Public Engagement

A pertinent follow-on to yesterday's post comes from the University of Chicago, which has recently established a Civic Knowledge Project (CPK) as the new community connections branch of the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. According to its web site, CKP

• provides educational and humanities programming, linking the University to other knowledge communities surrounding it;
  
• develops institutional policy that aims to establish channels for the exchange of knowledge among different knowledge communities on the south side of Chicago;
  
• serves as an organ for the dissemination of knowledge from the University to the community and from the community to the University; and
  
• undertakes small research projects that foster understanding of
  
  • how knowledge circulates in the demographic context of the U.S. and
    
  • the relationship between the circulation of knowledge and socio-economic status.
    Most research in this area begins from the assumption that socio-economic status determines knowledge acquisition. We start from the premise that knowledge acquisition and the circulation of knowledge significantly affect socio-economic status. We consider knowledge and its circulation to have structural social effects (i.e. influence class formation) on a fundamental level just as do brute economic realities. Helping to increase knowledge circulation in the area surrounding the University therefore empowers the people of the area’s communities and establishes the University as a valuable community resource. Increasing knowledge circulation between the University and the surrounding community also establishes the community as a valuable resource to the University.
  
  

The Grounding Ideas of the CPK are expressed by Danielle Allen, Dean of the Division of the Humanities and Executive Director of the Civic Knowledge Project:

"Successful democracies gather their strength and vitality from their ability to generate remarkably rapid knowledge transmission and an impressively fluid circulation of knowledge across geographical and social barriers. In a successful democracy, social diversity translates into an expanded knowledge base compiled from the banks of the entire citizenry. A central goal of the Civic Knowledge Project is to lead the University in generating modes of knowledge transmission between itself and its surrounding knowledge communities that might help jumpstart, in places where it has broken down or has never existed, the process of cultural circulation and mutual influence that is crucial to socioeconomic mobility and fluidity, and successful democratic practice."

Given the eminent status of the University of Chicago among research universities, the Civic Knowledge Project could become an influential model. It will be interesting to see how reciprocal the anticipated mutual influences between community and university turn out to be.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I went to the monthly meeting of the Academic Health Center's Community Campus Network. The theme was “Eminence Credentialing: Establishing the Credentials of Community Elders". It was announced as a panel discussion concerning how "universities must be guided by communities and embrace community Elders in university settings". Participating Elders came from the Powderhorn/Phillips Cultural Wellness Center and the Woodlands Wisdom program.

This is such a complicated subject, and I am far from having a settled opinion. My own cultural and intellectual beliefs come largely from the Enlightenment, the U.S. Constitution, and the scientific method (I'm a biophysicist). These beliefs include the importance of democracy, the general goodness of scientific progress, the ability of young people to challenge elders with evidence and argument, the importance of being able to reject received authority, one person one vote, etc.

Yet my belief system - or at least the ways it plays out in practice - is incomplete and certainly not totally successful:

• Not all intellectual disciplines are as successful as the natural sciences, even though they copy our style.
  
• Even the sciences are not totally reliable, as witness the back-and-forth of seemingly well-designed medical studies on diet, wine, estrogens, etc.
  
• Traditional medicine, disdained until recently, has shown that it knows of some drugs and procedures (esp. acupuncture) that are undeniably effective.
  
• Traditional wisdom can give new paths to healing and emotional stability. Note the PBS special on The New Medicine that just ran.
  
• "Modernism", at least in the extreme form it tends to take these days, leaves a lot of Americans behind, and tends to distort those who keep up. See Peter Levine's blog on Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods.
  
• Although I believe that there are empirical measures of scientific truth, there is little basis for asserting that non-scientific aspects of our modern Western culture are intrinsically superior to those of more traditional societies. Perhaps the commonalities in moral teachings of the world religions provide some standards of comparison.
  

Universities get particular attention because we are the standard-bearers and standard-setters of our society, and we are more open than most institutions in society to discussion of those standards. If people from other cultures challenge what we teach and how we do research, are they challenging the basic values of our society, or just how we implement them?

I expect to get deeper into this.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ideally, students, faculty, and staff would all work together in public engagement. In practice, of course, there's usually a separation of roles and a gradient of authority: faculty propose and supervise the project, students carry out the assignment.

A group of students calling themselves SCOPE - Student Council on Public Engagement - have organized a Spring Summit that aspires to overcome this separation. The vision for the Summit emphasizes unification and collaboration:

Vision: Strategic meeting of student leaders, faculty, administration, government officials, public achievement participants, coordinate colleges, and others. The purpose is to underline the meaning of civic engagement and public achievement, while discussing its accomplishments. To bring together groups and individuals who are working toward a more civically involved community in order to collaborate and create a unified message. Many people are working on similar projects but few are making theses resources known and available. In doing so, we will be creating a democracy laboratory and a legacy of civically conscious University of Minnesota. We can contribute to the University community, this state, and country as well as the world abroad by working as a collective body by synthesizing our power and passions.

This is a welcome vision. Students remind us of the power, and the necessity, of collective work. They can bring new energy, and new minds and hands, to initiatives already underway but in steady state. They can also point out to us new things that need to be done. By showing their idealism, as well as their willingness to work and organize, students validate and reinvigorate the public engagement work of their elders.

Many of the students active in SCOPE have taken Prof. James Farr's course on Practicing Democratic Education and have worked with Dennis Donovan at St. Bernard's middle school, putting the coursework ideas into practice in "a laboratory for citizenship". Students from this course also lead Students Today Leaders Forever and went on the Pay it Forward tour over spring break that I featured in my March 22 blog.

