Modern conceptions of land grant institutions have shifted focus from community outreach to community engagement, with focus on more egalitarian partnerships that place community members in active response to university engagement efforts. Historical studies that explore these interactions often fail to capture the nuance and reciprocity of these…

This essay reports on engaging academic and community partners whose positionalities spanned diverse lived experiences and power structures. Using groundwork from several literatures, we reflect on developing, nurturing, repairing, and expanding a container as a critically reflective space for experimenting with new ways of being and doing. A…

The purpose of this study is to examine how land-grant universities engage with the public in the era of globalization; to explain the institutionalization of engagement processes accounting for the global context; and, to integrate this analysis into a Global Engagement Model for Land-Grant Universities (GEM) implementing a grounded theory…

Cooperative Extension has a long-standing history of placing individuals in communities to lead community-wide change. These individuals are employees of the nation's land-grant universities, with significant roles and responsibilities working between and among institutions and their communities. They often must maintain dual identities and roles,…

This reflective essay addresses the nexus of two recent events in the United States: (1) the public scrutiny of the relationship between land grant universities and the expropriation of Indigenous lands and (2)the often uncritical and rapid uptake of settler land acknowledgments at public college and university events. We argue that written land…

This qualitative single-case study examined the institutionalization of community engagement at a selected land-grant university by melding individual and organizational perspectives and examining the process as an adaptive challenge. Specifically, the study applied Holland's (1997) assessment matrix for institutionalizing community engagement and…

Research on higher education community engagement (HECE) rarely places university or institutional voices in conversation with the community partners' voices. Boundary-spanning frameworks such as Weerts and Sandmann's (2010) for universities and Adams's (2014) for community partners help boundary spanners, but such models draw boundaries between…

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…

Land Grant Institutions (LGIs) and Cooperative Extension were founded to bring educational access to the states they serve. In contrast to this mission and the ubiquitous nature of Extension services in US counties, Extension offices can only be found in a small number of indigenous communities. Despite these inequities, there are Extension…

University engagement in community settings is increasingly valued and expected. Extension efforts vary slightly from community engagement conducted at private institutions but the ultimate goal has been focused on a stronger level of societal relevance that improves both society and the overarching goals of higher education. The Organizational…

This study, "A Quantitative Examination of Criminality in Relationship to Enrollment at Selected Land-Grant Institutions of Higher Education," examined the relationship between reported criminality and annual enrollment quantities among selected land-grant higher education institutions for the period of 2001 through 2014. The conceptual…

This article summarizes a project focused on the PROSPER program delivery system as a formal vehicle for addressing substance misuse and abuse in Ohio communities. Promoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) is a nationally recognized, evidence-based program delivery system designed to implement prevention…

The tripartite mission of the land-grant university -- teaching, research, and community engagement -- has evolved over the course of the past 150 years. The intensified concentration on empirical activities in the last half century, however, is thought to have created a mission-related imbalance that often has relegated teaching and community…

The authors of this report call on their colleagues to adopt "Public Impact Research" (PIR) as a broad label to describe how university research improves lives and serves society--locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. Using PIR consistently along with fundamental discovery and training the next generation workforce communicates…

Public higher education is in danger of failing to respond sufficiently to changing conditions that affect the public's need for services. A recognition of the apparent failure of higher education to keep pace with societal change and to meet the additional challenges of declining funding, increased accountability, and shifts in public attitudes…