Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education

This timely book addresses assumptions and challenges inherent within community engagement as a catalyst for developing students’ sense of civic responsibility at a time of rampant social polarization.Promoting academic development and life skills through the high-impact practice of service-learning, the book explores a new ecological framework for reflecting on and improving practice. This book describes new models such as the Californians for All College Corps, offers advice on coalition building, and presents the narratives of community engaged professionals and faculty, offering a sense both of tensions inherent in this work and examples of initiatives in local contexts. Chapters primarily reflect on what action is required for fulfilling our public purpose and what’s holding us back.This book provides guidance, examples, and benchmarks for best practices in community engagement that are particularly relevant to this time of crises and unrest and will be relevant to community engaged professionals, higher education faculty, and college administrators.

"Civic-minded undergraduates with community service encoded into their DNA will have a very positive impact locally, regionally, and around the globe. Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education provides us with many examples of programs and tools we can use to help these young people in their efforts. I can hardly wait to see the positive change they will create."- Dr. Walter R. Jacobs, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, California State University East Bay; Author, Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion, "Many books that advance community-campus engagement focus on a narrow aspect of practice in hope of making simple what is a wonderfully complex body of work. Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education honors the multiplicity of forms and people that animate engagement practice, but returns, again and again, to the central role of relationship-oriented changemaking. This book provides valuable portraits of varied practice but keeps the endeavor of seeking a more democratic, inclusive, and thriving world as its center point. In doing so, the chapters combine to provide a cogent, compelling explanation of current day community engagement in higher education."Lina Dostilio, Vice Chancellor of Engagement and Community Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, USA“California is a world leader in both higher education and service. This book describes the ways in which #CaliforniansForAll College Corps advances state and national priorities by connecting Californians of different backgrounds with enriching service opportunities while making college more affordable for our future leaders. Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education illustrates California Volunteers’ years of impact and shows how programs like the College Corps can be replicated across the nation.”Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, USA"Civic-minded undergraduates with community service encoded into their DNA will have a very positive impact locally, regionally, and around the globe. Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education provides us with many examples of programs and tools we can use to help these young people in their efforts. I can hardly wait to see the positive change they will create."Walter R. Jacobs, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, California State University East Bay, USA

Elena Klaw is Professor of Psychology and the Faculty Director of the Center for Community Learning and Leadership at San José State University, USA.Andrea Tully is Assistant Director of the Center for Community Learning and Leadership at San José State University, USA.Elaine Ikeda is Executive Director of LEAD California, USA.