I hope that SCOPE will become a constituent group in COPE (the Council on Public Engagement). Students need to be involved in COPE, and to speak up and participate in many of the workgroups and projects that COPE has underway. The undergraduates have told me that they feel more removed from the faculty than grad students are, but in fact they have a different - perhaps less duty-bound or dependent - relation with faculty. They can challenge us in ways that our colleagues, and our colleagues soon-to-be, might find more difficult. We should welcome the challenge.

SCOPE shows us that young people have not lost the idealism that has traditionally been one of their most attractive - and most challenging - characteristics, and it also shows us that engaged idealism need not be politically partisan. Student engagement activities, including but not limited to service-learning, energize them and make them learn better. Experience with engaged citizenship leads them to continue their public service after graduation, whether in Teach For America or in the Marine Corps.

We are coming to the realization that how we should really try to measure the worth and rank of a university is not its inputs - the ACT scores of its students or the federal research dollars secured by its faculty - but rather its outputs: the beneficial things it does for society, the ways in which it contributes to a democratic society. Surely the development of such engaged students counts as a strongly positive output.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is a guest blog by Harry Boyte, Senior Fellow at the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, Co-Director of its Center for Democracy and Citizenship, and a long-time leading figure in the public engagement movement.

I write here to suggest the need for lively debate about the intellectual and philosophical meanings of “public engagement” and to offer a framework informed by earlier experiences to help stimulate discussion and debate. The following begins with a short history of the linkage of intellectual work and engagement at the UMN. It enumerates a few lessons and integrates them with a chart.

A distinguishing mark of the University’s efforts in the civic engagement field nationally and internationally has been the ways in which we have taken “public engagement” to be a substantial, open, and evolving intellectual question. Susan Ostrander, a sociologist at Tufts who examined five major institutions that have undertaken public engagement efforts, noted this pattern as the UMN’s most important contribution several years ago, in comparing the University’s experiences with those of several other research institutions (UPenn, Brown, Tufts and others) that have taken up the theme of public engagement. In today’s environment, this intellectual process is rare. Dominant definitions of citizenship (e.g. voluntarism, service, outreach) often have a sentimental and hortatory flavor, stemming from versions of communitarian theory.

The intellectual dimensions of public engagement at the UMN have been enriched by scholars and public intellectuals from elsewhere (David Mathews, Julie Ellison, Tom Ehrlich, and others) as well as by conversations of UMN scholars such as Gail Dubrow, Tom Sullivan, Bill Doherty and others last fall in the forum on public engagement and strategic positioning. Intellectual efforts have also included writings about public scholarship, various forums, conferences, publications, a regular monthly intellectual newsletter, and other activities.

A part of the intellectual process has involved examination of the theoretical and practical lessons of engagement work. This is in keeping with the rich pragmatic philosophical traditions that have nourished the UMN history – the leading pragmatic philosopher, John Dewey, after all was once on the UMN faculty. Faculty members such as Jim Farr, Ed Fogelman, and former UMN professor Terry Ball are leading scholars of pragmatism.

As the Center for Democracy and Citizenship and our partners have begun planning for a sustained organizing process on civic engagement in the state (Minnesota Works Together), we have revisited such lessons from earlier experiences that connected the university with the larger society on civic questions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the CDC worked with the Minnesota Extension Service on a “citizen politics” initiative across the state to strengthen MES’s capacities for civic engagement. It involved what we called an organizing approach. Organizing is different than informational, programmatic, or service delivery approaches. Organizing means sustained effort to build capacities for powerful, collective citizen action, especially at the local level. In the case of MES, it included training of extension agents and community residents in “everyday politics,” skills of relationship building, dealing with people of different views and interests, learning to understand local political cultures and the like. MES created a state-wide leadership team as well local leadership teams; changed supervisory patterns, and sought to change the culture of the extension service to become more responsive to local communities and more aware of citizen capacities and talents for problem solving and co-production of public outcomes.

Another effort called the New Citizenship built in part on this experience. From 1993-1995, the CDC coordinated a nonpartisan confederation of universities, foundations, and civic groups called the New Citizenship, that worked with the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first two years of the Clinton presidency. Our tag line in the New Citizenship was “to reinvent government requires reinventing citizenship.” The initiative had support from UMN President Nils Hasselmo and a good deal of involvement by UMN faculty and staff. On the basis of this work and the extension work, the Kellogg Foundation asked the CDC to assess the potential for “renewing the land grant mission” at the UMN in 1997. The planning year helped lead to the Provost’s Task Force on Civic Engagement and the subsequent Council on Public Engagement. Pat Borich, director of MES, was an extremely effective leader and visionary in this process. I remember his riveting descriptions, and the effects that they had on cabinet officers and White House senior staff, in a day-long meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room in 1994. The White House Domestic Policy Council sought a congressional appropriation (without ultimate success) for a national citizenship initiative through USDA and the extension service, building directly on the Minnesota experiences.

The centerpiece of the New Citizenship was the idea of the impact of government policies and practices on the civic life of communities: federal policies and practices can be assessed by their successes or failures in building civic capacities and productive citizen-government partnerships. Examining policies and practices through this prism sheds new light on fields of the environment, health, housing and urban development, K-12 schools, higher education, and government organization itself. The New Citizenship conducted hundreds of interviews in federal agencies, produced many working papers, and created the basis for a day long Camp David seminar on the future of citizenship with Clinton and administration leaders before the 1995 State of the Union (see the Civic Practices Network site, my Camp David log, and Benjamin Barber’s account of this experience, The Truth of Power).

From these experiences and others we learned several theoretical and practical lessons about civic engagement. All these lessons have applications to the University of Minnesota, as well as to government.

