The founder of Penn State's Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy and chair of Penn State's Public Scholarship Associates establishes public scholarship's connections with democracy by distinguishing public scholarship from service, outlining a curriculum of consequence, and suggesting the constitutional roots of public scholarship.

This concluding chapter, written by a national leader in higher education, reflects on public scholarship from a perspective beyond Penn State and argues that public scholarship promises to strengthen "that special form of public decision making that we call democracy."