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

Requiring civic engagement demonstrates how much we valueit, for students and for democracy. Certainly new college studentsare even busier than they had anticipated. To meet college costs,many must work more hours than they had anticipated. For some,college is more difficult than anticipated and requires more studytime. Integrating civic engagement into first-year curricula establishesits place in the competition for students’ time. I believethat within our curricula, we must encourage, inspire, and requirea significant investment of students’ time in civic engagement.Surely we can and must do better.A New Call for the First-Year ExperienceFor almost three decades, first-year experience programs havefocused on students’ success as they begin college. The diversityof our programs serves many different kinds of students in manytypes of institutions. The evolution of our programs brings us to areadiness for renewed idealism and focus, and I believe requiringcivic engagement in the first college year can center us, with greatbenefit to our students, institutions, communities, and country.For higher education, civic engagement has to be the new“what’s next” in the first year. The first-year movement needsa set of more aspirational goals and desired outcomes from thefoundation of the college experience. Higher education operateswith both ideals and practicalities. Too often institutions see thefirst year too narrowly — in a retention model, a revenue model.That paradigm argues that the significant loss of new studentsthrough attrition is a business/ financial loss and that this loss canbe stemmed by having all employees adopt more business-like attitudesand practices toward the care and feeding of new students.I see civic engagement as the rallying cry to move us beyondthis business model to renewed ideals for the first college year.As a central theme and an organizing structure for curricula andco-curricula, it challenges students to think critically about realworldissues, encourages active learning, and asks them to reflecton values.Civic engagement returns us to the original purpose of Americanhigher education: development of leaders and civic improvement.From the societal perspective, what could be moreimportant? Every society has systems and pipelines for leadershippreparation: the church, the military, the practice of certain occupations.Starting with the Colonial college, this importantregenerative task has also been the work of higher education. InAmerica, especially now, higher education assumes this role.Civic engagement in first-year instruction suggests that highereducation is about moving this next generation of college studentsinto the important roles of improving communities for thegreater good of all, not just for individual benefits. Opposing amore utilitarian and less intellectual, even anti-intellectual, view ofthe purposes of college, higher education can tend to the developmentof societal leaders who are intellectual, rational, philosophical,and civic-minded. We can re-claim the ideals of higher education.We must do this beginning in students’ first year.Civic engagement can continue to strengthen the historic andmutually beneficial bonds between campus and community.Especially in communities where town/gown relations may havebecome strained over time, civic engagement offers great promisefor improving those relations. Many communities hope collegestudents will be future residents and use their energy and talentsfor the betterment of the community.It’s high time we gave back, some would argue. We of the academyare always asking for money, from local, regional, state, andnational communities. Leaders at many levels — cabinet-level officers,deans, department chairs, individual faculty — have all had tobecome fund-raisers. We are perceived in some quarters (particularlyin state legislatures) to have insatiable appetites for resources.We are perceived by some to have an entitlement mentality. Civicengagement gives us a wonderful opportunity to give back to thevery communities we are constantly soliciting.First-Year Civic Engagement: Now and NextThis monograph’s chapters and case studies present resourcesand models that can help us do better. We can and must moveour programs for the first year of college from a retention or businessmodel to a center of ideals for academic excellence and civiclife. George Mehaffy’s chapter leads and introduces the chaptersby other higher education and civic engagement leaders. BetsyBarefoot’s chapter introduces and analyzes the case studies. Thecase studies show what can happen when colleges and universitiesintentionally introduce first-year students to the concepts andpractice of civic engagement. Following those, my closing chapterproposes action steps to make civic engagement the new “what’snext” for the first year. With idealism and purpose, we can do better!WORK CITEDPolicy Center on the First Year of College. (2002). Second National Survey ofFirst-Year Academic Practices.(http://www.firstyear.org/survey/survey2002/index.html)