• Government is best conceived not as “the solution” or “the problem” but rather as a resource of the people in addressing our common problems and building a healthy, thriving society.
• Politicians can play useful roles in improving civic life. Indeed, the concept of “civic impact” illuminates a third column of “politics,” beyond the now dominant liberal (technocratic) and communitarian (morality focused) strands of politics that shape current debates. The civic impact of public policies needs to be considered from many directions including higher education. Other institutions can also be evaluated – and potentially held accountable -- for their civic impacts.
• “Civic life” is a concept with broad appeal to many different groups, a more communal concept than “citizen” by itself, more rooted and contextual than “public life,” and at the same time more public than “community” alone. Civic life suggests community with roots, public dimensions, and citizens doing the deliberation and public work needed to sustain it. Civic life integrates issue areas that are otherwise fragmented.
• Deliberative and public work practices function best when they are deeply contextual, cognizant of the unique identities, networks, histories, and features of particular places and communities – the opposite of the standardized “one size fits all” technocratic approaches that predominate when citizens are seen as clients and customers. These practices point to the need for reconfiguration of professional work as civic professional work, integrated into local civic cultures.

It is possible – and useful – to summarize these lessons and themes in a chart, of the sort social scientists often employ, contrasting archetypal “models” or underlying paradigms. Such a chart, of course, needs the cautionary note that such models are always open ended, with porous boundaries, enormous complexities, and many hybrids.

As the chart suggests, “public engagement” can mean very different things to different people, departments, and units, as well as to the institution as a whole. If we take seriously the University of Minnesota’s aspirations for world-class intellectual leadership, sustained attention to different models and the practices that flow from them is a central priority. The UMN has played a prominent role in the public engagement field because we have taken ideas and their implications seriously. We need many ways to examine rigorously every aspect of our work in terms of such underlying models.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday's StarTribute carried a story by Linda Mack about Cameron Sinclair, a visiting scholar in the University of Minnesota's College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (CALA). In 1999, Sinclair and his partner Kate Stohr founded Architecture for Humanity, a "laptop-based nonprofit" that "has harnessed the expertise of 10,000 architects ... to help people in poverty and crisis."

Sinclair says "I want to improve the living standards of 5 billion people", but he recognizes that design - such as temporary housing for Kosovo refugees or earthquake victims in Pakistan - needs to take account of local needs and building materials.

An assignment given to his CALA class asked two second-year graduate students, David Vilkama and Mark Lescher, to design and then build a laundry shed

for Kathy Everad, a 70-something disabled woman living with her 17-year-old granddaughter in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer. The shed had to cost less than $600 and be buildable in a few days.

"It's not sexy," said Sinclair. "She'll select the color of paint." But it allows her to do her own laundry rather than take a taxi to somewhere far away, and she can take in laundry for neighbors, as well, he said.

"She's using it," said Vilkama. "She did laundry for 15 hours straight after we finished."
The students learned as much from getting the 12-by-12-foot shed built as they did from designing it, he added.

"We now understand there's a lot more that goes into the project than just drawing it up: politics, building codes, finding materials, working with engineers and contractors -- and clients."

The story goes on to say, "While most architecture-school assignments involve a lofty project such as an art museum but no actual people, Sinclair is a stickler for clients. He had his students ride the Hiawatha light-rail train, get off at a stop, walk 200 feet and photograph and interview the first person they saw. 'That will be their client for the rest of the semester,' he said. 'They've never had a client before.'"

Working with real people with real needs determined by personal, particularized interaction, and satisfying those needs with innovative design: that's the embodiment of engaged scholarship and creative activity.

More information about Sinclair and a talk he's giving this evening is available here.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Human Rights Program (HRP) at the University of Minnesota educates students by connecting them with academic and real-world experience in the field of international human rights. A striking example of public engagement in higher education, the program serves as a connection between the University’s students and faculty and the greater human rights community. The Human Rights Program

• provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to take classes and to conduct research in the field of human rights;
  
• runs a Human Rights Minor for graduate students;
  
• assists students to find work experiences in human rights organizations;
  
• and brings together the University and the human rights communities to address critical human rights issues by hosting conferences, visiting speakers, and other special events.

This semester, the Human Rights Program and the Creative Writing Program in the English Department got support from the Office for Public Engagement to establish a fellowship for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) student who will work with the Human Rights Program as a writer-in-residence. As described in the fellowship proposal,

This “Scribe for Human Rights” would be assigned to a specific initiative of the Human Rights Program, and closely follow the project, conducting interviews and other research in order to write a narrative piece suitable for publication in a general interest publication. The fellowship would allow, but not require, the MFA student to pursue more ambitious publication, including a book-length ms.

This collaborative fellowship builds on the strong bond between the fact-finding and case-building of the Human Rights Program and the narrative abilities of creative writers who can radiate the stories related to social justice and human rights issues that so desperately need telling.

The project ... for the first year of the fellowship is the Human Rights at Home Project of the Human Rights Program. As part of this project, the Human Rights Program is coordinating the efforts of several Midwest advocacy organizations to monitor the treatment of persons being held in Midwest jails for immigration violations. U.S. immigration officials detain over 200,000 individuals annually in jails and other detention centers; in the Midwest, an estimated 2,000 immigrant detainees are held in county jails alongside the local criminal population. The detainees include persons seeking asylum from their home country who arrive without proper legal documentation at airports or borders. The jails are frequently in remote areas, resulting in extreme isolation and distress for immigrant detainees because of linguistic and cultural barriers as well as their post-traumatic psychological state. In coalition with immigrant service providers in the region, the Human Rights Program is “mapping” the detention of immigrants in seven Midwest states: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Following this kind of project would provide an urgent and profound human rights situation to engage the creative talents of selected MFA students, including writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Currently, most MFA students are employed as teaching or research assistants, but the Creative Writing Program feels strongly that a broader array of professional experience should be available to graduate student writers. Not all writers become—or should become—teachers. But many can expect to work as writers of nonfiction in a variety of fields and forms. They must be offered this experience.

