Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
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academic review?”—rested on the assumption that research university
missions were appropriately and forever fixed in the penumbra of
(1) the German research model and Clark Kerr’s master plan division
of scholarship among insoluble and separate institutions of
research, (2) K-12 teacher certification and terminal degrees, and
(3) remedial and vocational campuses or junior colleges that ironically,
yet appropriately, are today referred to as community colleges.
Democracy was a troubling concept. Our National Conversation
did not sufficiently address it. Later, I raised the democracy
question again, this time with the faculty program committee of
Penn State’s new public scholarship-based intercollege minor in
Civic and Community Engagement. The minor’s requirements
included a newly developed lower division survey course called
Fundamentals of Civic and Community Engagement, a capstone
project, approved fieldwork in the community, and several electives
individually tailored for each student with the assistance and approval
of faculty mentors. Missing at the National Conversation,
and when the program committee met, and in the minor’s curriculum,
was a sustained consideration of democracy itself—either
what it is, or how to practice it. A democracy requirement should
be made explicit, I thought. I wanted our faculty to state what we
wanted students to understand about democracy and what bodies
of knowledge and practice would best contribute to that learning.
This is not a new or an original thought. CIRCLE, Campus Compact,
and others sometimes distinguish between learning about
democracy and learning its effective practice. Public scholarship
requires both. But too often and intentionally or not on the part
of institutions, there has been an unsupported assumption that
volunteering in a community provides the knowledge and praxis
necessary to sustain a complex constitutionally based democracy.
The program faculty settled on requiring at least one “public
issues and democracy” course. The language reads:
Public Issues and Democracy Courses investigate the
roles academic disciplines play in their contribution to
public debate and participation in civic issues and community
problem solving. Through the lens of specific
academic disciplines and the examination of their civic