This Projects With Promise case study offers insights for addressing tensions between universities and communities in building partnerships and collectively rethinking "the field" of community engagement. We explore moving beyond a solely place-based understanding of "the field" into an ethos based on human interactions and…

Responding to an ongoing disconnect between higher education institutions (HEIs) and contemporary challenges communities face worldwide, universities can become a driving force to strengthen communities' capacity toward innovative solutions to the challenges they face. This article introduces an analytical framework that provides a roadmap to…

Over the past 50 years, colleges and universities have taken on increasingly important roles as anchor institutions in U.S. cities, partnering with local communities to promote development and well-being. Such community-campus partnerships rely on the work of community engagement professionals (CEPs), staff tasked with administering, coordinating,…

The relationship between institutions of higher learning and their local communities is often described as "town and gown." Few studies examine how these partnerships affect state and local public administration and local economic development. We analyzed data from the 2014 Economic Development Survey carried out by the International…

The Peace Corps Masters International program offers students the opportunity to combine their Peace Corps service with their master's education. This article demonstrates how classroom learning strengthened the author's Peace Corps service in Tanzania, which in turn strengthened her master's thesis. Peace Corps supports an approach to community…

In this reflective essay, we describe Widener University's 10-year transformation from a disengaged institution to an institution that has a metropolitan-focused mission vested in civic leadership, community engagement, and service-learning. We describe our journey to embed an expansive civic frame that includes concrete practices of pedagogy,…

In this article, a qualitative case study approach was used to explore the changes that community-campus collaborations stimulate. The authors document the "processes of interaction" (Spaapen & van Drooge, 2011) through which collaborations seek to contribute to positive social change, highlighting the outputs, outcomes, and…

The most pressing social problems facing humanity in the 21st century are what systems theorist Russell Ackoff referred to as "messes"--complex dynamic systems of problems that interact and reinforce each other over time. In this article, the authors argue that the lack of progress in managing messes is in part due to the predominance of…

Professional and Community Engagement (PACE) at Macquarie University offers undergraduate students experiential learning opportunities with local, regional, and international partners. In PACE projects, students work toward meeting the partner's organizational goals while they develop their capabilities, learn through the process of engagement,…

This study examined the racial attitudes of White undergraduates (N = 15) enrolled in a service-learning design studio, in which students worked closely on landscape architecture projects with residents in a low-income African American community. Using a modified consensual qualitative research method, the authors analyzed a series of guided…

This article delineates Benedict College's strategies for transforming the community to foster a strong sense of connectedness and inclusivity to the institution. Reciprocal partnerships between the college and the community have served as a vehicle for achieving the mission of the college and addressing critical community issues. Benedict College…

A contemporary vision for a democracy is that it involves those who wish to be involved; the highest expression of human rationality becomes reality when ordinary people speak and reason together on issues of common concern. Public deliberation is a structured dialogue around a challenging public problem. It is a means through which citizens can…

America's universities are facing unprecedented scrutiny and criticism. As pressure for institutional change has mounted, universities have taken steps to more effectively respond to the needs of their stakeholders. All of these activities are part of a broad movement to develop new and productive connections between the university and its…

Universities are structurally constrained from engaging in community development. Traditional concepts of teaching, research, and service make it difficult to focus on the needs of the community as a motivating force in the higher learning process. Historically black public universities, however, may have fewer such constraints than large private…

In response to a state budget deficit, the University of Minnesota Extension restructured its field staff, establishing a new regional and county delivery system, shifting all supervision of field staff to campus faculty, and encouraging greater field staff specialization, program focus, and entrepreneurial efforts. Nine economic concepts and…