he would not recommend the ASU model for any university. It fits ASU, its mission, and its capacity, and may not transfer readily to other contexts. The effort to forge common purpose identity across contexts has occurred, however, for 150 years or more, particularly in regards to urban universities. These institutions, set within an inner city or city centre, have a potential radically different mission compared to institutions set apart from population centres. What this different mission might be has been contested, as has the placement of universities as embedded institutions within cities. In the United States and elsewhere, universities were not created as places for students and professors to be one with the community and in the community. Universities were designed and geographically situated in rural settings, within environments fit for reflection, appreciation of aesthetic beauty, and concentration on development of the mind. For example, Charles Thwing, president of Western Reserve College in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, wrote in 1897: “[A college should] not be in the midst of the city, but on its borders—so near that the great life of the town can come into the college … and so the students and professors can enter into this great life, helping to qualify it. [But the location] should be so near the green fields and forests, that all those delights and all those influences which belong to nature may enter into and possess the quiet for the restless soul” (Diner 2017: 6). On the other hand, Boston University, founded in 1869, quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on its publications: “Where should the scholar live? In solitude or in society? In the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of nature beat, or in the dark grey town, where he can hear and feel the throbbing beat of men?” (ibid.). Over the course of the twentieth century in American higher education, the movement was very much oriented towards Longfellow’s assumption. Universities can exist in urban centres, and once there, they should have responsibilities to their communities that are unique. These extra responsibilities serve the interests of students, professors, and organisations and citizens existing within municipal boundaries. Charles Dabney, president of the University of Cincinnati, wrote, as quoted by Diner (40): “The university of the city, as distinguished from the university in the city,” should be the city’s brain, directing the goals and policies of all entities and

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its residents. Once cities recognize this, “boundless possibilities for service appear.”

Diner provides another example from Samuel Capan, chancellor of the University of Buffalo, who stated that the urban university “designates something other than the mere accident of location” and that there is a “special obligation” (44). In Washington, DC, the president of American University, Paul Douglass, stated that “the urban university cannot build a wall around the stresses of community life, [because] it is the catalytic agent of the twentieth century neighbourhood” (44). Diner himself defined the urban university as “one that is geographically in a city and that leverages its resources to affect lives and institutions within the city, using multi-disciplinary approaches, and building relationships and strengthening teaching and research activity” (2017: 72–73). This unique mission has included cooperation with municipal governments, dating to the early 1900s, adult education, and teacher training, and it is a mission that remains strong at universities geographically placed in city centres around the world, including some that are profiled within these pages: Arizona State University, University of Central Florida, Kaunas University of Technology, and others. The “urban” mission has been adopted on campuses that are, as Charles Thwing reported, on the borders of the city, such as Edge Hill University, as well by universities that were within a city but directed outward to surrounding areas, such as Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Nonetheless, this identity remains conflicted with competing pressures on the institution and the people who work within and in partnership with it. Goddard, Kempton and Vallance summarise this situation (2013: 43): The ambiguity about the university and the city is reflected in the existence of two separate knowledge communities. The first backs into the university from a city and regional development perspective, and the second backs into the city from a focus on the university as an institution. Each of these has its own ‘community of practice’ linked to the knowledge base and enshrined in two separate domains of government—higher education and territorial development. From an urban and regional policy perspective, the university is sometimes seen as providing the answer to all manner of urban ills, from a shortage of jobs through to the inclusion of marginalised communities into the socio-economic mainstream. From a higher education policy perspective, engagement with a city can provide an outward and visible sign of the university’s contribution to civil society. But there are potential tensions here between intentionally acknowledged academic excellence and societal accessibility to knowledge that urban engagement implies.

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One reason for the tensions is that building linkages to community is not part of standard academic work despite the rhetoric surrounding the urban university, and thus requires different leadership, from both universities and cities, to realise potential partnerships. There are hurdles to overcome, including the fragmentation of the university as an institution, and the negative incentives associated with performing community-­ engaged work (Bryer 2014; Goddard et al. 2013). Professors need to ask, in such common contexts around the world, “If I get involved in public issues, will I still have time to publish in my field so I can get tenure and promotions? If I focus too much on my career, am I selling out my ideals?” (Badgett 2015: 185). As stated by an interviewee at Arizona State University, one of our cases, we “can’t give tenure for working with needy children … but faculty [members] are recognized for community work.” External processes such as accreditation are pushing universities to include this topic in their structures. Both at the university and programme level, these processes might pressure universities to think in the manner through which “community-engagement” can take place. This can yield a problem in universities with little or no experience in the matter, because it can create the conditions for doing things that the university as a community does not feel important, therefore, they might pursue “community-­ engagement” activities only to comply, but not because they consider the activity as something relevant or meaningful. In this context, showing activities or programmes with communities can be a façade for getting the “certification” of being accredited. The risk of external pressures such as accreditation processes or other similar process is to do something without the conviction  that these types of activities are important for academic institutions. The prospect of shifting the culture and associated rules and incentives within higher education institutions is perhaps dim, at best, as Butin and Seider (2012: 3) explained: It of course must be noted that this vision of the “disciplined” inquiry of a subject seemingly so wedded to community action may be disappointingly deflationary, particularly for those committed to a revolutionary model of social change. We cannot, so it seems, immediately and completely transform either the academy or our communities. But, to be honest, this was never a possibility so much as a rhetorical straw man argument for the value of civic and community engagement.

What can turn this tide, and allow for movement beyond rhetoric, Butin and Seider suggest, is more clarity in scope, purpose, and overall ambition.

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This includes a clearer definition of civic engagement within the context of higher education missions, and clear, measurable integration within study programmes, and potentially to journey a path away from “apolitical” engagement activities that fail to place advocacy at their centre (Hollander 2012: 187) or the cultivation of human beings to reach their fullest potential as the primary goal, rather than to create skilled professionals of various kinds (Fethke and Policano 2012). These larger normative purposes and the possibility of being political as a pathway to civic relevance for universities is, however, problematic within countries that are considered democratic, let alone those that have lesser democratic tendencies. Stanley Fish argued in his book, Save the World on Your Own Time (2008; Fish 2004: para. 1): “Don’t confuse your academic obligations with the obligation to save the world.” Summarising his point further, Fairley and Wilson (2017: 8) wrote: “Character formation and civic responsibility are good things, he admitted, but they are not the responsibility of a university, which is to transmit and produce knowledge. To aim for more than that, he argued, dilutes mission, offers faculty members a platform to espouse their personal political beliefs, and should be the work of people in society other than university faculty.” A politically conservative organisation, the National Association of Scholars, released a 525-page report in 2017, where they were very pointed in their critique of the democratic, civic missions and activities of universities. Their critique is summarised in the report’s executive summary (9): What we call the “New Civics” redefines civics as progressive political activism. Rooted in the radical program of the 1960s’ New Left, the New Civics presents itself as an up-to-date version of volunteerism and good works. Though camouflaged with soft rhetoric, the New Civics, properly understood, is an effort to repurpose education. The New Civics seeks above all to make students into enthusiastic supporters of the New Left’s dream of “fundamentally transforming” America. The transformation includes de-carbonizing the economy, massively redistributing wealth, intensifying identity group grievance, curtailing the free market, expanding government bureaucracy, elevating international “norms” over American Constitutional law, and disparaging our common history and ideals. New Civics advocates argue among themselves which of these transformations should take precedence, but they agree that America must be transformed by “systemic change” from an unjust, oppressive society to a society that embodies social justice.

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The New Civics hopes to accomplish this by teaching students that a good citizen is a radical activist, and it puts political activism at the center of everything that students do in college, including academic study, extra-­ curricular pursuits, and off-campus ventures. New Civics builds on “service-learning,” which is an effort to divert students from the classroom to vocational training as community activists. By rebranding itself as “civic engagement,” service-learning succeeded in capturing early all the funding that formerly supported the old civics. In practice this means that instead of teaching college students the foundations of law, liberty, and self-government, colleges teach students how to organize protests, occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations. These are indeed forms of “civic engagement,” but they are far from being a genuine substitute for learning how to be a full participant in our republic. New Civics has still further ambitions. Its proponents want to build it into every college class regardless of subject.

Reports like these have the potential to make university leaders nervous, as Hollander reported (2012: 193): “[C]ampuses have good reasons to worry about ‘politicizing’ their civic-engagement efforts for fear of losing funding, or of favouring one political point of view or another.” The first author of this monograph experienced such worries in 2017. He sought to organise a “community conversation” about healthcare reform at the University of Central Florida. The forum was intended to repeat the success of a similar event in 2008, which was convened after a nationwide call from the Obama transition team to learn about challenges with accessing quality, affordable healthcare within the United States. In 2008, more than 70 people showed up in the middle of December, and one of the participants whose story was highlighted in Bryer’s report to the Obama administration was subsequently invited as a guest to the State of the Union Address, as a symbol of the challenge of why healthcare reform was necessary. In 2017, there was once again talk of healthcare policy reform, but the politics were very different: more reactionary. Upon requesting support from the university’s media office to advertise the new community conversation, university officials demurred, fearing that even the convening of such a discussion and promoted by more than a single university professor could be interpreted as taking a position against the new reform policy discussions advanced by the Trump administration. The university thus declined to promote the event in any organised way, but they did offer to post security personnel outside the doors of the event in case any protest-

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ers happened to show up. Only a dozen or so people attended this community conversation. The “new civics” critique, and fear of politicisation, is a response to much of what is advocated by The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement (2012). They recommend “five essential actions” (vi): • Reclaim and reinvest in the fundamental civic and democratic mission of schools and of all sectors within higher education. • Enlarge the current national narrative that erases civic aims and civic literacy as educational priorities contributing to social, intellectual, and economic capital. • Advance a contemporary, comprehensive framework for civic learning—embracing US and global interdependence—that includes historic and modern understanding of democratic values, capacities to engage diverse perspectives and people, and commitment to collective civic problem solving. • Capitalise upon the interdependent responsibilities of K-12 and higher education to foster progressively higher levels of civic knowledge, skills, examined values, and action as expectations for every student. • Expand the number of robust, generative civic partnerships and alliances, locally, nationally, and globally to address common problems, empower people to act, strengthen communities and nations, and generate new frontiers of knowledge. In the balance of this chapter, we examine different models of this kind of engaged university, while maintaining some focus on the critiques of this approach.

Models of the Engaged University The aim or purpose of engagement establishes the intensity of university involvement with communities and community organisations, as well as the structures and measurements of success developed to support the aim. Purposes have been described differently, according to the type of university, as well as by the function. In terms of type of university, there are several that are clearly identified within higher education institution (HEI) literature: civic university, un-civic university (Goddard, Hazelkorn, Kempton and Vallance 2016), multiversity (Cole 2009), humaniversity

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(Campbell and Hwa 2015), and engaged university (Bryer 2014). Engagement functions include citizen cultivation, knowledge creation and dissemination, skill building, and job creation (Bryer 2014), and social justice, economic development, and public good (Goddard et al. 2016). Each type and function is reviewed in the pages that follow. Civic Versus Un-Civic University Goddard et al. (2016) distinguished between the civic and un-civic university. The latter holds “third mission activities” such as engagement and community-based work as a separate, un-integrated silo within the university. These activities assist generally with increasing revenues through grants or contracts but are not specifically, strategically, or systematically linked to the teaching and research elements of the institution. This is much, as Bryer (2014) described the four competing narratives of the university in terms of purpose; each exists and is pursued by disconnected branches of the university. As Goddard et al. (2016) wrote, this is quite a common scenario, and the “civic” scenario is considerably less so. The civic university seeks integration between teaching, research, and engagement. The integration is not managed through top-down administrative leadership, as they described the un-civic university, but is led through what Goddard et al. (2016) called “transformative, responsive, demand-led action” (6). They identified seven dimensions of this type of university: • Sense of purpose, such that there is “an understanding of not just what it is good at, but what it is food for” (10). • Actively engaged “with the wider world, the nation in which it operates and the local community of the place in which it is located” (10). • Holistic approach to engagement, “seeing it as [an] institution-wide activity and not confined to specific individuals or teams” (10). • Sense of place, such that “it recognizes the extent to which its location helps to form its unique identity as an institution” (10). • Willing to invest in “its objectives to have an impact beyond the academy” (10). • Transparent and accountable with “clear benchmarks and performance indicators which help it express its civic mission in practical ways” (11). • Innovative methodologies and encouragement to “academic staff to explore new and emerging approaches to tackling societal challenges such as social innovation” (11).

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A prominent approach to recognising and helping universities assess their “civic-ness” is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Elective Community Engagement Classification (2015). Developed for and with universities in the United States, it is now being piloted for expansion to universities internationally. For the purposes of the classification process, community engagement is defined as “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. The purpose of community engagement is the partnership of college and university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good” (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 2015: 2). The Carnegie definition described how in reciprocal partnerships, there are collaborative community-campus definitions of problems, solutions, and measures of success. Community engagement requires processes in which academics recognize, respect, and value the knowledge, perspectives, and resources of community partners and that are designed to serve a public purpose, building the capacity of individuals, groups, and organisations involved to understand and collaboratively address issues of public concern (2).

In both constructions, from Goddard et  al. (2016) and from the Carnegie Foundation (2015), there was distinction between the symbols of engagement and institutionalised engagement. In the Carnegie classification application a university must complete to potentially receive the designation of a community-engaged university, there are two data categories of interest: (1) institutional identity and culture, and (2) institutional commitment. Presumably, it is easier to maintain identity and culture without having engagement embedded within the operations and structures of the institution. That is, a university can show symbols of engagement but still only be an un-civic university. To demonstrate, the questions asked under the Carnegie category of institutional identity and culture include the following: (1) Does the institution indicate that community engagement is a priority in its mission statement? (2) Does the institution formally recognise community engage-

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ment through campus-wide awards and celebrations? (3) Does the institution have mechanisms for systematic assessment of community perceptions of the institution’s engagement with community? (4) Does the institution aggregate and use all of its assessment data related to community engagement? (5) Is community engagement emphasised in the marketing materials of the institution? (6) Does the executive leadership of the institution explicitly promote community engagement as a priority? More simply stated, it is easy to “fake” it, such that leadership talk about engagement but internal practices do not change. From an organisational theory perspective, this is referred to as organisational decoupling. The rational organisation will maintain this separation to protect mid-level managers and lower level employees from changes and disruptions coming from the environment, like the normative, legitimacy-­ granting demand for community engagement. Leadership might do the bare minimum or talk the talk, as it were, to appease the legitimacy granters like the Carnegie Foundation, but little else will shift within the institution as a whole. Indeed, Butin and Seider (2012) described, within this talk, “there continues to be a lack of conceptual clarity, research rigor, or impact of outcomes” (4). Thus, the Carnegie Foundation seeks some evidence that systems are in place, and engagement strategies and civic activities are operationally embedded within the fabric of the institution. Institutional commitment questions include: 1. Does the institution have a campus-wide coordinating infrastructure to support and advance community engagement? 2. Are internal budgetary allocations dedicated to supporting institutional engagement with community? 3. Does the institution maintain systematic campus-wide tracking or documentation mechanisms to record and/or track engagement with the community? 4. Are there systematic campus-wide assessment mechanisms to measure the impact of institutional engagement? 5. Is community engagement defined and planned for in the strategic plans of the institution? 6. Does the institution provide professional development support for faculty and/or staff who engage with community? 7. Does the community have a “voice” or role for input into institutional or departmental planning for community engagement?

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8. Does the institution have search/recruitment policies or practices designed specifically to encourage the hiring of faculty with expertise in and commitment to community engagement? 9. Are there institutional level policies for promotion that specifically reward faculty scholarly work that uses community-engaged approaches and methods? 10. Is community engagement rewarded as one form of teaching and learning, scholarship, and service? 11. Are there college/school and/or department level policies for promotion that specifically reward faculty scholarly work that uses community-engaged approaches and methods? Even with these additional questions, the measures better reflect the capacity for engagement and not actual engagement. In a way that Medina and Bryer (2019) described within the context of e-governance rankings for governments around the world, the Carnegie institutional commitment measures reveal only that, as a metaphor, there is a beautiful new restaurant open that boasts a world-class chef and the finest ingredients. That capacity does not mean customers will show up or that they will enjoy the meal that is served. In other words, the Carnegie classification does not assess outcomes; it only assesses capacity to potentially achieve outcomes. The reclassification application asks what percentage of colleges/schools and/or departments have community-engaged criteria for promotion but does not ask what percentage of individuals promoted have engaged or been assessed on such criteria, as an example. This is an important limitation of the Carnegie classification system, in that the actual form and depth of engagement is not captured. There is, ultimately, no way to know if two universities that receive an engagement classification are likely producing the same depth and breadth of outcomes, or if one university might best be called un-civic with mostly token capacities but without fully embedded and operational systems, structures, and incentives. To demonstrate the point, we can reflect on a framework proposed by Goddard et al. (2016), which indicated “deepening” engagement activities that range from the practice of volunteering disconnected from other academic pursuits to holistic civic engagement, which consists of a “self-­ reinforcing and sustainable circle of activity, embedded across the entire institution and acting as the horizontal and reciprocal glue linking teaching to research” (70).

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Two universities that receive the Carnegie classification are perhaps highly likely to exist at multiple points on this continuum, which then reduces the value of the classification itself, at least with respect to the actual outcomes that are achieved given roughly equal capacities across institutions. At the same time, as we will see in one of our case universities, some institutions strategically choose to not pursue the Carnegie classification due to the burdensome application process and uncertain payoff. Nonetheless, the classification system and the notion of the civic versus un-civic university is a useful model to describe institutions and classify institutions. Actually measuring the impact of engagement is challenging (Bryer 2014; Butin and Seider 2012; Fethke and Policano 2012). Badgett (2015: 6) summarised this challenge: As scholars, we live and die (professionally, anyway) through our capacity to reason and persuade our colleagues. We have professional norms and customs to guide our research. We have our students to take our wisdom and insights from the classroom into the “real world.” University evaluation procedures keep us on a professionally productive path of research and publications. We get rewards of status, sabbaticals, and raises for staying professionally active. All of these features of academic life focus our attention on one key audience—ourselves.

Nonetheless, Badgett suggested some indicators of successful engagement that are more outcomes-oriented than those used, for instance, in the Carnegie classification. They include (197): • Gaining access to new resources: (1) being invited to speak to an influential group of decision makers or voters, (2) testifying before policymakers, (3) meeting privately with an influential person or organisation, (4) expanding social media followers. • Developing new relationships: (1) getting to know people in the public sphere who share your commitment, (2) connecting with other scholars working on the same issue, (3) creating a formal or informal network of scholars, (4) making new opportunities for your students, and (5) engaging with members of your community who are working for social change. • Leveraging your perspective through the media: (1) getting an op-ed published and cited in a debate, (2) having a tweet or blog post reposted or go viral, (3) being quoted in a news articles that connects your work to an issue.

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• Seeing your work used in a debate: (1) a judge or policymaker cites it in a decision or debate, (2) someone tells you that you work has changed how they see an issue, (3) other people cite your work in their own writing or speaking. • Seeing movement on an issue that is linked to new knowledge and greater understanding: (1) a bill is passed or a court decision issues, such as (A) an exclusionary policy is ended, or a new right is recognised, (b) new efforts to improve the lives of human beings in education, healthcare, housing, food security, and so on, are enacted and funded, (2) more resources of attention and funding go to important issues, (3) positive changes take place in what individuals, organisations, businesses, or public agencies do or don’t do, (4) an issue is reframed in a new and productive way. • Being sought after for your knowledge and opinion: (1) you are asked to do work more targeted to a specific action under consideration, (2) others consult with you on the implementation or evaluation of a course of action. Additional measurement ideas are presented in the next section and addressed through the case examples presented later in the book. Humaniversity Versus Impact University The idea of the humaniversity can be regarded as a further critique of Goddard et al.’s (2016) un-civic university as well as of the marketisation and commoditisation of university enterprises. Campbell and Hwa (2015) summarised this perspective: The issue of university community engagement must be understood in cultural context and ultimately its justification needs to be sought against principles and values that are deeper and more ennobling than mere increase in numbers. Communities are made up of people, people with values and a sense of dignity and self-worth. The objectification of community which occurs when we view what we do through the lens of quantification and calculation is ultimately dehumanizing (6).

Razak, Wan and Sirat (2017: 110) defined the humaniversity more specifically: It is a concept grounded in a commitment to humanity, knowledge moderation, and above all, wisdom … Importantly, the concept of Humaniversity

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addresses the lack of a human dimension in higher education through the method of ‘materialistic’ and ‘me first’, and hence, argues the need to reclaim the role of humanity as being the ultimate goal and beneficiary for sustainability and the good of humankind.

An institution that established itself with this idea was Alburkarhy International University in Malaysia. The institution was designed to “humanize university education by ensuring that human dignity is safeguarded and kept intact” (Razak et al. 2017). Campbell and Hwa (2015) also applied this framing to Universiti Sains Malaysia, which recognises that “universities themselves are communities where forms of moral commitment and broader social commitments are developed among both students and staff; and the values and norms developed within university communities are the foundation for the universities engagement with the broader social world of which it is a part” (2). The label of humaniversity has not caught on in the same way as other labels, such as engaged university, but the ideas appear implicitly, if not explicitly, around the globe. This is particularly the case when critics of current structures and frameworks of universities attack the measurability and impact “movements,” or the marketisation and commoditisation movements that are shifting the ways in which scarce resources are allocated across different parts of an institution. Brewer (2013) captured the fundamental concerns related to the “impact agenda” in higher education. Impact is a deeply flawed approach to assess the public value of social science research. There are diverse views on its meaning, it is very difficult to measure, even within the policy evaluation tradition for which the idea of impact slips easily off the pen, and the hostility generated by the impact agenda, associated as it negatively is with the adult culture, has turned the debate gangrenous and ruled out the possibility of reasoned argument (6).

Efforts have been made to bridge the gap between the negative perceptions of the impact agenda and the humanistic dimensions of particularly social sciences, arts, and humanities. Brewer (2013) launched this discussion by arguing the normative public value of social science. It “nurtures a moral sentiment in which we produce and reproduce the social nature of society, enabling us to recognize each other as social beings with a shared responsibility for the future of humankind through understanding, explaining, analyzing and ameliorating the fundamental social problems stored up for us all” (158).

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Bryer (2014) suggested ways to measure this public value for universities as a whole, beyond economic maximisation measures for alumni and financial return of investment for university activities. For instance, measurements can include percentage of alumni who (109): • volunteer two or more hours per week in their community • contribute 5–7 per cent of their household income to charity per year • contribute 8 per cent or more of their household income to charity per year • voted in their most recent local election • voted in their most recent national election • worked with others in their community within the past year to address a public concern • show empathy towards others Measures can also look beyond the point of direct influence (e.g. alumni, students): • percentage of citizens in surrounding communities who show empathy towards others • number of government, non-profit, private, or faith-based organisations that have partnered with or been served by some combination of university faculty and students • percentage of government, non-profit, private, or faith-based organisations that have partnered with or been served by some combination of university faculty and students and who report that their organisation is stronger as a result of the engagement Such measurement schemes require substantial investment, but they potentially allow a bridge from the impact university to the humaniversity, though advocates of the latter may consider the university is selling its soul, so to speak, by caving to the dominant language of measurement at all. Multiversity Versus Connected/Interactive/Transversity The multiversity is defined by the “proliferation of departments, centers, and institutes, its multiple constituencies, its multiculturalism, and its multidisciplinary endeavors” (Scott and Awbrey 1993). On one hand, this

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proliferation is desirable in that the institution maintains many arms with many fingers that can fulfil diverse sets of societal functions. On the other hand, being a multiversity with multiple arms might also include the possibility of multiple heads, with different values, interests, and performance drivers. The consequence of the multiverse is, according to Allan Bloom (1987) a moral relativism and nihilism (Scott and Awbrey 1993). Though this positioning might have been helpful as societies became more complex and multifaceted, it now stands as a manifestation of a fragmented system without values guidance or coordination across units or missions. As Williams (2012: 52) stated: Like other modern social institutions, one thing that has defined the history of the university has been the continual struggle among the competing interests of the groups comprising it, from students and parents to administrators to legislators, and over the general public vista that they each purport to represent.

This was the fundamental critique of Bryer (2014: 1): “Writers representing each of the varied interests, unfortunately, largely talk past each other; there is little if any shared objective.” Scott and Awbrey (1993) thus called for a multiversity, if it is maintained as such, that is “better connected internally and externally” (39) or what they called the Transversity. As a dimension of transforming scholarship … a connectivity in a third dimension, to entities such as K-12 education, community colleges, state governments and agencies, industry, health care, business, and to society in general. By analogy with the labels University and Multiversity, it is logical to label this new coupling as the Transversity, because it transcends the traditional boundaries of the University. The idea here is not simply an enhancement of existing outreach and partnerships, or of existing practices in the application of knowledge, but a new and transformational approach to scholarship (40).

Continuing, they wrote: “In the Connected University of the future, the paths to knowledge must branch across and upwards on the diagram in new patterns of transdisciplinary linkages—with increased dialogue and collaboration between departments within universities, as well as between similar disciplines at different universities. This connectivity must become

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part of the undergraduate curriculum as well as of research and scholarly outreach” (40). Engaged University The idea of an engaged university aligns with these other conceptions: civic, connected, humaniversity, transversity, and so on. Indeed, these other labels might best be described as variations, or branches on the tree of the engaged university. As such, we close this section with a focus on functions of the engaged university and some of the tools that have been identified through previous literature and practice. Engagement functions include: citizen cultivation, knowledge creation and dissemination, skill building, and job creation (Bryer 2014), and social justice, economic development, and public good (Goddard et  al. 2016). These are broadly reviewed, followed by discussion of two strategies that are most prominent in fulfilling these functions: service-learning and anchor institutions. Bryer (2014) described the integration of four HEI functions or narratives to ultimately strengthen communities. These functions, taken separately, will not serve the multifaceted and wicked problems faced in communities. Building skills and putting people into paid employment cannot solve homelessness and poverty, for instance, alone. Part of the problem can be solved, specifically related to subsistence needs. However, poverty takes the form of agency or felt political efficacy, as well as status, or how others view the person who is or was materially poor, undereducated, and so on (Bryer and Prysmakova-Rivera 2018). In the same manner, a university that only emphasises the part of its mission that deals with economy or economic development will not address the citizenship challenges that ensure that any thriving economy is grounded in ethical norms and behaviours that are accepted within society. At the same time, promoting citizenship—ethical, active, or otherwise—is not sufficient alone to produce thriving communities that ensure the material opportunities for self-fulfilment. Though not enough, citizenship, as a concept is foundational to the idea of the engaged university. Drawing on the work of Fairley and Wilson (2017: 28), we can describe the notion of public work as: Public work, where students, faculty, and citizens are co-equals in a dynamic and invigorating process of change, will not likely emerge as a result of

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national calls, declarations for presidents to sign, national organisations, or massive federal or private funding. It will only emerge when new relationships are formed, with citizens at the crowded center, when institutions agree to start where citizens start, and with the discovery of a type of power and identity that can only be formed collaboratively. And when it works well, we might discover that we are the ones we have been waiting for.

The leadership of the professoriate is critical to achieve this idea of public work. The “academic citizen” is someone “prepared to contribute positively as a member of a series of overlapping communities both within and outside the university, to take responsibility for the welfare and development of students, colleagues, and fellow professionals and to contribute to the life of the institution through decision-making processes” (Macfarlane 2007: 3). The academic citizen, or the professor who is a civic leader needs to be “knowledgeable (political literacy), possess key values (connected with social and moral responsibility) and … skilled to carry out this commitment (through community involvement)” (Macfarlane 2007: 17, italics in original). One strategy to achieve this level of academic citizenship and to pursue the idea of public work is service learning. This strategy, or more precisely, pedagogical approach (Bringle and Hatcher 1996; Bharath and Lebovits 2019), was firmly criticised by the report on the “new civics” previously discussed, but beyond these ideologically driven critiques, service learning is generally well recognised, regarded, and incentivised, most particularly at universities in the United States. It has similar roots as the idea of public work, which is integrated promotion of democracy and seeking to solve real-world problems (Boyte and Kari 2000). As a teaching-and-learning technique, it can maintain one of several different purposes: community service, moral, political, and instrumental (Dicke, Dowden and Torres 2004). A community service rationale provides technical or voluntary assistance to community organisations; a moral rationale helps students to become self-aware on questions of philosophy and ethics; a political rationale promotes a specific vision of a strong community and pursuit of equity and justice within society; and lastly, an instrumental rationale seeks to help students to develop new skills and competencies. These purposes are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though a service-learning project can pursue one of these goals to the exclusion of the other goals. Critical to the moral and political rationales, at least, is the use of reflection as a component of service-learning pedagogy (Bryer 2011). The

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reflective process, whether it be facilitated through small group discussion or silent individual meditation, creates space for a student or group of students to link practice to theory, and to consider his or her role as an agent of potential change in society.

Summary One caveat must be made before finishing the chapter. All these classifications of universities might not be appropriate for all the universities throughout the world. There is a particular type of university that can fit in many categories, due to its particular creation and evolution. In several countries around the world, national universities have a broad mandate that goes beyond a civic role or community orientation. They have to help countries in the creation of the education system, provide particular professionals that are required to the development of the economy, among a long list of objectives. For those universities, the community means the whole country; therefore, their activities have a wider scope that evolves since their foundation through these days. In most of the developing countries, these universities are crucial for the conformation of the state, and to have a critical mass for improving the wellbeing of their fellow citizens. We do not largely consider these universities in this book. The only case is the University of Chile, which does not fit in most of the categories presented in this monograph, but that can still be a good source of ideas and thoughts regarding the topics contained herein. In the next chapter, we look at literature on university-community partnerships and the idea of the civic mission, as reflected across discipline-­ specific literature found mostly in scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) journals.

References Badgett, M.L. 2015. The Public Professor: How to Use Your Research to Change the World. New York: NYU Press. Barber, B.R. 1998. “The Civic Mission of the University.” Kettering Review. BBC. 2016. “Brexit Split Needs Bridging, Kirsty Williams Tells Universities.” http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-37299382 Bharath, D. and H.  Lebovits. 2019. “Paving a Path Forward for Engaged Scholarship.” Urban Affairs Forum. https://urbanaffairsreview.com/2019/ 01/11/paving-a-path-forward-for-engaged-scholarship/?fbclid=IwAR2GCYj 1MKMfxZY9nxQJYrJVfetOK19zGW4Afasoq-AutTCzcgdg8KNoOjo

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Bloom, A. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Touchstone. Boyte, H.C. and N.N. Kari. 2000. Renewing the Democratic Spirit in American Colleges and Universities: Higher Education as Public Work. In Civic Responsibility and Higher Education, edited by T.  Ehrlich, 37–60. Westport, CT: The American Council on Education and the Oryx Press. Brewer, J.D. 2013. The Public Value of the Social Sciences: An Interpretive Essay. London: A&C Black. Bringle, R.G. and J.A. Hatcher. 1996. “Implementing Service Learning in Higher Education.” The Journal of Higher Education, 67 (2): 221–239. Bryer, T.A. 2011. “Linking Students with Community in Collaborative Governance.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 17 (1): 89–114. ———. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenships, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. ———. 2016. “The Role of Public Service in American Universities in the Future.” American Society for Public Administration annual conference, plenary speech. March 2016. ———. 2017. “The Professor and the People: All for One, or One for All?” University of Central Florida School of Public Administration. Inaugural Lecture. 22nd August 2017. Bryer, T.A. and S. Prysmakova-Rivera. 2018. Poor Participation: Fighting the Wars on Poverty and Impoverished Citizenship. Lanham: Lexington Books. Butin, D. and S.  Seider. 2012. The Engaged Campus: Certificates, Minors, and Majors as the New Community Engagement. New York: Springer. Campbell, J.  and Y.S.  Hwa. 2015. “The Spirit of Community Engagement.” International e-Journal of Community & Industry Engagement, 2 (1): 1–10. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Elective Community Engagement Classification. 2015. Cole, J.R. 2009. The Great American University. New York: Public Affairs. Dalton, R.J. 2016. The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Dicke, L., S. Dowden and J. Torres. 2004. “Successful Service Learning: A Matter of Ideology.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 10 (3): 199–208. Diner, S.J. 2017. Universities and Their Cities: Urban Higher Education in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fairley, N. and M. Wilson. 2017. Living Democracy: Communities as Classrooms, Students as Citizens. Dayton: Kettering Foundation. Fethke, A.J. and G.C. Policano. 2012. Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fish, S. 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/why-we-builtthe-ivory-tower.html ———. 2008. Save the World on Your Own Time. OUP: Oxford. Gelder, S.M. 2011. The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

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Goddard, J., E.  Hazelkorn, L.  Kempton and P.  Vallance. 2016. The Civic University: The Policy and Leadership Challenges. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Goddard, J., L. Kempton and P. Vallance. 2013. “Universities and Smart Specialisation: Challenges, Tensions and Opportunities for the Innovation Strategies of European Regions.” Ekonomiaz. Revisit viscera de economia, 83 (2): 83–102. Hollander, E.L. 2012. “De Tocqueville Rediscovered: Community-based Civic Engagement.” In The Engaged Campus, edited by D.W. Butin and S. Seider, 187–194. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Macfarlane, B. 2007. The Academic Citizen: The Virtue of Service in University Life. Milton Park: Routledge. Medina, P. and T.A. Bryer. 2019. “Limitations of Assessing Citizen Engagement Through Local Government Social Media Rankings: Implications for Policy and Practice.” International Journal of Policy Studies, 10 (1).  National Association of Scholars. 2017. Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics. https://www.nas.org/projects/making_citizens_report National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement. 2012. A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities. Razak, D., C.D. Wan and M. Sirat. 2017. “Juxtaposing Economic Progress with Sustainability in Mind: Issues and Way Forward for Universities.” In  Higher Education in the World 6: Towards a Socially Responsible University: Balancing the Global with the Local. Global University Network for Innovation, 105–114. Scott, D.K. and S.M.  Awbrey. 1993. “Transforming Scholarship.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 25 (4): 38–43. Williams, J.  2012. “History as a Challenge to the Idea of the University.” In Education as Civic Engagement: Toward a More Democratic Society, edited by G.A. Olson and L. Worsham, 49–69. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Zamudio-Suarez, F. 2018. “4 Months into His Tenure, a Flagship’s President Proposes Faculty Layoffs.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3rd May 2018. Zemsky, R. and S.  Shaman. 2017. The Market Imperative: Segmentation and Change in Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

CHAPTER 3

University-Community Partnerships in the Literature

Within numerous fields of academic study and research, university-­ community partnerships persist as a prominent component of engagement, at least within the parameters of our literature search, which focused mostly on English-language outputs. These partnerships are associated with several benefits, although partners must overcome challenges that also arise to sustain a successful partnership. University-community partnerships promote engagement between faculty, students, and the community. Moreover, such partnerships “allow relationships to form between institutions and community groups in which research is guided by the needs and interests of the community” (Schwartz, Weaver, Pei and Miller 2016: 178). Many institutions of higher education include community relations and partnerships in their missions and strategic plans; however, such emphasis on the community has not always been the case.