The Human Rights Program, for its part, has need of story-tellers, people who can transmit the deeply individual faces of human rights abuses and vulnerabilities to a broader audience. “Reports” alone do not serve the Program’s needs. A writer who can focus on a narrative and can write for a broader citizen-audience would greatly enhance the efforts of the Human Rights Program to get its message out to the community and the world.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Students Today Leaders Forever is an organization that sparks great enthusiasm for active engagement on the part of its members. To quote from its web site,

Students Today Leaders Forever is a college-based service and leadership organization determined to change the world in a positive way.  As an organization, the mission of STLF is promoting initiative and living with passion, believing that one student can make a difference.  As a means of carrying out this mission, STLF works on campus to help students identify their passion, and then act on this through various types of leadership and service opportunities in the community.

The largest project that represents the core of the organization for STLF is the annual Pay It Forward Tour held over spring break. While espousing the concepts articulated in the movie and book of the same name, the Pay It Forward Tour provides an amazing spring break opportunity for college students and more. Students get the chance to travel the country and stop in communities to perform community service projects while learning about how these project  and community issues affect local communities, the nation, and the world. In addition to the tangible benefits of service, students gain deep personal insights into their own lives and meet those who are destined to become lifelong friends.

This spring, Minnesota Daily photographer Mollie Mitchler accompanied the tour. Her story and especially her photo essay are vivid evidence of the hard work and high spirits that characterize student community service work.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The University of Minnesota has been undergoing an ambitious, all-encompassing strategic positioning exercise this year, involving the work of many task forces that are looking at college structure, undergraduate and graduate education, diversity, international perspectives, preK-12 connections, and other systemic issues.

Public Engagement is not one of the task forces. Instead, it was reasoned that since public engagement should be integral to all our teaching and research activities, it should be a part of the charge of each task force.

Accordingly, during the Fall semester I met with each of the academic task forces to discuss with them how public engagement might fit with their particular assignment. In addition to such specifics, I assembled a list of general things that faculty might do in the course of their normal lives - at work and in their communities - to foster better connections and understanding between faculty work and the public realm. Here are 17 things I came up with:

• Talk with your students about the public significance of your field


• Put service learning or citizenship/public ethics components in your courses


• Talk with your neighbors about your university work


• As appropriate, involve the public in planning and communicating your research


• Be respectful of community interests when doing research in communities


• Write and talk for public audiences


• Discuss with your college's communications director how to reach general audiences


• Talk with K-12 schoolkids and teachers about your work


• Form interdisciplinary teams to research and teach about societal issues


• Be alert to public issues that may provide research and teaching opportunities


• Participate in public engagement discussions in your professional societies


• Support your colleagues who do public engagement work


• Count appropriate engagement activities positively in P&T and salary considerations


• Talk with your legislators and local politicians about the important work the U is doing


• Be accessible to legislators and public officials needing advice in your areas of expertise


• Participate in public policy discussions that can be informed by your expertise


• Be accessible to local companies interested in your research

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Affordable housing is near the top of the social problems afflicting contemporary America, and it's something to which architects and designers, both inside and outside universities, can contribute valuable ideas. The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina organized a design competition that challenged architects to propose innovative designs, using Habitat for Humanity’s basic three-and-four bedroom house as a point of departure, but also including the use of environmentally friendly and sustainable materials, technologies, and methods.

The 25 winning entries to the competition, made into a traveling exhibition called the HOME House Project: The Future of Affordable Housing, are currently on display in an exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum (WAM) on the University of Minnesota's East Bank campus until April 30. The exhibition "showcases one hundred innovative design approaches that use sustainable materials, technologies, and methods. Local affordable housing efforts [which supplement the SECCA award-winners] are highlighted in drawings, scale models, and building sections." Some intriguing images are on the web at http://weisman.umn.edu/exhibits/homehouse/images.html

The commentary on the web site notes:

Participating architects offer a range of design solutions from the adventurous and visionary to more traditional approaches. Design proposals make use of prefabricated structures and elements; recycled, organic, or innovative manufactured materials; passive heating and cooling techniques; and filtered rain and gray water, among other ideas. The number and variety of entries demonstrate the interest of architects in addressing pressing social issues and prove that as technology changes, so does our ability to consider and actualize new solutions to housing problems.

According to the WAM web site, "SECCA is known for its 'Artist and the Community' series, with projects that revise ideas about contemporary art and design, insisting that they can address pressing social concerns and engage directly in community issues." In this way it is an exemplar of the philosophy behind Imagining America.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday we wrote about practical applications of math from a mathematician's point of view. Here's a story about math from a student's point of view, integrating it with writing, Hurricane Katrina, and a Habitat for Humanity service project. To quote from the story:

Two University of Minnesota General College professors recently integrated the seemingly disparate subjects of math and writing in a learning community, a progressive educational model that will be a signature feature in General College's successor department [to be called the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning] in the College of Education and Human Development.

Learning communities engage students by linking courses, providing students with integrated learning opportunities and increased interaction with their instructors and peers. Last fall, 18 first-year students took part in a learning community taught by Irene Duranczyk, assistant professor of mathematics, and Amy Lee, associate professor of writing, who linked their courses with a Habitat for Humanity service project.

Students in this learning community explored how Hurricane Katrina's devastation redefined housing and housing issues in New Orleans. They gathered and analyzed demographic data on New Orleans and used algebraic expressions and concepts to develop statistics such as residents' race, ethnicity, income, and size of household. With their newly developed mathematical thinking, students gained a broader understanding of the unfolding stories about housing for New Orleans residents in Katrina's aftermath. The students then had an opportunity to put their newfound knowledge into practice. Along with professors Duranczyk and Lee, the students participated in a Habitat for Humanity build taking place in the Heritage Park housing development in north Minneapolis. They learned how to frame and raise internal walls and finish external framing. They used algebraic formulas in order to measure, determine angles and lines, and to proof their work.

