Civic engagement has become an important part of the educational landscape at institutions of higher education in the United States. The development of mutually-beneficial community-university partnerships has become a common interest for practitioners and researchers as the rise in civic engagement across higher education has grown. Institutions…

Background: The academic impact agenda and evidence-informed policy movement have formed dynamic incentives for engagement between universities and local authorities. Yet, in the competitive higher education landscape, research-intensive universities frequently gravitate towards global rather than local impacts, while local government resources…

This research study analyzed the role of CEPs in strategic planning processes by examining the use of the civic action plan ("Campus Compact, 2018"). To ascertain whether institution-wide planning efforts around civic and community engagement create new opportunities for CEPs to take on institutional leadership roles, we interviewed CEPs…

Authentic community engagement involves substantive give and take with those outside the college who have an interest in the decisions that are made, or who potentially have a role to play in strengthening the college's work. Such engagement efforts begin with a commitment to building new or improved forms of partnership across various silos and…

As social work's fight for social and economic justice returns to its historical attention to finances, faculty are called to infuse financial capability and asset building (FCAB) content into their classes. Given few published models, this study contributes a redesign that infuses FCAB in a community organization course, with additional attention…

This case represents an effort to connect academic learning with educational reform in real time. It describes a district initiative to meaningfully engage a skeptical community and the subsequent attempts of university-based researchers to provide further entry points into the perspectives and concerns of educational partners. What is compelling…

The community engagement professional (CEP) plays a critical role in engaging faculty, staff, and students with communities. In order to do this in the most effective way, this essay advocates for CEPs to become familiar with the Cooperative Extension system and develop competency for engaging Extension personnel, even when those personnel are not…

This article reports on an analysis of the effects of a quasinatural experiment in which 16 rural communities participated in public discussion, leadership training, and community visioning as part of an Extension program at Montana State University. Difference-in-differences methods reveal that key U.S. Census socioeconomic indicators either…

Courses: This semester-long project is suited for courses on persuasion, diversity, social media, communication and technology, social advocacy, service-learning, or social justice. Objective: This assignment challenges students to research, design, launch, maintain, and assess an anti-hate social media campaign.

Postsecondary education refers to any education beyond high school. It builds a strong foundation for the strength of the economy and elicits other benefits as well. For those who earn a postsecondary degree or credential, there are additional career options and more income is earned over a lifetime (American Psychological Association, 2017;…

Too many students drop out and never earn their high school diploma. For students at risk of dropping out, academic, social, and other supports may help. "Communities In Schools" seeks to organize and provide these supports to at-risk students in the nation's poorest-performing schools, including through "case-managed"…

Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) provides opportunities for scholars and students to respond directly to community needs; students also practice critical thinking, problem-solving, and conflict-resolution skills necessary for professional life and engaged citizenship. The challenges of involving undergraduate students in CBPR include…

This article describes the community organizing role of an Extension educator and a research faculty to enable young children in a resource-limited community to start savings accounts and to save regularly through a school-based savings effort. The study explored whether children from low-income communities are capable of saving money regularly…

The article describes a community organizing course that was as dynamic as community organizing itself. By employing a combination of teaching approaches, community organizing philosophy, and pedagogical and andragogical techniques for student training, the course challenged students to discover their beliefs and the role of the community and the…

Some Hispanic students are making it through the Eurocentric, United Statesian education pipeline, but exponentially more are failing. Meanwhile, poor Chican@ communities are disproportionately suffering from unemployment, low levels of education, chronic illness, pollution, and myriad social ills. At this historical crossroads, it behooves…