Calls for University-Community Partnerships Initially, the American higher education system did not include a community focus. Rather, the first American institutions of higher education were modelled after the older, traditional European system, in which the mission of universities was to prepare and train the future ministry (Cole 2009). Early colonial colleges also became the training grounds for doctors, lawyers, and politicians. In nearly every case, these universities, © The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_3

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­ rivately funded through endowments and donations, restricted access to p all but the elite. Such restrictions promoted exclusivity and did little in the way of connecting the institution with the local community. However, a congressional act in the late nineteenth century would create public universities and democratise higher education through community service. Land-grant universities are an early example of university-community partnerships in the United States. In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Land-Grant Act. The act established land-grant universities and granted states in excess of 30,000 acres of federal land to establish colleges for the promotion of educating the masses (Key 1996). More importantly, it moved the nation away from a model of strictly training professionals of law, medicine, and theology, instead offering educational training opportunities for those in agriculture and engineering. In addition to making education more accessible, land-grant universities also served the surrounding communities. Upon the creation of land-grant institutions, non-­ elite citizens gained access to higher education and additional knowledge through the dissemination of the new universities’ agricultural research (Key 1996). Access to higher education and the facilities or services of a local college or university are powerful tools for transforming a community and its people. The true measure of a successful university-community partnership is the lasting influence and positive impact exhibited within the community. One example of such success is the decade-long partnership between the University of Winnipeg and the local Aboriginal community (Axworthy, DeRiviere and Moore Rattray 2016). The university recognised the needs and challenges facing the local Aboriginal population, such as inadequate housing, poverty, and increased high school dropout rates (Axworthy et  al. 2016). In an effort to diminish the social barriers of the local Indigenous community, the university chose to move away from traditional community-engaged teaching approaches and instead “actively partner[ed] with the surrounding community in order to make it easier for Indigenous people to access the resources and facilities on the campus” (Axworthy et al. 2016). In an effort to promote such engagement, the university changed its own internal policies “to provide culturally based learning opportunities” (Axworthy et  al. 2016: 1–2). Policy changes included new hiring approaches directed at increasing diversity, with a specific eye to increasing Indigenous leadership. The campus also opened its doors to “free, culturally-­ based family programming” that increased the community’s

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access to the campus and its facilities (Axworthy et  al. 2016: 3). Such access to the campus increased the community’s sense of belonging to the university and provided examples of successful Indigenous college students to the younger children, encouraging a commitment to education. The university’s policy changes promoted stronger relations with the community as well as the local community elders, whose support increased the trust the community placed in the university. This approach demonstrates the ability of a university to establish an authentic relationship with community partners or the larger surrounding community. A survey assessing the community’s needs and the benefits of the university-community partnership determined the programming “helped to build stronger family units and the community’s capacity to see itself as learners” (Axworthy et al. 2016: 13). Moreover, the university’s commitment to community learning and its investment in the local community far surpassed the intended results of personal and community benefits, resulting in higher local graduation rates, reductions in youth unemployment, and a more engaged citizenry (Axworthy et al. 2016). In addition to providing access, university-community partnerships also provide opportunities for partners to engage with faculty and students and contribute to academic research. While in certain instances, such as above, the university has an immense role in the partnership, most often, university-­community partnerships are established between a faculty and community organisation. In his seminal work, Ernest L.  Boyer (1990) underscores the importance of community-engaged scholarship and reasons university faculty engaged with the community through teaching, research, and service should be rewarded and promoted based on these activities. In fact, Boyer (1990) suggests the need to re-evaluate the focus of promotion and tenure guidelines and evaluation processes of American professors. In Scholarship Reconsidered, Boyer (1990) advises that “the time has come to move beyond the tired old ‘teaching versus research’ debate and give the familiar and honourable term ‘scholarship’ a broader, more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full scope of academic work” (16). He emphasises the importance of focusing and rewarding all aspects of the professoriate: teaching, research, and service. Rather than focusing simply on published research, Boyer’s scholarship of engagement incorporated professors working and researching aspects of the local community, and in certain cases implementing the newly obtained knowledge to help strengthen society (1990). Through university-­community partnerships, universities can utilise their resources

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to benefit the larger community, “just as the land-grant colleges responded to the needs of agriculture and industry a century ago” (Boyer 1984). The research and engagement that result from university-community partnerships benefit several facets of the broader community. Many times, the community organisation or local community experience greater capacity. Other partnerships promote engagement within an educational setting across different age groups and members of society. The students who often participate in university-community partnership note educational, personal, and professional development growth. While other times, the surrounding community experiences increased cultural awareness, immense innovation, or economic growth.

Benefits of University-Community Partnerships In addition to affecting positive impact within local communities, university-­community partnerships also encourage engagement between different student groups. University-K-12 partnerships offer university students the opportunity to engage outside of the classroom, while K-12 students are exposed to the opportunities higher education can offer. One such example explored a collaborative partnership between college students and a gifted elementary class (Hunter and Botchwey 2017). The structure of most university-K-12 partnerships emphasises college students as content experts and K-12 students as the recipients of such knowledge. However, Hunter and Botchwey (2017) highlight the benefits of a shared learning opportunity in which both student groups gained meaningful academic experience as well as knowledge about engaging with their local government. The student groups employed different learning approaches to better understand healthy neighbourhoods, neighbourhood planning, and civic engagement (Hunter and Botchwey 2017). The undergraduate students explored ways to engage a subset of the community, and the elementary students explored engaging with their neighbourhood. They gained experience developing a curriculum and designing a board game activity to reinforce the learning materials. The elementary students investigated their local neighbourhood and presented neighbourhood improvement solutions to city officials. While both groups of students worked and learned independently of each other, neither could gain the same learning experience without the other partner. Learning opportunities such as this reinforce key skills such as collaboration, communication, and ­engagement

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that are necessary for a successful partnership as well as future success academically and in professional settings. A similar example is found in a graduate student class partnered with high school students in a low-income community (Bryer 2014). Here, the course was designed over the period of one year, with two different groups of students on each side. Like the example in the previous paragraph, students worked together on a joint project, first to assess the needs of the community, and second, to identify how the community school where students were studying could serve to address some of those needs. During the first semester, students were separate, but during the second semester, the graduate course was co-taught with a high school course, with students sitting and interacting together. One high school student wrote to the professor the following unsolicited note (Bryer 2014: 264): Thank you for the opportunity to be part of the community school focus group process. I speak on the behalf of Evans High students when I say we appreciate your efforts to try to make our school not feel like a school, but a home, and for that we are grateful. We know that you do not have to do these things for us, most people don’t know us and don’t know how great we can be and the things we can do or our talents and hopes and dreams that we hold. They don’t know what we go through and the pain and struggles we deal with. Evans is my home. I walk these halls and I see my brothers and sisters fall, they fall into the temptations and cruelty of this world. I see how great and stunning they are, things other people will never see. So, on behalf of my family, I say thank you, UCF… Thank you.

Most partnerships are defined as transactional. Each partner brings a particular skill set or knowledge expertise to the relationship that the other partner does not have. Such an exchange serves as a transaction of sorts. In many cases, these are self-serving relationships that may end once the goal has been fulfilled; while beneficial, most often leave both partners unchanged by the experience (Butcher, Bezzina and Moran 2011), or may actually leave the community partner worse off (Stoecker and Tryon 2009). Butcher et  al. (2011) suggest another approach to university-­ community partnerships: a transformational approach. Rooted in transformational leadership literature, in this type of partnership, both partners approach with a commitment to change, using shared resources in an attempt to effect “generative growth” or an attempt to make things better for future generations.

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A nearly three-decade-old partnership between an Australian university and Catholic school system highlights how partners can grow and transform as the result of a university-community partnership (Butcher et al. 2011). The partnership originally began as several different initiatives with a core focus on increasing educational outcomes at the university and the schools within the school system. In time, the university and school system recognised they were no longer separate entities working towards a shared goal, but rather a unified partnership with the same purpose. The trust and collaboration built over time transformed the individual participants into a committed team with a common understanding and a mutual intent to work towards a shared goal (Butcher et al. 2011).

Challenges of University-Community Partnerships Past literature suggests the critical role universities play in the economic development of American cities and towns. In many instances, such literature highlights universities as social change agents or centres of culture and innovation (Holley and Harris 2018). At other times, university relations with local leaders can increase engagement. While such university-­ community relationships may exist, at other times, the community’s expectations of the role of the university do not always align with the university’s mission. One study revealed the far too common tensions that exist between university and community. As the university chose to pursue a research mission, the city viewed that such an agenda would not benefit the city. Moreover, the community felt the faculty only collaborated with or participated in community relations when it served the university’s interest. Unfortunately, such tensions appear when the expectations of a university’s commitment do not align with that of the community. The mutual benefits of university-community partnerships are often lost when tensions arise concerning power dynamics between the partners. Power struggles can occur in various ways during the course of a university-­ community partnership. The most often cited challenges include past experiences of failure or lack of trust between partners, struggles among the groups for shared knowledge or the creation of information, and miscommunications or unmet expectations (Howarth, Currie, Morrell, Sorensen and Bengle 2017; Pizarro 2015; Schwartz et al. 2016). Past experiences between partners or previously failed attempts at mutual engagement can also lead to conflict. Howarth et al. (2017) investigated two different university-community partnerships that attempted to

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combat high poverty in the suburbs, one proved lasting and successful, and the other eventually failed. Through personal interviews with residents, the authors discerned that even similar university-community partnerships are never the same and a single approach cannot be applied universally. Lessons from these two cases include the importance of entering each partnership with an understanding of the experiences and challenges faced by the community partners. Additionally, the authors stressed the need to document and utilise clear communication when conveying community and social needs to inform the research questions and direct the outcome and goals for the partnership. Community partners often cite concerns over shared knowledge and the value placed on their contributions. Strier and Shechter (2016) demonstrate the continued need to “democratize processes of knowledge production” as community partners shared concerns that “the production of knowledge still remains an academic privilege” (343). Although academic staff members are considered the knowledge experts, they often depend on community partners to provide practical knowledge gained from experiences within the field. Unfortunately, community partners can sometimes feel diminished in the shadow of the university or staff member, contributing to feelings of inadequacy, as if they did not contribute to the creation of knowledge (Strier and Shechter 2016). The goal of many university-community partnerships is to address social issues, especially local problems; therefore, it is important that community members feel they are contributing. Additionally, these feelings of inferiority can undermine the contributions of participating community members, creating a point of discord between university and community, whether the feeling is perceived or actualised. One suggestion to combat this challenge is community-based participatory action research. Strier and Shechter (2016) specifically suggest community-based participatory visual action research; this approach “places researchers and community members in full partnership throughout all research stages” (Strier and Shechter 2016: 345). Unfortunately, this process is difficult, as it requires straying away from traditional research approaches and involves multiple researchers. While not a complete solution, the core of Strier and Shechter’s suggestion addresses the need to continually involve all parties and ensure a sense of teamwork. Miscommunication and unfulfilled expectations also cause challenges to arise in university-community partnerships. Pizarro (2015) details three failed “sustainable urban design master plans produced in university

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c­ ommunity partnerships” in Colombia, China, and Germany (48). Pizarro outlines how the challenges experienced when creating sustainable urban design plans were the result of misunderstandings between the partners. When working with a fishing village in Colombia, “the community mistook the role of the university” (Pizarro 2015: 48). The community expected the university consultant to “carry the project through the municipal approval process,” the university did not share this expectation. In comparison, the partnership in China was considered a success, at least until it was revealed that the Chinese municipality maintained a hidden agenda and never intended to implement the design plans created through the partnership. Rather, the municipality used the partnership to complete the political formality of seeking multiple bids. In Pizarro’s (2015) final example, both the university and community worked together successfully and intended to implement the design plans. Unfortunately, the cost was prohibitive and the project never came to fruition. Cost is often a restriction in university-community partnerships and must be accounted for in the initial planning and partnership development stage. Pizarro’s multiple examples highlight scenarios in which roles were not clearly defined by either university or community, nor were common goals and objectives.

Examples of University-Community Partnerships from Academic Disciplines The above outlined challenges should not deter participation in university-­ community partnerships; rather, they should serve as part of a guide to ensure a successful relationship and avoid sometime common pitfalls. As the benefits often outweigh the challenges, partnerships continue to abound. In the following section, we further explore examples of university-­ community partnerships from various academic disciplines. Challenges and benefits are highlighted, as well as teaching approaches, personal growth opportunities, and unique partnerships that promote successful collaboration to reduce redundancy. Challenges Within the Field of Education Institutional changes can negatively affect previously successful partnerships. One example from the education literature outlined a university that went through institutional changes that resulted in several challenges and

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a negative relationship with the community partner. The case study details a US-Mexico border university that maintained several successful partnerships with the local community over a 20-year span (Mendez and Rincones 2013). Many often attributed the success of these partnerships to the university’s commitment to excellence in teaching and service to its local community. The university’s commitment brought together “educators, business, and civic leaders in an effort to transform schooling and ensure academic success for students” (Mendez and Rincones 2013: 78). However, the university administration realigned its mission and goals in pursuit of increased research status. Faculty were no longer expected to sustain involvement in the community. Instead, tenure and promotion guidelines emphasised active research and publication agendas. Such institutional change also influenced hiring decisions. Unfortunately, these changes coincided with a national foundation award “to improve the preparation of math and science educators through the establishment of a university-K-12 partnership” (Mendez and Rincones 2013: 79). In addition to other initiatives, the university hired new faculty with the award funds. Aligning with the new research focus, the new hires were more committed to establishing a research track than collaborating with the community. A thorough evaluation of the faltering partnership revealed a shift in the relationship. While the local community partner expected the outcomes as outlined in the award funding and past experiences, the university faculty members participating adapted their approach to align with the university’s new focus and mission (Mendez and Rincones 2013). The complications of this partnership highlight the problems that can arise when a partner’s values shift. Furthermore, such challenges also reveal the importance of partners working towards a shared goal that is frequently reviewed and assessed through honest communication. In some cases, partners may have the best intentions and still be unable to overcome societal inequities. Another case study within the education literature brings to light social justice issues concerning educational inequalities for communities of colour. Citing the disadvantageous and often discriminatory practices of American educational policies, the researchers explored a partnership established to overcome the current Latina/o educational dilemma by promoting college access and leadership among parents and the community (Aleman, Perez-Torres and Oliv 2013). Increased student retention rates were reported among ­undergraduate university students participating in the partnership’s mentorship programme.

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However, such success was eclipsed by the fact that the partners struggled to create opportunities for the K-12 students to access higher education. They were also often met with sentiments of frustration and feelings of defeat when attempting to offer the parents leadership skills training to help navigate the education system (Aleman et al. 2013). Challenges concerning immigration further complicated partnership attempts. Although the partnership offered a successful mentorship programme and had committed partners with shared goals, struggles against external forces, legislative initiatives, and immigration policies persisted. One university-community partnership outlined in the education literature struggled with lack of collaboration and leadership. The study details a partnership in which a university partnered with the local school board, state board of education, and the city to create school reform (Patrizio 2013). Unfortunately, the partnership lacked a formal mission and shared goals. Although members from the local schools and university were committed to the partnership, the lack of formal ties that bind partners to shared goals instead led to misaligned approaches. The partners were working within their own silos, unclear about what the others were accomplishing. Such an example highlights the necessity of collaborative discussions and shared goals to sustain a partnership. Beneficial University-Community Partnerships Many partnerships experience success through shared goals, even when many partners are involved. Within the field of nursing, healthcare practices and policies have evolved in the last 20 years in the United States. To respond, states have formed “action coalitions” to strengthen health professions, specifically nursing (Giddens, Keller and Liesveld 2015). Many states chose to prioritise nursing education and academic progression among nursing professionals. In the state of New Mexico, a partnership developed between community colleges and universities. While the community colleges were offering Associate’s degrees in nursing, only few universities in the state offered pre-licensure Bachelor of Science Nursing degrees, thus limiting the state’s registered nurse (RN) workforce (Giddens et al. 2015). In an effort to address academic progression, educational leaders created the New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium (NMNEC). The creation of the NMNEC “would increase the number of BSN-prepared nurses, create a more diverse workforce, and improve nursing education

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efficiency through a common curriculum plan” (Giddens et  al. 2015: 447). Through the model, community college students could obtain a Bachelor of Science in nursing degree and earn an Associate’s degree in health science along the way. To maintain students’ commitment to the programme and ensure academic progression, the Associate’s degree awarded was not equivalent to an associate’s degree in nursing (Giddens et  al. 2015). Such collaboration among differing institutions of higher education exemplifies the ability of university-community partnerships to work towards shared goals. The schools were able to adapt and create a partnership for greater academic progress among nursing students and increase the RN workforce in the state. In some cases, university-community partnerships endeavour to create a greater sense of community within a specific population. Social isolation is often associated with limited interactions with others and the lack of a social network or community, such isolation can also impact one’s physical health. In an effort to promote community and reduce health disparities, a group of nursing educators and community organisations formed a university-­ community partnership in a vulnerable area of Nashville, Tennessee (Dunlap, Marver, Morrow, Green and Elam 2011). Since the inception of the Nursing Education Partnership for Community Health Improvement (NEPChi) the partners’ goal was to promote community; however, the group’s approach evolved over time. Initially, the university’s nursing students offered lessons on health management to local residents and assisted in prescription refills (Dunlap et  al. 2011). The students, supervised by faculty members, then began offering home visits and family care. A family resource centre, funded by the United Way, later transformed the partnership, as the partners made new efforts to increase leadership skills among the local community members. Through the family resource centre, a youth council emerged. Aware of “the death, hunger, and loneliness among the older members” of their community, the family resource centre director, youth council, and nursing students “began a senior patrol” (Dunlap et al. 2011: 46). The youth offered companionship to the senior residents and completed minor household chores. The nursing students also began teaching the youth council members how to complete basic health assessments of the older adults. This teaching opportunity also evolved into a mentorship programme between the university students and community youth. Examples such as this demonstrate the transformational power of university-­community partnerships. This partnership resulted in increased

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healthcare access, healthcare assessment and prevention, and increased social networks among both youth and older adults in an underprivileged community. Additionally, university students gained first-hand experience in community care, developing healthcare assessment training modules, and youth mentorship. Such partnerships strengthen university-­community connections and mitigate social isolation within neighbourhoods. An example from the music literature highlights how a university-­ community partnership created a sense of community among the students and the communities they were working in as well as between the rural communities in South Africa (Harrop-Allin 2017). Through a partnership with a non-profit organisation, students studying music at the University of the Witwatersrand completed a cultural immersion day-long visit in a rural village homestead. Prior to the experience, the students learned that music was a vital teaching tool among the rural communities and often utilised “in environmental, life-orientation, and health education” (Harrop-Allin 2017: 235). The university students led music lessons and hosted workshops at the local rural schools. The students worked with a translator and the local communities to create musical workshops that addressed the needs and social issues of the area (Harrop-Allin 2017). A culmination project brought the various schools together as the young students sang and presented their workshops to each other. In many instances, this was the first time the rural communities would engage together. The partnership encouraged interactions among the university students and the rural communities as well as between the communities. Home away visits such as these also exposed university students to others’ lived experiences, such as poverty, different cultural norms, and the resiliency of rural communities. One university-community partnership in the nursing field highlights two approaches to partnerships, one internally within the university and the other with the local First Nations community in Saskatchewan, Canada (Hoffart, Kuster-Orban, Spooner and Neudorf 2013). Faculty members collaboratively selected students from licensed practical nursing, registered nursing, and registered psychiatric nursing programmes to complete a community-based learning experience. Additionally, the faculty worked together to plan the course curriculum and co-teach the community-based project. Faculty members also partnered with the local nursing c­ ommunity to ensure the project would help meet the local area’s needs (Hoffart et al. 2013).

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Working within the First Nations community, the nursing students experienced several unique learning opportunities (Hoffart et al. 2013). The health needs among the First Nations members varied, providing students the chance to work “with the dietician, the diabetic nurse educator, and mental health workers and participate in community education and health promotion sessions, such as healthy cooking, diabetic testing, and support groups for fetal alcohol disorders” (Hoffart et  al. 2013: 106). This partnership developed from collaboration among faculty members from different nursing programmes and a commitment from the community to educate students in rural healthcare access and practice. As the experiences benefitted the students and university as well as the First Nations community members, faculty members continued offering the course and tailored it continually to adapt to the needs of the community. Developed by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine and the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services, the Transforming Education and Community Health (TEACH) programme highlights partnership success that benefits vulnerable communities (Fancher et  al. 2011). The TEACH programme serves the local uninsured patients in Sacramento County. In order to promote a career in primary care among third year medical school students, the TEACH programme was created to offer students more first-hand experiences with highly diverse populations. Throughout their residency, the students work closely with the medically indigent ensuring proper care and promoting healthcare prevention strategies, as the medically uninsured are less likely to seek medical attention or may delay treatment. Per the study results, students who completed the TEACH programme were more likely than their peers “to choose general internal medicine and to practice in underserved settings” (Fancher et  al. 2011: 256). Additionally, TEACH residents were found “to provide diabetes care on par with or better than national quality benchmarks,” highlighting the care and level of commitment the students dedicated to their patients (Fancher et  al. 2011: 256). Such findings reveal the increased empathy and compassion the medical students gained from their experience in the TEACH programme; moreover, the increased care also suggests improved health outcomes for patients in the programme. An example of a long-serving successful university-community partnership is the Community Legal Information Center (CLIC) at the California State University, Chico, which began in 1969 (Allen, Parker and DeLorenzo 2012). CLIC is a law clinic operated by undergraduate stu-

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dents to serve the legal service needs of local residents. The community members who utilise CLIC services often report an annual household income far below the poverty line, and many report disabilities. Law schools often offer legal services to the local community that provides the graduate students with clinical and experiential opportunities to reduce redundancy; CLIC offers these same experiences to undergraduate students. Such an opportunity offers these students the chance to engage with their potential profession and gain experience with a diverse clientele, who otherwise would be unable to afford legal services. Moreover, the students’ experiences can transfer into paralegal and other legal system professions, offering students who may choose not to attend law school, professional experiences that employers so often seek (Allen et al. 2012). Such a partnership prepares students for future professional school and employment opportunities as well as provides a vital service to the community’s most vulnerable population. Service Learning University-community partnerships are often introduced in the classroom through various community-engaged teaching approaches. Some of the most referenced teaching models include service learning and course work culminating capstone courses. Service learning was most commonly referenced in the disciplines explored for this study. It is a pedagogical approach that incorporates traditional classroom instruction and components of community service while promoting social responsibility (Dicke, Dowden and Torres 2004; Giles, Honnet and Migliore 1991). A large majority of the disciplines explored in this study provided examples of community partnerships as evidenced through service learning. Non-profit management literature suggests individualised experiences are necessary for educating non-profit students and preparing them for careers in the field. Service-learning opportunities best serve this need, offering students the chance to work with non-profit organisations and local community leaders. One study explored the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) Non-profit Clinic and its impact on the community (Carpenter 2011). The Non-profit Clinic serves as a central point of contact for faculty members incorporating service learning in their courses and organisations (Carpenter 2011). Through a call for proposals, local non-profit organisations are matched to a faculty member and course for a semester-long

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project. Student projects offer technical assistance to the organisations, and organisations report the students’ assistance as immensely beneficial, with many projects resulting in improvements to the organisations. A partnership centre such as the Non-profit Clinic serves the experiential needs of students as well as the technical assistance of local organisations. Such partnerships, thus, contribute to student learning and affect local community quality of life. An example of a non-profit course in the education literature outlined incorporating service learning into the curriculum as an opportunity to continue to build and strengthen university-community partnerships. Within the case study cohort, each student participated in the same coursework; however, they were given autonomy to choose the non-profit with which to partner, as well as share input in the goals and measurable outcomes the partnership would achieve in the course of the semester (Purcell 2015). Local organisations praised the course and the students’ engagement. Course offerings such as this introduce students to university-­ community partnerships, as well as engagement opportunities that one can participate in well after graduating from university. Moreover, such an experience also trains students to become responsible citizens, acknowledging the importance of service and drawing awareness to community needs. Providing students with the chance to choose their own non-profit with which to work and encouraging learning outside the classroom highlights the strength of service learning as a non-traditional teaching pedagogy that can promote collaboration with community and commit students to community engagement (Strickhouser, Kleinberger and Wright 2015). Faculty incorporating learning experiences in their courses often express concerns about designing new opportunities for their students every semester. Semester or year-long partnerships can alleviate these concerns. An example from the nursing field highlights a sustainable university-­ community partnership that has offered a foot care clinic in a homeless shelter since 2006 (Schoon, Champlin and Hunt 2012). Within their curriculum, healthcare nursing educators must provide students with clinical experiences as well as prepare students to work with patients from different walks of life. This service-learning experience in a homeless shelter foot care clinic offers an optimal learning experience. Working in collaboration with the homeless shelter’s healthcare staff, nursing educators created a sustainable partnership that addresses the

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needs of the shelter’s population and provides students the experience of caring for the homeless community. Through the course, “faculty role modelled nursing assessment and interventions and partnered with students in providing care” (Schoon et al. 2012: 715). Additionally, students gained a greater understanding of responding to individual care and community needs. Moreover, the students engaged with a vulnerable population and experienced learning opportunities in empathy, compassion, social justice, and were asked to reflect on their own personal biases. Through the many years of this service-learning experience, students “demonstrated an understanding of the conditions and causes of homelessness and how to use their citizenship skills for social change within a health care context” (Schoon et al. 2012: 716). Additionally, the homeless shelter healthcare staff members have gained additional capacity through the students’ efforts and have increased their own assessment and intervention knowledge to assist the homeless population who utilise the shelter’s services. Partnerships often provide benefits to the communities they serve; a truly successful partnership provides assistance to those they serve as well as learning opportunities for those participating in the partnership. Service-learning experiences can also be appropriate for universities to react to emergencies and other contingencies where students and faculty are eager to help. The experience of the University of Chile’s School of Government after the massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile in February of 2010 is an example of that (Araya, Pliscoff and Vergara 2014). Several rural areas in the surroundings of Santiago, capital of Chile, were affected by the earthquake. Students from many schools found ways to channel their interest in helping, such as building temporary houses (School of Architecture), providing medical aid (School of Medicine), helping animals (School of Veterinary Sciences), and other areas. Yet, how can students from the School of Government—who are trained to be public administrators—help in this context? How can they be more useful according to their education and abilities? Students and faculty agreed on their interest of working together in this context of rebuilding the country. Service learning was used as a technique to provide a hands-on experience in a middle- to low-income municipality, where a cadastre of damages and losses was required for the municipality and other agencies to provide support for those in need. The activity implied for the students to go to the field and fill a file to register the exact requirements in a given community, house by house. For academic purposes, this activity was useful to understand the administrative structure of the Chilean

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state, along with the complexities of an emergency that Chile had in 2010 can have in the State, at the local, regional, and national levels. Engaging university students and the community is another potential burden by faculty and students, especially when those students are considered non-traditional, adult students (aged 25–34) who often have career and family commitments outside of school (Phillips 2013). However, an example from the education literature rivals such claims. When given the choice, a class of adult students overwhelmingly chose to complete a service-­learning experience, especially when such an option was offered as a replacement to a traditional coursework assignment. Such findings reveal students, even those with other life demands, want to contribute to and engage with their communities. Students welcomed options within the local community or offered on campus that would not conflict with their schedules (Phillips 2013). They also cited the course commitment as an incentive to hold them accountable to their service, so long as these volunteer and service-learning options did not add additional responsibilities to their current workload. Such insight reveals the genuine desire to commit to one’s community and highlights the constraining realities of life, such as time and other life commitments that can prohibit volunteering more regularly. Service-learning options in the classroom include opportunities for students to become more engaged or insight into how they could incorporate service into their busy schedules (Strickhouser, Kleinberger and Wright 2015). In other cases, academic fields not traditionally invested in university-­ community partnerships are exploring opportunities to partner with the community through service learning and related pedagogies. Literature from business education, for instance, suggests that business schools are re-focusing curriculum to promote classroom and community interactions. Additionally, students are beginning to call for greater emphasis on social responsibility within business education (Lopez-Navarro and Segarra Cipres 2015). One study found a gap in “students’ attitudes to the role of social issues in business education and companies’ responsibilities” (ibid. 2015: 314). While issues related to corporate social responsibility have recently made headlines and businesses are preparing annual reports summarising community and sustainability efforts, business education majors reported feeling social issues were not addressed in their current curriculum. While the students in this study were calling for more educational experiences focused on increasing one’s social and civic responsibility, other studies highlighted the multitude of skills and the

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sense of civic commitment that students reported gaining through service-­ learning opportunities. Service-learning experiences often focus on a community service component that meets the needs of the local community while providing students with a greater understanding of the course content. Within business education, Poon, Chan and Zhou (2011) suggest “service learning can offer business students an opportunity to encounter a sense of moral obligation and personal responsibility, to develop greater interpersonal, intercultural skills and ethical sensitivity, and to help identify the stakeholders within a community” (188). Moreover, Poon et al. found that students who participated in service-learning projects exhibited an increased sense of social responsibility and ethical and moral behaviour. Two examples of business education service learning that reinforce Poon et al.’s (2011) findings follow. In one particular service-learning project, accounting students participated in a tax preparation assistance (ITPA) programme, providing tax return services to undergraduate students and university staff (Aldridge, Callahan, Chen and Wade 2015). The study explored the perceived benefits to the service providers, students participating in service-learning experience, and the service recipients. Service receivers reported consistent high levels of satisfaction with the tax preparation. The students participating in the project reported increased professional skills, career preparation, and gaining a sense of contributing to their community (Aldridge et al. 2015). The study also revealed long-term benefits from the project, as alumni praised the enhanced educational experiences and professional career opportunities. In Pakistan, students do not generally participate in community or civic engagement in the academic setting (Aslan, Jaffery and Zaid 2011). A case exception is from the medical field, where a service-learning course was designed to increase students’ civic engagement and promote community knowledge about a national health problem, iron deficiency anaemia (IDA). As a unique and innovative approach, faculty members chose to incorporate service learning as an opportunity to encourage students to realise their civic responsibilities and interact with others at an urban community health centre. The experience increased both the students’ and public’s knowledge about IDA and measures to prevent it (Aslan et  al. 2011). Additionally, the students expressed significant growth in their civic awareness and commitment to civic action. Beyond benefits for students and community partners, numerous studies highlight increased health promotion as a benefit of service-learning

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interactions with the community, while other studies featured the various service-learning opportunities for students to engage with their local elderly communities. For example, as technology progresses, so too does individual daily reliance upon it. Unfortunately for some groups, such as aging adults, the technological advances are outpacing their ability to learn and utilise the tools. Recognising a community need, faculty members from an occupational therapy course partnered with a community senior centre director to offer computer training for older adults (Sanders, O’Sullivan, DeBurr and Fedne 2013). All seniors participating in the training course reported improved computer skills and increased feelings of productivity and activity. One particular assignment left lasting impressions on the occupational therapy students and the elderly. To culminate the class, the elderly were tasked with applying their new computer skills to share life lessons with students; the students expressed appreciation for the chance “to pass along a life legacy” to the students (Sanders et al. 2013). Partnerships often set out with a shared objective, in this case training the elderly to use computers and offering students an opportunity to design an older adult wellness programme. Other service-learning opportunities focus less on training the elderly and more on creating shared intergenerational experiences. An intergenerational service-learning course was developed at the Hong Kong Institute of Education as a university-community partnership between the school and three senior community centres (Tam 2014). In their course, students initially completed class sessions to gain an understanding of elder learning; they then completed 54 community service hours at the senior centres. Many students led learning activities and creative projects, while others spent time participating in  local excursions with the older adults. Upon reflection, both the students and the elderly spoke of the multiple learning opportunities, the students citing the chance to develop programmes and spend time with the older adults and the elderly finding that the interactions with students kept them active and engaged. Both enjoyed their time together, and the most common criticism of the project was the time limitation. The project findings revealed that both groups exhibited intergenerational learning. An example such as this, with the sole purpose of bringing groups together with the intention that they will learn from each other, demonstrates the ability of partnerships to establish commonalities and promote community among people from diverse backgrounds.