This is a nice example of how so many things can come together in publicly-engaged teaching and learning: interdisciplinary approaches, new educational methods, and real world applications.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perhaps the greatest gap between the public importance of an academic area, and its reputation for ease of access, is in mathematics. As Temple University mathematician and popular author John Allen Paulos has written regarding his classic book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, "at least part of the motivation for any book is anger, and this book is no exception. I'm distressed by a society which depends so completely on mathematics and science and yet seems to indifferent to the innumeracy and scientific illiteracy of so many of its citizens." Paulos, in books such as Innumeracy, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, has done a lot to show the practical importance of mathematics and make it accessible.

Another laborer in the same vineyard is Douglas N. Arnold, Director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. Arnold has been widely quoted in the popular press for his insights into two intriguing phenomena: the size of the claimed world-record muskie, and the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot. In the muskie case, Arnold and several other mathematicians used projective geometry to raise some cautions about the apparent size of the fish. In the Powerball case, he used striking comparisons to dramatize the long odds:

• "You have a seven times higher chance of being killed in a car accident if you drive one mile to the store for a ticket and one mile back home than you do of winning this Powerball jackpot."


• "For an average American, the chance that you will die in the next 30 seconds is greater than the chance that your Powerball ticket will hit the jackpot,"


• "You would need to buy 101 million randomly selected tickets in order to have a 50 percent chance of winning the jackpot. You would have to buy one ticket per minute for 193 years to purchase that many tickets. And don't forget that the cash value of the jackpot is only $177 million, and that gets reduced to $120 million after federal and state taxes."

The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications applies the highest level of modern mathematics to a broad array of real-world problems, including cardiology, telephone networks, power blackouts, robotics, computer security, microstructure of magnetic alloys, solid propellants in rockets, and many industrial applications. These diverse applications result from intense collaborations and mutual education between mathematicians and specialists in other areas - just the sort of reciprocal partnership through which we define engagement.

The IMA's funding was recently renewed with a $19.5 million grant over five years from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the largest single research investment the NSF has ever made in mathematics. It's yet another example of how high-quality engaged research can pay off financially as well as intellectually and practically.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conferences on public engagement in graduate education, whether local or national, usually involve mostly people who are already committed to the idea. How do we get others to pay attention?

The most obvious way is for each of us who is committed to talk with our local colleagues involved in graduate education: directors of graduate study, department heads, graduate faculty, etc. This can be done piecemeal, or as part of a coordinated effort. When the University of Minnesota Graduate School instituted, several years ago, a requirement of education in research ethics for grad students, we organized a group of "Research Ethics Advocates". These faculty members served as ambassadors to the graduate programs in their general disciplinary areas, pointing out the importance of research ethics in the grad student experience, and providing examples appropriate to the disciplines. (Engineering has different ethical concerns than studio arts.) The Research Ethics Advocates also met among themselves, sharing advice and successful strategies and providing moral support.

We could and should do the same with our Public Engagement efforts, encouraging and supporting those who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable to spread the word through panel discussions, mentoring sessions, and individual contacts. Steady and systematic are our typical watchwords.

Yet we'd really like the Public Engagement movement to grow faster, to be propagated with infectious enthusiasm. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the elements needed to make new social ideas take hold in a dramatically transformative way in his book The Tipping Point. He argues that we should think of such transformations as social epidemics. "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."

The Tipping Point is entertaining, thought-provoking, and well worth reading. For those with limited time or who need a refresher, there are some useful summaries on the Web, notably those in Wikipedia and an article by Robert Paterson. Some of the main points are that three kinds of people are needed to start epidemics:

• Connectors with wide social circles, people who are hubs of social networks;
  
• Mavens who know things and like to spread their knowledge (enthusiastic teachers);
  
• Salespeople who are effective persuaders, often using nonverbal and emotional cues

• The Law of the Few : Those with the skill sets described above have disproportionate influence over the spread of social phenomena, and without their aid, such dissemination is unlikely ever to occur.
  
• Stickiness: Ideas or products found attractive or interesting by others will grow exponentially for some time.
  
• The Power of Context: Human behavior is strongly influenced by external variables of context. Small changes in specific situations can often have large effects.
  
• The Magic Number 150: Research suggests that an individual can only have genuine social relationships with 150 people. Groups larger than 150 are prone to fragmentation, and it is often best for the group's health that it split.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday's St. Paul Pioneer Press had a story about planning for evacuation after a man-made disaster such as an airborne release of anthrax or rupture of a chlorine tank. Only people within a mile of the disaster need to be evacuated, and - contrary to instinct - they should walk, not drive, to the nearest safety zone.

This recommendation comes from computer modeling by the University of Minnesota's McKnight Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science Shashi Shekhar, who "found that because of the time people took to get to their cars and then the traffic jams created, leaving the car behind was the best option". The details can be found at Prof. Shekhar's web site.

Of course, getting people to behave this way requires major efforts in public education, contacts with the media, and so forth. But it's important to know up front what the best strategy is.

Will Craig, Associate Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs and - like Shekhar - a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) expert , wrote to me:

Here's a nice example of campus-based GIS work being of real use to the people of Minnesota. Professor Shekhar's research frequently uses the local laboratory to develop and test new approaches. He connects well with local officials and helps them understand the implications of his findings. He is a perfect example of public engagement that benefits both research and the community. Some of our colleagues think that engagement is a diversion from real research. Shekhar proves that engagement is central to understanding the nature of problems and for testing the solutions.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those of us who live in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul know that we're fortunate to have an unusually rich environment of artistic activities. But we may not know much about the social mechanisms that support the arts, bringing artists together with each other and with funders and other supporters.

