Community-engaged learning opportunities are increasingly prevalent in higher education. In addition to positive personal growth and learning outcomes, these opportunities allow students to learn about the community surrounding their campus and formulate their own understandings of social responsibility and citizenship. These connections can be…

Rural communities face incredible challenges and emerging opportunities. Land-grant universities are well-positioned to assist by developing new approaches to inspire university students to become civically engaged, rural community members. With this aim, the Rural Scholars program at Oklahoma State University was developed as an opportunity for…

Engagement in citizen science can result in participant outcomes including increased science and environmental literacy and civic action. One factor which may increase the likelihood of these outcomes is facilitation by groups such as employers, schools, or other organizations. We examined how a partnership between SciStarter and Girl Scouts of…

Finding ways to move knowledge-to-impact is a key priority for research funding agencies, universities, and academics. However, academic engagement with the broader community is not without tensions and challenges, including arriving at mutual benefit and relevance, and addressing power dynamics and often incompatible communication practices. This…

Alternative Breaks are service trips that occur at colleges and universities all around the United States, but little is known of their long-term impact on the participants. This study explored how alumni of Alternative Break programs were civically engaged in their communities post-graduation. The survey instrument, modeled on the Life After…

New Hampshire is a place of both traditions and contradictions. Though historically New Hampshire's demographics have been primarily white, the state is becoming increasingly diverse with respect to racial and ethnic identities. There are communities with significant wealth adjacent to towns with widespread poverty and devastating rates of…

This study presents a unique educational partnership combining the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools Program with a concentrated iteration of civic education via iEngage Action Civics in order to provide an opportunity for a localized curriculum that featured specificity to the urban community demographic. Participants were asked to…

Numerous sport-based interventions exist which target marginalised or 'at-risk' young people with the intention of enabling some form of social change for programme participants. Very often, the objective of such interventions is the acquisition and development of qualities associated with 'good citizenship'. However, critical scholars have noted…

Since 1995, the Donors' Education Collaborative (DEC) has supported a range of groups--advocacy, organizing, research and policy groups--who advocate for, or whose members come from, diverse constituencies concerned about public education in New York City (NYC). DEC has also encouraged collaborations among these types of groups to leverage their…

Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes both locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools into committees and gives these groups powers…

This is the second evaluation of the Donors' Education Collaborative's (DEC) grant making since its founding in 1995. The first evaluation was a cross-case study of three projects that embodied DEC's theory of action: lasting systemic school reform demands sustained funding to build organizational collaboration that simultaneously broadens and…

Proceedings are presented of twenty public hearings conducted by the advisory council for technical-vocational education in Texas. The objectives of the hearings were to provide an opportunity for citizens to give input as to needs, assessment of resources, and dialogue regarding technical-vocational, adult, and manpower programs. The first three…

The Minneapolis Accountability Project was an effort of the Minneapolis Public Schools to provide greater accountability to the public by helping citizens evaluate school programs. Citizens' study groups were provided with staff to help them in a year-long study of a topic selected by a citizen's advisory board. Study committees met weekly…

The Urban Crime Prevention Program (UCPP) was designed to combat urban crime through the establishment of 85 innovative neighborhood-based crime prevention projects across nine cities for 18 months. UCPP's main goals were to increase citizen participation in innovative neighborhood crime prevention efforts, to bolster the capabilities of…

This qualitative study conducted in urban Miami, Florida, explored the essence of juvenile delinquency and recidivism: its causes, its relations to communities, the roles of families, and the myriad roles of residential treatment programs at rehabilitating young offenders. Data were collected from nine young adult participants who had satisfied…