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To increase medical students’ knowledge of geriatric medicine, the University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine at Chapel Hill created the Service-Learning in Communities of Elders (SLICE) programme (Laks, Wilson, Khandelwal, Footman, Jamison and Roberts 2016). The course instructor utilised previous relationships in the local medical community to select community partner sites. Additionally, the selected partners offered site coordinators and volunteers “to help schedule and promote student activities at their sites” (Laks et  al. 2016: 212). With guidance, the students completed community needs assessments at the partner sites and developed projects to serve the seniors at each location. The service-learning project results revealed both long and short-term benefits for both the students and the older adult patients. Not only did the students’ attitudes towards geriatric patients change positively, but the students also reported diminished age bias (Laks et al. 2016). Moreover, the students reported the most valuable component of the course was their interactions with the older adults. The older patients universally enjoyed the students and their interactions. The site partners expressed satisfaction with the students and the students’ community needs assessment. Through trust and a shared commitment, the partnership persisted beyond the initial group of students, and the older adults continued to enjoy their interactions with students. As the results of the community participating were immensely beneficial for both the students and the communities they assessed, the partnership continued well past what was originally planned (Laks et al. 2016). Capstone Capstone courses are another teaching approach often utilised in university-­ community partnerships. The capstone course, most often completed at the culmination of a student’s programme of study, is a course, project, or experience in which students are “expected to integrate, extend, critique, and apply the knowledge gained in the major” (Wagenaar 1993). In many capstone courses, students are encouraged with applying the knowledge they gained through their coursework to create or evaluate projects within their major or potential career fields (Davis 1993). One of the main tenets of the capstone is incorporation of classroom learning in a practical situation. Most often, this takes place as a partnership between university and community.

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In a study at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, non-profit graduate students participated in capstone projects with client organisations (Carpenter 2011). Non-profit graduate students were divided into teams and completed full academic year (two semesters) capstone projects that “address a real concern for a local, national, or international government or non-profit agency” (Schachter and Schwartz 2009: 447). Through a call for proposals, client organisations applied to work with the student groups. With the input of faculty members, alumni, and past capstone clients, students created a final report and recommendation for the client organisations. Since its inception in 1995, the students have reported educational growth in research management and leadership skills; they also developed a professional network and gained insight into the daily responsibilities required of their potential career choice (Schachter and Schwartz 2009). Aware of the value the capstone projects offered the students, the researchers were uncertain of the benefits for the participating community organisations. Long-term assessments of the project’s impact to the community organisations were not known. Findings from a survey revealed high overall satisfaction with the project; the clients suggested the recommendations gave them insight into the problem and an outsider’s perspective for addressing it (Schachter and Schwartz 2009). Additionally, the students’ knowledge and interactions with faculty members and past capstone students and clients also provided grounded, knowledgeable approaches for the client. The study revealed interactions between students and non-profit organisations were beneficial to both and produced lasting impact for the local organisations. In another example, business students in an international business programme capstone course partnered with local businesses to develop markets outside of the United States (Annavarjula and Trifts 2012). While the instructor oversaw student involvement in the course, the students were responsible for the management of the project. Local businesses provided feedback to the students throughout the project. Such project management and communication with the clients prepared students for future professional careers while at the same time offering the clients an opportunity to engage with the students and the project to ensure valuable and useful deliverables. Additional unexpected relationships formed as a result of the class and community partnership, as the university and college reported strengthened relationships with the local businesses and greater

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opportunities for engagement within the community (Annavarjula and Trifts 2012). In some instances, it is the community organiser who approaches the academic institution proposing a partnership. The mayor and assistant city manager of Chico, California approached a political science faculty member at the local university, California State University, Chico, with the intent of strengthening the community and university’s relationship (Turner 2014). Additionally, the officials and faculty member recognised an opportunity to help transition students into a more engaged civic body. Through a semester-long capstone course, political science students worked with seven government agencies to create a “state of the community” event. Through written reports, the students offered recommendations for addressing community needs as identified by the government agencies’ self-assessments. Through their interactions, the students gained important professional development skills, such as professional presentation insights including dress and presentation skills, communicating with community leaders, and listening and engaging with community members (Turner 2014). The students also revealed that they viewed public service and the commitment of government officials differently, and in a more positive light. Throughout the semester, the students’ growth exhibited a transition from a student to a more engaged and aware community member. Moreover, the mayor and assistant city manager that conceptualised the partnership reported the success of the collaboration, not just between their office and the university but also among the seven government agencies that pursued additional collaborations beyond the “state of the community” event (Turner 2014). Partnerships with several participating organisations can often illuminate areas for future collaboration. Through various approaches to university-community partnerships, students often gain access otherwise unavailable in the classroom. Such learning experiences can promote personal or professional growth, or as in this case, civic responsibility. Through a years-long partnership between a public policy programme at James Madison University and the Manager’s Office for the Town of Elkton, Virginia, students completed evaluations of the local police force, community centre, and the town’s economic development plan (Wodicka, Swartz and Peaslee 2012). Lack of communication and a history of ­allegations led many in the community to mistrust the police department. Through the students’ evaluation and incorporating a public awareness

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initiative, the police department volunteer base grew and the community, as a whole, better understood the services available. Other students surveyed the local community’s opinion of the Elkton Area Community Centre and completed an on-site survey (Wodicka et al. 2012). Much like the police department assessment, the students determined much of the public’s criticism of the centre was due to lack of communication about services offered. Following the students’ recommendations, the centre created social media accounts to highlight the programme offerings. The students also evaluated the town’s defunct economic development plan. Based on the students’ assessment, the town established an Office of Economic and Community Development. In addition to the town’s realised benefits from the students’ evaluations and recommendations, the students also gained real-world experiences they could apply to their future professional careers. Personal Growth The literature outlined above has often touched on personal growth in addition to other learning outcomes and benefits to the community or community partner. The following examples specifically highlighted the personal growth achieved as a direct result of the university-community partnership experience. Certain university-community partnerships emerge when one’s responsibilities to the university and the community intersect. Such was the case for a professor of dance who also served as a project director for a local visual arts studio for underserved youth (Barr 2014). Recognising a potential partnership and learning opportunity for the university students and the youth who visited the arts studio weekly, the professor worked with the youth education outreach coordinator to develop movement workshops “to enable participants to explore creative art-making processes through visual art and movement modalities” (Barr 2014: 109). The university students co-facilitated workshops and led reflective discussions with the youth after the sessions. Many of the university students were considering careers in education or occupational theory, specifically dance and movement. These experiences allowed students to pursue those interests and gain insightful information that would prepare them for future careers. Many of the youth who visited the visual art studio experienced self-esteem and body issues related to past experiences with rejection and abandonment. University students were warned that the youth may not be receptive to the move-

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ment workshops or “may shy away from any form of physical contact” (Barr 2014: 110). Fortunately, for both groups, the workshops eased anxieties and encouraged growth and familiarity. Additionally, the youth became immensely engaged in the performance art and made connections with the student leaders. Both groups developed mutual trust in their dance partners and across the entire group. One service-learning experience from music literature offers insight into the personal growth university students can experience. University students enrolled in a music education course participated “in a service-­ learning project at a nearby preschool centre for prekindergarten students with and without disabilities” (Bartolome 2013: 3). During the initial five weeks of the project, students served as classroom aids, assisting the teachers, and engaging with the students. During the last five weeks of the semester, the university students developed music lesson plans and led the classroom in musical activities, such as singing, playing instruments, and playing music-based games. While the undergraduates gained useful teaching experience and professional development skills for their classrooms, the most profound take away was their personal growth as related to teaching students with disabilities (Bartolome 2013). The students reported increased comfort and efficacy in their attitudes towards students with disabilities, one student offering that the experience alleviated any sense of apprehension. Many students also expressed increased empathy and greater awareness about the inclusivity needed in their lesson plans. As beneficial as the college students were to incorporating music in the classroom, the personal growth the university students exhibited may not have developed without the partnership. Unique Partnerships The literature also revealed unique approaches to partnerships that provided opportunities for success. The medicine literature revealed a unique approach to university-community partnerships, the Community Leaders Institute or CLI (Crosby, Parr, Smith and Mitchell 2013). Several obstacles inherent to new university-community partnerships include the initial stages when the partnership is developing. Partners struggle to fully trust one another, rely on each other as knowledge experts, and develop shared goals. Each of these must be overcome for a successful relationship to thrive. As such, the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine col-

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laborated with local hospitals and medical centres to form a Community Partnership Council (Crosby et al. 2013). This board of medical educators and community members offered recommendations for engaging the community and developing partnerships. Based on their recommendations, the Community Leaders Institute was formed. The CLI was “a six-week innovative leadership development training program designed to enhance academic-community research, integrate the interests of community leaders and academic health centre researchers, and build research capacity and competencies within the community” (Crosby et al. 2013: 335). Of the CLI graduates, 66 per cent have gone on to participate in university-community partnerships, some have received more than three million dollars in grant funding. The partnership and development programme have proven successful in increasing the capacity of local community leaders and their organisations. It also creates a space to overcome those initial challenges of partnerships. Additionally, the programme offers an opportunity for networking and developing potential collaborations. As another example, in an effort to promote service learning in an international relations course, a faculty member developed a curriculum to introduce students to microfinance through service learning (McDonald 2013). Throughout the semester, students learned how microfinance could be utilised to develop some of the world’s poorest countries. Students were tasked with fundraising, as the funds would be used to offer microloans to those in need. After raising the funds, students explored the US non-profit organisation Kiva, which facilitates microloans throughout developing countries. Kiva vets the loan recipients to ensure the “approved borrowers demonstrate a specific need and reasonable likelihood of repayment” (McDonald 2013: 798). The students reviewed potential borrowers and selected two, fully funding one loan and contributing to the final fulfilment of a second loan. Both loans were repaid, and the funds reinvested in other loans. Throughout the course, students managed every aspect of the project from funding development through loan repayment and reinvestment (McDonald 2013). Students gained real-world experiences with micro-­ financing and further gained insight about contributing to community impact. Moreover, the loan recipients utilised the funds and successfully repaid the microloans. Such service-learning experiences highlight unique partnerships that can benefit both partners, even if they are in different countries.

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Summary As seen in case examples drawn from multi-disciplinary literature, the benefits of university-community partnerships far surpass the challenges that may arise. Examples of university-community partnerships exist in several academic disciplines with most highlighting increased community capacity, positive community impact, cultural awareness, economic growth, organisational development, and personal and professional development among students and partners. While shortcomings, unfulfilled expectations, or miscommunications do exist, the consensus within the literature appears that university-community partnerships are worth pursuing and struggling partnerships should be improved as the benefits add immense value for both partners. The next chapter introduces the case universities that will guide discussion of university-community partnerships related to the promotion of civic health in diverse locations around the world.

References Aldridge, R., R.A.  Callahan, Y.  Chen and S.R.  Wade. 2015. “Income Tax Preparation Assistance Service Learning Program: A Multidimensional Assessment.” Journal of Education for Business, 90 (6): 287–295. Aleman, E. Jr., J.C. Perez-Torres and N. Oliv. 2013. “Adelante en Utah: Dilemmas of Leadership and College Access in a University-School-Community Partnership.” Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 16 (3): 7–30. Allen, M.D., S.A. Parker and T.C. DeLorenzo. 2012. “Civic Engagement in the Community: Undergraduate Clinical Legal Education.” Journal of Political Science Education, 8: 35–49. Annavarjula, M. and J.W.  Trifts. 2012. “Community Connections to Enhance Undergraduate International Business Education: An Example of Business Consulting Projects.” Journal of Teaching in International Business, 23 (3): 222–235. Araya, J.P., C.  Pliscoff and P.  Vergara. 2014. “Experiencas de Innovación Pedagógicas en la Escuela de Gobierno y Gestión Pública de la Universidad de Chile.” In Enseñanza y Aprendizaje de Administración y Políticas Pública en Las Américas, edited by C. Pliscoff. Santiago Ril editors. Aslan, R., T.  Jaffery and Z.  Zaid. 2011. “Service-learning: Increasing Civic Responsibility in Pakistani Students.” Medical Education, 45: 524. Axworthy, L., L. DeRiviere and J. Moore Rattray. 2016. “Community Learning and University Policy: An Inner-city University Goes Back to School.” The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 7 (2): 1–20. Barr, S. 2014. “Are We Following or Leading?” Journal of Dance Education, 14: 109–112.

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Bartolome, S. 2013. “Growing through Service: Exploring the Impact of a Service-Learning Experience on Preservice Educators.” Journal of Music Teacher Education, 23 (1): 79–91. Boyer, E.L. 1984. “Creating the New American College.” Chronicle of Higher Education, A48. ———. 1990. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bryer, T.A. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenship, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. Butcher, J., M. Bezzina and W. Moran. 2011. “Transformational Partnerships: A New Agenda for Higher Education.” Innovative Higher Education, 36: 29–40. Carpenter, H. 2011. “How We Could Measure Community Impact of Nonprofit Graduate Students’ Service-Learning Projects: Lessons from the Literature.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 17 (1): 115–131. Cole, J.R. 2009. The Great American University. New York: Public Affairs. Crosby, L.E., W.  Parr, T.  Smith and M.J.  Mitchell. 2013. “The Community Leader’s Institute: An Innovative Program to Train Community Leaders in Health Research.” Academic Medicine, 88 (3): 335–342. Davis, N.J. 1993. “Bringing it all Together: The Sociological Imagination.” Teaching Sociology, 21 (3): 233–238. Dicke, L., S. Dowden and J. Torres. 2004. “Successful Service Learning: A Matter of Ideology.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 10 (3): 199–208. Dunlap, R.K., D.  Marver, B.J.  Morrow, B.R.  Green and J.  Elam. 2011. “A Community Health Service-learning Roundtable: Nursing Education Partnership for Community Health Improvement.” Journal of Nursing Education, 50 (1): 44–47. Fancher, T.L., C.  Keenan, C.  Meltvedt, T.  Stocker, T.  Harris, J.  Morfin, R. McCarron, M. Kulkarni-Date and M.C. Henderson. 2011. “An Academic-­ Community Partnership to Improve Care for the Underserved.” Academic Medicine, 86 (2): 252–258. Giddens, J., T. Keller and J. Liesveld. 2015. “Answering the Call for a Bachelors-­ Prepared Nursing Workforce: An Innovative Model for Academic Progression.” Journal of Professional Nursing, 31 (6): 445–451. Giles, D.E., E.P. Honnet and S. Migliore. 1991. Setting the Agenda for Effective Research in Combining Service and Learning in the 1990’s. Raleigh, NC: The National Society for Internships and Experiential Education. Harrop-Allin, S. 2017. “Higher Education Student Learning Beyond the Classroom: Findings from a Community Music Service Learning Project in Rural South Africa.” Music Education Research, 19 (3): 231–251. Hoffart, C., C. Kuster-Orban, C. Spooner and K. Neudorf. 2013. “Intraprofessional Practice Education Using a Community Partnership Model.” Journal of Nursing Education, 52 (2): 104–107.

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Holley, K.A. and M.S.  Harris. 2018. The 400-pound Gorilla: The Role of the Research University in City Development. Innovative Higher Education, 43: 77–90. Howarth, J., M.A. Currie, E. Morrell, J. Sorensen and J. Bengle. 2017. “Challenges of Building Community-University Partnerships in New Poverty Landscapes. Journal of Community Development, 48 (1): 48–66. Hunter, P.E. and N.D. Botchwey. 2017. “Partnerships in Learning: A Collaborative Project between Higher Education Students and Elementary School Students.” Innovative Higher Education, 42: 77–90. Key, S. 1996. “Economics or Education: The Establishment of American Land-­ grant Universities.” The Journal of Higher Education, 67 (2): 196–220. Laks, J., L.A. Wilson, C. Khandelwal, E. Footman, M. Jamison and E. Roberts 2016. “Service-learning in Communities of Elders (SLICE): Development and Evaluation of an Introductory Geriatrics Course for Medical Students.” Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 28 (2): 210–218. Lopez-Navarro, M.A. and M.  Segarra Cipres. 2015. “Social Issues in Business Education: A Study of Students’ Attitudes.” Journal of Education for Business, 90 (6): 314–321. Mendez, Z.Y. and R.  Rincones. 2013. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Faculty’s and Academic Administrators’ Dilemmas in a University-K-12 Partnership.” Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 16 (3): 77–85. McDonald, M.K. 2013. “Civic Engagement with an International Focus: The Western Carolina Microfinance Project.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 46 (4): 797–801. Patrizio, K. 2013. “Learning from Lorreltag: An Urban, Community-School-­ University Partnership.” Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 16 (1): 3–13. Phillips, L.A. 2013. “Working Adult Undergraduate Students’ Interest and Motivation in Service Learning and Volunteering.” The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, 61 (2): 68–73. Pizarro, R.E. 2015. “Challenges of Implementing Sustainable Urban Design Plans through Community-University Partnerships: Lessons from Colombia, China, and Germany.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 17: 48–56. Poon, P., T.S. Chan and L. Zhou. 2011. “Implementation of Service-Learning in Business Education: Issues and Challenges.” Journal of Teaching in International Business, 22 (3): 185–192. Purcell, M.A. 2015. “Student Empowerment in the Nonprofit Management Classroom.” The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, 63 (3): 193–198. Sanders, M.J., B. O’Sullivan, K. DeBurr and A. Fedne. 2013. “Computer Training for Seniors: An Academic-Community Partnership.” Educational Gerontology, 39: 179–193.

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Schachter, D.R. and D.  Schwartz. 2009. “The Value of Capstone Projects to Participating Client Agencies.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 15 (4): 445–461. Schoon, P.M., B.E.  Champlin and R.J.  Hunt. 2012. “Developing a Sustainable Foot Care Clinic in a Homeless Shelter within an Academic-Community Partnership.” Journal of Nursing Education, 51 (12): 714–718. Schwartz, K., L.  Weaver, N.  Pei and A.K.  Miller. 2016. “Community-campus Partnerships, Collective Impact, and Poverty Reduction.” Community Development, 47 (2): 167–180. Stoecker, R. and E. Tryon. 2009. Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Strickhouser S., J. Kleinberger and J.D. Wright. 2015. “Investing in Engagement: Volunteerism and Charitable Giving among Millennials.” In National Service and Volunteerism: Achieving Impact in Our Communities, Bryer, T.A., 61–74. Lanham: Lexington Books. Strier, R. and D. Shechter. 2016. “Visualizing Access: Knowledge Development in University-Community Partnerships.” Higher Education, 71 (3): 343–359. Tam, M. 2014. “Intergenerational Service Learning between the Old and Young: What, Why, and How.” Educational Gerontology, 40 (6): 401–413. Turner, C.C. 2014. “Civic Engagement in the Capstone: The ‘State of the Community’ Event.” PS: Political Science & Politics, 47 (2): 497–501. Wagenaar, T. 1993. “The Capstone Course.” Teaching Sociology, 21 (3): 209–214. Wodicka, R., N. Swartz and L. Peaslee. 2012. “Taking the Classroom to Town Hall: Advancing Public Affairs Education through University-Municipal Collaborations.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 18 (2): 271–294.

CHAPTER 4

Introduction of Cases

A selection of universities was chosen from different parts of the world for deeper inspection regarding how partnerships with communities are defined, operationalised, implemented, and assessed. The particular focus in case inspection was partnerships for the promotion of civic health, but we left largely open the definition of civic health. As we looked across societies and university systems, it was important that we not bias perceptions of the civic and what would constitute promotion of civic health. Indeed, we found much diversity, but also significant similarity in how these issues are framed. As such, some partnerships investigated may not be considered as established to promote civic health from all cultural/ societal perspectives. The universities given deeper inspection were, in no particular order: • University of Baltimore (United States) • Arizona State University (United States) • University of Central Florida (United States) • Edge Hill University (United Kingdom) • Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania) • Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia) • University of Tyumen (Russia) • Stellenbosch University (South Africa) • University of Chile (Chile) © The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_4

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• Catholic University of Chile (Chile) • University of Concepción (Chile) Though neither exhaustive nor representing all corners of the globe, these institutions reflect diverse developmental patterns as well as unique placements within their communities. Our aim is not to scan the full world of experience, for to do so would require multiple volumes, or to essentially prepare an encyclopaedia of practice. Instead, our aim is to cull lessons from divergent culturally embedded institutions to establish a sense of common language, potential common ambition, and common challenge, while respecting the importance of context for relative success. Lessons can thus be taken up and applied at other institutions and in other societies around the world. Initial contacts with university officials followed a structured protocol consisting of an introduction to the project and a semi-structured interview. The initial interview provided an overview of the university, its history, culture, and aspirations and challenges related to engagement with the community, generally, and specifically in regard to promotion of civic health. Importantly, the key terms “community,” “partnership,” “civic,” and “civic health” were never defined for the interviewees. It was our aim to allow each institution to explain how they defined these concepts rather than to artificially constrain the scope of inquiry according to our known and unknown biases related to these topics. Following these initial interviews, we asked our contact at each institution to identify others with whom we should speak about the issues we identified in the interview. Here, again, we did not specify categories of individuals, except to suggest in broad strokes: professors, researchers, administrative leadership and staff, students, and community partners. We did not seek specific disciplines nor positions, which allowed each institution to, first, tell the story they wanted to tell, and second, produce an agenda for our case studies that was guided by their practice, rather than our ideas about what and where that practice should be occurring. The first author of this book personally visited all of the universities, except for the three in Chile, for at least three days each of intensive interviewing, observation, and meetings, either as a core purpose or as part of a broader agenda. For instance, he visited the University of Tyumen (Russia) for two weeks as a Fulbright Specialist, giving lectures and participating in various other meetings, in addition to having discussions and making observations while there. Similarly, he visited Stellenbosch

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University (South Africa) for one week to participate in a conference prior to a second week devoted to conducting interviews for this project. He was, further, a Fulbright Scholar living in Kaunas, Lithuania, for at least three months per year from 2015 to 2017, which exposed him to people and practices at Kaunas University of Technology. He is a visiting professor in the Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice at Edge Hill University (United Kingdom) and combined a visit for business related to this appointment in order to conduct interviews. He served as an opponent for a PhD thesis at Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia) and combined this work with an extended visit to conduct interviews. Finally, two of the authors are affiliated with the University of Central Florida (United States), one as a professor and the other as a PhD candidate. The remaining author is a professor at the University of Chile. For most institutions, except for University of Central Florida and Kaunas University of Technology, all initial interviews at each institution were conducted through Skype, usually over several sessions, before a physical visit occurred. At each institution, the authors were welcomed and introduced to the simultaneously dynamic, bureaucratic, innovative, and risk-averse institutions as they navigated the meaning of the twenty-­ first century university within their societal structure. Though we did not specify the disciplines with which we wanted to engage or focus in our interviews and observations, there was a substantial amount of similarity with respect to those disciplines perceived and perhaps operationally being at the centre (more or less) of community-­ engaged work within the university. For instance, prominent disciplines included political science, sociology, business, and arts. The literature review found in Chap. 3 mirrors these disciplines, which allows us to progress to the individual and crosscutting themes, and to suggest lessons for practice and enhancements for theory in the chapters that follow. The themes we identified within and across the cases are the following: • Defining community is variable. • Willingness to take risks in terms of civic and political activity is a function of the level of autonomy of the institution and individual within the institution, as well as the level of issue contestation. • University campuses are contested civic spaces, and there is variation in how those spaces are used. • Institutionalisation and socialisation pressures contribute to the embeddedness of civic and community-engaged practices.

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• Measuring the impact of civic activities is challenging, particularly when there is need for alignment with performance and promotion standards of professors. • Students are vibrant forces of civic activity, particularly as volunteers in the communities surrounding a university campus. Before turning to these themes in more detail, the balance of this chapter introduces each case university with core descriptive information: age, public/private, student enrolment, historical development, and so on. This is information that, largely, does not come from our interviews, but from publicly available websites. It is important to note here that case universities were not selected as “best practice” locations for community engagement or the promotion of civic health. Indeed, as previously stated, such an approach would contradict our desire to have each university define what is engagement, civics, partnership, and so on, in their terms and within their context. These are not best practice cases, but are cases that describe current practices across widely different contexts. Readers might wonder about the inclusion or, more likely, the exclusion of universities that are generally well regarded with respect to their community-engagement activities. These are universities that might, for instance, be recognised through the Carnegie classification within the United States or that have high impact scores in the United Kingdom. Our aim in this book is not to profile these best cases, but to learn from diverse experiences, particularly from universities that might be unheralded or unknown outside of their localised geography.

University of Baltimore The University of Baltimore (UB) is “the public undergraduate, graduate and professional University, located in the heart of the [Maryland’s] largest city … and proud to embrace the diversity that is critical to its role as an urban anchor institution” (About Us 2018). Schools and colleges found within the university are the College of Public Affairs, Merrick School of Business, School of Law, and Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Public Affairs has a particularly strong connection to the city, declaring on its website: “We are Maryland’s only college dedicated to public service!” (About the College of Public Affairs 2018). Within the college, there are three schools, consisting of the Schools of (1) Criminal Justice, (2) Health and Human Services, and (3) Public and International Affairs.

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As of spring 2018, total student enrolment was 5336 students, 53 per cent of which were undergraduates. Sixty per cent of students were female, 47 per cent full time, and 7 per cent were from outside the State of Maryland. The university was founded in 1925 as a private law and business school; in 1975, it became a public institution with focus on upper-­ division undergraduate and master’s-level programmes. In 1988, it became part of the university system of Maryland, and in 2007 opened for four-­ year undergraduate degrees. The university has, as of spring 2018, 51,164 alumni, 78 per cent of which continue to live in Maryland (About Us 2018). Most students at UB are employed full time, often coming from high poverty backgrounds. This, then, becomes a central concern to the university with respect to providing practical knowledge and addressing practical concerns as part of its programmes and projects. One interviewee described the breakdown of students filtering into the university, starting with the general youth population in the city of Baltimore. Approximately 43 per cent of youth in the city of Baltimore graduate high school. Of those youth, 25 per cent pursue a four-year degree; 25 per cent pursue a two-­ year degree; 25 per cent go into the workforce; 25 per cent disappear. Nine per cent of those who pursue a four-year degree, according to an interviewee, will ultimately finish within that time; approximately 30 per cent will finish in six years. Another interviewee offered additional demographics that reflect the unique constitution of the UB student body, including: • Age range from 17 to 60s • 85 per cent are black • Most come from Baltimore • Many, if not most, are raised in family with trauma, such as substance abuse and addiction, early childbirth, and biological parents not in the child’s life • Most students work, and most students pay their own tuition, compared to universities with more affluent families where parents will often assume at least some of the financial burden

Arizona State University Arizona State University (ASU) is “a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and

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assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural, and overall health of the communities it services” (Charter 2018). By enrolment, ASU is the largest university in the United States. As of fall 2016, there were 71,946 students registered across five Tempe/ Phoenix metropolitan area campuses. This is an increase from 67,112 from fall 2012. An additional 26,200 students were enrolled at the university’s Skysong campus, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a defined purpose to “attract cutting-edge and innovative companies and their base of knowledge workers from around the world, integrating the resources of ASU with the opportunities of the private sector” (About Skysong 2018). Our focus on ASU for the purposes of this project was at its Downtown Phoenix campus. Colleges based on this campus are outwardly focused with some level of community engagement mission. They include: • Thunderbird School of Global Management • College of Health Solutions • College of Integrative Sciences and Arts • Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication • Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law • College of Nursing and Health Innovation • Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions • Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College In particular, the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions maintains a central position in the downtown campus. It holds as part of its mission that “we are committed to service, dedicated to research and learning that addresses social problems and are deeply engaged in the community—enabling us to be a part of the solution we want to see in the world” (Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions 2018). The college consists of four schools, consisting of the Schools of (1) Community Resources and Development, (2) Criminology and Criminal Justice, (3) Public Affairs, and (4) Social Work. The College further boasts 23 centres or institutions, plus an additional nine mission-­ driven offices within the School of Social Work. These include, as example: • Centre for Child Well-Being • Centre for Human Capital and Youth Development • Centre for Problem-Oriented Policing • Centre for Urban Innovation

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• Lodestar Centre for Philanthropy and Non-profit Innovation • Participatory Governance Initiative • Office of American Indian Projects • Office of Latino Projects • Southwest Collaborative on Immigration, Inequality and Poverty The College was named the Watts College following a $30 million gift from Cindy and Mike Watts in 2018. Among the people and initiatives that will be funded by this gift is the Maryvale Revitalization Project and One Square Mile Initiative, which will (Atkinson 2018): formalize a collaboration between the college’s academic units and community leaders to provide embedded and concentrated community services with the intent of bolstering local entrepreneurial efforts and community engagement activities in a designated square-mile zone … The Goal of this initiative will be to increase youth engagement with arts, culture, sciences and sports; increase positive human and environmental health outcomes; increase enrolment in post-secondary education and decrease the number of youth and young adults who commit crime.

One anecdote from an interviewee provides a practical example of this mission. The local government administered a popular programme to provide wraparound services to youth, including mentoring, job training, and so on. Due to a change in leadership, the programme was terminated. ASU picked it up and continues to implement in partnerships with local community organisations. The university, after all, as another interviewee said, is a problem solver.

University of Central Florida Founded in 1963, the University of Central Florida (UCF) is a “thriving preeminent research university located in metropolitan Orlando. With more than 67,000 students, UCF is one of the largest universities in the U.S.” (About University of Central Florida 2018). It is second in size only to ASU. The university boasts 13 colleges and more than 216 study programmes, across multiple campuses. Each campus has its own identity, including the 1400-acre main campus 13 miles east of downtown Orlando, plus additional place-based campuses specialising in hospitality, medicine, and,

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beginning in fall 2019, a campus in downtown Orlando that will specialise in public service study programmes. The 13 colleges are as follows: • Burnett Honours College • College of Business Administration • College of Community Innovation and Education • College of Engineering & Computer Science • College of Graduate Studies • College of Health Professions and Sciences • College of Medicine • College of Nursing • College of Optics and Photonics • Rosen College of Hospitality Management • College of Sciences • College of Undergraduate Studies The college of greatest interest in this project is the College of Community Innovation and Education (CCIE). Founded in July 2018, CCIE will anchor the UCF Downtown campus, opening in fall 2019. The college mission is to educate and empower “leaders to serve a diverse society through innovative instruction, strong partnerships and transformative scholarship.” Its vision is to transcend “traditional university boundaries to engage faculty and students with the social and economic fabric of thriving, modern communities” (College of Community Innovation and Education 2018).

Edge Hill University Edge Hill University (EHU) exists for the purpose of “creating and harnessing knowledge to deliver opportunity.” It is located in England, roughly halfway between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester. Its mission is (Vision and Values 2018): [To] provide an intellectually-stimulating, creative and inclusive environment for its community. Teaching and learning of the highest standard, supported by pure and applied research of international significance, will provide a firm foundation for its graduates, and other stakeholders in a rapidly changing world. An international perspective, knowledge and under-

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standing, and a life-long capacity to learn and adapt, is the surest way of securing an individual’s and the nation’s future.

There are three faculties at the university, consisting of the Faculties of (1) Education, (2) Arts and Sciences, and (3) Health & Social Care. There are also three cross-disciplinary institutes for the production of knowledge and engagement with community. These are the Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice (I4P), and Postgraduate Medical Institute. The first two institutes are particularly important in our consideration of university partnership with community. ICE is the university’s “practice-led and theoretically grounded interdisciplinary research forum which connects us with the digital and creative economy and with cultural institutions” (About ICE 2018). The institute works to identify where and how the themes of sustainability, good enterprise, the flourishing city, creative labour, and class, community & social justice intersect. Central to this work is its partnership mission (ibid.): ICE brings together researchers, educators, communities and industry practitioners to share expertise, develop partnerships that address current challenges, and contribute to debates on the roles of culture and creativity in driving economic growth and sustainability, as well as promoting citizen engagement, regionally, nationally and internationally.

I4P has a similar and robust partnership orientation. Working with practitioners, policy and decision makers, residents, and other individuals across sectors, I4P maintains three objectives (Overview I4P 2018): 1. To provide a space for those working across the public policy field of critical and informed reflection and thinking; 2. To offer a research and practice-informed seminar series open to all which examines public policy challenges, practice developments, and professional learning; 3. To inform the professional development of intending practitioners working and studying at the university. As of 2017, there were 15,220 students enrolled at the university, down from 18,483  in 2013 (Edge Hill University Facts and Figures 2018). During the same period, the university has been recognised for its achieve-

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ments (Edge Hill University Key Successes 2018). It was awarded the title of University of the Year in the UK by Times Higher Education for 2014/2015 academic year; it was also named University of the Year for Student Retention in 2018. The university has also achieved the highest rating in the government’s evaluation of excellence in teaching quality, learning environment, and student outcomes—the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).

Kaunas University of Technology Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) is situated in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. Founded in 1922 as a faculty within the University of Lithuania, KTU became an independent university in 1990. Its mission is to “provide the research-based studies at [the] international level; to develop and to transfer knowledge and innovative technologies for sustainable development of the State and development of innovations; to create an open creative environment which inspires talents and leaders” (Kaunas University of Technology Mission and Vision 2018). Within KTU, there are nine faculties, eight institutes, and nine research centres, with student enrolment at about 10,000, mostly in bachelor’s programmes (Kaunas University of Technology Facts 2018). Through its faculties, institutes, and centres, KTU seeks to maintain its “responsibility to the society and the country, towards consolidating its activities for the improvement of the people’s life quality and acceleration of the statehood development” (Kaunas University of Technology Strategy 2018). The Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities (FSSAH) is the most connected with respect to the civic life of the community. Other faculties maintain partnerships with the business and technology communities, for example. FSSAH has a goal to “prepare graduates, citizens of Lithuania and the world, for national and international careers. Faculty’s priority is social partnership and internationalism. Collaboration with private and public organisations, local communities, alumni give practical knowledge, abilities, and skills which match the market needs; it motivates to create joint projects, to propose innovative solutions, and organize practical activities” (Kaunas University of Technology About the Faculty 2018). More pertinent to the civic linkage, FSSAH considers itself (ibid.) special because of its social mission. We care not only for ourselves but also for sustainable environment—for our country, community, for the world.

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We participate in public discussions and debates; we present to the society our evidence-based scientific insights which are relevant to issues in public discourse. It is important for us that research conducted and social innovations created in the Faculty would contribute to the well-being of our country and the world, because we care about the future.