Our knowledge has been greatly increased by the just-published study Artists' Centers: Evolution and Impact on Careers, Neighborhoods and Economies written by Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs Prof. Ann Markusen and grad student research assistant Amanda Johnson. The study, a product of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics (PRIE), can be downloaded at http://www.hhh.umn.edu/projects/prie/artists_centers.html, which also gives directions for ordering a print copy.

The study attributes a large part of the Twin Cities' ability to "generate, attract, and retain high concentrations of artists" to the "creation of dedicated centers where artists can learn, network, get and receive feedback, exhibit, perform, and share space and equipment. " They further "believe these spaces not only serve artists but contribute to economic and community development in their respective regions." Twenty-two such centers - for writing and book arts, dance, theater, composition, textiles, ceramics, visual arts, etc. - are profiled, along with a similar number of artists.

Particularly pertinent to the place-based nature of public engagement is this paragraph from the study's Preface:

In general, the contemporary discourse on cultural and economic development policy undervalues the significance of space and place in the arts. Arts administrators and funders tend to think organizationally. But many artists and art fans think instead of a place: a theater space, a gallery, a jazz club, an art crawl, or even an entire arts neighborhood that they love to visit and revisit. Ongoing access to spaces that offer novelty and serendipitous encounters with other artists and art lovers is a great gift for artists. It is not only the events and equipment that matter, but also the networks and friendships formed around them. We argue that "more and better" artists, to use the rather crass terminology of economics, emerge in and are attracted to towns and cities that offer a portfolio of dedicated spaces for learning, networking, exhibition, and sharing tools and workspace. Once there, they contribute to the host economy by exporting their work, contracting with businesses to make them more productive and profitable, stimulating innovation on the part of suppliers, and bringing income and energy to their neighborhoods.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I wrote about our Outstanding Community Service Awards. To give a flavor of both the diversity and the academic content of the projects that have won awards, here are two winners from 2003, both from the "academic core" of the university: English and Physics.

Department of English faculty Thomas Augst and Patricia Crain, and grad student Eric Daigre, won an award for The Literacy Lab. According to the program desciption,

Literary studies today suffers from a crisis of purpose, a crisis that often resolves itself into the common plaint: what ís the point of an English major anyhow? The Literacy Lab at the University of Minnesota proposes to shift the paradigm for literary studies in the academy by bringing together facets of our discipline that have traditionally been separated: not only theory and practice, but literature and basic literacy, the stories of famous authors and the stories of ordinary citizens. By connecting a variety of literacy practices in diverse public settings, students can develop their academic skills within a "real world" of community service and understand the relevance of these skills in different cultural and social contexts.

Another OCSA was won by The Physics Force, a successful and entertaining outreach program of the Institute of Technology "developed to make science exciting and fun for students of all ages, from 5 to 105." The Force consists of high school teachers and faculty from the University of Minnesota Physics Department, led by Dan Dahlberg, Professor of Physics. Dan received the Outstanding Instructor Award in 1990 and the 1992 George Taylor IT Alumni Society Award for Teaching. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his research in magnetism.

The Force attracts standing-room only audiences across Minnesota. They have also performed for national and international audiences. They were featured at the national convention of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the Chemistry Educators national convention, on Newton's Apple, and for two years at Disney World's Epcot Center. They traveled twice to Europe and appeared on German television as guests of the "Knoff Hoff" show. Their website says

A trademark of their demonstration is "bigger is better." Why implode a pop can when a 55-gallon drum is available? Or shoot down a mythical monkey when the target could be a physics teacher dropping from a scaffold 20 feet high!

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since 1999, the University of Minnesota has annually given Outstanding Community Service Awards to faculty, staff or University-affiliated community members who have devoted their time and talent to make substantial, enduring contributions to the external community and to improve public life and the well-being of society.

A list of awardees from 1999-2005 is at http://www1.umn.edu/civic/news/ocs_awards.html. Nominations for 2006 have just been submitted. Winners will be honored at a dinner on April 25.

Awardees come from a wide range of roles and disciplines. In 2005, for example, winners were a director of service learning, an extension educator, the executive secretary of a hearing foundation, and professors of family social science, astronomy, and applied economics. This is evidence that important public engagement can come from all parts of academia and its community partners, not just the usual suspects in "service roles".

To quote from the award announcement:

...Such contributions and accomplishments must result in long-term and lasting changes for the public good and demonstrate an unusual commitment to the University and greater community.

[T]he Outstanding Community Service Award emphasizes the importance of external community service and recognizes the role of faculty and staff that is over and above the expectations of their regular position description. Awards given to faculty or staff will also recognize the agency or group with which the recipient of the award is affiliated. Community members who receive the award will have made a significant public service or public engagement contribution through an affiliation with the University of Minnesota.

These awards do not just signal the applause of the University; they also carry a significant financial reward: continuous annual salary augmentation for faculty and staff winners during their employment at the University of Minnesota.

Such concrete manifestations of recognition are crucial if public engagement is to be genuinely valued. Are there other universities that have similar award programs?

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's striking how many national or regional civic/public/community engagement efforts are going on now. They include

• NSF broader impact criterion
  
• Carnegie reclassification of higher education institutions
  
• Reports urging changes in graduate education - including more engagement - from the Carnegie, Pew, and Woodrow Wilson Foundations
  
• Community- Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) promotion and tenure project in health science disciplines
  
• Imagining America Tenure Team Project in the arts, humanities, and design disciplines
  
• CIC-NASULGC efforts on definition and benchmarks of engagement
  
• Tufts/Campus Compact project on "Research Universities: A New Voice in the Effort to Return Higher Education to its Civic Mission"
  
• Inclusion of a community engagement criterion by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and School in its accreditation standards
  
• Conferences on civic engagement in graduate education organized by the North Central Consortium of Campus Compact and the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, and by California Campus Compact
  

What we really need is examples of practice from our peer institutions. Who goes first?

