The terms “civic engagement” and “community engagement” have various definitions, but they are united by the sense that individuals who are civically engaged not only are concerned about the quality of life in their communities but also take action to improve conditions for the common good. In the United States, to be civically engaged means to actively participate in a civil democratic society. Going Public examines programs related to civic engagement and the ways in which faculty and students participate in communities in order to improve them. Engagement scholarship is a scholarship of action, a scholarship of practice that takes place both in and with the community. Within the framework of this new scholarship, the mission of the academy does not begin and end with intellectual discovery and fact-finding. Rather, the academy joins forces with the community, and together they use their knowledge and resources to address pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems. Each chapter in this book tells a unique story of community engagement and the scholarship of practice in a diverse range of settings, documenting successes and failures, the unintended consequences, and the questions yet to be answered.

In the preface to the Handbook of Engaged Scholarship, Hiram Fitzgerald observes that the Kellogg Commission's challenge to higher education to engage with communities was a significant catalyst for action. At Michigan State University, the response was the development of "engaged scholarship," a distinctive, scholarly approach to campus-community partnerships.
     Engaged scholars recognize that community based scholarship is founded on an underpinning of mutual respect and recognition that community knowledge is valid and that sustainability is an integral part of the partnership agenda.
     In this two-volume collection, contributors capture the rich diversity of institutions and partnerships that characterize the contemporary landscape and the future of engaged scholarship. Volume One addresses such issues as the application of engaged scholarship across types of colleges and universities and the current state of the movement. Volume Two contains essays on such topics as current typologies, measuring effectiveness and accreditation, community-campus partnership development, national organizational models, and the future landscape.

In the preface to the Handbook of Engaged Scholarship, Hiram Fitzgerald observes that the Kellogg Commission's challenge to higher education to engage with communities was a significant catalyst for action. At Michigan State University, the response was the development of "engaged scholarship," a distinctive, scholarly approach to campus-community partnerships.
     Engaged scholars recognize that community based scholarship is founded on an underpinning of mutual respect and recognition that community knowledge is valid and that sustainability is an integral part of the partnership agenda.
     In this two-volume collection, contributors capture the rich diversity of institutions and partnerships that characterize the contemporary landscape and the future of engaged scholarship. Volume One addresses such issues as the application of engaged scholarship across types of colleges and universities and the current state of the movement. Volume Two contains essays on such topics as current typologies, measuring effectiveness and accreditation, community-campus partnership development, national organizational models, and the future landscape.

Employing history, social theory, and a detailed contemporary case study, Knowledge for Social Change argues for fundamentally reshaping research universities to function as democratic, civic, and community-engaged institutions dedicated to advancing learning and knowledge for social change. The authors focus on significant contributions to learning made by Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, Seth Low, Jane Addams, William Rainey Harper, and John Dewey—as well as their own work at Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships—to help create and sustain democratically-engaged colleges and universities for the public good.  

Knowledge for Social Change highlights university-assisted community schools to effect a thoroughgoing change of research universities that will contribute to more democratic schools, communities, and societies. The authors also call on democratic-minded academics to create and sustain a global movement dedicated to advancing learning for the “relief of man’s estate”—an iconic phrase by Francis Bacon that emphasized the continued betterment of the human condition—and to realize Dewey’s vision of an organic “Great Community” composed of participatory, democratic, collaborative, and interdependent societies.

Randy Stoecker has been “practicing” forms of community-engaged scholarship, including service learning, for thirty years now, and he readily admits, “Practice does not make perfect.” In his highly personal critique, Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement, the author worries about the contradictions, unrealized potential, and unrecognized urgency of the causes as well as the risks and rewards of this work.      

Here, Stoecker questions the prioritization and theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of the core concepts of service learning: 1. learning, 2. service, 3. community, and 4. change. By “liberating” service learning, he suggests reversing the prioritization of the concepts, starting with change, then community, then service, and then learning. In doing so, he clarifies the benefits and purpose of this work, arguing that it will create greater pedagogical and community impact. 

Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement challenges—and hopefully will change—our thinking about higher education community engagement.

Rebuilding Community after Katrina chronicles the innovative and ambitious partnership between Cornell University’s City and Regional Planning department and ACORN Housing, an affiliate of what was the nation’s largest low-income community organization. These unlikely allies came together to begin to rebuild devastated neighborhoods in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  

The editors and contributors to this volume allow participants’ voices to show how this partnership integrated careful, technical analysis with aggressive community outreach and organizing. With essays by activists, organizers, community members, and academics on the ground, Rebuilding Community after Katrina presents insights on the challenges involved in changing the way politicians and analysts imagined the future of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. 

What emerges from this complex drama are lessons about community planning, organizational relationships, and team building across multi-cultural lines. The accounts presented in Rebuilding Community after Katrina raise important and sensitive questions about the appropriate roles of outsiders in community-based planning processes.

Institutions of higher learning around the nation have embraced the concept of student civic engagement as part of their curricula, a movement that has spurred administrators in various fields to initiate programs as part of their disciplines. In response, sign language interpreting educators are attempting to devise service-learning programs aimed at Deaf communities. Except for a smattering of journal articles, however, they have had no primary guide for fashioning these programs. Sherry Shaw remedies this in her new book Service Learning in Interpreter Education: Strategies for Extending Student Involvement in the Deaf Community.

       Shaw begins by outlining how to extend student involvement beyond the field experience of an internship or practicum and suggests how to overcome student resistance to a course that seems atypical. She introduces the educational strategy behind service-learning, explaining it as a tool for re-centering the Deaf community in interpreter education. She then provides the framework for a service-learning course syllabus, including establishing Deaf community partnerships and how to conduct student assessments.

       Service Learning in Interpreter Education concludes with first-person accounts from students and community members who recount their personal and professional experiences with service learning. With this thorough guide, interpreter education programs can develop stand-alone courses or modules within existing coursework.

Service learning has become an institutionalized practice in higher education. Students are sent out to disadvantaged communities to paint, tutor, feed, and help organize communities. But while the students gain from their experiences, the contributors to The Unheard Voices ask, "Does the community?"

This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy. Using eye-opening interviews with community-organization staff members, The Unheard Voices challenges assumptions about the effectiveness of service learning. Chapters offer strong critiques of service learning practices from the lack of adequate training and supervision, to problems of communication and issues of diversity. The book's conclusion offers ways to improve service learning so that future endeavors can be better at meeting the needs of the communities and the students who work in them.