Tallinn University of Technology Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) is the only technological university in Estonia, but, like KTU in Lithuania, it is not limited to technology programmes. As of 2017, TalTech boasts more than 11,000 students from 94 countries. Established in 1918, the university has four schools and 20 departments. Among those is the School of Business and Governance, and within, the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance. These are the units of greatest interest within this book but not exclusively. The other schools are the Schools of Information Technologies, Engineering, and Science. TalTech is located in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, another of the Baltic States along with Lithuania and Latvia. Like Lithuania, Estonia is a former member State of the Soviet Union and is now a member of the European Union and part of the common currency. As a technological university, TalTech contributes to social and technological innovation that leads to economic advancement in the country. TalTech is the “flagship of Estonian engineering and IT education and research where higher education can be acquired at all levels in the fields of engineering and technology, information technology, economics, natural sciences and maritime affairs.” The “university’s vision is innovative Estonia in a sustainable world, where TalTech [facilitates] cooperation between the University, enterprises and the public sector [contributing] significantly to knowledge and welfare in society” (TalTech Facts and Figures 2018).

University of Tyumen The University of Tyumen (TU) was founded in 1930 and stands today as one of the largest universities in Russia with more than 27,000 students, nearly 10 per cent of which are international (University in the City 2018). TU is located in the Tyumen region of Siberia. Originally founded in 1586, Tyumen is now the capital of the broader region and is most known for its oil and gas reserves (ibid.).

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TU offers degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s and postgraduate level, including 175 academic majors. Across these programmes, the university employs 1200 professors and lecturers, 70 per cent with a doctoral degree. The programmes are spread across 12 institutes and two schools, consisting of the Institutes of: • Social Sciences and Humanities • State and Law • Finance and Economics • Mathematics and Computer Sciences • Chemistry • Physics and Technology • Biology • Earth Sciences • Psychology and Pedagogical Sciences • Physical Education • Distance Education • International Cooperation, and • School of Advanced Studies • Polytechnic School The university supplied many opportunities for students to participate on campus and, for the benefit of international students, provides access to Russian language courses to become a full, active member of the community. Figure  4.1 shows one of the student dormitories, which is also where international visitors stay. Additionally, the School of Advanced Studies provides a venue for international scholars to teach in English language. As such, the university actively seeks to build local connections and forge international partnerships.

Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch University, located in the Cape Town region of South Africa, was founded in 1918. Today, it has ten faculties with more than 30,000 students and 3000 staff spread over five campuses. The university painted a picture of itself (Discover Stellenbosch University 2018): The historical oak-lined university town amongst the Boland Mountains in the winelands of the Western Cape creates a unique campus atmosphere,

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Fig. 4.1  Dormitory at University of Tyumen (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer) which attracts local and foreign students alike. On the main campus, paved walkways wind between campus buildings—some dating from previous centuries; others just a few years old. Architecture from various eras attests to the sound academic foundation and establishment of an institution of excellence. This, together with the scenic beauty of the area; state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly facilities and technology, as well as visionary thinking about the creation of a sustainable 21st-century institution, makes for the unique character of Stellenbosch University.

The ten faculties consist of AgriSciences, Economic and Management Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Engineering, Military Sciences,

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Arts and Social Sciences, Science, Education, and Law and Theology. Eight of the faculties are on the main campus in the town of Stellenbosch. At the time of this writing, the Stellenbosch Business School, within the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, is building a non-profit leadership postgraduate programme and will thus have one of the clearest links to civic and civil society discourses in the region and broader society. One of the other university campuses is in Worcester. We will discuss this campus in more details further on in the book. For now, suffice to say is it is the home of the Ukwanda Rural Clinical School of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. This campus represents a significant outreach effort to impoverished, rural area.

University of Chile The university (Hechos y Cifras 2018) has 38 PhD programmes, 113 master’s programmes, 72 professional or undergraduate degrees, with a total of 41,000 students altogether. In terms of organisation, the university has 14 faculties and 4 interdisciplinary institutes. It also has four permanent artistic bodies. Founded in 1842, only 32 years after the Chilean Independence. It was conceived as one of the pillars of the new republic. The Real Universidad de San Felipe that worked from 1747 to 1839 is the institutional antecedent of the University of Chile. Its first rector was Andrés Bello, a Venezuelan scholar who had the idea that this new institution had to be a place where “all truths have to be addressed.” The idea, from the outset, was to create an institution in charge of educating professionals and to develop research, having in mind the needs of the country as a whole. It was conceived as a “national” university, meaning it had to fulfil its mandate not only in the capital of the country, but also in the rest of the country. Indeed, the University of Chile had several campuses all over the country to provide an academic option suitable for the needs of the different regions of the country. It played a key role in different areas of knowledge providing solutions to address key public problems. It was the only institution to educate several professionals that were required for the development of a new state. For many years, it was the only institution in charge of developing and disseminating knowledge in the country, playing the role of leader in many areas. The relevance of the University of Chile reached its highest point during the first part of the twentieth century. At that time, the university created new departments and schools, promoted

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the arts, and created important institutions such as the Instituto Pedagógico, el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo y el Ballet Nacional. During the dictatorship (1973–1990), the university had to go through many problems. The dictatorial regime implemented an active intervention, which led to the appointment of non-elected authorities at many levels of the hierarchy, and the intervention of schools and communities to align the activity of the university with the purposes of the military regime. The second biggest problem for the university during this time was the enactment of the Law of Universities in 1981, which legislated the division of the university into several new universities, particularly the regional universities that became autonomous entities, without the resources for fulfilling their mandate. This law also opened the “market” to tertiary education that implied the creation of new universities without proper regulations to make sure the newly created entities were able to provide good education. After democracy was restored in the country, the university resumed its role in the society by trying to play a key role in the education of professionals and the advancement of knowledge in key areas. Due to the characteristics of the Law of 1981, the university has lowered its influence in terms of number of students, state funding, professionals, researchers, and other issues relevant to the role the university has to play in the society. In 2016, for example, only 12 per cent of the total budget of the university was provided by the state, the rest was obtained from tuition and fees, competitive research grants, and other external sources of funding. This context has pushed the university to a complex situation, because the government has seen the university as being just like any other university. In other words, despite the fact that the state is the owner of the university, it has not been treated differently vis-à-vis the rest of the institutions that are members of the higher education domain. In spite of this situation, the university remains one of the most important in the country. According to the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the University of Chile is the most important university in Chile and the seventh in Latin America. Due to the fact the university is seen as a national university, it sees the whole nation as its area of influence. The fact that it is no longer a national university with campuses in other parts of Chile is not a problem for moving forward on an agenda of commitment, with the country as a whole carrying out activities as relevant as the functioning of the National Seismologic Institute or the Dirección de Medición (DEMRE), which is

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in charge of the national test for entering the university. In 2006, a new vice chancellor of “Outreach and Communication” was established to foster the connection the university has and should have to fulfil its mandate. Particularly, this new unit has a mission “to create, develop and coordinate opportunities of interaction among the different entities of the university, to foster and develop different possibilities of engagement and ‘outreach.’” For the University of Chile, “community” is the whole country; therefore, being a community-engaged university means to be involved in the key problem the society is facing and need to be addressed. In 2017, the university defined an “Outreach Policy.” In this document, the university defines the principles and main characteristics the university has to address. The main principles of this policy are commitment and public relevance, integrity and excellence, inclusive orientation and bi-directionality, and a participative and transversal endeavour. These principles should be the orientation for academic units within the university to engage with communities. The areas where the university should work are the cultural and patrimonial area, productive and services area, and community domain. The latter domain is the one connected to the “traditional” approach of a community-engaged university. Finally, two elements should be highlighted from the principles adopted by the university. First, there is a consensus that being engaged with the community is not only a one-way approach for community orientation. It implies a two-way approach, meaning that being engaged with communities is not only beneficial for a group in a given community in terms of receiving a service or “academic” product. It has to be beneficial for the professor and the university as a whole, as well, in terms of the knowledge from community groups. This implies that communities can also “teach” professors, which should entail an improvement in the teaching and research projects.

Catholic University of Chile Founded in 1888, it is the first and the most important religious university in Chile. According to the university website (Hechos y Cifras—Destacados 2018), The Catholic University (PUC) has 26,197 undergraduate students, 3160 graduate students, with 1169 of those studying a PhD.  In terms of organisation, it has 18 schools and faculty, 56 professional degrees, 104 undergraduate programmes, 97 master’s programmes, and

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35 doctoral programmes. The university has 3555 faculty members in different tracks and contractual commitments. Despite the fact that the Catholic University (PUC) does not have a vice dean or similar in charge of community outreach or “vinculación con el medio,” it does have an interest in making the activity of the university more relevant and oriented to address key issues the country is confronting. Just like any other complex university, PUC has the problem that, in order to stay in the highest positions of prestigious rankings, its professors have to show the achievement of key indicators such as publishing in peer-­ reviewed journals and applying for and obtaining competitive research grants. This objective is in tension with developing a stronger connection with the community or the social environment as whole. However, the university wants and needs to express its commitment with the nation, as it is a public non-state-owned university. That is why the PUC has developed several initiatives for having a presence in the public debate, and does not restrict its work to classroom and campuses. The unit in charge of easing this process of opening the university is the Centre for Public Policy Analysis (Centro de Análisis de Políticas Públicas). This academic unit is not a disciplinary department or school, and its mission is “to contribute to the development of the country connecting the academic activity of the Catholic University with the main challenges of the country” (Que Hacemos 2018). It is conceived as a hub where academics of different units work to put forward ideas and solutions that are relevant for the country. One programme the centre is developing is the “Public Policy Contest PUC.” This initiative started in 2006 with the intention of doing a match between professors conducting specific research projects with political authorities and private sector actors, to propose solution to real public problems. The centre facilitates the dialogue between professors and external actors, with the idea that the outcome of this work would be a policy paper.

University of Concepción Founded in 1919, the University of Concepción (UdeC) is one of the oldest non-public universities in Chile. According to several rankings, it is the third university of Chile in terms of academic production in all the different aspects a research university has to fulfil. Since the early days of its foundation, the UdeC has been conceived as a tool for the development and advancement of the city where this university was founded,

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Concepción, which is the second largest city in Chile. The Committee for the Creation of the University of Concepción (Comité Pro UdeC) was established by distinguished citizens of the region, who have realised that the intention from the central government from Santiago was to put off the creation of a university in this city, therefore, the community had to react and act according to their interests. In only two years, they generated the conditions for this new university to start functioning. The university (UdeC Cifras 2018) has 25,033 undergraduate students in 67 programmes, 2550 graduate students, in 31 doctoral programmes and 66 master’s programmes, 20 faculty and three campuses in three different cities. The fact that the UdeC was created by a group of citizens provides a special seal to the university in terms of creating a bond between the institution and the citizens of Concepción. The university is part of the city, therefore, it has to work to fulfil the needs of the citizens of the city, providing solutions and education for the particular needs of the community. For many years, the UdeC was the only university in the region, which entailed a close connection between the society as whole (community leaders, the regional political elite, senior civil servants, judges, etc.) and the university. This bond implied the provision of an academic offer and a research agenda, connected to the need of the fellow penquistas (citizens born in Concepción). It also had the intention to help the advancement not only to the Concepción region, but to the south of Chile as a whole. Being a “community-engaged university” is part of the essence of the UdeC.  The tight connection between the UdeC and the community, meaning citizens of Concepción, was part of the mandate of the university. This key characteristic of UdeC was usually fostered by the commitment of professors of different schools and departments of the UdeC.  Along with having a general strategy, to connect with the community with activities as relevant as the University Hospital, it also engages with communities with specific training programmes and professional degrees for increasing the number of professionals in key areas of the economic and social domain. The university created a Vice Dean of Institutional Relationships and Engagement in 2015. This new unit of the university had to “suggest and implement strategies and policies oriented towards addressing the institutional relationships of the UdeC with the local, regional and national environment, highlighting its public character through planning and executing its own activities, along with providing permanent support to those origi-

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nated in Faculties, Centres, and other units of the University, which are aimed at serving and developing the community, and fostering its permanent engagement with them” (Decree 2015-013, article 161). According to current authorities, the UdeC has a wide offer of activities with the community, ranging from helping low-income communities in improving their quality of life, and developing an adequate environment for entrepreneurs to create new businesses. The UdeC recognises that community-­ university relationships should be bi-directional, meaning they have to permeate both communities and the activity of the university, because the interaction between both domains must yield a learning process for citizens and professors alike.

References About ICE. 2018. https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/ice/about-us/ About Skysong. 2018. http://skysong.com/about-skysong/overview/ About the College of Public Affairs. 2018. http://www.ubalt.edu/cpa/aboutthe-college/ About University of Central Florida. 2018. https://www.ucf.edu/about-ucf/ About Us. 2018. http://www.ubalt.edu/about-ub/ Atkinson, P. 2018. “Renaming Launches College into New Era.” https://publicservice.asu.edu/content/renaming-launches-college-new-era Charter. 2018. https://www.asu.edu/about/charter-mission-and-values/ College of Community Innovation and Education. 2018. https://ccie.ucf.edu/ Discover Stellenbosch University. 2018. http://www.sun.ac.za/english/ about-us/Why-SU Edge Hill University Facts and Figures.  2018. https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/ about/facts-and-figures/ Edge Hill University Key Successes. 2018. https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/about/ key-successes/ Hechos y Cifras. 2018. http://www.uchile.cl/hechosYCifras Hechos y Cifras—Destacados. 2018. https://www.uc.cl/es/la-universidad/campus Kaunas University of Technology About the Faculty. 2018. https://admissions. ktu.edu/faculty/faculty-of-social-sciences/ Kaunas University of Technology Mission and Vision. 2018. https://en.ktu.edu/ university/ Kaunas University of Technology Strategy. 2018. https://ktu.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2017/12/KTU-strategija-2012-2020-EN-pataisyta-versijasutampa-su-LT.pdf Overview I4P. 2018. https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/i4p/overview-institute/

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Que Hacemos. 2018. https://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/nosotros/que-hacemos/ TalTech Facts and Figures. 2018. https://www.ttu.ee/public/e/en/University/ Mainetrukis_24-10-2018_210x148_ENG_.pdf UdeC Cifras. 2018. http://www.udec.cl/pexterno/node/16 University in the City. 2018. https://www.utmn.ru/en/about/ Vision and Values. 2018. https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/about/vision-and-values/ Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. 2018. https://publicservice.asu.edu

CHAPTER 5

Defining Community

Community is an abstract idea; it defies precise measurement in a holistic sense and lacks clear boundaries. Yet, it is a ubiquitous notion that serves as the foundation for engagement work of universities around the world. It is the place where universities strive for impact, conduct experiments, facilitate innovation, provide service, place students, influence decision makers, build capacities, and apply knowledge. The place itself can be extremely localised to a neighbourhood, isolated to a city, or defined through interlocking networks of citizens, organisations, and/or decision makers regionally, nationally, or internationally. The place can be online, offline, virtual, or boundary spanning across these technologically augmented—and supplemented—realities. Fowler (1991) described the definitional confusion of “community” as follows: “The meaning of community is elusive, a word without an essence or a text without meaning” (3). From a communitarian perspective, “community” has been defined as: “a group of people with two characteristics: (1) a web of affect-laden relationships that often crisscross and reinforce one another (rather than merely one-on-one or chain-like individual relationships) and (2) a commitment to a core of shared values, norms, and meanings, as well as a shared history and identity—in short, to a particularistic normative culture” (Etzioni 1996: 127).

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The declining webs of relationships that make up communities, defined in this way, are often cited as reasons for the decline of citizen participation, interpersonal trust, and the ability to solve problems (Putnam 2001). The lack of community within a geographic space and across geographic spaces are seen as the root cause of societal decline, and the potential to build community capacity is seen as the antidote (Chaskin 2001), even if done neighbourhood by neighbourhood or block by block (Hoffman 2003). Fragmented communities, defined or marked by extreme individualism, represent a potential barrier to strengthening communities (Riley-­ Smith 2010). Increasing identity politics may exacerbate such fragmentation, but the same identity politics might further establish in-­ group cohesion, leading to fragmentation at the group level rather than individual level. Bryer and Prysmakova-Rivera (2018) described this phenomenon as the difference between the included-in and included-out citizens in society, or, to put it very simply, the in-group and the out-group, where the out-group are socially excluded for reasons of poverty, race, religion, gender, and so on. They wrote (60): Atomistic individualism of the included-in population complicates the question of representation. Fundamentally, a bit rhetorically, how can the self-­ obsessed and self-interested person be shaped or open themselves to express concern for others, especially when the others exist on a lower social and economic plane? How can the included-in develop a sense of obligation towards the included-out? And, the reverse, how can the included-out populations open themselves to be represented wholly and fully, and ideally, on the way towards self-empowerment? Use of such phrasing presents a paradox. The included-in are defined by their individualism, and yet I approach them as a collective whole. The included-out are, as we discussed in previous chapters, lumped together and stereotyped, denied their individuality; yet, I approach them as individuals … The included-in cherish their individuality, but social norms and desire to belong limit their willingness to act on their freedom. If any of the group wished to break from the pack, they would risk being ostracized.

These ideas point towards the dissolution of shared existence within a shared space, with common values and visions. Social cohesion is broken, torn asunder by stark individuality and pressures to align within groups of like-minded people, bonding versus bridging, or better stated, perhaps, bonding at the expense of bridging social capital (Putnam 2001).

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It really is quite the paradox (Bryer and Prysmakova-Rivera 2018), at least within some societal contexts. Individualism is the siren call, but in-­ group cliques are the death knell that reduce communities, as they might have been in an idealised sense, to group fragmentation and individual isolation. The declining “sense” of community and shared meaning gives way to a world of multiple meanings that are temporary and shifting, or that, as Bauman (2005) described, like liquid. The fragmentation and isolation are potentially further enabled given the increasing use of social media technologies and responsive websites and music/video streaming services with algorithms that introduce individuals to groups, products, ideas, and people that are assessed to be aligned with pre-existing interests and biases. Rather than introduce a user to diversity, dominant algorithms narrow the search field within parameters based on past behaviour and activity, as well as existing relationships (Mittelstadt, Allo, Taddeo, Wachter and Floridi 2016). With these online dynamics, it is possible that individuals are forgetting or not learning at all how to negotiate within and across groups. Thus, we witness what might be considered horribly uncivil behaviour in online environments. Fuentes (2018: 18), an evolutionary anthropologist, explained how these behaviours have come to be so pervasive. We’re wired to work together, to forge diverse social relationships, and to creatively problem-solve together. This is the inheritance that everyone in the twenty-first century carries. I would argue that the increase in online aggression is due to an explosive combination of this human evolutionary social skill set, the social media boom, and the specific political and economic context in which we find ourselves—a combination that’s opened up a space for more and more people to fan the flames of aggression and insult online.

He explained further with the simple phrase: “you are whom you meet,” and the people we meet online reinforce our in-group negative language targeted at all others who are not part of that group (Fuentes 2018: 18). Into this quagmire of paradox, contradiction, socialisation, and isolation steps the university as institution. For our purposes, we did not impose a definition of community on the case universities, nor do we impose one now. In this chapter we explore different conceptual and operational definitions of “community.” We also identify the range of strategies deployed to engage communities, within and across these definitions, including the ways in which community as an idea is formalised within

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universities. In closing, we offer summary observations and reflections on how community exists vis-à-vis the university. Ultimately, when we speak, as we do in the title of this book, about university-community partnerships to develop civic health, we are fundamentally discussing the building, maintenance, and strengthening of the holistic community: the groups outside the university working with the groups inside the university. From a community lens, the only way to enhance civic health is to build better communities. In some of our case universities, the idea of community is discussed, conceptualised, and made operational as something wholly apart from the university (us and/with or to them); in others, community is defined as the university being of this broader construct (we). We explore these differences, including questions of how “us and/with or to” and “we” are defined across universities, as applicable.

Definitions of Community Across Universities The ways in which the idea of community is defined are as diverse as the geographic locations of each of the case universities. No university official or representative explicitly stated that their institution stood fully apart from community. Instead, there is more of a question of rhetorical alignment with practice, within the unique frames of how “community” is defined in each context. Within those contexts, we explore differences in the geographic focus (local, regional, national, international) as well as the realm of reality (offline, online, virtual, or hybrid). In some cases, researchers have gone as far as comparing university and community relationships to marriage and family metaphors, applying such typologies to varying interactions as traditional, harmonious, conflicted, or devitalised (Gavazzi, Fox and Martin 2014). Universities in our discussion are categorised by those that have a more “hard” integration with community and those that have a more “soft” integration with community. The former is reflected by universities that tend towards having a clear notion of communities, apart from academic communities, that they serve and where there is some level of being embedded; the latter is reflected by universities that tend towards having a more loose or variable definition of community and more ad hoc relations with community stakeholders that are driven potentially more by the individual interests of academic staff than by institutional directive. The distinction is not presented here as good and less good; it is presented

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descriptively, as demonstration of multiple paths to form bonds with diverse stakeholders, entities, and places outside the university. Hard Integration with Community Stellenbosch University (South Africa) strives to be embedded within its surrounding geography but is kept at arm’s length by certain population segments due to its divisive past. The university was the intellectual home for much of the apartheid system; as the campus took on more and more of a physical footprint during and after apartheid, it dislodged members of the black and coloured1 population. Buildings that were centres of activity for the black and coloured population became offices for university officials. The university usurped the history that was part of the black and coloured experience in Stellenbosch. For much of the university’s history, the official language for teaching was Afrikaans, a language associated most with the white oppressor class; only recently have courses started to be offered in other languages, including English. As both a symbol and substantive demonstration of intention to heal wounds from its past, the university rededicated in 2007 a building that was a prominent school for black children before apartheid. It became the home of the university’s now named Division of Social Impact, with lower-­ level offices occupied by NGOs working to serve the needs and interests of core segments of the population. Figure  5.1 shows a picture of this former school. The astute reader will notice that in the previous paragraphs about Stellenbosch University, we did not use the word “community.” As much of the symbols and artefacts of society are contested in South Africa (e.g. language, housing, tenant rights, water rights), the notion of “community” is similarly debated. As one local NGO leader expressed it, “community” can be interpreted as derogatory. To say, “we are doing work in the community” can mean that the university or NGOs, as the case may be, are doing work in the black and coloured populations, interpreted as the “other.” It means that we, the mostly white and financially comfortable, are doing work with a population that is not like us. Instead, this 1  For our purposes here, we refer to the “black” population as those whose parentage is 100 per cent black; coloured refers to those who are “mixed race.” We base this on the discussion provided by Campbell (2016), which should also be consulted for broader discussion of racial classifications in South Africa.

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Fig. 5.1  Home of the Division of Social Impact, Stellenbosch University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

leader preferred the use of geography-based vocabulary: “neighbourhood.” The authors of the text Academics in Action (Brinkley-Rubinstein, Barnes, Doykos, Martin and McGuire 2016) expressed similar concerns about marginalised groups and their encounters with researchers, specifically, the elitism of academics completing research among marginalised groups who are often the focus of such research. The challenge of a university taking control of neighbourhood or community landmarks is not unique to Stellenbosch, though the unique historical context certainly is. Despite the unique history, the dilemma is common of how to use the infrastructure to avoid alienating or angering community members who, perhaps for generations, have part of their identity linked to the space. For example, the University of Central Florida (United States), at the time of this writing, is constructing a new campus in the downtown core of Orlando—a campus named University of Central Florida (UCF)

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Fig. 5.2  City of Orlando Recreation Centre at the UCF Downtown Campus (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

Downtown. The footprint for the campus includes a recreation centre that has been a place for youth and other members of the mostly black, mostly poor population. The university has announced that it will keep the façade of the building in place while overhauling the interior to fit university needs. In Stellenbosch, the university kept both the façade and the interior largely intact, and dedicated the building to the mission of community engagement and social impact. How the University of Central Florida will use the building is not clear at the time of this writing. Figure 5.2 shows a photograph of this recreation centre in Orlando. UCF Downtown represents a significant symbolic, at least, movement into an impoverished part of the community, with the intent to direct some of the effort and resources of public serving study programmes and research initiatives towards the people and places of the neighbourhood. Whether it moves beyond symbolism will be determined by how the university acts once the new campus opens, anchored by programmes from the university’s College of Community Innovation and Education. As such, the new UCF campus is not an encroachment into neighbouring blocks and streets as a university slowly creeps into neighbourhoods

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through growth. This kind of encroachment is observed in many neighbourhoods, such as in Los Angeles, home of the University of Southern California, and Richmond, home of Virginia Commonwealth University (Bryer 2014). It is, instead, a strategic move designed to embed within a community in order to affect change and, potentially, improve lives in that community through research, teaching, service, and other extension activities. Arizona State University (United States) similarly built a campus in downtown Phoenix with much the same mission. Arizona State University (ASU) did not name its anchoring college “community innovation” like UCF, but chose instead the name “community solutions” or the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Both institutions communicate through their naming of critical units that “community” is central to the higher education enterprise. By building campuses in the urban centre, the community of most concern in that naming is the local, urban community. Here, the university stands as the backbone to the community, not in competition with other community-based organisations. Beyond the extension campuses embedded within locations they were not before, there are universities that were built within urban areas. The University of Baltimore (United States), Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), University of Tyumen (Russia) exist in the urban area, with the first two existing without a boundary between university property and the overall life of the city. Yet, despite the shared urban placement, the urban identity is variable, with partnership embedded in all, but targeted in different ways. The University of Baltimore seeks to influence and inform local policy and decision making, a purpose captured by their slogan, “Knowledge That Works.” This engagement ranges from the training of election judges, provision of legal aid to the poor, and sharing of neighbourhood-­ level data to help improve lives within disparate and unique neighbourhoods around the city. The University of Concepción has a special bond with the city where it was founded. For them, community is the city of Concepción, in the south of Chile. The formation of the University was done by a group of prominent individuals of the city in 1919, who considered there to be a great need for having a university in their city for the advancement of the southern region of the country. The main lever for installing this new university was the lack of interest from central government in Santiago de Chile to create this University. Bearing in mind this lack of initiative motivated

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f­ ellow penquistas (people from Concepción) to work on having their own university for addressing the real needs of the city and its people. This process of University creation has created a bond between the university and the city that have lasted for almost 100 years of permanent activities of the University of Concepción Soft Integration with Community An important distinction between the University of Baltimore and Kaunas University of Technology are their urban environments. Baltimore is challenged by rampant homelessness, crimes, and one of the highest murder rates in the United States. Kaunas is the second largest city in a country of only three million people; it has limited social problems, as such, but strives to become an attractive place for business investment, entrepreneurship, and foreign tourism. The urban community target population is less concerned with social solutions and more with helping spur innovation through, for instance, technological development and deployment. As another technological university, Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia) has a similar orientation, with a robust institutional framework for incubating entrepreneurs to develop new businesses. TalTech is not located in the city centre, but on the outskirts of the city on a campus with defined boundaries. Adjacent to the campus is the headquarters office of Skype, a global communications platform created in Estonia. Though there are elements of the university that have a local focus with respect to social concerns, as a technological university, the orientation is more directed to the community of entrepreneurs and innovators. A similarly robust incubation programme exists at Stellenbosch University, but includes as well a strategic focus not just on business entrepreneurs but also social entrepreneurs; the parameters of community, as such, are defined differently as seen through the similarly structured incubation programme. University of Tyumen (Russia) officials prefer to speak about social engagement and influencing overall social and societal wellbeing. This is ensconced in a context that is driven by centralised authority and a general universal set of values to pursue, across geographic-based communities. The work of the university is geographically based on a regional level, as the only university in western Siberia, but it maintains national concern. Edge Hill University (United Kingdom) has a unique position existing in a rural area between two major metropolitan areas—Manchester and

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Liverpool—with other nearby places with smaller population centres but pressing social issues, including, most significantly, poverty and associated issues. This geographic location is challenging in that there is not a natural geographic constituency, particularly since the urban centres are home to their own higher education institutions. University officials, though, pursue engagement and impact within the broader geography with their unique brand of interdisciplinary research and practice promoted through such institutions as their Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice. For the University of Chile, the notion of “community” has a completely different meaning. It does not have a strong connection with a particular neighbourhood, city, or region. For the University of Chile, its area of influence is the country as a whole. The mandate of the university, founded in 1842, was the creation and advancement of knowledge and education for the good of the country. It was conceived as one the pillars of the republic of this new independent country that reached its independence only 32 years before in 1810. The fact that the notion of community is the country can have an effect, in terms of being so broad that it does not create a sense of bonding with a specific community. Yet, when the whole nation is the area of influence, the institution has to create channels for this commitment to unfold. One element that jeopardised the engagement with the community in this national university was the intervention made by the dictatorship in the 1980s, where all the campuses that the University of Chile had in different cities in the rest of the country were separated from the centre, creating regional universities. This process infringed upon the mission of the University of Chile, because it isolated the university within the capital, making it more difficult to fulfil its national mandate. In spite of these problems, the University of Chile continues to have a key role in the educational system, serving the country as its community.

Strategies for Engagement Across Communities Across hard and soft practices of integration, there are some common and some different strategies for engagement with community. Presented here are some stories from case universities, expanded further in other chapters related to more specific aspects of engagement. These stories relate to how the definition of community is advanced through practice, if not through word directly.

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ASU, according to one respondent, is “not just another organisation occupying downtown.” The university was to be seen by those in the downtown city community as an equal in partnership with government, non-profit organisations, businesses, and others. Community stakeholders are not specimens to be researched, nor passive masses waiting for received wisdom. The first question often asked by a stakeholder, according to a respondent, is something like, “Are you going to tell me I’m wrong or tell me how to change?” This reflects the fear of community members, that they will be treated as inferior, and that their “real world” knowledge is not as meaningful as scientific expertise. Indeed, this fear might sometimes materialise in relationships, but university officials seek to establish a culture in which the university “strives for equality” while recognising that they “may never achieve it.” One reason the equality between university and community might never be achieved is the unique organisation of one: “Communities don’t live in boxes like we do.” The silos inherent in university structures are not unique to ASU, and there, as elsewhere, is at least rhetoric to break up the silos, and in some cases there is action. ASU provides some example of this action; so does UCF.  Both institutions have named their academic units in relation to broader ideals: community solutions at ASU, community innovation at UCF. They both are forming problem-based, cross-disciplinary research clusters as recruitment and hiring strategies for new faculty members. For instance, at these institutions, we might see clusters across social and natural sciences formed to conduct research on environmental sustainability, poverty, or civic health. In this scenario, three to four faculty members are specifically hired to form collaborative teams to write grants and conduct research, aiming to attract larger grants from government funders, but also to contribute more robustly to real-world challenges that defy solutions advanced through a single discipline. Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) has created a system with similar intent but different design. They eliminated their academic silos, or departments (institutes in their terms). Previously, institutes were the administrative homes of academic programmes and the academic staff who taught in those programmes. Researchers were embedded within these institutes and, largely, worked within rather than across institutes. The recent change established study committees, loose groups of academic staff aligned with each study programme; these stood apart from newly created research groups. Every active researcher is assigned to a theme-based group, irrespective of the study programmes where they

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teach. Currently, these research groups do not span faculties (or colleges) but reside within, but there is potential for university-wide expansion. For example, there is a research group formed on the theme “civil society,” which brings together researchers from sociology, public administration, political science, and semiotics, along with sub-disciplines. The research group and cluster models are designed, at least partially, to break up or, at least, poke some holes in the traditional boxes that are rationally constructed within an academic hierarchy and bureaucracy, but bear little resemblance and offer little relevance to the world outside. The groups and clusters are problem-based, rather than discipline-based, and, as such, community potentially merges more easily with university institutions as a result. These examples suggest a definition of community that is not place- or geographic based, at least in a highly localised manner, though local, geographic community groups can certainly benefit from such arrangements. The structural arrangements facilitate relevance for places including the physical area surrounding the university, physical areas elsewhere in the university’s home country or in the world, or some blending of all three. We see differences across universities in how they define, as institutions, the community, or communities of focus. For example, TalTech has a clear definition of its target community for outreach, and it is not the highly local in the City of Tallinn. It is the whole of Estonia, as university programmes and research centres are designed to enhance national technological innovation and economic development. UCF has global ambition but is also committed to the local, as reflected in their location-based model for university campuses. UB is proudly local, but also serves as a model for other local-market, local-impact institutions. The Catholic University of Chile also has a commitment with the country as a whole, grounded in its Catholic principles and perspectives, but helping particular communities in their actions, such as low income communities being helped by students from different courses across the university that are designed according to the needs of a given community. The most important programme in this domain is the “Programa Puentes UC” (UC Bridges Program 2018). In this programme, the university offers its students the opportunity to work with low income municipalities in different topics, where faculty assist them in developing activities in their professional area that could have an impact in those communities. A question emerges with these different focal communities within or across institutions: how are non-priority communities managed? There

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might and is likely to be individual academic staff or faculty members who work globally in a highly local institution, or vice versa. Do institutions allow for such activity, against the grain of the expressed interest and purpose of the institution? This question will be taken up further when considering incentives for academic or community-based performance. For now, we raise the question only to indicate what is probably obvious to the reader: universities are not monolithic institutions with compliant staff that toe the party line, so to speak. They are institutions that provide a home for individual scholars who are, to some extent, institutions unto themselves, complete with brand identity. There is opportunity for conflict between university institution and individual when the former embraces one definition of community, constructs incentive systems around this definition, and organises publicity and branding around this definition. The individual whose work is focused on a different community may feel left out, or, as may be the case, feel liberated to work without feeling the need to continually checking in with university administrators about how his or her work is furthering the impact felt in the institutionally defined community. The latter is possible only if there is no harm, such as lost promotion, poor annual evaluation, or other negative bias manifested through administrative action. We provide a couple of examples, without naming institutions. As we discuss potential conflict situations, the names of institutions are withheld to avoid negative perceptions about the institutions or individuals involved. Further examples are considered in Chap. 6, which address the issue of autonomy within the university. One example of a potentially conflicting set of relationships concerns a dean with a specific notion of how the faculty/college/institute should interact with a very localised community. As the leader with discretionary control over certain financial and non-financial resources, the Dean incentivised research, teaching, and service or extension activities that engaged, affected, or somehow linked to this community. Academic staff who, despite incentives, had no interest to work with this community, fit within the two identified categories: devalued, or liberated. Those who felt devalued considered that the institution was not supporting the work they considered to be important, either working with a different local community, on research of national concern, or engaging activity with international or global concern. There was a perception that leaders were filtering available resources to a preferred niche at the expense of work that was aligned with other interests, and, in some ways, a more traditional view of the role of

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higher education institutions. That is, on one hand, leadership promoted community-engaged scholarship; on the other hand, those researchers and teachers who did not practice this kind of scholarship felt as if the rules had changed without consultation. At the same institution, there were academic staff who acknowledged that they did not feel they were losing access to resources that were never fully theirs prior to the leadership initiative within the local community. As such, they maintained their regular work effort, seeking funds in traditional ways through grants and/or contracts, and were happy to not have the spotlight of university leadership aimed at them. For more senior members of the faculty, this is an easier position to take, perhaps. For younger members of the faculty who might still be working to define their identity and gain a positive reputation within the institution, such an approach might be perceived, at least, as risky and in defiance of the will of leadership. At this institution, the issue was not fully resolved, as such, and, to an extent, remains as a concern; we introduce the scenario here as part of the dilemma regarding the treatment of non-priority communities that do not have a “hard integration” with the university. Another example, with a different narrative, comes from a university that maintains a hard integration with its local community. In this case the hard integration is fixed and has been throughout the university’s history, and is, thus, not subject to the whims and wishes of whoever is occupying the dean’s office at any particular moment. There might be tinkering or areas of focus (e.g. homelessness, poverty, safety, justice) that take on different levels of priority, but the jurisdictional or community focus remains the same. Within this context, there are professors who focus their research on global contexts, or local issues in a city within a different country. Unlike the previous example, the professors in this case feel supported and encouraged in their work, as the diversity of interests are perceived by leadership to be a strength. Work conducted in another country might be “translated” to provide lessons to the local community directly through applied recommendations for practice, or indirectly, through the sharing of comparative lessons within the classroom. In this case, given the fixed nature of the “hard integration” with the community, there has been and remains potentially more opportunity for integration of all academic staff across interests; such integration of all academic staff is perhaps more challenging when the community focus shifts depending on who is occupying positions of leadership within the university.