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At last week's Wingspread Conference on Civic Engagement in Graduate Education, we devoted half a day to small group sessions focused on disciplinary areas. In the Natural Sciences and Engineering session, I proposed the deliberately provocative idea that scientific research, as it is currently carried out in this country, is generally engaged even if its practitioners don't view it that way. Nobody questioned the impact of scientific research on the modern world, but there was considerable dissent from the idea that it counts as civic engagement.

My argument is as follows: Most scientific research in universities is funded by federal agencies (NIH, DOE, DOD, USDA) that have goals in mind for the money they spend. There is, therefore, a reciprocal partnership (a key piece of the definition of engagement) in which the "community" tells the university what its problems are, and chooses - through an advisory process - which ones it is willing to support. It's true that investigator-initiated research is a heavy part of the mix, but whether an investigator-initiated proposal gets funded depends on its congruence with agency priorities as much as on its intrinsic quality.

Even NSF, the home of "pure research", now judges proposals on the criterion of broader societal impact as well as scientific quality.

In the biomedical arena, research is also funded by disease-oriented societies (American Cancer Society, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, etc.). These organizations are even more involved in the choice of research priorities than are the federal agencies. Rare diseases often have patient advocacy groups that - though they may not provide much funding - are passionate in encouraging medical research, supporting national and world-wide databases, and participating actively in information networks.

Therefore, I contend that most of the scientific research carried out in universities fits the definition of engagement, so long as the definition of "community" is suitably broadened. Community should mean not just our home-town neighbors, but any group of people - possibly across the country or around the world - with whom we share interests and whose lives are entwined with ours in actively reciprocal ways.

In my view, the question is not "Is science engaged?", but rather "How can we persuade university science faculty, and their graduate students, that they should recognize and value engagement as an intrinsic part of what they do?"

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the Wingspread Conference on "Civic Engagement in Graduate Education", I was the "host" at a World Café table on internal and external resources needed for successful engagement. Given that so much of the discussion of civic engagement tends to be fairly abstract, it was refreshing to get down to a somewhat more concrete discussion of what it takes.

A bare list, without much commentary, more or less in the order in which the ideas were generated:

• MONEY from various sources (with various sorts of restrictions) to fund RAs, seed grants, released time, etc.
  
• DATA and expertise to analyze them (can generate $$)
  
• EXPERTISE, both disciplinary and community
  
• LEADERSHIP AND CHAMPIONSHIP from both community and university
  
• CLEAR ACCESS POINTS to both university and community
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE AND MANAGERIAL CAPABILITY
  
• ORGANIZATIONS: State and national (e.g., Campus Compact), professional associations, funding agencies
  
• DEGREE PROGRAMS and CERTIFICATES accessible to both university and community members
  
• COMMUNICATION: Print, web, popular media, arts
  
• EFFICIENT MECHANISMS: IRB, technology transfer (see also clear access points, above)
  
• PEOPLE to do the work: students, staff, community people
  
• COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Community organizations, business, chambers of commerce, etc.
  
• EXTENSION SERVICE
  
• FACULTY time and commitment
  
• CHALLENGING INTELLECTUAL ISSUES that will engage faculty time and commitment
  
• DIVERSITY for effective work in diverse communities, and as possible attractant for funding
  
• EVALUATION CAPABILITY
  
• EXISTING MODELS AND BEST PRACTICES
  
• SKILLS: Conflict resolution, consensus building, teamwork
  
• IN-KIND SUPPORT from governments, non-profits, corporations
  

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm writing this at the just-concluded Wingspread Conference on "Civic Engagement in Graduate Education", sponsored by The Upper Midwest Campus Compact Consortium and The Johnson Foundation. I'll be blogging more about this stimulating and important conference in the next couple of days.

In the wrap-up session, however, something surprising happened. Several people said that they felt "civic engagement" was not a term that would play well on their campuses. "Public engagement" or "community engagement" seemed more acceptable.

By coincidence, Peter Levine in his blog today asks "why there is no 'civics' discipline, and why that matters". He concludes his essay as follows:

It is intriguing to imagine a formal academic discipline of "civics." It might combine philosophical investigations of citizens' role in communities, historical research into changing forms of civic participation, empirical studies of political behavior and political development, formal study of rhetoric, and analysis of the frequent challenges that confront active citizens, such as free-rider problems in voluntary associations. However, it seems unlikely that such a discipline will develop in the near future. The alternative is to try to infuse many (or all) existing academic disciplines with civic themes and to organize educational institutions so that they draw their members' attention to the study and practice of citizenship. But that, too, is a tall order. There is a risk that civics, if diffused across the curriculum and research programs of a school or university, will never amount to much.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sarena Seifer, Executive Director of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, has sent a compilation of resources on ethics in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), prepared for a recent discussion that took place on the CBPR listserv. This is an important supplement to our February 23, 2006 example of ethical issues in engaged research.

To sign up for the listserv, go to:
https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/cbpr

Sarena begins with what she says is one of the best articles she's seen on ethics in community-based education:

Quinn SC, Gamble D, Denham A. (2001) Ethics and community-based education: balancing respect for the community. Family and CommunityHealth. 23(4):9-23

The article lists ethical issues that arise in community-based education, for example:

• Are the attachments formed between students and community members
  negatively affected by the transient nature of the student's involvement?
  
• Do university requirements (e.g. applying for IRB approval, completing
  student evaluations, etc.) place additional burdens on the community?
  
• Does students' presence take community members' time away from other
  projects or leadership obligations?
  
