This Projects With Promise case study offers insights for addressing tensions between universities and communities in building partnerships and collectively rethinking "the field" of community engagement. We explore moving beyond a solely place-based understanding of "the field" into an ethos based on human interactions and…

Can verse mediate between the educational institution and the wider community of which it is a part? Utilising a case study of a specific taught module, this essay considers whether the performance of poetry as an experiential learning activity has a role to play in the emerging concept of the university as an anchor institution, a term that…

Anchor movements rest on the premise that people- and place-based initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The community development movement, however, has been haunted for years by the people-place dilemma -- the idea that efforts to help people harm efforts to uplift places and vice versa. Most of the literature on the anchor strategy has…

Across the United States, institutions of higher education must now reinvent the ways that they conduct business after the COVID-19 pandemic. Bridging campus culture is a paramount step in creating a positive learning environment for all college students. This involves constructing a new paradigm where both sides, academic and student support, of…

W.E.B. Du Bois fought passionately for full civil rights, increased political representation, and a purposeful education for Black Americans based on theoretical models and philosophies that were aligned with and responsive to the most pressing needs of the Black community. This discussion provides an overview of the educational philosophy of…

While sufficient methodological training and effective implementation of assessment approaches are essential for successful evaluation in student affairs, those with an interest and passion for social justice may be conflicted. Many of the assessment approaches employed today are misaligned with social justice agendas, lack theoretical grounding…

The essay briefly outlines the history of community engagement at DePaul University in order to explore how and why universities and colleges are increasingly adopting data collections systems for tracking community engagement. I explore the question of why there is a growing interest in tracking engagement within the academy and suggest that…

Higher education has proved to be a significant medium for the socio- economic, political, and technological development of any nation. It is absolutely necessary for equipping individuals with new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Globally higher education, especially university education is faced with a lot of challenges and difficulties…

This article examines a common problem in higher education--how to create more widespread use of improved practices, often commonly referred to as innovations. I argue that policy models of scale-up are often advocated in higher education but that they have a dubious history in community development and K-12 education and that higher education…

Tim Clydesdale is professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey. This article is adapted from the author's forthcoming book "Calling on Purpose: The Conversation Every Campus Must Have with Students" (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Clydesdale met two students, James and Tracy, during their senior year of college, when his…

This article discusses the current dynamics at African universities concerning the quality of teaching, the role of research, the level of community outreach, and the position of higher education in the educational sector as a whole. Points of reference are experiences at the University of the North in South Africa as well as experiences at…

The premise of this article is that the "jury is still out" to describe what effective Community Engagement entails in South African higher education institutions. The current discussions about community engagement and service learning do not cover the primary objective of adding value to the community, particularly of the rural-based…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the focus and practice of Adult and Community Education (ACE) as well as its conceptualization and delivery and to suggest parameters for an approach based on excellence, a balanced scorecard and performance to meet community needs. Design/methodology/approach: The review examines key aspects of the…

In the winter of 2009, with more than 1.4 million job losses in the first two months of the year, the federal government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law as a way to quickly inject liquidity into a stalling economy and maintain critical services that would allow individuals and communities to survive through the…

In spite of engagement and efforts to bring about gender equality in Swedish universities, gender division paradoxically appears in both old and new degree programs and academic disciplines. In recent years there has been a tendency for higher education students to enrol in degree programmes rather than in single subject courses. Due to the…