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Engagement Strategy Typologies As there are different ideas of community, and different types of communities, there are also various strategies of engagement. These are addressed more in the chapters on autonomy (Chap. 6) and measurement (Chap. 9). For now, we can discuss broad categories of engagement strategy as follows: • Individual scholar, outside formal university processes • Individual scholar, within formal university processes • Teaching enrolled students • Teaching community members • Research on or for community • Research with community Individual Scholar, Outside Versus Within Formal University Processes The manner in which individual scholars choose to engage with their local or non-local community may depend on the scholar’s perception of how the university is perceived within that community. We will give examples that reveal different paths, all from the same university. At Stellenbosch University, an art professor is working within the South African townships or slums. She teaches art and demonstrates the power of artistic expression to express one’s life condition and ambition. Though a professor at the university, she does not brand herself as part of the university out of concern that, though she has an embedded deep relationship and reputation in the township, the university as an institution is not necessarily trusted. The university was an intellectual home for the apartheid system; it still is challenged with its relationships with the black population, both in terms of demographics of students and language(s) of study. The professor feels she might lose some credibility if she identifies first, at least, as part of the university; for that reason, she has hesitated in taking or using university resources that would require that branding. This, then, is a case of an individual scholar who is working outside formal university processes. Another example is not of a professor but of a group of students. The university’s Division of Social Impact helps facilitate student volunteerism in the community. At least two groups of students organise to mentor and tutor students ranging in age from early childhood through teen years

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within the townships. They volunteer as students of the university and successfully provide outreach to these impoverished areas on behalf of the university. These students provided homework assistance and general support in reading and writing; the student volunteer initiatives are further explained in Chap. 10. A final example involved both university professors and students. In a different township located about two hours from the main university campus, there is a faculty of health and medicine that operates a rural health clinic. The clinic and health campus are designed to expose students in health and medical professions to rural health needs, as these are unique relative to urban areas, such as Cape Town. The rural areas consist generally of populations that are underserved so far as healthcare is concerned. The township in the area near the health clinic is one that has a particular history of violence, as well as significant incidents of critical illness and disease, such as high levels of tuberculosis. The university opened a ­clinic/ health centre inside the township, in partnership with governmental organisations, to serve this population. It is branded as part of the university and is further linked to other resources, such as a university-supported recycling centre and community garden. Students use all of these resources to support residents and their health needs. Figures  5.3 and 5.4 show images of these resources, and Fig.  5.5 shows a tank-like police vehicle that suggests the potential for violence in the area. This case is described further in a later chapter. These three scenarios from a single university demonstrate the different paths that can be taken to engage with the community, with critical factors being the interest of the individual scholar, or student, and the reputation of the institution within the community. Leadership within the university is also a potentially critical factor, determining the extent of formalised engagement practices. For example, the Dean of the College of Health and Public Affairs (now the College of Community Innovation and Education, and the College of Health Professions and Sciences) at the University of Central Florida made a 25-year commitment to a developing and now fully operational community school set within an impoverished neighbourhood. A community school provides wraparound services to children and families; the space becomes a community centre, providing access not only to traditional educational services but job training, medical, and social support services. The Dean’s commitment started by personally engaging in the planning stage of the community school itself, including joint visits to

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Fig. 5.3   Front of Avianpark Resource Centre, Stellenbosch University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer) 

community school models in other parts of the United States. His personal involvement was parlayed into involvement of numerous faculty members, staff, and students from across the diverse disciplines of the college. These included public administration, social work, criminal justice, and health services administration. This is an example of engagement using, or more precisely, leveraging the diverse and rich resources of the university to assist community organisations to strengthen community. Teaching Enrolled Students and/or Community Members Engagement with communities can happen through enrolled students as part of a service-learning pedagogy, or it can happen with community members directly. In either case, community-engaged teaching requires empowerment of either students or community members, or both. Bryer (2014) referred to this as a process of SEE DEMOS: Student Empowered

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Fig. 5.4  Community Garden in Avianpark, Stellenbosch University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

Education, and Democratising Education for Members of Society. This discussion will be extended in Chap. 10 whilst discussing students. Research “On” or “For” Versus “With” Community A primary underlying philosophy of community-engaged or participatory action research is that the subject of the research, or participants, are empowered through the research process. Among other methodological distinctions, this kind of research not only seeks to develop applied recommendations that might be used by community groups or organisations to improve a situation or quality of life. This kind of research seeks to ensure sustainability through the inclusion of those same community members from the start to finish of the research process. Of course, there is much variation, but the idea of empowerment is critical (Bryer 2014).

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Fig. 5.5  Police Presence in Avianpark, South Africa, Stellenbosch University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

Another way of drawing this distinction was made by a University of Baltimore professor, who framed it not as “research on” but “research for,” juxtaposed to “research with.” The first assumes research subjects are essentially lab rats to be manipulated to give the researcher information she needs. The second is research that recognises significant issues or challenges in a community and seeks to address those issues, assuming the community members or organisational members are not capable of doing it themselves. The latter, as written in the previous paragraph, is research in partnership with those who can both provide information and benefit from the use of that information. Throughout the balance of the book, we will see more examples of each of these kinds of research, with particular emphasis placed on those who practice the partnership model, as that model aligns particularly well with the notion of promoting civic health in the places where researchers work.

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Summary In this chapter, we considered definitions of community and variations in how communities, differently defined, are potentially engaged. In the following chapters, additional case examples will make these discussions more robust. In the next chapter, we examine factors that might contribute to variations in community engagement, specifically institutional and individual autonomy and willingness to take risks.

References Bauman, Z. 2005. Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity. Brinkley-Rubinstein, L., S.L. Barnes, B. Doykos, N.C. Martin and A. McGuire. 2016. Academic in Action: A Model for Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Service. New York: Oxford University Press. Bryer, T.A. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenships, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. Bryer, T.A. and S. Prysmakova-Rivera. 2018. Poor Participation: Fighting the Wars on Poverty and Impoverished Citizenship. Lanham: Lexington Books. Campbell, J. 2016. Morning in South Africa. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Chaskin, R.J. 2001 Building Community Capacity. New  York: Transaction Publishers. Etzioni, A. 1996. “The Responsive Community: A Communitarian Perspective.” American Sociological Review, 61: 1–11. Fowler, R.  B. 1991. The Dance with Community: The Contemporary Debate in American Political Thought. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Fuentes, A. 2018. “Are We Really as Awful as We Act Online?” National Geographic, August 2018. Gavazzi, S.M., M.  Fox and J.  Martin. 2014. “Understanding Campus and Community Relationships through Marriage and Family Metaphors: A Town-­ Gown Typology.” Innovative Higher Education, 39 (5): 361–374. Hoffman, A.V. 2003. House by House, Block by Block: The Rebirth of America’s Urban Neighborhoods. New York: Oxford University Press. Mittelstadt, B.D., P.  Allo, M.  Taddeo, S.  Wachter and L.  Floridi. 2016. “The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate.” Data & Society, 3 (2). https:// doi.org/10.1177/2053951716679679. Putnam, R.D. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Riley-Smith, T. 2010. The Cracked Bell: American and the Afflictions of Liberty. London: Hachette. UC Bridges Program. 2018. http://ucsirveachile.uc.cl/programa-puentes-uc

CHAPTER 6

Autonomy and Willingness to Take Risks

The ability for universities to engage with communities for the promotion of civic health, or for any other reason, requires some level of autonomy, for the individual student, individual scholar, units of the institution, and the institution as a whole. Universities are subject to various political, economic, social, and cultural factors that may create some constraints for whether and how they become community-engaged universities. This chapter analyses the relationship between the level of autonomy among universities and their ability to engage with communities. This connection can be established because the context, traditions, stakeholders, among a long list of other factors, can exert a relevant influence over the manner in which universities can engage with the environment. Throughout the chapter, we consider several nuances in this connection to understand the complexities of this phenomenon. Several examples will be provided to have a better understanding as to how a university’s level of autonomy can influence how and why it works or not with the community. We define autonomy for our purpose here as the freedom of action by universities, professors, and students for accomplishing their missions.

© The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_6

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On Autonomy A university is a place where professors and students work together for creating and disseminating knowledge. In so doing, they observe a group of values and principles that are required for meeting the higher standards of science. Chief among those principles is the need for autonomy and freedom of thought. Professors and students should not be forced to uphold a particular ideology or to adapt their work to someone’s needs or goals. The lack of that autonomy not only could jeopardise the quality and relevance of research, but also, it can create knowledge with a significant level of bias. As such, autonomy is such a significant value for universities. Lacking autonomy could imply impoverishing the work conducted within university. Autonomy among universities, in normative terms, can be understood, at least, on two levels: at the institutional level, and at the professor’s level. At the institutional level, universities are constrained to the extent they are subjected to external pressures for undertaking a particular research agenda, or to hire a particular type of professor. At this level, autonomy means the freedom a university has to fulfil its duty in terms of creating and disseminating knowledge, without being subjected to influences or external control. At the professor’s level, autonomy in a university means the ability to develop a research agenda, according to the interests and needs of the researcher. In pure form, it means a professor is able to pursue any line of inquiry she or he thinks is relevant in a given scientific domain. Both at the university and at the professorial level, autonomy should be rightly understood in terms of being involved in the key issues a society has to address but not being forced or pushed to pursue a particular agenda, which could affect the scientific work. In theory, this autonomy should be combined with the social commitment of universities and professors to address issues and problems that are meaningful for citizens. Universities and professors should develop their work to educate professionals and conduct research for solving or helping in solving the key issues a society confronts. The definition of those pressing issues should be open and lacking political, cultural, or economic biases. However, if one takes the argument to an extreme, autonomy could mean “isolation,” in terms of doing whatever professors and students think is relevant despite the concrete application or even need for a particular activity. Not being subjected to external influences could lead to work on topics that are only relevant for those working at and for the university. There is, thus, a balance likely needed between influence and action of the university and its professors.

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How is university and professors’ autonomy intertwined with a community-­engaged university? Is it relevant for a community-engaged university to have autonomy? These questions can be analysed from two perspectives. First, universities and professors should have the autonomy to engage with communities in order to help them to address their problems, while educating and conducting research. This connection could be relevant in terms of making the work of universities more meaningful for communities. The second approach to this connection involves a potential for loss of autonomy through partnership, because universities and professors while engaging with communities are influenced and subjected to those communities that work with them. Being engaged with communities includes an exchange between those in the university and those outside the university. This relationship implies a level of negotiation between communities and universities for what should be done in terms of research, activities, and other outcomes of a community-engaged university. In some sense, this is a loss of autonomy for the university, but it is a “consensual” loss of autonomy, which is different from the lack of autonomy a university could have when subjected to external actors or other types of pressures imposed rather than invited. In other words, autonomy plays a different role according to the moment and type of influence exerted to the university and its professors. It is different from the influence a university receives from a donor or potential donor for not engaging in a particular research topic or domain, with the influence a community can play for undertaking a particular project. Both include potential risks and should be managed in different ways, as case examples demonstrate.

Defining Autonomy as Function of Funding, Control Discretion, and Authority Appointment This section addresses a list of factors that could have an impact on the level of autonomy universities have, and its impact on the ability to engage with communities. These factors include, and may not be limited to, three broad categories: funding, control, appointment authority. Funding One of the most complex problems universities have to face is the source of their funding. It can be public, private, or mixed, and all of them create specific challenges for universities to function. In some cases, such as pub-

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lic universities, the source of funding is a public budget, which could allow the allocation of public or government resources to the university. In other cases, such as private universities, the university itself has rules and means for getting funding, not only from tuition and fees, but also from external sponsors. Some institutions have a combination of public and private sources, requiring attention be paid to government, charitable, and private sector interests. Each of these sources of funding has pros and cons that usually have an impact on the manner in which the university is managed. Usually, public universities have funding from governments, but they also have several potentially onerous bureaucratic procedures, as well as potential political pressures, attached with those resources. On the other hand, private universities can have a higher degree of freedom for using resources, but sponsors tend to influence the management, and even the activity of those universities. Either way, it is impossible to deny the impact the source of funding has among universities. Particularly relevant is the impact funding has in the university’s level of autonomy. As it was stated before, some sources of funding can have an important effect on the manner in which universities work. Autonomy could be jeopardised, or at least constrained, according to the type of funding, as the sponsor may try to play a role or influence in the terms and scope of the activities carried out by the university and its employees. Control Another element that could have an impact in the work of universities is the level of control exerted on universities. The source of this control can be from different entities. Universities do not work in a vacuum; they must abide by certain rules and regulations whether they are from funding bodies or accrediting bodies. Every country has a different institutional setting for universities to work. In some cases, universities are highly regulated in terms of creation and functioning of academic programmes, use of resources, and other activities. On the contrary, in other places, universities have room for working just like any other economic activity. Regulations and controls can influence the level of autonomy of universities in many ways. A particular type of control taking place among universities is the accreditation process. This mechanism for quality assurance has gained popularity in the last ten years throughout the world, because of the

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increase in the number of universities and the need for differentiating universities in countries and regions. In any accreditation process, universities are assessed according to different standards, which are expressions of quality in education. One of the elements included in these standards is the level and form universities engage with communities. This is creating a pressure for universities for taking communities more seriously, with the risk of doing activities and projects, only to meet the standard, but not because of a conscious decision to open the work of the university to the external world. Appointment Authority A third element to bear in mind while analysing the autonomy of universities is the manner in which universities appoint their authorities. Universities have different means to generate the higher levels of the hierarchy. Those in charge of managing the university can be appointed internally or externally. Internally appointed authorities are usually chosen by the members of the institutions using elections as a means to define who is going to be the president, dean, or head of department. Externally appointed authorities are chosen through different mechanism such as open selection contest or searching recruitment committees. Summary of Autonomy-Influencing Factors These three factors can be studied from a formal and informal point of view. In some cases, the allocation of resources, the control exerted to universities, and the selection of authorities can have a formal impact in the functioning of universities. But also, those regulations can have an informal effect on the manner in which universities work. Mechanisms of control have an effect on the level of autonomy and the likelihood of engaging with, or to engage with, communities. The higher the level of autonomy, the higher the likelihood universities may choose community partners they consider relevant or pertinent for their purposes. On the contrary, when universities have limited autonomy, the decision to engage with community partners could be subject to external authorities having more explicit or implicit control. The question of choice is not, however, likely to be fixed for any institution. Discretion of university leaders or individual professors is likely to be quite variable, across levels of resource independence, control, and

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appointment authority. Discretion, then, assumes ability to choose whether to take risks in forming relationships with certain community members, or conducting research on a sensitive political or social issue, or introducing a divisive topic in a classroom or a public forum for the purpose of open discussion and education. Before introducing case examples that bring these ideas to life, we elaborate on the issue of risk taking as a function of different kinds of autonomy and the relative contestation of the social, political, economic, or cultural issue that is the subject of university or professorial activity.

Autonomy, Issue Contestation, and Risk Willingness We consider our case universities on two dimensions, related to willingness of institution and/or individual scholar to take what might be perceived as risks: (1) level of autonomy, based on the factors previous described, and (2) level of issue contestation or divisiveness. A simplified presentation of these dimensions is seen in table. The level of autonomy is presented as high or low, but in practice would exist on a continuum, with the three components of funding, control, and appointment authority interacting with each other to establish what might be a highly contextualised level of autonomy for every university. The level of issue contestation is also not a particularly fixed idea, but is presented as dichotomous for simplification. Level of contestation is not necessarily an objective idea either; instead, it is subjective from the perspective of university leadership and professors. Of course, there might be some objective indicators of the level of contestation, such as news media attention paid to the issue, or discourse about the issue in political bodies, ranging from local to national to supranational institutions (Table 6.1). Universities that maintain a higher level of autonomy when faced with issues of low contestation will not face any or very limited risk, and will act as an institution or individual professor with full discretion. On the other hand, with the same autonomy when faced with a highly contested issue, Table 6.1  Autonomy and contestation High autonomy

Low autonomy

High contestation Cautious risk, stakeholder collaboration No risk, issue avoidance Low contestation Absence of risk, full discretion Individual risk, under radar

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the university will take risks in addressing, researching, or potentially engaging the issue with caution, preferring perhaps a strategy of “strength in numbers” by forming stakeholder collaborations to address the issue. When there is low autonomy, an issue with little contestation may allow an individual professor to take risks, but to do so under the radar, or outside the watchful eye of the media or politicians. The institution is not likely to engage the issue under these circumstances. Finally, where there is limited autonomy and a highly contested issue, there will likely be issue avoidance and risk avoidance, for both individual professors and whole institutions. We give examples of these strategies. Sample Cases Here we suggest approaches to community engagement based on the dimensions of autonomy and issue contestation. In giving examples, we highlight characteristics of the case universities that show variation in practice and unique challenges faced by universities as they consider what is legally or politically feasible in terms of community partnerships for civic health, or for other purposes. First, we categorise roughly our case universities according to their level of autonomy. All, for different reasons, can be suggested to be at a mid-level of autonomy, meaning much of university activity occurs somewhere where two or more of the four quadrants might overlap, treating each dimension as a continuum rather than fixed cell. It might seem odd, at first glance, to equate the levels of autonomy in such diverse societies as United States, Russia, and South Africa. Though formal autonomy might be different, in the absence of formal constraint there can be, and often is, found informal constraint. The manner in which universities and university personnel manage this informal constraint is where we see some variable practice. To demonstrate, we provide two examples from the first author’s direct experience at the University of Central Florida, and then contrast this to experiences at other universities. The first example originated in December 2008, with the contested component occurring in 2017. After the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, his transition office called on citizens throughout the country to convene community conversations about access to affordable, high quality healthcare. This was a major theme of the Obama campaign—to reduce health access inequalities. At the time, the idea of health insurance and healthcare reform was as close to a “third

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rail” of politics as one might be able to get it; that is, like the third rail on a train line, if one touches it, they will get burned. In order to create momentum for policy change, the Obama transition team asked citizens to convene conversations in the home, workplace, faith organisation, place of business, or other locations within their community. Individual conversation organisers were given guiding questions to facilitate discussion, and they were asked to take detailed notes of the discussion and report them back to the transition team in advance of Obama’s inauguration. Several hundred conversations were convened around the country as a form of co-produced public participation (Bryer 2010), including one at the University of Central Florida, where Bryer served as the lead convener and facilitator. More than 70 people participated in the event held a few days before Christmas 2008. The report Bryer prepared and submitted to the Obama transition team included photographs, themes from the discussion, and individual stories that were particularly compelling. This led to one woman from the participant pool being invited as a guest to the State of the Union Address in 2010. To support the conversation, the university wrote a press release (Helms 2009), which was picked up in a couple of media outlets, including on the radio. After the conversation, the local university-run public television station interviewed Bryer about the experience and purpose of the conversation. Once the local woman was invited to the State of the Union, the university again supported Bryer in promoting the indirect outcome associated with the community outreach activity. The story to this point reflects an openness of the university to use its resources, or for a professor at the university, as the case may be, to leverage university resources to promote a civic outreach with the community. The issue was linked with a national political conversation based on a national call from a president-elect who was popular. To the extent there was risk involved in aligning university resources with discussion of a potentially divisive political issue, it was absorbed with active engagement with various community partners to join the conversation and was lumped together with a national call for discussion. As such, it was not the university acting unilaterally. Nearly ten years later, soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States, the issue of healthcare reform became a politically divisive topic once again. Since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Republicans in Congress had tried to change

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it or eliminate it. They never had such opportunity until there was a Republican in the White House. The Trump Administration did not call for nationwide community conversations in the style of Obama’s team to consider what is working and what needs to change in the health insurance and healthcare systems. Nonetheless, Bryer wanted to revisit the issue using the same format—a community conversation with the university as neutral convener. At first, there was some excitement within the university’s public relations office. A media release was drawn up. Bryer proceeded with invitations to the event, including all who had participated in 2008. However, university leadership perceived too much risk in promoting a conversation like this, with the university’s branding, at a time when Republicans controlled the Florida legislature, many of whom would likely advocate the change or repeal of the Affordable Care Act. There was fear that promoting discussion that might lead to a report that the public support the Affordable Care Act would be politically risky, as the legislature controls the budget for the university. In the end, the university did not prevent Bryer from hosting the conversation. They declined to provide support for promotion, or with the media. They did offer to provide security in the event protestors appeared. Clearly, the environment had changed from 2008. Bryer was able to do as he wished but on his own. The result was a conversation with fewer than 20 participants. Without broader university support and media coordination, the effort fizzled without fanfare. Another example from Bryer at the University of Central Florida concerned not an issue of national concern but of fully local concern. In the State of Florida, local governments have the power to create, through the vote of the people, a special taxing district to dedicate funds for children’s services. The intent is to dedicate funding to children’s and family services, such that the amount available would be higher than it might otherwise be if left to general fund expenditure for the local government, and the amount would be largely stable over time. The model is referred to as the Children’s Services Council, or Children’s Council for short. An advocacy coalition, led by a prominent civic leader, contracted with Bryer to write a needs report based on existing reports regarding the needs of children in Orange County, Florida, which is also the county in which the university is based. Knowing that the issue and report would generate potentially significant media interest, Bryer established fixed ground rules up front. Specifically, the advocacy organisation would not have any edito-

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rial control over the final report, and the report would be the same had any other organisation commissioned it. Bryer did not inform university leaders about the project before accepting the job. The issue and report did generate much media attention, particularly when the county mayor announced publicly that she was opposed to the creation of the Children’s Council. Bryer was subsequently interviewed for a local public radio programme on the issue, and he maintained his neutrality, focusing on the findings in the report, not the advocacy for any solution to the challenges identified within. Nonetheless, university leaders learned of the report and received calls from county government officials expressing concern about the report and the influence of the university in the effort. In response, university leaders did not prevent Bryer from continuing his work or media interviews, but they did emphasise that he should preface any public statement with the fact that the university, as an institution, is not endorsing any viewpoint or finding expressed in the report. Leaders were fearful of angering the county mayor. For more on this work, see media interviews, particularly Bryer’s interview on Orlando’s public radio station: http://www.wmfe.org/intersection-funding/childrens-programs-cold-case-golf/86327 (Peddie 2018). These examples both show that putting oneself or one’s work into the public space to help inform public debate and citizen awareness of issues can lead to the work or the scholar being thrust into a political spotlight. A similar occurrence, more prominently, occurred to a researcher from George Washington University who estimated the total death count in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria and inadequate sanitary and health conditions in the months following the storm. In this case, President Trump attacked the researcher, but the researcher’s university supported him and his methods, a definite difference compared to the University of Central Florida response, which left the researcher effectively on his own. Let us compare these responses to some others, starting with University of Tyumen in Russia. Officials at the university described numerous ­projects in which they are involved. For instance, the Institute for State and Law implements an event each year, the “day of the young voter.” During election years, teenagers, aged 16–17, in the community are trained on the elections process, the importance of voting, and the candidate options. The same institute also sponsors a legal aid clinic, providing free legal consultation to community members in need. The legal aid clinic is implemented in partnership with NGOs, specifically the public chamber

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organisations. Prysmakova-Rivera and co-authors (2019) summarised the function of public chambers (272): The representatives of the local authorities say that citizens … lack confidence in the authorities. When addressing civil servants, citizens feel as if the interests and objectives of the population and the officials are totally different. This opinion is provoked by the intricacies of Russian legislation, as well as by the high cost of legal assistance. Public chambers help to overcome this situation. Ordinary people can come to the public chamber and feel better able to engage in discussion. The public chambers consult the citizens, assist in drawing up an appeal, and also monitor the consideration of the appeal in the local government bodied. Public chambers organise their work in the form of discussions on various kinds of local issues; they invite representatives of local bodies to the meetings, and, in turn representatives of public chambers participate in the commissions of both the local administration and the representative body of the municipality.

Overall, the university aims to be a socially engaged university, in which professors can bring projects of interest to them, without administrative pressure in one direction or another. A professor developed a novel legislative initiative, for example, that gives students the experience of drafting legislation for the national legislative body. With such initiatives, there might not always be specific administrative support, but there generally is some available resource to support the civic initiatives of professors. At the very least, extracurricular activity of professors, including community-­ based work, is recognised as part of annual evaluation processes. One example of a positively perceived activity was experienced through one of the university’s institutes. They convened an international web-­ based conference on inclusive education and volunteerism. With this programme, university professors and community members shared insights and experiences from Russia, Belarus, and elsewhere regarding efforts to improve accessibility for students studying at university who are differently or uniquely abled. This initiative both served a policy function and potentially brokered research partnership ideas across participating universities. Beyond university authorities, no activity is expressly forbidden by the state, so long as it is not linked to potential terrorist activity. Projects with a specific political or advocacy dimension may not be encouraged, but they are not forbidden. Political activities that are not encouraged include any effort that support political parties, promotes labour strikes or other forms of protest activity, or that visibly shows support or opposition to policies

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or politicians. In practice, this might freeze some potential activity but, overall, university personnel report they are free to engage in any activity of interest, with the aim of promoting excellence in education. As such, there is perhaps limited difference between the experiences of Bryer, previously described, and the lack of encouragement given to certain political activities at the University of Tyumen. A departure from this theme was seen at the University of Baltimore. The university hosted the United States Secretary of Education under President Trump as a commencement speaker. Secretary Devos is not, generally speaking, very popular, particularly within the education community. We will not go into detail on her record here, as it is not relevant, beyond the fact of her unpopularity. Students and professors, including some on the dais, stood and turned their back on Secretary Devos throughout her speech. As one professor said, they remained respectful and non-disruptive, beyond the obvious display of opposition, but they felt it their obligation to express their opinion. A news report about this protest can be seen online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ladWRqoZS9Y. Such a display is not likely to appear at an institution like the University of Tyumen or even the more politically divided area around the University of Central Florida. A somewhat similar situation happened at the University of Chile, when Sebastián Piñera, the President of Chile, attended the inauguration of the second period of Ennio Vivaldi, as the President or Rector of the University. In spite of the differences between the Rector and the President in different policies in term of financing and regulating public universities, the inauguration was developing smoothly. There was a tension in the air, but a “republican spirit” was predominant in the University of Chile’s main hall. Yet, suddenly a student stood up and started shouting at the President, complaining about his policies, criticising the errors the government had made, and uttered strong words about his ability to rule the country (El Mostrador 2018). The reaction was quick. The Rector of the University asked the student to stop doing that without any use of force, only by arguing with her about the negative effect an action like that could have in the relationship between the university and the government. The student left the hall, and the event concluded. The situation shows that even when authorities have problems and tensions, there are some rules that have to prevail among the actors involved. The brashness of the display at the University of Baltimore is comfortable and perhaps less risky in a city dominated by partisans opposite Secretary Devos. Other kinds of activity might be too risky. For example,

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a professor runs a programme whose details she was hesitant to share in public forums, including with the media. Though the programme is successful and funded by the federal government, in the professor’s view, it is not well aligned with Trump administration policies or philosophies. Though the professor takes great pride in the programme, she and her colleagues may be occasionally cautious in their promotion of the programme for fear the Trump administration might learn that it, and the funding that supports it, is ongoing, beyond its origin during the Obama administration. In this case, the risk is like the risk not accepted by the University of Central Florida in not promoting Bryer’s healthcare conversation. The difference between the examples is that the Baltimore case concerns an individual professor potentially wary of over-exposure of a project in which she believes. The case has, subsequent to the professor’s interview for this book, been written about in the media. As such, we share it here in order to provide full context. The effort is called the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program. It allows convicted and imprisoned individuals to begin taking courses through the University of Baltimore while in prison, transfer those courses to the main university, and thus help facilitate prisoner re-entry into society. The first student to transfer from prison to the classroom was Marcus Lilly (2018). He is quoted in a university media release: After I was released in December, after spending 13 years in prison, I started taking two classes at the University of Baltimore campus: Human Ecology and Business Ethics. I had taken eight classes while at Jessup [Correctional Institution], making me nearly a sophomore [or second year student]. Now I’m pursuing a degree in Nonprofit Management. At first, I felt like a fish out of water. The hardest thing has been socializing with other students. Prison can dehumanize you—it can make you feel insufficient, like you don’t know how to interact with people. I’ve been working with my re-­ entry coordinator, who was hired by the Second Chance Program to help me get adjusted to life after prison. She’s a great resource, and is helping me find work, showing me how to get on the computer and fill out assignments. In prison, they didn’t teach us about technology.

The professor who manages the programme, Andrea Cantora, has also started promoting her work and the success of the programme (Cantora 2018). She wrote a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun newspaper: “I have observed how vital prison education is to improving the lives of incarcerated students … [Whereas there have been] calls for our elected

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officials to create strategies to keep people out of prison, … I would first encourage our elected officials to develop ways to invest in the existing prison education and re-entry programs run by higher education institutions.” Ultimately, Cantora’s perspective is, according to our interview with her: “If University of Baltimore won’t do, who will?” Part of her personal motivation is to remain connected to people in the community who are the focus of research. This also means being responsive to community feedback about the programme. For example, the original name of the effort was not Second Chance, but Prison College, which was not considered attractive to the imprisoned student population. It also means that she and others associated with the programme might become directly involved in decisions about the future of inmates. For example, during parole hearings, Cantora and others might write letters of support. Though hesitant to have big media attention on the project, the public role is quite substantial and life altering. It is this role that creates the caution for discussing the project in mass, popular media, as the public might not be fully behind using public resources in this way. In other issues with potentially high levels of contestation, universities and university personnel mitigate their exposure by joining or convening a broader coalition of organisational stakeholders and other community leaders to address the issue. In this way, neither the university nor individual professors are acting unilaterally absent a safety net of broader support. For example, Arizona State University maintains a campus in downtown Phoenix, a major metropolitan area that, like many metropolitan areas, is challenged by homelessness. Figure  6.1 shows an image of the area immediately outside the downtown campus buildings. The park across the street from the campus building is a gathering place for homeless individuals. In the photo, the building in the distance is a homeless shelter; the covered areas are congregating places for homeless individuals seeking protection from the hot desert sun. This, of course, concerns university officials for a number of reasons, such as safety of students and staff, use of campus toilet facilities by the public, as well as ensuring a clean, attractive public space outside the doors of the university. Different offices of the university meet regularly with officials from Phoenix municipality to discuss the challenge and devise creative solutions. The solutions are “owned” by the City, university, police, and area non-profit organisations, as well as businesses. Decisions regarding where to setup sun shelters in the park, how to manage free Wi-Fi around the

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Fig. 6.1  Park and Homeless Facility outside Arizona State University Downtown (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

university and in the park, how to offer access to the first floor public facilities of the university but restrict access in upper floors, and so on. The university is acting as a partner, collaborating with multiple stakeholders to engage itself and the community in this issue. In somewhat similar fashion, the Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice (I4P) at Edge Hill University received a grant to evaluate the implementation of a Poverty Truth Commission in a nearby city to its campus. Poverty and anti-poverty policies are potentially divisive issues, and any evaluation document that offers not only findings but recommendations can be risky, in the same manner as Bryer’s report regarding children’s needs in Orange County, Florida. I4P and university leadership perceived this to be a critical project consistent with their mission to bridge university and community. As evaluator, like the Arizona State University (ASU) example, they joined a multi-sector team of interested stakeholders and helped define an anti-poverty agenda through process evaluation.

