MoMent

Using disciplinary and
interdisciplinary lenses, faculty
committed to civic-minded
scholarship provide the means
to deepen students’ knowledge,
investigate lines of inquiry, and
expand civic skills through
public engagement.
Faculty driven: Like students, faculty members across all sectors of
higher education have been drivers of the transformation toward education
for democracy and social responsibility. Philosopher Elizabeth Minnich
describes them as establishing “a new academy” located (often literally) “on
the periphery” in “slightly shabby houses now owned by the university…
[and] often hard to distinguish from the community that relinquished
them” (AAC&U 1995, 2). Signs on the front lawn announce these “new
academy” themes: Center for Collaborative Learning, Women’s Studies,
African American Studies, Environmental Studies, American Indian Studies,
Interdisciplinary Studies, Deaf Studies, Institute for Technology and Values,
Multicultural Studies, Science and the Humanities Programs, Center for
Research on Teaching and Learning, Continuing Education Center.
Summarizing Minnich’s argument, one scholar in the same 1995 volume
says “this new academy…welcomes rather than avoids critical and creative
engagement with wider communities. It endorses and produces scholarship that
seeks not just to know the world but to work toward a better world…pioneering
ways of thinking, learning, and teaching that provide models for engaging
differences constructively, rather than divisively” (Schneider 1995, vii).
Faculty members have assumed leadership in channeling the volunteer
energy of students into opportunities to explore important issues. Using
disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses, faculty committed to civic-minded
scholarship provide the means to deepen students’ knowledge, investigate
lines of inquiry, and expand civic skills through public engagement. Service
learning has become the term to describe a wide variety of community-based
learning and research experiences that are embedded within courses and carry
academic credit.
Recent HERI data suggest the timing is propitious for seizing on the
increasingly widespread faculty interest in education for personal and social
responsibility. In one indicator of a core capacity necessary for civic learning,
82.5 percent of faculty in 2007–8 said teaching tolerance and respect for
different beliefs was very important or essential; 72.4 percent said the same for
engaging students in civil discourse around controversial issues. Between the
2004–5 HERI faculty survey and the 2007–8 survey, a huge increase—of 19.1
percent, from 36.4 percent to 55.5 percent—emerged in faculty response to
the question about instilling a commitment to community service. Enhancing
students’ knowledge and appreciation of other racial/ethnic groups jumped
from 57.6 percent to 75.2 percent, while helping students develop personal
values climbed from 50.8 percent to 66.1 percent (DeAngelo et al. 2009).
These shifting faculty priorities reflect a larger trend: civic-oriented
scholarship infused with diversity and global perspectives is emerging as part
of the fast-growing academic field of public scholarship. The integration of
civic, global, and diversity lenses on public questions is also becoming more
prominent in pedagogies designed to have students apply their knowledge
to real-world problems. Such pedagogies are typically grounded in messy
real-world settings where students don’t just theorize how to tackle stubborn,
complex public problems, they actually figure them out with others through
hands-on experiences. This approach by faculty is transforming the routine
experience of, say, an introduction to chemistry course, an American history
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