First-Year Civic Engagement: Sound Foundations for College ...

open to new experiences. Civic engagement initiatives channelthis growth to educationally and socially meaningful outcomes.Given the rapidity with which many college students make affiliationchoices, we need to connect students to the communityearly in the first term, make civic engagement an early competitorfor their time, resources, and loyalty, and make their colleagues incivic engagement some of their first new friends.Let’s listen to our students: First-year students report very mixedsatisfaction levels with opportunities for community service and therelevance of coursework to everyday life: we can and should be doingbetter. Monograph chapter author John Pryor reports that in YourFirst College Survey, conducted by UCLA’s Higher EducationResearch Institute with the participation of a national cohort of144 institutions and 38,538 first-year students:1. 49.8% of respondents were very satisfied or satisfied withtheir opportunities for community service, but 42.7% wereneutral, and 7.5% were dissatisfied. We can do better!2. 51.2% were very satisfied or satisfied with the “relevance ofcoursework to everyday life,” but 37.1% were neutral and11.8% were dissatisfied. Dissatisfied students are boredstudents, more prone to drop out. We can do better!There are troubling degrees of first-year student “academic disengagement.”This is manifested by students frequently or occasionallycoming to class late (63.1%), or not coming to class atall (32.7%); turning in assignments that do not reflect their bestwork (42.5%) or late (15.7%). Most disturbingly, 43.5% of studentsreported that they “frequently” felt “bored in class.” Only24.1% reported that they “frequently” felt that their classes inspiredthem “to think in new ways.” Surely, we can do better.Many students engage in other activities. This sample yieldedthe findings that 39% studied or did homework less than sixhours per week, 30.8% six to ten hours a week, and only 30.2%invested eleven or more hours a week. We can provide incentivesfor higher levels of engagement. We have much power and imprimatur,and we can do better.The case for incorporating civic engagement in the first-yearexperience is strongest for me when I look at what students expectto do upon coming to college versus what they actually do. Moreexpect there is “some chance” or a “very good chance” (74.6%) toengage in community service during the first year, but fewer actuallydo (61.5%). We need to meet – and raise! – their expectations.We need to require civic engagement.The beginning college experience, especially the curriculum,can lead most students to experience something intellectuallythat they would not, if left to their own devices, have chosen.We call this “general education.” And even though at most institutions,the required common elements of the general educationcurriculum have been greatly diluted over the last three decades,students are still forced to invest significant intellectual time insubject matter they might initially regard as irrelevant. Requiredimmersion into their communities may actually serve as a countervailingforce, placing students in what is definitely the “real world.”The very fact that on most campuses there are so few common,required academic experiences argues for a unifying idealacross the first year. We can implement this with mandatory,course-embedded civic engagement. We have vastly reducedthe common experiences that historically were sources of studentbonding and connectedness with the institution. (To discover thisfor yourself, pick up any course catalog and do a search for theverbs “will,” “must,” and “shall.” You will find very few. At best, allstudents are required to apply, pay fees, register, but little else.) Itis no wonder that we face challenges of “retaining” students in astructured environment where we take so few opportunities tocreate common, shared experiences, particularly those that mightlink the curriculum and the co-curriculum and students to thecollege and the community.Late adolescence/early adulthood is a period for testing outfuture adult citizen behaviors, the practice of ethical skills, groupaffiliation choices, intellectual habits of inquiry. We should usecourse-based civic engagement to encourage all of these.For traditional-aged college students living on campus, civicengagement in a course setting forces contact outside the normalconfines of youth culture. As first-year students create theirnew “home,” civic engagement forces them to cross social, cultural,and generational divides and gain valuable learning. Studentsgain wider experience and an opportunity for informed engagementwith their new community.Civic engagement looks beyond a focus on job preparation.For many of us in the academy, this consumer model for highereducation has generated dismay, frustration, and even denial. Formany students, higher education has become a mere means toan end, that of improved employment opportunities and makingmore money. Many of our classes reflect this conflict: professorssee higher education as an end in itself; students have a moreutilitarian approach and see the class as a means to grades, credits,degree, job, the good life. A central theme of civic engagementasks professors to connect teaching and learning to benefits forboth students and society; it asks students to broaden their horizons,discover new ideas and contexts, and apply their knowledge.Civic engagement provides a context/structure for the importantout-of-class contact between students and faculty/staffand with community members. The challenges of out-of-classeducational interaction have never been greater. Many studentscommute. Even today’s residential students stay in touch withfamily members and past associates with great ease, and manywork. Civic engagement offers new connections and mentoringbased in the classroom and beyond the classroom.