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Receiving neutral outside funding, as I4P did, can also enable university engagement in potentially divisive issues. With outside funding, there is legitimacy in the form of meeting societal expectations, as compared to an initiative that emerges from within the university on the initiative of a professor or administrator. We will return to this I4P example in a later chapter, particularly as it concerns a philosophy embedded within the Poverty Truth Commission model as used in the United Kingdom: “Nothing about us without us is for us.” In Chile, 2018 was a notable year. Several scandals of sexual harassment and other expressions of violence against women were unveiled. Universities, both public and private, were unable to catch up with the pace of the movement and showed lack of capacity to provide concrete answers to these women that were brave enough to raise their voices against these practices. Initially they were seen as overreacting to a few “bad apples” that were not behaving according to academic standards. However, the panorama was much different. It was not a group of isolated scandals; it was a culture of abuse and lack of respect for women that was uncovered. The movement gained momentum and strength, taking the public agenda and confronting the government and the universities to take action and concrete steps for changing this situation. The universities had to change their regulations, to implement policies and programmes for making universities a safer environment for women and other groups, and even to modify curriculums and programmes for including a gender perspective. Students, particularly women and other groups, such as the LGBTI community, compelled the university to modify its practices and routines. A final example of a university moderating its potential risk is to launch a non-profit venture, almost as an incubator might, without committing to long-term housing of it. We saw this at Tallinn Technological University. A member of the faculty wanted to establish a human rights-based NGO to fill a perceived gap in Estonian civil society. He used the university to start the organisation, with support from his department. He was limited in terms of what he could do, such as limited advocacy work, but otherwise he had free space to establish the organisation, its mission, and relationships. The university allowed the use of meeting space and served as a fiscal agent for initial funding for the venture. Launched in 2008, by 2015 it was an independent organisation. It still maintains some relationship with the university, but only informally, such as a professor serving on the advisory council for the organisation.

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Before moving on to further chapters, we offer some general reflection on the questions and challenges of autonomy for scholars who are new in the field, compared to those who are more established. We heard a general statement across universities that more junior scholars who are early in their career are less able to take risks and, as such, pursue their passion, compared to more senior scholars. We consider the implications of this for community-engaged work that can promote civic health.

Observations of Junior Versus Senior Professors Every country and university system has a unique system of promotion and tenure for professors. Across the board, there is consistent expression that junior professors, or those with fewer than five or six years, or in some cases ten years, are not specifically encouraged nor advised to participate in more intensive community-engaged scholarship. This is particularly the case on issues that are potentially contentious. The distinction is found in the greater autonomy possessed by senior professors, who have, by virtue of their rank, stronger reputations within the academic and practice communities to withstand potential pushback; senior professors are also more likely to have tenure, or at least more secure or potentially long-term contracts. As such, they are better protected should they say or write something that antagonises certain politically powerful individuals. Junior professors do not have these protections. Further, as we will discuss in a later chapter in more depth, annual evaluations of professors typically (meaning there are exceptions) do not include community-engaged scholarship or civic outcome metrics. The absence of these measures means any risk taken by junior professors to engage with potentially contentious community issues have a long-shot opportunity to generate meaningful rewards—at least rewards linked to professional advancement. Strategies for resolving this dilemma are considered in the chapter on measurement.

Autonomy for Students In similar fashion, the autonomy of students to engage issues of public concern as a component of civic participation may be limited in different ways by university rules and regulations, as well as restrictions placed on students by the neighbourhoods in which they live. We flag these issues now without writing in more depth, but will return to them in Chap. 10.

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Summary In this chapter we have examined variations in willingness to take risks in political and civic dialogue, as institutions and individuals, given different degrees of autonomy and level of contestation of a policy or civic issue. In the next chapter we focus on the university campus itself as a civic space that can be contested.

References Bryer, T.A. 2010. “President Obama, Public Participation, and an Agenda for Research and Experimentation.” International Journal of Public Participation, 4 (1): 5–11. Cantora, A. 2018. “Prison Education a Proven Investment.” The Baltimore Sun. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-rrprison-education-letter-20180531-story.html El Mostrador. 2018. “Funan a Piñera con peluca y nariz de payaso en la Universidad de Chile.” https://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2018/08/23/funana-pinera-con-peluca-y-nariz-de-payaso-en-la-universidad-de-chile/ Helms, T. 2009. https://today.ucf.edu/residents-share-health-care-nightmaresat-obama-inspired-ucf-health-care-meeting/ Lilly, M. 2018. “Finding College By Way of Prison.” The Marshall Project. https:// www.themarshallproject.org/2018/04/05/finding-college-by-way-of-prison Peddie, M. 2018. “Intersection: Children’s Welfare in Orange County.” WMFE. http://www.wmfe.org/intersection-childrens-welfare-in-orange-county/ 86315 Prysmakova-Rivera, S., E.  Gladun, T.A.  Bryer, A.  Larionov, D.  Teplyakov, O.  Teplyakova and N.  Nosova. 2019. “Practices and Challenges of Citizen Participation in Government: Case Studies of Midsized Cities in Russia and the United States.” In The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government, edited by R. Kerley, P. Funning and J. Liddle, 263–279. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 7

Universities as Contested Civic Spaces

Students in Chile call a strike to force changes in policy related to gender equity in instructional activities. A professor in the United States organises a community conversation on a highly contested political issue. A law programme in South Africa helps champion changes in law to protect poor tenants who work on agricultural lands. Students in Russia are not encouraged to initiate unsanctioned political activities but are not prohibited. University staff in the United Kingdom convene community conversations about what is a good society, potentially challenging accepted opinion. Students and professors at a university in the United States turn their back on a national political official during a commencement speech. These are only a few examples of how university campuses are used for various civic and, by extension, political ends. By “political,” we mean activities, including speech, that are intended to reveal the power of one or more university constituency to potentially alter or support existing policies at the local, regional, national, or international levels. Civic activities include political actions, but also include non-explicit political acts, such as volunteering, service learning, and delivery of seminars. Even these acts, though, can be political, as their enactment can lead to raising the consciousness of participants or can provide human skill and talent in areas of social concern that are not perceived to be receiving sufficient support from existing institutions. That everything civic can be considered politi-

© The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_7

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cal to one extent or another gives rise to the debate about the need to shed the mask of being apolitical (Hollander 2012) versus abandoning all activities that promote certain ideological viewpoints, mostly associated with human rights and social justice (National Association of Scholars 2017). Depending on where in the world we are looking, we can see universities as hotbeds of political activism, training grounds for future professional political leaders, and/or stalwarts that support existing power structures. In some cases, all three seemingly conflicting roles can co-exist on a single campus—at least, this is the potential, granted through enablement of free speech, free assembly, free movement, and so on. In societies like the United States, these freedoms are embedded and almost religiously worshipped, though interpreted differently, as the first amendment to the country’s constitution. However, even in this case, the environment is dynamic and the nature of allowable civic activity is potentially monitored, sometimes supported through the administrative centres of the university and sometimes starved of resources by those same centres. With such dynamic environments, universities and university campuses are contested civic spaces. Public spaces are places for emergent, unscripted civic action to be designed and implemented. Civic action can take the form of adversarial engagement, such as through violent rioting or peaceful protest, or more generally, open expression of values through sanctioned public art or unsanctioned community art, designating areas for feeding of homeless individuals, holding community events on streets or in parks, and so on. Cities can design space for such civic expression to take hold (Gillette Jr. 2010), but the designed streetscapes can also prevent such civic expression (Mehta 2013). In cases where space is not designed for civic activity, citizens can monopolise it, as if through an insurgency in what Hou (2010) referred to as “guerrilla urbanism.” Some university campuses are open, public spaces, like cityscapes, and are subject to the same design elements, including rules that require permitting the citizenry to convene rallies, mass gatherings, and so on. Other universities are semi-public, meaning a visitor on the campus or inside a campus building must be registered as an official professor, staff, student, or guest, in order to gain access. This is most common in urban universities where the campus is, for all intents and purposes, the city, and the buildings are secured upon entry or to gain access to certain floors or rooms. How a university administration allows its space to be used is a question of ongoing negotiation with its environment.

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In the preceding chapter, we consider this as a question of autonomy and willingness of the institution to take risks given different levels of issue contestation. Here, we approach the issue from a strategic sense. As autonomy is negotiated within and across institutions, the strategies for deploying the open civic space of the university campus are similarly negotiated. We discuss the strategies based on the nexus of two functions: empowerment and manipulation. With the dance between the two functions, the civic space is contested and negotiated.

Power and Manipulation Power and manipulation are opposite ends of Sherry Arnstein’s “ladder of participation” (1969). The ladder was conceptualised as means to show how the powerful give power to or take power away from the powerless, who, from a larger governance perspective, are the masses. Power was interpreted as a limited supply resource that could not be increased in amount; as such, if government wanted to empower citizens, it would have to disempower itself in some way. At the bottom of the ladder, government has all power, and the masses have none. Functionally, Arnstein (1969) described this as manipulation of the masses by government. At the top of the ladder, government has given all power to the masses, or what Arnstein called citizen control. In the middle rungs of the ladder are various hybrid participatory strategies through which government shares less to more power. Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of participation was formulated in an age when citizens were potential adversaries of government and where citizens engaged in processes designed to battle for rights and empowerment in the American war on the sources of poverty, anti-war protests, and as counterbalances to corruption and government by the elite. Power, as such, was not shared, and citizens quite often felt powerless and restricted to the bottom rungs of the ladder. The notion that power is a zero-sum game fits this era, as governance systems and intergovernmental relations in the United States were still best defined by the cake metaphors of layer cake, marble cake and, to a growing extent, pineapple upside down cake. In other words, there were more-or-less clear roles of government agencies, across levels of government, and the regime of contracting and privatisation, and cross-sector collaboration had perhaps only begun to develop. Power was more clearly given and taken away, and there was a finite amount of power when it came to policymaking and policy influencing.

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This description simplifies the complex reality of the United States and other places around the world in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, but the simplification is helpful to reveal clear differences to governance and citizen participation, or citizenship generally speaking, in 2018. In contemporary times, models of governance are shared, with more focus on collaboration, partnership, and networks (Melish 2010). The cake metaphor more apt is that of a multi-flavoured wedding cake, with shared responsibilities, and ample choice for how to allocate and leverage resources (Bryer 2014). Another important departure from the environment of the 1960s are technological and communication advancements, such as through social media, that have further dispersed power and allowed for ad hoc and short-term coalitions to emerge, as well as power plays in the policymaking process that effectively marginalise the traditional power holders of the kind described by Robert Dahl (2005). Power as a zero-sum concept no longer holds, as it can be developed, negotiated, deployed, expanded, contracted, and so on in organic form. Yet, the participation or non-participation rungs of Arnstein’s ladder remain reliable guides to how traditional power holders try to interface with their environment. Government officials might not treat each rung as a fixed condition, but may identify the diverse set of possible power relationships and use them to some purpose known or unknown to anyone besides the government official. This idea has been called the circle, rather than the ladder, of participation (Cooper and Bryer 2007). Multiple strategies, ranging from manipulation to direct citizen control, can be used alternately and even potentially together simultaneously. What is clear, then, is that when power is not zero-sum and is shared and shareable, as well as grown and growable, and multiple strategies can be used alternately or simultaneously, those who are traditional power holders may use multiple approaches to maintain whatever power the governance system allows them to pursue and keep. In such a scenario, the line between power and manipulation is thin, easily traversable, and, as such, dangerous with respect to genuine empowerment of the people who, thanks to emerging social technologies and shared governance models, have more possibility than ever to grow the amount of power that exists in society and to claim some of it as their own (Bryer and Prysmakova-Rivera 2018). This danger is apparent within the context of university enterprises. As with governments, universities with direct or indirect pressures on their

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levels of autonomy can engage in one of four strategies. Building on the work of Bryer and Prysmakova-Rivera (2018), these strategies are: • Controlled participation of professors, staff, and students in civic and political activities. With this strategy, empowerment of these groups is low, as is the manipulation of them. University administration offices will control largely scripted civic events and will seek to avoid direct involvement or endorsement of civic activities not aligned with that script. • Tokenistic participation of professors, staff, and students in civic and political activities. With this strategy, these groups are manipulated but not empowered. University administrations might, with this approach, endorse certain civic and political activities to give the appearance of an open participatory environment, but they will restrict access by dissenting viewpoints within the context of the event. • Symbolic or fake participation of professors, staff, or students in civic and political activities. With this strategy, these groups are simultaneously empowered and manipulated. A university might sanction a civic or political activity and strategically select representatives of different ideologies or positions, thus giving the appearance of openness to all voices within the civic space, but not to the extent that those voices would be disruptive of the status quo. • Authentic participation of professors, staff, or students in civic and political activities. With this strategy, these groups are provided unfettered support and endorsement to pursue any activity in the interest of promoting dialogue and debate across the widest of societal perspectives. We might suggest that the fourth, authentic participation, is the purest strategy for an institution of higher education that maintains, as part of its mission, a commitment to open inquiry, search for truth and understanding, and dissemination of knowledge in all its forms. Though this might be the purest, the real politics of a university across societies, prevents this from being implemented, we suggest, probably anywhere. Certainly, in our case examples, we find universities where officials speak about the desire to achieve this “purity,” but who might fall short given real or perceived limits on their autonomy as an institution.

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Power and Manipulation in the University Civic Space We apply this framework to higher education institutions with examples from our case universities. Across cases, the university administration exerts, to some extent, control over how it designs and allows use of available campus space, including the possibility of what we will call, adapting from Hou (2010), guerrilla civism. By civism we mean processes and efforts that bring a strong sense of community to a place (Bryer and Cooper 2012), without which public servants, including potentially those working within a university “will continue to constitute a threat for the citizens and a scapegoat for elected officials” (Frederickson 1982: 505). Controlled Participation of Professors, Staff, and Students in Civic and Political Activities Controlled participation, according to some observers of higher education institutes, is the default position. Professor Henry Reichman, chair of the American Association of University Professors’ committee on academic freedom and tenure, was quoted in Times Higher Education regarding controversy around a guest speaker brought to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (Marcus 2018). He suggested that underlying the concerns of university leaders “are image, budget, things like that. Many of them, the first gut reaction is ‘How do we protect the institution?’” With this as a primary concern, there is heightened sensitivity to inclusion of certain persons, personalities, or messages permitted on and/or supported by university resources. As reported by Marcus (2018): The chancellor, Joe Gow, invited the adult film star to speak as part of National Freedom of Speech Week. [Nina] Hartley, who appeared in My Bare Lady and more than 1,000 other movies … now advocates for sex education and free expression… In the resulting firestorm, system president Ray Cross upbraided Professor Gow in a letter, saying that the event ‘puts all of our funding at risk. I fear your actions also detract from our budget request and our capital plan, which should be one of your highest priorities.’ He said that the incident would affect Professor Gow’s scheduled salary increase, too.

Marcus provides additional examples of how “campus speech disputes do, in fact, risk alienating not only people on both ends of the political

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spectrum, but donors, prospective students and the legislators who hold the purse strings to public university budgets.” These include a bill passed by the New York State Senate that, if signed, would have prevented student groups from receiving State funding if they advocated boycotts of Israel. Examples like this show that, building on the previous chapter, institutions that might appear to have autonomy and openly promote free speech and civic discourse are subject to outside forces that curtail it, either through direct budgetary restriction or fear of possible political or budgetary implications. We saw this in the example from Bryer at the University of Central Florida and the lack of support for his community conversation on healthcare. The controls on individual behaviour or on the people who are invited to participate in an event or speak on campus are typically not driven by internal values within the university; they often come from outside: the politician, donor, and so on. Even if these individuals do not directly control vast resources, they often do have enough power to influence those who do, thus creating a fear of engagement. We see the same as we see in American public universities as we do in the case of the University of Tyumen. The risk associated with participating in overtly political activity that favours a dominant perspective, party, or person is potentially high, as such participation in political activity is not encouraged, except for generic activities like voter education and mock debates. In both cases, universities control the script of the civic activity, as surrogates from some other force. Even in such cases, though, university personnel still will often try to promote civic discourse, but in a manner that consciously seeks to emphasise that there is no bias or that specifically includes the opposite view of that presented through the primary civic event. For example, the former adult film actress in Wisconsin led the university to invite a speaker to discuss the harmful effects of pornography to counter the opposing message presented by the actress. Perceived political bias within universities presents a potential challenge for universities that are walking on the edge. As Turnage (2017) reports: “A majority of Republicans and right-leaning independents think higher education has a negative effect on the country … [there has been] a consistent increase in distrust of colleges and universities since 2010, when negative perceptions among Republicans was measured at 32 per cent. That number now stands at 58 per cent.” Controlling civics within this kind of environment is not surprising, particularly within states dominated by one political party or a strong political culture.

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Thus it is risky when individual professors or whole institutions take on a project that might open debate, facilitate discussion, or otherwise create potentially uncomfortable political moments for policymakers and other societal powerbrokers. The manner in which the university responds speaks to how much the civic space is controlled, or is authentically open. A final example can be found at the Catholic University of Chile. In general, professors have freedom to participate in any area of debate in the civic space. However, being a catholic university implies following the principles and values of the catholic church, which does not mean for professors to be censored or curtailed in their research agendas or public participation, it means to respect the institutional values that professors accept at the moment of being hired at the university. However, students do not necessarily follow the same strategy. They tend to be freer in terms of activities and values vis-à-vis the official discourse of the university. As a matter of fact, this year, a feminist movement controlled the central offices of the university for a few days, protesting for the attitude of university authorities regarding abortion, diversity, and other topics. The official discourse of the university collides with the opinions and political agenda of some students. Authentic Participation of Professors, Staff, or Students in Civic and Political Activities An example of an authentically open participation comes from the Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice (I4P) at Edge Hill University. In 2015, the Webb Memorial Trust commissioned I4P to “examine civil society’s response to poverty and inequality as part of a wider research project examining the concept of a Good Society” (Goldstraw and Diamond 2017: 4). The project convened a set of focus groups with civil society and academic organisations in different parts of the country, including the cities of Birmingham, Newcastle, Bath, Newport, Belfast, London, and Glasgow, in addition to conducting extensive literature review, in order to recommend visions of a Good Society that might transform policies concerning social and economic commitments to the citizen. The visions are as follows (4–5): • A society that repairs the current welfare state, restores institutions, and reimagines the Webbs’ extension ladder model of a Good Society.

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• A society based on strong human values of public love, care, tolerance, respect, and kindness. • A society that uses the social scaffolding of civil society to temporarily alleviate the gaps in welfare provision. Goldstraw and Diamond (2017: 82) described the extension ladder model: In 1916, in their book The Prevention of Destitution, Sydney and Beatrice Webb set out the parallel bars/extension ladder models of voluntary action. In the parallel bars model, the state and civil society work side by side to reduce poverty. In the extension ladder model, the state and civil society hold different roles. In this model, the state provides the basic minimum for all citizens and voluntary action extends from this basic minimum. In the Webbs’ (1916) model, voluntary action and civil society are not a substitute for state action; they are additional to it. One hundred and one years later this public argument has developed and evolved and has re-focused on a scaffolding of human values, ignited by a strong vocal civil society fuelled by a participatory democracy that is based on cross-sector collaboration between responsible and ethical organisations.

Engaging this kind of dialogue was made possible through the funding of a trusted charity organisation. It is possible that, without such “cover,” leaders of I4P and the university might not have proactively engaged these discussions. Nonetheless, through this initiative, Edge Hill University has demonstrated that it can be and is a place for authentic dialogue on tough, potentially politically sensitive and divisive issues. They are helped with a commitment to multiple methodologies that enables trust in the university as a neutral arbiter of discussions, and so, as in this case, the recommended visions are not of the university but are of the people engaged in discussions, and the university is the vehicle through which their voices are heard. From a facilitation perspective, the critical dimension in this case is a fundamental political question: who is included and excluded from the research and discussions? Which communities are engaged? What rationale is given for not including (and thus effectively excluding) certain communities or civil society organisations? So long as there is a consistent and rational response to these questions, the risk of damaging criticism from within segments of society is perhaps limited.

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Stellenbosch University provides further examples of the authentic civic space, though not a perfected civic space. The university was the wellspring of ideas leading to the apartheid system in South Africa, and there remain challenges associated with racial diversity and language of instruction (e.g. Afrikaans or English) on the campus. Afrikaans is often linked to the white oppressors during the apartheid years, though it is a language better understood by certain residents of the townships/slums in the Cape Town region. These divisions give rise to the art professor who prefers to work as herself, without clearly seen affiliation with the university, as discussed in the previous chapter. Despite the challenges, the participation/civic space at the university does lean towards authentic and less towards controlled. One interview respondent at the university stated it very clear: “I’ve come to work for South Africa. The university only pays my salary.” This idea of higher purpose seems well embedded within different academic and administrative units of the university. The university’s Division of Social Impact coordinates and records social impact projects from around the university, using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as the organising framework. With this approach, the university is clearly communicating its desire to not only have impact, but to play a role in informing and possibly shaping local, regional, national, and global responses to the most challenging problems identified by world leaders. Practically, we see this commitment in two examples from the university: (1) Legal aid clinic, and (2) Rural health clinic. Stellenbosch University maintains a legal clinic to provide pro bono legal services to impoverished individuals. Part of its law programme, the clinic is not unique. Similar structures are found at other universities around the world, including among our cases, the University of Baltimore and University of Tyumen. We highlight Stellenbosch University’s efforts in this regard, given their unique socio-historic positioning, and thus genuine example of authentic participation. Merwe (2017: 692) summarises part of this uniqueness: [Clinical Legal Education (CLE) allows] more students to receive exposure to social justice issues and increase access to justice for the marginalised and poor in society. Although it is not, or should not, be the first priority of CLE, providing access to justice is an extremely important positive spin-off of the [Legal Clinic] model. Given the inequalities that remain as a result of

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South Africa’s legacy of apartheid, CLE provides abundant opportunities for universities to demonstrate their commitment to making a positive social impact.

Legal aid clinics deal with cases that are further unique to indigent populations who cannot afford the fees of private lawyers. These cases include matters related to refugees, unemployment payments, employment termination, evictions of farm labourers and squatters, and debtors. Given the nature of these issues, students and staff affiliated with the clinics are in a position to detect patterns and understand underlying public policy dilemmas. With this perspective, students and staff can then make policy recommendations that can potentially create a fairer and more socially just set of outcomes in communities and society writ large. Figure 7.1 shows a photo of the legal aid clinic location at Stellenbosch University.

Fig. 7.1  Legal Aid Clinic at Stellenbosch University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

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According to an interview conducted with SJH van  der Merwe at Stellenbosch University, his and his students’ work has led to reform of laws related to eviction of farm labourers (a particular challenge in the wine country vineyards surround Stellenbosch), and they have made recommendations related to debtor laws. The power of this approach, and the empowerment inherent in this model of scholarship, teaching and learning, and community engagement, is captured in Merwe’s words related to debtors (2007: 14): It would probably be impossible to ever measure the full social and economic impact of unlawful collections on the lives of debtors and their families. Because of the stigma associated with debt, most people carry this burden with silent shame. Yet people find themselves in this situation not only due to their own irresponsibility, but due to a combination of factors. These factors often include aggressive advertising and marketing, reckless lending, a previously unregulated credit industry, lack of appropriate policies and laws associated with credit, historical disadvantages, a lack of consumer education and desperation to meet basic needs such as food and clothing.

It is noteworthy that the extracted paragraph from Merwe (2007) is written about debtors in South Africa, but the same words can be used in virtually any location around the world, including in the United States, where the fearsome nature and abuses of lenders was manifested particularly during and following the housing market collapse in 2007–2008 and beyond (Bryer 2012; White 2009). From this generic statement of the problem, Merwe (2007: 14) shifts to a place of advocacy, which is grounded in specific, actionable recommendations: The cycle of bad debt drags these people under and adds to the moral and civil decay of our society. We must not allow those who choose to make a living from the suffering of these marginalised members of society to longer go unhindered in their practices. They should not be allowed to escape responsibility by cases being thrown out of court based on technical limitations [instead] of being judged on their merits.

As an advocacy statement, Merwe is demonstrating the freedom to engage potentially divisive political and policy issues directly, involving not only himself but his students, through their work in the legal aid clinic. It is in this direction that he closes, extoling the virtue of clinical legal education to affect change in society (2007: 14):

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The clinical movement and clinical legal education have an important role to pay in support of this case. The availability of skilled professional staff who assist students in tackling these cases is crucial. In assisting persons like [clients of the clinic], the student consultant is also gaining valuable experience in basic legal skills such as consulting, negotiating, drafting and engaging in legal research.

Both the University of Chile and the University of Concepción have been at the forefront of student participation in Chile since the moment of their foundation. The same has been the situation with the Catholic University, but at a different level and with variations through time. Students in those three main universities of the country are active players in the civic space, and usually, most of their leaders move from university halls and classrooms to the house of representatives (Cámara de Diputados). As a matter of fact, five of the youngest diputados and diputadas in the current lower chamber were student leaders in previous years. The Federación de Estudiantes de Chile (FECH), founded in 1906 as the main organisation of the students of the University of Chile has played a key role in the political debate for more than 112 years. Student participation in Chile is one of the assets in terms of civic development and political involvement. This freedom to engage authentically in the civic space is not without challenge, however. A case from a university in the United States, not one of our case universities, shows the potential ease with which authentic engagement and advocacy cross the line into explicit politics, complete with manipulation, misinformation, and advocacy as purpose rather than, as we see in the legal aid clinic, natural extension of education, research, and service. Northwestern University is located in Chicago, Illinois. It is the home of a leading journalism programme in the United States that, in the 1990s and onwards, was the home of a professor who was alternately described as a hero advocate and a publicity hound seeking to raise the profile of his programme. Like the legal aid clinic at Stellenbosch University, the professor, students, and affiliated staff were entrusted with a civic mission that held at its centre the pursuit of social justice. The case at Northwestern University concerned the work of an investigative journalism class of students and their professor. As a course project, they implemented a plan to recreate a double murder that occurred in the early morning hours at a public park. The individual who was convicted of

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the crime was subsequently sentenced to the death penalty. As a class, led by the professor, the students wanted to test the facts of the case to ensure an innocent person was not put to death. The case becomes complicated not only by the students’ pursuit of facts that might prove the innocence of the man convicted but the presentation of information that suggested another man was actually guilty of the crime. In the end, the convicted person was freed from prison, spared the death penalty, and the other man was convicted for the crime. This process, along with others similarly constructed, led to the suspension of all punishments by death in Illinois and ultimately the end of the death penalty all together, as political leaders lost faith that the process of investigation and conviction was fair, particularly to low income and minority individuals. With this description, this appears a case to celebrate in the same manner as the team at Stellenbosch University whose efforts through the legal aid clinic helped change policy related to eviction of farm labourers from the properties on which they worked. The professor and students at Northwestern University successfully investigated a past crime, gathered sufficient evidence to persuade a judge, and later a jury of the innocence of one man and guilt of another, respectively, and to then help rid the State of Illinois of the death penalty, which many thought an ethical and moral travesty of justice given the risk of putting the wrong person to death. However, first appearances are potentially deceptive. Though celebrated at the time as a monumental breakthrough, which led to highly positive publicity for the journalism programme and university as a whole, the case was later the subject of a documentary expose. Filmmakers (Rech 2015) revealed what they depicted as an overzealous professor using his students as pawns to promote a political agenda of ending the death penalty. They described how students failed to interview all witnesses to the crime, how the crime re-enactment was flawed, and, perhaps most egregiously, how they fabricated evidence and coerced a video recorded confession of the man subsequently convicted of the crime. The university, in 2018, ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount of money, with the man thus “framed” for the double murder who had spent approximately 15 years in prison for it, though defenders of the journalism professor suggested the documentary was biased based on the animosity felt by those in the criminal justice system whose work was ridiculed due to the findings of the students in a class project. The professor left the university in 2011 and established an independent non-profit organisation

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to promote investigations of death penalty cases and to help free those whose convictions are questionable. The lesson—at least one of many possible—from this case is that there is a potential, and in many cases actual, fine line between a community-­ engaged teaching or research project with a social, policy, or civic purpose, and an advocacy project that loses sight of the teaching or research mission of the university. It is also apparent, in both cases, that community-­ engaged teaching and research is not an academic exercise; the work has implications for real people and actual places and, with the weight of the university and reputation of an accomplished professor behind them, any recommendations can have far reaching positive or negative consequences that can last generations. On the positive side, we can look at the authentic partnership engagement demonstrated by another case from Stellenbosch University. This case is moving outside the city centre of Stellenbosch, where the legal aid clinic is based, and relocating us about two hours through the mountains to the rural community of Worcester, and, specifically, a township/slum called Avianpark. The Avianpark Community Interaction Project of the Faculty of Medicine, which established a rural health campus to contribute to the training of medical students who might become interested in working in rural communities and outside large cities around the country. By comparison, the Faculty of Medicine maintains its main campus in Cape Town, a major metropolitan area. According to our interview with staff and students, numerous social, economic, criminal, and health issues confront Avianpark. For instance, a 2011 study conducted by the Sociology Department at Stellenbosch University found, amongst teenagers alone, risks associated with teen pregnancy, crime, substance abuse, and gang violence. In order to address these wicked problems, the university’s Division of Occupational Therapy (OT), along with members of the Avianpark community, established the L.I.F.E. (Learning is Fun and Exciting) Service Learning Project. The L.I.F.E. project is grounded in the practice of collaborative care, divided into two categories, and two locations in Avianpark: the garden and life support. Figure 7.2 shows a picture of the L.I.F.E. project facility of the community where work occurs. The garden provides a space for community members to grow their own produce, spices, and other natural ingredients for food preparation. OT students support residents as a form of therapy in the garden environment, which includes a soup kitchen, food

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Fig. 7.2  L.I.F.E. Project Facility in Avianpark, South Africa (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

garden, and garden club. The life support activities include support groups and a swop shop. The swop shop (pictured in Fig. 7.3) allows specifically youth to bring refuse for recycling, and other trash, to a central location in exchange for coupons that can be exchanged for food and health products that can be used in the home. The deep involvement of the medical faculty and OT students within Avianpark places the university and its affiliated individuals in direct contact with pressing public policy issues, and through their involvement, can help direct attention to find solutions for long-standing, wicked problems. When leveraged through partnerships with other institutions, such as government health organisations, churches, local media, and others, the capacity to shift public perception, professional practice, and policy ­creation is significant. It is evident in this case that there are authentic participation opportunities for university officials to chart an innovative course within this civic and policy space.

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Fig. 7.3  Swop Shop in Avianpark, South Africa (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

Tokenistic and Symbolic Participation of Professors, Staff, and Students in Civic and Political Activities These authentic participatory opportunities and activities contrast with those that might give the appearance of authenticity and genuine empowerment (Bryer and Prysmakova-Rivera 2018) of university-affiliated staff and students, but they do so with a more strategic design to effectively decouple the outward rhetoric, which gives legitimacy by meeting a normative expectation of openness, from actual operational practice. This is distinct from controlled participation, which is where universities specifically and, generally, in a public manner limit certain forms of supported engagement and participation. In the cases of tokenistic and symbolic participation, there are more active attempts to manipulate perception of external and internal stakeholders about the available opportunities for authentic participation.

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With this example, we are in no way suggesting this university practices active deception or manipulation. However, the kind of publicly directed statement as written and promoted by the University of Chicago, without underlying implementation plans, may be seen as potentially symbolic. We share it here as a demonstration of the “ease” with which a university can speak the language of authentic participation, as such rhetoric is common but may not be matched with practice. We did not assess the practice at the University of Chicago. In 2012, the University of Chicago released a Statement on Principles of Free Expression. Sharing the statement, in full here, shows the standard that can be set for open, civic inclusion on a university campus and through university activities, if other factors, such as politics, budget, or social norms, do not interfere, as in the previous sub-sections. As statements such as this are constrained by such factors, they might tend to be symbolic and vision setting rather than substantive. As Sandro Galea, Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the Boston University School of Public Health notes: “Our capacity to participate in an exchange of ideas is at the core of what we do as institutions. But while it is easy to apply blanket support to the idea of ‘academic free speech’, it is amply clear that, even in the academy, speech is never without limits” (Galea 2018). Nonetheless, the optimism implied within the University of Chicago’s statement establishes the parameters for inclusive campus civics, aware of but not expressly limited by concerns of a political, budgetary, or cultural nature. It is reproduced in full here (Statement on Principles of Free Expression 2012): Eighty years ago, a student organisation at the University of Chicago invited William Z. Foster, the Communist Party’s candidate for President, to lecture on campus. This triggered a storm of protest from critics both on and off campus. To those who condemned the University for allowing the event, University President Robert M. Hutchins responded that “our students … should have freedom to discuss any problem that presents itself.” He insisted that the “cure” for ideas we oppose “lies through open discussion rather than through inhibition.” On a later occasion, Hutchins added that “free inquiry is indispensable to the good life, that universities exist for the sake of such inquiry, [and] that without it they cease to be universities.” This incident captures both the spirit and the promise of the University of Chicago. Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the

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broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn. Except insofar as limitations on that freedom are necessary to the functioning of the University, the University of Chicago fully respects and supports the freedom of all students, faculty and staff “to discuss any problem that presents itself,” free of interference. This is not to say that this freedom is absolute. In narrowly-defined circumstances, the University may properly restrict expression, for example, that violates the law, is threatening, harassing, or defamatory, or invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests. Moreover, the University may reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University. Fundamentally, however, the University is committed to the principle that it may not restrict debate or deliberation because the ideas put forth are thought to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the members of the University community to make those judgments for themselves. As a corollary to this commitment, members of the University community must also act in conformity with this principle. Although faculty, students and staff are free to criticize, contest and condemn the views expressed on campus, they may not obstruct, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. For members of the University community, as for the University itself, the proper response to ideas they find offensive, unwarranted and dangerous is not interference, obstruction, or suppression. It is, instead, to engage in robust counter-speech that challenges the merits of those ideas and exposes them for what they are. To this end, the University has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it. As Robert M. Hutchins observed, without a vibrant commitment to free and open inquiry, a university ceases to be a university. The University of Chicago’s long-standing commitment to this principle lies at the very core of the University’s greatness.