• Who in the community can provide students with guidance, caution, and
  feedback to maximize their learning and encourage them to engage in
  critical thinking?
  
• Is there a risk of the community becoming overwhelmed by too many
  students?
  
• Is the student's level of skill to provide service conveyed to community members
  
• Are members of the community free to choose student involvement?
  
• Do community leaders have the opportunity to engage students in a real
  partnership in order to support or reject specific projects?

Other useful references:

• The US Department of Energy maintains a Community IRB website for community members of IRBs that has a wealth of information and other resources on it http://www.orau.gov/communityirb/
• Family Health International's Office of International Research Ethics (OIRE) has developed a dynamic and innovative curriculum to empower community representatives through training and education to act as a competent voice for research participants worldwide. Developed and field-tested in eight countries, the Research Ethics Training Curriculum for Community Representatives (RETC-CR) helps community representatives to understand the research process and their roles and responsibilities as partners of the research team. The Curriculum also explains the corresponding roles and responsibilities of Ethics Committees/IRBs and Researchers. The RETC-CR addresses universal principles of research ethics, informed consent, ethics committees and other important issues. http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Training/trainmat/ethicscurr/retccr.htm
• A newsletter issue of Protecting Human Subjects, published by the US Department of Education, focused on CBPR: http://www.science.doe.gov/ober/humsubj/fall03.pdf
• Proceedings from a conference on research ethics and CBPR: http://www.researchethics.org/Conference_Recommendations.pdf
• A newsletter issue of Protecting Human Subjects, published by the US Department of Education, focused on CBPR: http://www.science.doe.gov/ober/humsubj/fall03.pdf
• The Research Ethics Website at http://www.researchethics.org
• Bibliographic resources: www.researchethics.org/uploads/word/irb3.doc
• Research ethics tip guide at http://www.uml.edu/centers/CFWC/programs/researchethics/research_ethics1.htm
  Some of the sub-headings include:
  • Ethical Considerations in Participatory Research: The Researchers Point of View
  • Questions to Ask about Community Based Research Partnerships
  • Partnership-Based Research: How the Community Balances Power within a Research Partnership
  • Everything you always wanted to know about IRBs

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The third of the notable publicly engaged University of Minnesota Law School centers is The Institute on Race & Poverty (IRP). The IRP describes itself as a

...strategic research, public education and advocacy institution... that, since its founding in 1993, has contributed greatly to national understanding of how racial and economic discrimination combine to create barriers to opportunity for low-income communities of color. The work of the IRP is driven by a core commitment to the ideals of a true democracy. Paramount among these ideals is the right of all individuals and groups to substantively participate in those institutions that shape and define our society through the assignment of value and the distribution of opportunities and resources.

Within this context, IRP pays particular attention to regional social, fiscal and growth dynamics, how these impact racialized poverty, and are affected by regional policy. This knowledge allows the Institute to develop strategies, policies, and programs to ameliorate the problems. Its central goal is to create a better understanding of the structural and institutional dynamics of racialized poverty and to work with others to pursue remedies through research, the development of legal theory, public education and advocacy.

Recently, the IRP has undergone a transition that augments its academic and theory-based foundation with a renewed focus on regional social, fiscal and growth dynamics and with new technical capacities. Its new Director, Myron Orfield , is a nationally recognized expert on race, poverty, urban finance, and affordable housing. Orfield served five terms in the Minnesota House of Representatives, and one term in the State Senate, authoring a series of laws that brought about metropolitan reform that created the nation’s most substantial regional government and reformed land use and fiscal equity laws in the Twin Cities area. Urban policy columnist Neal Pierce called Orfield “the most influential social demographer in America's burgeoning regional movement.”

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few disciplines engage the public as directly as law and medicine, particularly when they are coupled with challenging environmental issues and revolutionary developments in modern biology. Therefore, the University of Minnesota's Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences, headquartered in the Law School, exemplifies publicly engaged scholarship to an extraordinary degree.

The Consortiums links 17 other centers and programs at the University of Minnesota - dealing inter alia with bioethics, stem cells, genetics and genomics, infectious disease, food safety, neurobehavioral development, agricultural and environmental policy and ethics, water resources, and international science and technology policy - to address the legal, ethical, and policy implications of the life sciences.

As the program's web site says, "While science surges forward, law, ethics, and public policy lag far behind. At the University of Minnesota we are acutely aware of this gap. As a public, land-grant, research university, we have an obligation to do more than advance scientific frontiers. We have to tackle the equally difficult questions of how law, ethics, and policy should analyze and govern these advances."

A related effort is a unique Joint Degree Program in Law, Health & the Life Sciences, which allows students to combine a Law degree (J.D.) with an M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. or M.S. in one of 12 graduate and professional degrees in health and the life sciences. According to the web site

We train students to tackle the toughest problems of the 21st century, the problems that respect no disciplinary borders and demand fundamentally new answers. Our students are becoming leaders in areas such as managed care and health policy, intellectual property issues in biotechnology, and environmental law and policy. Joint Degree Program students are able to obtain two degrees in less time and with more academic support and potentially more financial support than if they pursued the two degrees separately. The Joint Degree Program presents a lecture series, a lunch series, an annual symposium, and an annual conference an to draw scholars in these fields to campus.

These efforts are complemented by the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology , a new multidisciplinary, faculty-reviewed journal edited by University of Minnesota faculty and Law students. The journal publishes two issues per year focusing on policy, ethical, and societal issues at the intersection of law, science, and technology.

Of course, I am biased by my long association with Law Prof. Susan Wolf , the founder and Director of these programs, and the other University of Minnesota faculty involved with the Consortium, the Joint Degree Program, and the MJLST. But I can't help feeling that such innovative and energetic interdisciplinary efforts are what we need to truly address the central issues of our time.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)