Summary The risk of participatory spaces on campus and promoted through campus activities becoming symbolic or tokenised is potentially high. The potential political and administrative burdens that come with maintaining a truly authentic space are high, as are the morale costs of explicitly controlling activity. In this way, it is easier, from a management and leadership perspective, to share the rhetoric of openness with action (symbolic) or to

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provide only limited inclusion to suggest openness to diverse perspectives on campus (tokenistic). We have shown through some example how it is possible to maintain authentic participatory spaces. In the next chapter, we explore the institutionalisation of such spaces, beyond rhetoric and individual endeavour.

References Arnstein, S. 1969. “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35 (4): 216–224. Bryer, T.A. 2012. “Identity Crisis: Searching for Personal Responsibility, Justice, and Community in the Real Estate Market Crash.” Public Integrity, 14 (3): 299–311. ———. 2014. “Together for Tomorrow: Improving Title I Education through Inter-Sectoral and Governmental Collaboration.” Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, 20 (1). https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/jpmsp/vol20/ iss1/2. Bryer, T.A. and T.L. Cooper. 2012. “George Frederickson and the Dialogue on Citizenship in Public Administration.” Public Administration Review, 72: s108–s115. Bryer, T.A. and S. Prysmakova-Rivera. 2018. Poor Participation: Fighting the Wars on Poverty and Impoverished Citizenship. Lanham: Lexington Books. Cooper, T.L. and T.A. Bryer. 2007. “William Robertson: Exemplar of Politics and Public Management Rightly Understood.” Public Administration Review, 67 (5): 816–824. Dahl, R. 2005. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press. Frederickson, H.G. 1982. “The Recovery of Civism in Public Administration.” Public Administration Review, 42 (6): 501–508. Galea, S. 2018. “Free Speech Review Unnecessary, Australian Universities Say.” https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/free-speech-review-unnecessary-australian-universities-say Gillette, H.  Jr. 2010. Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the Garden City to the New Urbanism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goldstraw, K. and J.  Diamond. 2017. “Civil Society and a Good Society: Conclusions from Our Collaborative Conversations.” I4P, Edge Hill University. Hollander, E.L. 2012. “De Tocqueville Rediscovered: Community-based Civic Engagement.” In The Engaged Campus, edited by D.W. Butin and S. Seider, 187–194. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hou, J. 2010. Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities. New York: Routledge.

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Marcus, J. 2018. “Porn Start Talk Exposes Role of Funding in Free Speech Debate.” https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/porn-star-talkexposes-role-funding-free-speech-debate Mehta, V. 2013. The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space. London: Routledge. Melish, T.J. 2010. “Maximum Feasible Participation of the Poor: New Governance, New Accountability, and a 21st Century War on the Sources of Poverty.” Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, 13 (1): 1–134. van der Merwe, S. 2007. “Failure to Discharge. A Discussion of the Insufficient Legal Recourse Afforded to Judgment Debtors in the South African Context.” Working paper. ———. 2017. “A Case Study in Advocating for Expanded Clinical Legal Education: The University of Stellenbosch Module.” Stellenbosch Law Review, 28: 679–701. National Association of Scholars. 2017. Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics. https://www.nas.org/projects/making_citizens_ report Rech, C.S. 2015. A Murder in the Park. Sutton: Severn House. Statement on Principles of Free Expression. 2012. https://freeexpression.uchicago.edu/page/statement-principles-free-expression Turnage, C. 2017. “Most Republicans Think Colleges are Bad for the Country. Why?” The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Most-Republicans-Think/240587 White, B.T. 2009. “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis.” Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 09-35. James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona.

CHAPTER 8

Institutionalisation of and Socialisation to Community-Engaged Practice

Building on themes from the previous chapter, universities that successfully enact authentic participatory spaces are those that are able to do two things: (1) institutionalise community-engaged and civic practices within the rules and procedures of the university, and (2) socialise or train academic and non-academic staff into the norms of community-engaged and civic practices, through cultural artefacts, symbols, and language, for instance. This chapter addresses these issues, first conceptually and theoretically, and second as seen through examples from case universities. We can state up front that none of the case universities have necessarily perfected both the institutionalisation and socialisation practices to be firing on all cylinders, to speak metaphorically, but there are pockets of both practices in all case universities. In the previous chapter, we introduced in passing the notion of organisational decoupling. This is the notion that organisations, including institutions of higher education, will simultaneously seek to maintain efficiency in operation and maintain a stable working environment for “line employees” (interpreted in higher education as anyone who is not administrative leadership) to focus on their core jobs, and align with external environmental legitimacy-granting concerns. These are two goals that may not, and indeed in many cases, do not align or integrate very well, if at all. In essence, to decouple is to provide window dressing in order to give the appearance of conformity to environmental expectations or demands © The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_8

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while maintaining everything behind the curtain as it was. This decoupling satisfies, or potentially satisfies, two masters: efficiency and legitimacy. In the context of institutionalisation and socialisation—our twin concepts in this chapter—decoupling takes the form of rules and procedures, or maybe codes of conduct akin to what we find at the University of Chicago designed to appease environmental expectation of a community-­ engaged campus, without concerted effort or resources invested to socialise members of the university community to the ideas and practices of community-engaged and civic work. We add to the thinking of the decoupled organisation/university and identify three other variations of the organisational structure based on levels of institutionalisation and socialisation. The four possibilities, given variation on these two dimensions, are the (1) Decoupled Civic Campus, (2) Grassroots Civic Campus, (3) Full Integration Civic Campus, and (4) Ad hoc Civic Campus. Figure 8.1 shows these dimensions. We construct these different types of civic campuses based on the observation that higher education institutions are both open and closed systems (Scott 2013). They are closed with respect to their construction as rational, mission-driven organisations. As institutions, they set goals, design strategies, develop human capital within the organisation, and work to ensure the efficient operation of the rather complex internal

Socialization

High

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Grassroots Civic Campus

Full Integrated Civic Campus

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Institutionalization

Fig. 8.1  Typology of Civic Campuses

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s­ystem, thus ensuring a consistently high-quality teaching and learning experience and research and knowledge production effort. Universities are open systems in that they must be responsive to governance bodies, whether they are government or private donor-based, or church hierarchy. They must further be responsive to public perception, as communicated through the media and, increasingly, social media. The openness of the system and need to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of external stakeholders is what gives rise to the controlled civic spaces and limited autonomy discussed in previous chapters. We address the four types of civic campuses with examples in the pages that follow. In actuality, case universities do not fit, generally speaking, cleanly within one of these four types. They exist more on a continuum. However, for simplicity of discussion, they are separated into the different types of civic campus. As with other parts of our discussion, the labelling of campuses/ universities is not intended as a critical evaluation, where one type of civic campus is superior to another; this is a descriptive framework that shows different approaches for a campus/university to be civically engaged. We do not give detailed descriptions of all case universities in these chapters, but seek to show one or two cases in each as a demonstration.

Decoupled Civic Campus We might consider a couple of case campuses as decoupled civic campuses, meaning there is rhetoric and some institutionalisation of civic practice, but the level of socialisation and bottom-up buy-in is limited or spotty. However, labelling the campuses as such would only reflect descriptively that rhetoric is strong but practice is not in alignment. It would not accurately, in our judgement, reflect the intent of the university leadership. From an organisational theory perspective, the intention would be based on the goal of intentionally preventing actors throughout the organisation from investing time to implement the policies and values expressed by management, in order to have external legitimacy without sacrificing short- and long-term efficiency of operation to what might be considered the core mission. None of the universities fit this definition, in our case set. We keep this category here, though, as we believe, with a broader review of universities, we would find such strategic thinking put into practice. The universities we might have placed here from our cases are instead listed as full integration civic campuses, though the level of acceptance and socialisation within that category is variable.

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Grassroots Civic Campus One campus is defined as a grassroots civic campus, meaning there is no institutionalisation nor rhetoric from leadership regarding civic mission or purpose, but there is demand from the ranks of academic staff and students to be a civically engaged campus. In other words, here we have a high socialisation to an idea, but limited shaping of that idea from above. Our one campus example is the University of Baltimore. One professor at University of Baltimore (UB) described the environment at his institution: “Looking across UB, there is extraordinary mentorship that takes place quietly. This then is very useful in growing scholars. We need to look at what people enjoy doing, [not just what boxes they check].” There are several parts of this statement that are notable that align with the notion that UB is a grassroots civic campus. The first word we can highlight is “quietly” with respect to the mentorship that occurs. We discuss this as well in Chap. 9 in the context of measuring impact. For now, we can preview the discussion. Other professors at UB echoed this basic sentiment, including that important civic, community-­engaged work is happening, but either individuals are not reporting it, or they do not see any formal mechanism to which to report it. If they are not reporting, it may be because they do not consider it to be worthy of reporting, or as not clearly linked to their “academic” job description. Yet, the dean of at least one college wants to know about it, as being engaged with the Baltimore community is a fundamental part of the UB mission, as nearly all interviewees expressed it. Initiatives at UB we can define as in full public view but under the radar of official university reporting mechanisms. This represents a potential vulnerability on two levels. It is a potential vulnerability for the university if the broader community in Baltimore and beyond are not aware of the breadth and depth of projects and initiatives that have a civic and policy impact that are linked to the university, even if that link is limited to paying the salary of the individual(s) who perform the work. It is also a potential vulnerability for individual professors, particularly those of junior standing who might need some senior-level cover or support for investing valuable time in community work and to, subsequently or simultaneously, convert that work to more traditional academic outputs (e.g. publications, grant proposals, new courses). An example comes from a joint interview with a professor and community non-profit leader. In speaking with them both, in the professor’s

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office, the university itself was not much discussed. The focus was on deep, embedded work in the community, and the leadership of the professor and recognition he has received. If the interviewer had not been sitting in the professor’s university office, he might have left with the impression that he was a community activist rather than university professor. In this case, his commitment and many years of work in the community are appreciated and celebrated by officials in the university, but the work the professor described was not necessarily the work of the university, but the work of the professor as an individual. This is not surprising in one sense, as the academic career is not one built on teamwork necessarily. It is individualistic with commitments that perhaps reach beyond the institution as a critical part of identity. We heard such a sentiment from an interviewee at Stellenbosch University who observed that she comes to work for South Africa, and the university just pays her salary. Though we did not ask the Baltimore professor if he would consider his identity in the same way, we would not be surprised if that is the case for him and others at the university. The calling to work for the community is strong, and the university provides the space for this civic entrepreneurial activity to occur. To close the story of this one professor, the community leader he brought with him to the interview represented an organisation called The Living Well. Figure 8.2 shows a poster from the organisation’s website: The Living Well is a natural partner for the university, and this professor in particular, as it seeks to bring community together. According to the website (The Living Well 2018): We are a community development entity that uses art as a vehicle for individual and community change and empowerment. We subscribe to a Vibrant Community model using creative space- making tactics and strategies. We focus on building social capital while using business principles to create economic outcomes. We believe that using vibrant approaches to community building creates a distinct culture of engagement.

We report elsewhere about another professor’s work with prison-based education, the Second Chance Program. In this case, university officials knew about her work, as it is grant funded, but she was none too keen to receive much outside publicity. Other stories that involve service learning, volunteer initiatives such as through Public Allies and AmeriCorps VISTA, community training and capacity building projects are seen and heard

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Fig. 8.2  The Living Well, Baltimore, Maryland (Source: The Living Well 2018)

throughout the university, whether sitting with senior leadership or with new assistant professors. Yet they remain, to repeat our summary view, in full public view but under the radar of official university reporting.

Full Integration Civic Campus Four campuses are defined as full integration civic campuses, meaning they are both maintaining civic practices through institutionalisation and bottom-­up cultural socialisation. These campuses are Arizona State University, University of Central Florida, Stellenbosch University, and Edge Hill University. We discuss in detail Arizona State and Stellenbosch universities. Arizona State University Officials at Arizona State University have, for nearly 20 years, been making strategic decisions that simultaneously create infrastructure at the top to support a civic mission while facilitating opportunities for professors, staff, and students to engage with community through formal and informal means. Defining itself as the “New American University,” Arizona State

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University (ASU) “is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves.” We write the university mission, as written in the institutional charter, to suggest the importance of such rhetoric for all that follows in creating a civic-purpose culture. Figure 8.3 shows a sign hanging inside university buildings, such that the culture being promoted by the New American University idea should not be forgotten.

Fig. 8.3  New American University Sign at Arizona State University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

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One of the goals of the university is to “enhance our local impact and social embeddedness.” The broad strategy to accomplish this goal is written as: “Co-develop solutions to the critical social, technical, cultural, and environmental issues facing 21st century Arizona.” The institutionalisation of this idea was further enhanced with the development and opening of the ASU Downtown Phoenix Campus, which placed core programmes with civic missions in the heart of the city, including programmes in the College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Currently there are 11,000 students studying downtown, with nearly 2000 employees working downtown. The civic mission, as part of the institutionalisation, is further seen in the mission statement of the college: [O]ur faculty and research centers are taking on the most vexing challenges. Through rigorous, applied research we are developing solutions with the potential to better our response to pressing issues ranging from child welfare to neighbourhood safety, city management to human trafficking, water scarcity to tourism and development.

Language from units within the college is similarly driving home this message: • School of Community Resources and Development: “We provide nationally-recognized, interdisciplinary research expertise and innovative academic programs with community development as our foundation.” • School of Criminology and Criminal Justice: “The faculty is recognized for its contributions to policy and practice at every level.” • School of Social Work: “We prepare social work practitioners committed to social justice and to serving and empowering individuals, families and communities.” • School of Public Affairs: “[We are] developing outstanding public leaders; people who are committed to making a difference in our world.” College-level initiatives further demonstrate commitment from leadership and alignment with the mission rhetoric. For instance, the college sponsors the Spirit of Service Scholarship, which was a $5000 competitive scholarship to students combined with mentoring from a “high-profile

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local leader of public service in the fields of your choice.” The college also sponsors the “Call for Collaborations” (C4C) Grants (Call for Collaborations 2018). The C4Cs are designed to support meaningful partnership between the community and ASU College of Public Service and Community Solutions (PUBSRV). Project ideas can derive from community partners but the projects must comprise transdisciplinary and collaborative teams representing ASU, community groups, organisations, and agencies. Although the collaboration can emanate from the community, a PUBSRV faculty/staff must co-lead the effort.

Successful applicants receive $80,000 for two years and can pay for salary, equipment, operational expenses, supplies, and/or travel. The initiative is designed to encourage formation of interdisciplinary research teams and, importantly, facilitate researchers to engage directly with community, and address pressing public problems. The commitment to engage the university with pressing local and regional policy challenges is also demonstrated in multiple ways. For example, the university, across multiple units, is contributing to the redevelopment of the Rio Salado habitat and Salt River. ASU is providing space and people to serve as convener and facilitator of a multi-year project that will stretch over 45 miles, engaging eight communities and two to three Native American communities. It is an effort that includes federal, state, and local governments, non-profit organisations, and private businesses. The university is contributing to the stability of what is called, in network governance terms, a network administrative organisation (Milward and Provan 2006). In addition, individual professors are devoting classes to the project through service-learning activities. For example, an architectural studio course has designed mock-ups of possible design elements for the redevelopment project. Ultimately, the university will assist in the establishment of an independent non-profit organisation to carry the work forward. For more information on the project, see Sunnucks (2017). Underneath these university-level initiatives, individual professors are deeply engaged in promoting civic projects as individual course service-­ learning initiatives, engaged research projects, or some combination of both. Bryer (2014: 47) wrote about such an example from an ASU professor, Erik Johnston.

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The class was Introduction to Public Administration; the lesson was on social and economic inequality. Rather than simply lecturing on statistics of inequality, Johnston designed a process whereby students were graded on an assignment based on existing laws that impact the lives of real people in society.

Students in the class had to endure certain situations that divided them. For instance, white students had to display an ID; student athletes who did not score at least 80 per cent on an assignment received a score of 0; all female students had their scores adjusted to 77 per cent of the average score of male students. Bryer (2014: 48) summarised how the experienced concluded: Some students in the class acted out against Johnston, with some even forming a union of sorts to demand a change to the grading policy. Ultimately, the experiment was revealed, students embraced the lesson while also raising more than $3000 to support a variety of non-profit and charitable organisations in the community that address some of the very inequalities—and the values of justice, autonomy, and responsibility—the students experienced.

This kind of commitment and innovation was expressed during interviews with numerous professors, students, and community partners. Given both the institutionalisation expressed through rules, initiatives, leadership rhetoric, and the commitment seen from below, we consider ASU as a full integration civic campus. Stellenbosch University Core institutional innovations have been implemented at Stellenbosch University. As we discuss in Chap. 9, and not least among them, is the use of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for the tracking, recording, and reporting of social impact initiatives throughout the university. The office that monitors and maintains the database of social impact initiatives is the Division of Social Impact, formerly the Division of Community Interaction. That name change alone represents, at least, a rhetorical shift regarding the intended direction and core values of the university. Further, every faculty and faculty subunit is required to have a social impact liaison that is responsible for promoting the social impact agenda within specific disciplinary contexts. This structure is a critical part of the institutionalisation of a civic-oriented mission.

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The Division of Social Impact (DSI) is one piece of the institutional puzzle. Another, and related, piece is Matie Community Service (or MGD for its Afrikaans name Matie Gemeenskapsdiens). MGD celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2013 and is a part of the university’s Vision 2030 to advance “knowledge in the service of all stakeholders.” As Antoinette Smith-Tolken, director of the Division of Social Impact, wrote in the 2016 annual report of MGD (2016: 4): MGD is a special kind of organisation. It is a registered non-profit organisation, with all the public accountability and responsibility that is required of such a body. In addition, it is embedded in the Division of Social Impact of Stellenbosch University and managed by SU staff. It is a support centre for structured volunteerism for both staff and students. It also plays a significant role in the improvement of quality of life in the social environment in which it is situated, namely the Stellenbosch and Tygerberg areas.

Smith-Tolken continued and described more specifically the civic components of the Division of Social Impact and MGD (2016: 4): [MGD has] the mandate of taking responsibility for the engaged citizenship vision of SU as espoused in the Social Impact Strategic Plan: “Engaged citizenship [refers to] student volunteerism as a structured, co-curricular learning experience; staff and alumni volunteerism as instances of responsible active citizenship; and public service rendered by SU staff based on their fields of expertise increasing the capacity of societal organisations and institutions.”

Volunteering initiatives supported through MGD have facilitated the placement of student groups and organisations, including through student residence associations, into schools and communities throughout the region. The emphasis has been in underserved, high-need, high-poverty areas. In 2016, 774 volunteers gave assistance that potentially helped 943 unique individuals (MGD 2016). We will discuss more about student volunteering through Stellenbosch University in Chap. 10. Before proceeding further with the example of the full integration civic campus, we should share more about the history of the idea and how social impact came to be institutionalised. The launch of the efforts that have led to the current form followed the end of apartheid in South Africa, which came in 1994. A 1997 white paper on higher education and related legislation called for universities to pursue community interaction as a

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mandate; this was seen as a vehicle through which universities could fruitfully play a part in rebuilding the society. This was a particularly important mandate for Stellenbosch University as, according to Smith-Tolken during an interview, the university is seen as a “cradle of apartheid.” In 2000, a Division of Community Interaction was established as a structure to fulfil this mandate. It started as an entity to train professors in the practice of service learning as a community-engaged teaching method. The task proved difficult, as community interaction was not the traditional way of teaching or conducting research. Ultimately, university leaders rejected the limited scope of “interaction” and chose to focus on the broader and more substantive “social impact.” As Smith-Tolken said, at least individuals know what social impact is, perhaps more than the ambiguous idea of community engagement or interaction. Despite what might be a more clear or understandable definition, the process of institutionalising and embedding took the form of an engagement process itself. The definition of social impact is defined based on the work that is occurring and with feedback from the university community, such that they buy into the idea and the reporting structure. Each year, the division convenes a social impact forum for sharing of impact stories and ideas that move the agenda forward. The language of social impact is now widespread and embedded structurally throughout the university; there are still challenges of receiving reports of all activity for the reporting system, but that effort is underway. Examples shared in other parts of the book demonstrate how this institutionalisation process has in fact filtered down and furthered the interests of at least some teaching and research staff to engage with communities and pursue missions of reducing inequality and empowering people. These examples include the work of the legal aid clinic, non-profit and business incubator known as the Launch Lab, student volunteerism, arts ­programming in the townships, and medical services in rural areas. It is the combination of these numerous demonstrations of implementation and the clear direction from university leadership that we classify Stellenbosch University as a full integration civic campus.

Ad hoc Civic Campus The last set of campuses is the ad hoc civic campus. These are campuses that are neither institutionalised in their practice nor socialised in their culture. Any civic activity that occurs is necessarily then ad hoc, or based

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on individual interest. Three campuses are defined in this way: Kaunas University of Technology, Tallinn University of Technology, and University of Tyumen. We provide some examples of practices from each university elsewhere within the pages of the book. As these are ad hoc initiatives, they are generally not institutionally supported, or, if they are, they are supported based on decisions that may not be aligned with any particular strategic direction or mandate.

Summary In this chapter, we examined the university campus itself as a civic space, apart from the actions of professors, staff, or students within or outside the university through their regular work. We identified four types of civic campuses, with most attention paid to two of those types: full integration civic campus and grassroots civic campus, along with the ad hoc civic campus and decoupled civic campus. In the next chapter, we consider  how impact is measured, across type of campus and form of engagement with different kinds of community.

References Bryer, T.A. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenships, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. Call for Collaborations. 2018. https://publicservice.asu.edu/content/category8-call-collaborations-c4c-grants-community-initiated MGD. 2016. https://www.sun.ac.za/sien-za/Pages/MGD.aspx Milward, H.B. and K.G. Provan. 2006. A Manager’s Guide to Choosing and Using Collaborative Networks. Washington, DC: IBM Center for the Business of Government. Scott, W.R. 2013. Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests and Identities. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Sunnucks. 2017. https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2017/10/26/ariver-in-the-desert-asu-helps-mccain-with-rio.html The Living Well. 2018. http://livewellbemore.com

CHAPTER 9

Measuring Impact

The idea of impact can alternately be compared with perhaps equal measures of accuracy to the Holy Grail and obscenity. It is like the Holy Grail in how governments, organisations, and universities regularly engage in fanciful quests to find that which is ultimately unattainable. It is like obscenity as defined by the United States Supreme Court as they sought parameters of free speech that is not ultimately obscene and thus subject to some potential regulation: you know it when you see it. Impact, thus, is a dream worthy of pursuit, but we (collectively, and particularly as universities) do not know how to get there, and if we do get there, we might not be sure what we found is actually impact. If it is, though, we will know, or at least try to persuade our stakeholders that we know as we proclaim to all who listen that impact has been found and achieved. Despite the ambiguity of the idea and uncertainty of how to get there or know if we got there, there are increasing calls around the world for universities to demonstrate their impact. It has become a buzzword joined with an assortment of other buzzwords: collective impact, innovation and impact, social impact, economic impact, cultural impact, interdisciplinary impact, to name a few. The “impact agenda” (Brewer 2013) is a relative of the performance measurement movement that made strategic management (Bryson 2018) and its various measurement cousins, such as balanced scorecards (Kaplan and Norton 1996) and performance evaluation and measurement (Wang 2009), embedded buzzwords that never quite © The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_9

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succeeded in ensuring meaningful measurement practice in organisations across sectors. Instead, whole institutions were created to establish the machinery of performance measurement and strategic management, but that machinery has not always linked the process of measurement and planning to organisational activity (Forsythe 2000). We argue elsewhere in this book that the university-community engagement efforts follow this same general pattern of institutional disconnections, at least in some places. As happens with management fads, buzzwords can become so ubiquitous that they have no meaning. In this, impact is like the idea of community discussed in Chap. 5. It simply sounds good to describe the impact of what we do as universities, at least as an idealised contribution of universities within and/or to society. Once a university, or any organisation, spends various forms of human and financial capital to cultivate the idea of impact, it becomes part of the university’s identity. One of the authors observed at a meeting with officials at his university that the notion of interdisciplinary impact is a fad that is not grounded in much substance; the official responded that the university has invested a lot in this fad. The implication was that the university was moving forward to establish machinery in support of the rhetoric, but it remained to be seen how that translated to substantive action linking words to policy and practice. As Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert (2017) observed, any kind of management reform often stops after the stages of discussion and first-­ order (Weick 1995) change to practice, before getting side lined or waylaid by other embedded features of organisational and system bureaucracy. Brewer (2013) captured the fundamental concerns related to the “impact agenda” in higher education. “Impact is a deeply flawed approach to assess the public value of social science research. There are diverse views on its meaning, it is very difficult to measure, even within the policy evaluation tradition for which the idea of impact slips easily off the pen, and the hostility generated by the impact agenda, associated as it negatively is with the adult culture, has turned the debate gangrenous and ruled out the possibility of reasoned argument” (6). Flinders (2018) also expressed concern about the impact agenda. “I fear that there is an instrumentalisation of the impact agenda occurring. Decisions regarding the investment of institutional resources and the appointment of staff are increasingly taken with a keen eye not on the intellectual vibrancy of the project, the disruptive scholarly potential of the appointee or the need to cultivate a culture of engaged scholarship but on a crude, mechanical short-term calculation as to whether the outlay is likely to result in the requisite number of high-quality impact case studies” (4)

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Headlines of articles published in the UK’s Times Higher Education further show the concern about this impact agenda: • Publish or Perish Culture May Be Enemy of Impact • Doing Harm to Data Won’t Get a Reaction, but It Will Have Impact • Using Twitter to Measure Research Impact Needs Quality Control A reason why universities adopt the language and some basic machinery and practice of the impact agenda might be rooted in Dimaggio and Powell’s (1983) notion of isomorphic pressure. In some cases, university governing bodies or external policymakers that control some or all of a university’s budget require enactment of some of the impact agenda (coercive isomorphism). Elsewhere, university officials might feel pressure from stakeholders within their community, however defined, to justify their public value (Brewer 2013; Moore 1997) and defend their sometimes encroachment on increasingly more geographic space (normative isomorphism). For institutions immune to one or the other, or both, of these pressures, they still might see opportunity to enhance their reputation to join the chorus of institutions making impact agenda changes, and they basically copy what others are doing for that enhanced relevance, legitimacy, and reputation (mimetic isomorphism). All of this is to say that the impact agenda has taken hold and has done so within most of the universities examined within these pages. In Chap. 2, we provided an overview of some concepts related to the impact agenda, particularly in relation to the less rigid “humaniversity” (Campbell and Hwa 2015). Brewer (2013) argued that the normative public value of social science is found in how it “nurtures a moral sentiment in which we produce and reproduce the social nature of society, enabling us to recognize each other as social beings with a shared responsibility for the future of humankind through understanding, explaining, analyzing and ameliorating the fundamental social problems stored up for us all” (158). Bryer (2014) suggested ways to measure this public value for universities as a whole, beyond economic maximisation measures for alumni and financial return of investment for university activities. For instance, measurements can include the percentage of alumni who (109): • volunteer two or more hours per week in their community; • contribute 5–7 per cent of their household income to charity per year; • contribute 8 per cent or more of their household income to charity per year;

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• voted in their most recent local election; • voted in their most recent national election; • worked with others in their community within the past year to address a public concern; • show empathy towards others. Measures can also look beyond the point of direct influence (e.g. alumni, students): • percentage of citizens in surrounding communities who show empathy towards others; • number of government, non-profit, private, or faith-based organisations that have partnered with or been served by some combination of university faculty and students; • percentage of government, non-profit, private, or faith-based organisations that have partnered with or been served by some combination of university faculty and students, and who report that their organisation is stronger as a result of the engagement. Such measurement schemes require substantial investment, but they potentially allow a bridge from the impact university to the humaniversity, though advocates of the latter may believe that the university is selling its soul, so to speak, by caving to the dominant language of measurement at all. With this in mind, we turn to the practices found within our case universities.

Measuring Schemes: Partnerships and Civics Measurement schemes sometimes align with stated university-level or unit-level missions. For instance, the University of Baltimore is guided by a mission captured by the phrase “Knowledge that Works.” We see this phrase reflected in the sometimes ad hoc approaches to measurement. In other cases, such simple phrases reveal the complexity of measurement. For instance, an arts professor at Arizona State University wondered about how to measure the basic truth that “doctors save lives; artist give people a reason to live.” He asked, “How do we quantify generosity of spirit?” Despite, or maybe because of, such logic, different measurement schemes have emerged across our case universities. We highlight the main ideas across some of the cases.

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University of Baltimore One professor at the University of Baltimore spoke about his work as “designed to shape, inform, and influence policy.” How is such power achieved and measured? Students at the university implemented one attempt at measurement with supervision from both administrative and academic staff as part of a formal fellowship programme. Select students were included in the Community Engagement Corps (CEC), an initiative established by the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore. They conducted 17 interviews with local non-profit organisations to understand “experiences working with colleges and universities, identify current needs, and understand how institutions can build future collaborations” (Akes, Branco, Cordes, Eaton, McCalin and Pirog 2013: 1). Specific questions related to university-community relations included: • Have you worked with colleges or universities before, and, if so, can you describe the experience? What worked well, and what did not work so well? • Currently, how do you see universities and students contributing to you and your organisation? • What do you see happening in this community over the next five years that would affect your future work? How can colleges and universities play a role in your future work? • Are there any other comments or feedback that might help us identify ways that colleges and universities can be an effective partner in community engagement? This was a one-off project—as of the time of this writing—that documented the community partner perspective. As we will see, this perspective is often unheard, or at least it is not actively listened to in any systematic way. Understanding the community partner perspective is critical, however, given the potential for harm when students or other university personnel seek to engage busy practitioners (Stoecker and Tryon 2009). As the students in Baltimore learned, “While short-term service experiences are valued by organisations, many of them are not able to accommodate volunteers who are unable to make a lasting commitment because of the extensive training, background checks, or clearances required of participants” (Akes et al. 2013: 4).

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Other work at the University of Baltimore is measured in more traditional ways, though these traditional ways can be questioned. As one interview respondent asked, paraphrasing: We use citation counts as a measure of impact, but is this the right impact? If work is not read or used in any way, what use it? The contrast is found in writing for policymakers specifically. The same interview respondent set the parameters here: If I write an op-ed for the newspaper, do policymakers use it? Do policymakers use my words in legislation, in speeches, or in other places? Am I invited to meet with legislators? Is my work translated into other languages? This kind of public writing will not lead to tenure or promotion at the University of Baltimore, but it can be “symbiotic” with traditional scholarly writing. This is important, as an interviewee said, as writing to drive up one’s citation score has no impact on life outside academia. Other, at least, informal ways of measuring at the University of Baltimore are heard in the self-identified achievements of professors who were interviewed for this project. For instance, one professor spoke about the number of students who spoke at a national conference on work related to community-based work. Another spoke about the need, following the completion of research, to answer the question: “How can we help you solve your problems?” Reflecting this logic, another professor spoke about the growth of a problem-solving network that includes the university. The objective, according to another, is to “give back” and not to “suck dry.” Stated differently, extending this logic, measurement of success is based on empowerment of community members. Measurement must reflect both of these possibilities, so the benefits and harms are captured. Many of these informal achievements may not be recorded in official records. As one interviewee reported, she hardly ever reports back what she is doing on the civic front, attributing this lack of reporting to her personality. This self-acknowledgement reflects, perhaps, the idea that doing civic work for credit or recognition may be anathema to the altruism inherent in the civic work. It is part of the challenge of measuring civic work in any sector of society; individuals who do it, and have passion for it, are potentially likely to not report it as more than what is expected of them as citizens. As such, official measures of civics in society (e.g. volunteer rates) are likely underreported (Bryer 2016). The same phenomenon may be happening at UB and at other places. As this interviewee reported, her dean is keen to collect this information, to document partnerships, but much still seems to happen in full public view but under the radar of official university reporting mechanisms.

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The same dilemma is reported by Stellenbosch University (SU) officials who have established a robust system for collecting, reporting, and openly sharing the community impact or social impact work of their academic staff. Stellenbosch University According to the United Nations (2018): The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice.

Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) and University of Central Florida (UCF) have started to utilise Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to align their measurement and documentation efforts. Stellenbosch University has constructed their Division of Social Impact around these goals, including the opportunity to search for initiatives and identify results by goal (see https://www.sun.ac.za/si/en-za/Pages/Impact-Area.aspx). The 17 goals are as follows (United Nations 2018): Goal 1: No Poverty—Economic growth must be inclusive to provide sustainable jobs and promote equality. Goal 2: Zero Hunger—The food and agriculture sector offers key solutions for development, and is central for hunger and poverty eradication. Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing—Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the wellbeing for all at all ages are essential to sustainable development. Goal 4: Quality Education—Obtaining a quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development. Goal 5: Gender Equality—Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world. Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation—Clean, accessible water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in. Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy—Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity.

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Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth—Sustainable economic growth will require societies to create the conditions that allow people to have quality jobs. Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure—Investments in infrastructure are crucial to achieving sustainable development. Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities—To reduce inequalities, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalised populations. Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities—There needs to be a future in which cities provide opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation, and more. Goal 12: Responsible Production and Consumption—Responsible Production and Consumption. Goal 13: Climate Action—Climate change is a global challenge that affects everyone, everywhere. Goal 14: Life Below Water—Careful management of this essential global resource is a key feature of a sustainable future. Goal 15: Life on Land—Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss. Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions—Access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels. Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals—Revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development. The final goal reflects how officials at Stellenbosch University see their role: as partners to make a difference in their local, regional, national, and international communities. At these other levels of impact, SU further aligns with National Development Goals (NDGs) and Provincial Strategic Goals (PSGs). The NDGs consist of: • Too few people work. • The quality of school education for black people is poor. • Infrastructure is poorly located, inadequate, and under-maintained. • Spatial divides hobble inclusive development. • The economy is unsustainably resource intensive. • The public health system cannot meet demand or sustain quality. • Public services are uneven and often of poor quality. • Corruption levels are high. • South Africa remains a divided society.

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PSGs consist of: • Create opportunities for growth and jobs. • Improve education outcomes and opportunities for youth development. • Increase wellness and safety, and tackle social ills. • Enable a resilient, sustainable, quality and inclusive living environment. • Embed good governance and integrated service delivery through partnerships and spatial alignment. Overall, the SDGs, National Development Goals (NDGs), and Provincial Strategic Goals (PSGs) provide the framework for documenting impact activities and measuring actual impact. Researchers, teachers, and students perform activities that are linked within the tripartite framework. For instance, in the area of health, there are 4.5 million people living in the Cape Town region, 80 per cent of whom are dependent on government for healthcare. Through university projects, including student projects, volunteers and others provide health screening and visits to the elderly and homebound, build up the capacity of community organisations through capacity-building, service-learning projects, and generally promote healthy lifestyle and choices through special event days in the community. Impact in this area is assessed by, for example, documenting patient referrals for further healthcare and through student reflection on their ability to affect positive change in a person or community’s life. As one official noted, it is not enough for university representatives to “give back” as a traditional volunteer would, they must be embedded. “I don’t want to give back; I want to be there with them.” “Embedded” is a good word to describe the kind of interest and budding commitment to impact at Stellenbosch University. One university official heard a leader at the institution proclaim: “We will not acknowledge research if there is no social impact.” The SDGs, NDGs, and PSGs provide a broad framework for potentially every researcher to see where impact is possibly pursued and achieved, even if a research project is not launched with impact in mind. Kaunas University of Technology Kaunas University of Technology is, also, though not in as sophisticated a way as Stellenbosch University, working to assess its contribution to sus-

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tainable innovations, with a particular emphasis on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. A relatively new institute at the University of Central Florida is also seeking to align the research and applied activity occurring within the university to the SDGs—Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity. This alignment is much more pronounced at Stellenbosch University as a mechanism for assessing, or at least documenting, activities related to social impact. KTU, however, does offer an example of mission-linked measurement of formal and informal practices. One respondent identified that mission of the university generally as to “develop community by bringing new knowledge, innovation, and science,” not to solve the problems that exist in community but to “help the community develop solutions.” Impact, according to another respondent, is now part of the strategic mission of the faculty, if not the university. In the respondent’s formulation:

Research Quality + Active Engagement = Local & Global Impact

Breaking this down, research quality is assessed in traditional ways. Within the Lithuanian system, points are awarded based on placement of written material. Monographs are awarded most highly, followed by articles in high ranked journals in prominent academic databases Scopus and Web of Science, and last by Lithuanian language publications. Funded projects are assessed based on the scientific source of funding, and whether it is international or national. Currently, there is no reward for purely applied projects. The quality of the research, in subjective terms, is assessed based on newness, risk and uncertainty, creativity, systematic design, and replicability. Active engagement is assessed in output form. For example, engagement activities might include the number of public lectures, articles in media, engagement in professional networks, and maintenance of a website. One possible measure, not yet actively tracked, is the number of community members visiting the university website for information. ­ Ultimate impact is considered in terms of how much and how well the university and its component parts help communities and community organisations develop solutions, as the previous respondent suggested. One measurement challenge KTU might face now, as described by one official, is that their “citizenship” or civic activities take the form of “accidental citizenship.” The interviewee’s meaning here is that good, civic-­

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oriented, and community-relevant work is happening, but it is not designed with civic goals in mind, nor, as such, measured with civic outputs or outcomes in mind. Edge Hill University, on the other hand, is part of a system where attention to impact is mandated from outside the university. Edge Hill University At Edge Hill University, there is a required measurement process defined by the Research Excellence Framework (REF). This systematic measurement process is the sought-after goal for officials at Stellenbosch University. As one official said, “If we claim systematic impact, we must show evidence.” The biggest challenge in this regard is to persuade or otherwise assist busy professors and researchers to identify and communicate their work within the context of social impact and the SDGs, NDGs, and/or PSGs. Edge Hill University addresses this challenge by soliciting impact cases or stories, as required by the REF. The REF is a joint effort of various organisations: Research England, Scottish Funding Council, Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, and the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland (REF2021 2018). The purpose is to “secure the continuation of a world-class, dynamic and responsive research base across the full academic spectrum within UK higher education.” The procedure assesses UK’s higher education institutions with respect to the quality of their research outputs, the environment that supports research, and the impact beyond academia. Ratings are made by a panel of experts who review submissions from every institution on a seven-year cycle. Included on the panel, and of most interest to us here, are “research users.” These individuals are defined as those “people outside academia in the private, public or third sectors, who make use of university research in their organisation or professional activity (by commissioning research or collaborating with academic researchers, for example)” (REF2021 2018). Central to the REF process are the impact case studies. According to the Higher Education Funding Council of England (2018), impact was defined as “an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.” During the 2014 REF process, higher education institutions submitted 6975 impact case studies. According to an analysis of these case studies (Higher Education Funding Council of England 2017):

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• More than 80 per cent of case studies were based on multidisciplinary research. • More than 3700 “unique pathways” were identified that linked research to impact. • Collectively across the UK, higher education institutions made some kind of contribution to every country in the world. In 2014, Edge Hill University submitted 25 impact case studies, broken down by impact area as (REF2014 2018): environmental (2), economic (1), societal (12), technological (1), cultural (5), health (1), legal (1), and political (2). Impact in each area is clearly shown as coming from multiple disciplines. For example, of the political impact cases, one came from law and the other from health/public health. In the societal impact area, cases came from sports science, computer science, political science, psychology, education, sociology, social work, and health/public health. Within the civic health space, broadly defined, is an impact case study entitled “Influencing the practice and policy of collaborative working of leaders across the not-for-profit and local government sector.” The impact is based on the work of Professor John Diamond who, based on his research and publication, was invited to facilitate discussions with local leaders about public policy issues, including the health of the not-for-­ profit sector. The summary of the case, reproduced here as an example of impact case content, is (Impact Case Study 2014): Diamond’s research paper on the management of change within major urban regeneration programmes directly led to him working with Voluntary and Community Sector organisations in South London; regional VCS networks in the North West; the Leadership and Development group of VCS leaders in the North West and national VCS organisations. The impact can be seen in terms of the number of key leaders and activists supported and facilitated by Diamond to reflect upon their work, their learning and, as a consequence, their strategic goals.

Similar impact cases from other UK universities further reflect the nature of civic oriented projects that are possible, which Edge Hill University represents a small fraction of the overall picture. Searching the REF2014 impact case study database, there are 182 case studies that address in some fashion the question of “civic.” None of these were submitted by Edge Hill University, though the Poverty Truth Commission

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work that was presented in a previous chapter would fall into this category and may be captured as such during the REF2021 process. Appendix A shows the list of titles of each of the 182 civic impact projects. A mere sample of the diverse 182 civic impact projects includes the following: • Educating for Pluralism, Human Rights, and Democracy • Engaging Communities in Flood Risk Science and Management • Improving Youth Political Engagement and Citizenship • European Street Arts: Performances in Public Spaces • Latin London: Improving the visibility of Latin Americans in the UK • Storytelling and Community • Youth, Citizenship, and Politics: The Social Role of Higher Education • Food Citizenship and the Public Interest • Voting Rights for Prisoners

Summary In this chapter, we reflected on different levels of sophistication and institutionalisation of impact and performance measurement related to civic-­ related activity of the university and individuals associated with the university. In the next chapter, we look at a set of activities performed by a group that might be included in measurement schemes but are also likely to be outside such formalised channels. We refer, of course, to the activities of students.

References Akes, A., J.  Branco, K.  Cordes, A.  Eaton, V.  McClain and A.  Pirog. 2013. “Community Engagement Corps Community-Based Research Project.” University of Baltimore. Brewer, J.D. 2013. The Public Value of the Social Sciences: An Interpretive Essay. London: A&C Black. Bryer, T.A. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenships, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. ———. 2016. “The Music is Us: Processes and Narratives that Create Civic Maps around the World.” International Congress of Numanities. https://youtu.be/ ieSWzZF6n2M Bryson, J.  2018. Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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Campbell, J.  and Y.S.  Hwa. 2015. “The Spirit of Community Engagement.” International e-Journal of Community & Industry Engagement, 2 (1): 1–10. DiMaggio, P. and W.W.  Powell. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Collective Rationality and Institutional Isomorphism.” American Sociological Review, 48 (2): 147–160. Flinders, M. 2018. “Lack of Instant Impact is Not Failure.” Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/lack-instantimpact-not-failure Forsythe, D.W. 2000. Performance Management Comes to Washington: A Status Report on the Government Performance and Results Act. Albany: State University of New York. Higher Education Funding Council of England. 2017. “The Nature, Scale and Beneficiaries of Research Impact: An Initial Analysis of Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 Impact Case Studies.” https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20170712123928/http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/ Year/2015/analysisREFimpact/ ———. 2018. https://re.ukri.org/research/ref-impact/ Impact Case Study. 2014. “Influencing the Practice and Policy of Collaborative Working of Leaders across the Non-for-Profit and Local Government Sector.” https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=43765 Kaplan, R.S. and D.P. Norton. 1996. The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. Moore, M. 1997. Creating Public Value. Bridgewater, NJ: Replica Books. Pollitt, C. and G. Bouckaert. 2017. Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. REF2014. 2018. https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/Results.aspx?val=Show %20All REF2021. 2018. “What is REF?” https://www.ref.ac.uk/about/whatref/ ———. 2018. “Guide for Research Users.” https://www.ref.ac.uk/about/ researchuser/ Stoecker, R. and E.A. Tryon. 2009. The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. United Nations. 2018. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ Wang, X. 2009. Performance Analysis for Public and Nonprofit Organizations. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett. Weick, K.E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

CHAPTER 10

Student Engagement

One way to understand community engagement is through the work of students. Indeed, a well-travelled path in higher education literature concerns the potential for universities to be training grounds for citizens. In a previous chapter, we previewed previous work by Bryer (2014), who established a philosophy of higher education institutions grounded in the acronym SEE DEMOS: Student Empowered Education/Democratising Education for Members of Society. To launch this chapter, we focus on the SEE. Bryer described the idea as such (Bryer 2014: 46): We want to experientially empower our student to become sustainably empowered and to emerge as active ethical citizens. Empowerment of students is not a simple task; the traditional teacher-student model of learning is unidirectional, providing substantial power to the teacher to shape the values, ideas, and future of students. At its worst, the traditional model allows for the perpetuation of the status quo, which may serve to disempower students by preventing their questioning their identity, social standing, or the values of the society in which they reside … At its best, the traditional may provide the tools for critical thinking and reflection but stop short of allowing students to use or experience the use of those tools for any kind of community or societal change process. Thus, there is a need for techniques and social technologies for empowering students and thus empowering communities to achieve change.

© The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_10

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In this chapter, we highlight some ways in which university programmes and initiatives are empowering students (Bryer and Seigler 2012) as emerging civic actors, and/or how students are taking the reins and pursuing such activities on their own, given the open civic spaces that may exist on campuses. Not all of our case universities are included here. There, our particular emphasis is on student volunteerism, which has and seems to maintain a long and successful history (Brewis 2014).

Arizona State University One student described the university environment as extremely welcoming to and facilitating of student ideas and energies to affect some positive change outside the university. This particular student had a decided international focus. Her efforts centred in Nepal; through a formal programme, she gained first-hand experience working with youth and sought to build connections between schools in Nepal and schools in Arizona. Beyond this work, based on a meeting she had with women at an orphanage, she took up the challenge of supporting the orphanage by selling handmade necklaces. This is only one of a litany of projects she took on and credited to the university and her professors for opening up such opportunities. The culture of supporting students in their civic pursuits begins in the classroom at Arizona State University (ASU). Service learning is a critical component of coursework in many courses. For instance, a course on design thinking partners students with a community organisation or organisations over a 15-week semester. The course addresses a real-world problem and fully embeds the student within that environment. It is, as one interviewee described, “solution-based learning.” The output of such an approach entails not “problem briefs” but “opportunity briefs,” with a focus on strategies to move a community forward in addressing the issue or issues of concern.

University of Baltimore The environment at the University of Baltimore is also aligned with visions of an engaged student body. As noted previously, UB has a student body that is, at least in part, coming from the working, lower- to middle-class of Baltimore and surrounding areas. Free time for extracurricular volunteering that might be found at universities with more full-time, non-working

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students, is limited. This creates a challenge for university professors and staff who are keen to see students engage as active citizens. The university, specifically the College of Public Affairs, facilitates volunteer opportunities with community partners, including through Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). We will describe VISTA further when discussing students at the University of Central Florida. At UB, volunteer opportunities are organised during special days, such as Community Service Day, and in support of charitable organisations, such as CUPs Coffee, whose mission is: “CUPs Coffeehouse is dedicated to bringing you great coffee and food. Through food and beverage sales we are committed to creating opportunities for local youth and to building community. CUPs works directly with Project I CAN, a program of Fusion Partnerships, to provide hands on workforce development for disconnected youth living in Baltimore City” (CUPs Coffee 2018). The university partners with organisations like CUPs Coffee, leverages resources like AmeriCorps VISTA, and mobilises community support for pressing concerns. The success of this wraparound approach is seen in the voter participation rate achieved in the 2016 election. Through voter education and a project called UB Votes, officials calculated a doubling of the number of students who early voted from the previous election. Overall, officials estimated approximately 79 per cent of students voted in the 2016 election, an impressive turnout by any measure. A final example concerns UB law students who work, through a law clinic, to assist veterans. The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic in the School of Law facilitates students giving of their time to help the approximately 80 per cent of 500,000 veterans in the State of Maryland who are eligible for but not receiving government benefits. The work they perform is similar to the legal aid clinic at Stellenbosch University described in Chap. 8, or the legal clinic at the University of Tyumen in relation to the public chamber (see Chap. 7). We include this discussion here, as it is an initiative that relies on the participation of students while also maintaining a population-specific focus for the area of assistance: veterans. Students work with other non-profit organisations, governmental agencies, and judicial organisations to advocate on behalf of veterans, leading students to not only develop critical legal skills but to see the impact of their work on the lives of real people and, sometimes, on public policy (Novash 2017).

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Kaunas University of Technology Perhaps in similar fashion, but with different approach and context, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) officials consider the role of the university as to develop “citizens of the world, starting in Lithuania.” From the university’s perspective, this means engaging and teaching students on three levels: (1) encouraging them to join the association of students and various student organisations, (2) volunteering in the community, and (3) working with local NGOs. This is a tough road to travel, given the lack of historical precedent for such voluntary activity, but the university encourages it. In 2015–2016, the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities declared it as “VoluntYear” or the year for volunteering. Backed by a collaborative international project implemented by the Faculty’s Municipal Training Centre, the Faculty sought to engage students in volunteer activities and to promote the idea of volunteering through a volunteer fair and other associated activities throughout the year.

University of Central Florida University of Central Florida (UCF), through the offices of the student government, heavily promote student volunteerism. The main driver of volunteerism is an organisation called VolunteerUCF. The organisation is structured both to mobilise students as volunteers and to train and provide leadership development opportunities for student organisers (Plante, Currie and Olson 2015). There are leaders identified from the ranks of students to guide the overall operation; further, there are heads of committees established to create volunteer opportunities in a variety of different substantive or policy areas. These include committees on homeless, veterans, elderly, animals, environment, youth education, and so on. Additionally, VolunteerUCF (VUCF) implements annual sets of volunteer days to mobilise large numbers of students in a single day; it also organises the annual Alternative Break Programme (ABP) for students during spring break. Rather than have a week of parties or relaxation, ABP organises service weeks. For instance, they might partner with Habitat for Humanity to go and build homes somewhere in the United States, or they might travel outside the country for a service project. The data reported from 2014 are as follows (Plante, Currie and Olson 2015: 100):

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VUCF tracked over 5,400 volunteers participating in almost four hundred events and with the event duration lasting over 2,700 hours, the total amount of hours served was over 33,300. There were over 120 events filled, 270 donations, and six hundred car pool drivers. In-kind donations from VUCF ($6,326) and ABP ($1,347) yielded a total of $7,673 of total in-kind donations. This figure plus the ABP fundraising of $5,372 produced a grand total of $13,045 that was raised by VUCF board members and committee members and ABP student leaders and trip participants. With the amount of volunteer hours (approximately 38,000) and the money raised … [they collectively] made a net impact of over $1  million in the 2013–2014 academic year.

Beyond volunteerism, the student government and Office of Student Involvement at the university provide support for a plethora of student led clubs and organisations, including student political groups aligned with different political parties, humanitarian groups, religious groups, and so on. As such, there is significant breadth and vibrancy in the available outlets for students to become active and to learn from engaging with the diversity of student interests. UCF also has partnered with the AmeriCorps VISTA programme, as previously introduced in discussing the University of Baltimore. Volunteers in Service to America was established in 1964, an anti-poverty initiative that promoted year-long commitments of service from American citizens to build the capacity of organisations and communities to better fight the causes and effects of poverty. At UCF, the Centre for Public and Non-­ profit Management hosted a VISTA project from 2012 to 2016. In hosting the project, it joined other universities, such as Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where national service was championed as both an opportunity for students to give back but also as a bridge between the university and community. The VISTA project at UCF recruited both active UCF students as well as other people from around the country. Unlike projects at other universities, UCF project leaders distinguished their effort by the focus on youth homeless education. They dispatched approximately 15 full-time volunteers each year to school districts, non-profit organisations, and faith-­ based organisations to build their capacity in support of homeless youth. The logic was to have deep focus on one population in order to track and measure overall impact (Bryer, Augustin and Bachman 2015). This kind of initiative provided opportunities for current, former, and potentially

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future students to engage civically through the university and affect positive change in the community.

University of Tyumen The University of Tyumen maintains a student organisation, like UCF, called the League of Volunteers. According to the university’s website, students who volunteer through the League can (Volunteering 2018): • Help kids open up to the world: take part in classes, games, and concerts for orphaned children. • Help elderly and disabled people: hold meetings with elderly and disabled people, help to collect New Year presents and perform at the New Year concert for them. • Use your language and communication skills: work as an interpreter/ translator at international sports competitions and festivals, escort foreign guests. • Support donor community: work with students to recruit blood donors and promote blood drives, help organise [University] Donor’s Day in November and March. • Make a contribution to ecological sustainability: take part in our University Project “5R: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover” and join our urban initiatives to improve and preserve the environment.

Stellenbosch University Like UCF and University of Tyumen (UT), Stellenbosch University encourages volunteerism amongst students. The Division of Social Impact in the university organises students, facilitates a competitive funding programme for volunteer initiatives, and provides mentorship and support for students who volunteer. Photos of some of these students and their volunteer initiatives are in Chap. 5. Figure 10.1 shows an image of a sign found on the university’s campus promoting one volunteer initiative related to Social Impact Day. Notable amongst these student leaders are their commitment to service. For instance, student leaders organise volunteering in townships/ slums in the region around the university’s main campus. They are guided by their commitment to service and, for some of them, by their religious commitments. One student leader credited one of his professors, who

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Fig. 10.1  Social Impact Day at Stellenbosch University (photo by Thomas Andrew Bryer)

taught a service-learning course, as his inspiration. Discussing their volunteer work, students described, for instance, how “we bring love to these children.” They recognise their limitations in noting that “we don’t change lives, but I believe we bring change.” They see themselves as a part of what can be a much larger whole.

Summary Student engagement as active citizens on and off campus can be a crucial component of any university that strives to be considered a civically engaged university. The few case examples provided within this chapter are by no means exhaustive of what happens at these institutions, but they are exemplary of the opportunity to be civic and promote broader community civic health not only through the work of paid university staff, but through the work of young, passionate, and compassionate students. We found these students across societies and countries.

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References Brewis, G. 2014. A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880–1980. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bryer, T.A. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenships, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. Bryer, T.A. and D.  Seigler. 2012. “Theoretical and Instrumental Rationales of Student Empowerment through Social and Web-Based Technologies.” Journal of Public Affairs Education, 18 (3): 429–448. Bryer, T.A., M. Augustin and E. Bachman. 2015. “Three Sectors and a University: The Creation of a High Impact AmeriCorps VISTA Project.” In National Service and Volunteerism: Achieving Impact in Our Communities, edited by T.A. Bryer, 19–24. Lanham: Lexington Books. CUPs Coffee. 2018. http://www.cupscoffeehouse.org Novash, P. 2017. “At Their Service.” University of Baltimore Magazine. http:// www.ubalt.edu/ubmag/issue140/features/veterans-advocacy-clinic.cfm#. XD0i2K3Mzrc Plante, J.D., T.J.  Currie and S.L.  Olson. 2015. “Volunteer UCF: Igknighting Volunterism.” In National Service and Volunteerism: Achieving Impact in Our Communities, edited by T.A. Bryer, 89–101. Lanham: Lexington Books. Volunteering. 2018. https://www.utmn.ru/en/student-life/clubs/volunteering/

CHAPTER 11

Conclusion: Towards the Future of University-Facilitated Civic Health in Global Communities

The focus of this book adds to a robust dialogue about the role of higher education in today’s societies, whether we are looking in the United States, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, South America, or elsewhere. We contribute to dialogue that is defined by numerous other texts published in the past few years, such as, in no particular order: • Activist Educators: Breaking Past Limits (Marshall and Anderson 2009) • Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement (Shaffer, Longo, Manosevitch and Thomas 2017) • Educating for Citizenship and Social Justice: Practices for Community Engagement at Research Universities (Mitchell and Soria 2018) • The Academic Citizen: The Virtue of Service in University Life (Macfarlane 2007) • The Engaged Campus: Certificates, Minors, and Majors as the New Community Engagement (Butin and Seider 2012) • Universities and Their Citizen: Urban Higher Education in America (Diner 2017) • Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenship, and Community (Bryer 2014) • Teaching Justice: Solving Social Justice Problems through University Education (Holsinger 2012) © The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0_11

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• Community Engagement 2.0? Dialogues on the Future of the Civic in the Disrupted University (Crabill and Butin 2014) • Educating for Social Justice: Transformative Experiential Learning (Birkenmaeier et al. 2011) • The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest (Gelber 2011) With such titles, we offer our own: Promoting Civic Health Through University-Community Partnerships: Global Contexts and Experiences. We list several book titles, both to show where we fit within an ongoing dialogue and to show where our contribution is unique. We fit into that by asking the question about the promotion of civic health through university-community partnerships, and thus we join an esteemed group of scholars and scholar-practitioners who are rightfully concerned about the nature of the contributions facilitated or made by intellectual leaders, scientists, and philosophers to the betterment of the whole or parts of our world. We recognise that, in the early to mid-twenty-­ first century, our global society faces and will continue to face significant challenges associated with natural resource depletion, mass migration, climate change, human deprivation, and poverty. As do the authors and editors of the other books we list, and many more, we believe professors and whole universities have an obligation to help address these issues. We also believe, as Brighouse (2010) wrote, that universities should cultivate an orientation within the professoriate and from the professoriate to the students, that, as part of an elite educated global community and workforce, we should exercise our privileged position to contribute to the majority of the world population who are not so privileged. Of course, the form of this assistance varies, as we saw in the pages of this book, and care needs to be taken to not do harm to those we might endeavour to help. One area in which our contribution is unique is the global, comparative exploration of civic practices at universities. Other texts achieve this through edited volumes with authors from different parts of the world, such as in the notable contribution from Elaine Unterhalter and Vincent Carptentier (2010) in Global Inequalities and Higher Education: Whose interests are we serving? With questions like that and books like ours, we recognise the importance of looking at common challenges and variations of approaches to addressing those challenges, across cultures and countries. Programmes like Fulbright, sponsored by the United States State Department, and

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Erasmus+ sponsored by the European Commission, are essential tools for sharing knowledge and experiences. Working together, across boundaries, we have the capacity to enhance our understanding of how universities meet the civic, community, and policy challenges we each face, and to craft new and potentially collaborative solutions to those challenges. We hope, with this book, we have been able to reveal that first thoughts about a country or place, with respect to civics and university-community partnership, require deeper inspection. First-hand experience living and working in different environments reveals common interests and concerns, despite various institutional and cultural pressures. With lessons from Americans, British, Chileans, Estonians, Lithuanians, Russians, and South Africans, and beyond, we can develop both global partnerships and local engagements that affect positive change in our communities and civic lives.

References Birkenmaeier, J., A. Cruce, E. Burkemper, J. Curley, R.J. Wilson and J.J. Stretch. 2011. Educating for Social Justice: Transformative Experiential Learning. Chicago: Lyceum Books. Brighouse, H. 2010. “Globalization and the Professional Ethic of the Professoriate.” In Global Inequalities and Higher Education: Whose Interests are We Serving? edited by E.  Unterhalter and V.  Carpentier, 287–311. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bryer, T.A. 2014. Higher Education Beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenship, and Community. Lanham: Lexington Books. Butin, D.W. and S. Seider. 2012. The Engaged Campus: Certificates, Minors, and Majors as the New Community Engagement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Crabill, S.L. and D. Butin. 2014. Community Engagement 2.0? Dialogues on the Future of the Civic in the Disrupted University. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Diner, S.J. 2017. Universities and Their Cities: Urban Higher Education in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gelber, S.M. 2011. The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Holsinger, K. 2012. Teaching Justice: Solving Social Justice Problems through University Education. Surrey: Ashgate. Macfarlane, B. 2007. The Academic Citizen: The Virtue of Service in University Life. Milton Park: Routledge. Marshall, C. and A.I. Anderson. 2009. Activist Educators: Breaking Past Limits. New York: Routledge.

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Mitchell, T.D. and K.M. Soria. 2018. Educating for Citizenship and Social Justice: Practices for Community Engagement at Research Universities. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shaffer, T.J., N.V. Longo, I. Manosevitch and M.S. Thomas. 2017. Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement. East Lansig: Michigan State University Press. Unterhalter, E. and V. Carpentier. 2010. Global Inequalities and Higher Education: Whose Interests are We Serving? London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Index

A Action research, 39, 100 Ad-hoc civic campus, see Civic campus, forms of Affordable Care Act (United States), 110, 111 American Association of University Professors, 126 American Society for Public Administration, 11 American University, 6, 8, 14 AmeriCorps VISTA, see Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) Arizona State University (ASU) engagement strategies, 4, 21, 97–101 full integration civic campus, 5, 144, 145, 148–155 impact measurement, 23, 157–169, 175 mission, 13, 14, 68, 90 New American University, 148, 149 Skysong campus, 68

student engagement, 172 Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, 68, 90 B Baltimore, University of College of Public Affairs, 66, 161, 173 community integration, 91–92 grassroots civic campus, 5, 144, 146–148, 155 impact measurement, 146 mission, 146 Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, 115, 116, 147 student engagement, 172–173 Belarus, 113 Boston University, 13, 138 Brexit, see United Kingdom Britain, see United Kingdom Buffalo, University of, 14

© The Author(s) 2020 T. A. Bryer et al., Promoting Civic Health Through University-­ Community Partnerships, Rethinking University-Community Policy Connections, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19666-0

183

184 

INDEX

C California-Davis, University of, 45 California State University Chico, 45, 54 Canada, 44 Cantora, Andrea, 115, 116 Capan, Samuel, 14 Capstone, 46, 52–55 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 20 Catholic University of Chile engagement strategies, 133 mission, 79 participation forms, 128, 133 Central Florida, University of autonomy, 109 College of Community Innovation and Education, 70, 89, 98 College of Health and Public Affairs, 98 community integration, 98, 127 engagement strategies, 98 full integration civic campus, 163 impact measurement, 163, 166 mission, 11, 14 participation forms, 17, 110 student engagement, 173–176 UCF Downtown, 70, 89 VolunteerUCF, 178 Chicago, University of, 138, 139, 144 Statement on Principles of Free Expression, 138 Children’s Services Council (Orange County, Florida, United States), 111 Chile, 7, 48, 49, 64, 77–80, 90, 118, 121, 133 Chile, University of community integration, 92 mission, 30, 78, 92 participation forms, 78 School of Architecture, 48

School of Government, 48 School of Medicine, 48 China, 40 Cincinnati, University of, 13, 56 Civic campus, forms of ad-hoc, 5, 144, 155 decoupled, 5, 144, 145, 155 full integration, 5, 144, 145, 148–155 grassroots, 5, 144, 146–148, 155 Civic engagement, 16, 17, 22, 36, 50 issue contestation, 65, 108–119, 123 Civic university, see University, forms of Community communitarian, 83 definition, 3, 83–102 Community-engaged teaching, 34, 46, 99, 135, 154 Community integration hard, 3, 4, 86–91, 96 soft, 3, 86, 91–92 Concepcion, University of participation forms, 133 CUPs Coffee, 173 D Dabney, Charles, 13 Decoupled civic campus, see Civic campus, forms of Democratising Education for Members of Society, see SEE DEMOS Devos, Betsy, 114 Diamond, John, 128, 129, 168 Douglass, Paul, 14 E Edge Hill University community integration, 71, 91 full integration civic campus, 148

 INDEX 

impact measurement, 167–169 Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), 71 Institute for Public Policy and Professional Practice (I4P), 71, 117, 128 mission, 14 participation forms, 128, 129 Engaged University, see University, forms of Erasmus+, 181 Estonia, 4, 65, 73, 91, 94 F Federación de Estudiantes de Chile (FECH), 133 First Nations, 44, 45 Fulbright, 180 Full integration civic campus, see Civic campus, forms of G George Washington University, 112 Grassroots civic campus, see Civic campus, forms of H Hong Kong Institute of Education, 51 Humaniversity, see University, forms of Hurricane Maria, 112 I Impact measuring, 23, 146, 157–169, 175 tenure and promotion, 15, 41 Impact agenda, 25, 152, 158, 159 fad, 158

185

J James Madison University, 54 K Kaunas University of Technology Ad-hoc civic campus, 154–155 community integration, 72, 91, 174 engagement strategies, 93 Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities, 72, 174 impact measurement, 165–167 mission, 14 student engagement, 174 L Land-grant universities, 34 Lilly, Marcus, 115 The Living Well, 147, 148 Lithuania, 4, 7, 65, 72, 73, 90, 174 M Morrill Land-Grant Act, 34 Multiversity, see University, forms of N New Civics, 16–18, 29 New Mexico, 42 New York University, 53 North Carolina, University of, 52 Northwestern University, 133, 134 Nursing Education Partnership for Community Health Improvement (NEPChi), 43 O Obama, Barack Affordable Care Act, 110, 111 State of the Union, 17, 110

186 

INDEX

P Participation, forms of authentic, 5, 35, 125, 128–136 controlled, 126–128 symbolic, 137–139 tokenistic, 137–139 Pinera, Sebastian, 114 Pittsburgh, University of, 46 Poverty Truth Commission, 117, 118, 168 Progressive Farmer, 11 R Research Excellence Framework (REF), 167 Russia, 4, 7, 64, 73, 90, 91, 109, 112, 113, 121 S Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services, 45 Scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL), 3, 30 SEE DEMOS, 99, 171 Service learning, 17, 28, 29, 46–52, 56, 57, 99, 121, 147, 151, 154, 165, 172, 177 South Africa Cape Town, 74, 98, 130, 135, 165 Worcester, 76, 135 Southern California, University of, 90 Stellenbosch University Avianpark Community Interaction Project, 135 community integration, 87 Division of Community Interaction, 152, 154 Division of Social Impact, 87, 88, 97, 130, 152, 153, 176

engagement strategies, 135 Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, 76 full integration civic campus, 152–154 impact measurement, 163–165 L.I.F.E. Service Learning Project, 135 legal aid clinic, 130, 131, 133–135, 173 mission, 152, 154 National Development Goals, 164, 165 Provincial Strategic Goals, 164, 165 rural health clinic, 98, 130 student engagement, 176–177 Sustainable Development Goals, 152, 163 Ukwanda Rural Clinical School, 76 Student Empowerment Education, see SEE DEMOS Student engagement, 171–177 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), 163 T Tallinn University of Technology ad-hoc civic campus, 154–155 community integration, 91 engagement strategies, 94 Thwing, Charles, 13, 14 Transversity, 3, 26–28 Trump, Donald, 110, 112, 114, 115 Tyumen, University of ad-hoc civic campus, 154–155 community integration, 91 inclusive education, 113

 INDEX 

participation forms, 64, 74 student engagement, 176 U Un-civic university, see University, forms of United Kingdom Brexit, 9 exceptionalism, 1 Liverpool, 70, 91 Manchester, 70, 91 United Nations, 163 United States California, 54 exceptionalism, 1 Florida, 8 Illinois, 133, 134 Maryland, 66, 67, 148, 173 Ohio, 13 Puerto Rico, 112 Tennessee, 43 Virginia, 54 United Way, 43 Universiti Sains Malaysia, 25 University appointment authority, 107, 108 audit culture, 10 autonomy, 4, 47, 65, 77, 95, 97, 102–120, 123, 125, 127, 145, 152 civic mission, 2, 3, 7–30, 133, 146, 148, 150

187

civic risk, 4 community partnership, 3, 30, 33–58, 86, 180, 181 control, 106–107 funding, 105–106 University, forms of civic, 19–24 engaged, 28–30 humaniversity, 24–26 impact, 24–26 multiversity, 26–28 transversity, 26–28 un-civic, 3, 18–24 V Virginia Commonwealth University, 90 VISTA, see Volunteers in Service to America Vivaldi, Ennio, 114 Volunteerism, 5, 16, 97, 113, 153, 154, 172, 174–176 Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), 173, 175 W Wales, 9 Watts, Cindy and Mike, 69 Western Reserve College, 13 Winnipeg, University of, 34 Wisconsin-La Crosse, University of, 126