Public Engagement

Many faculty realize that publicly engaged research and teaching would be valuable and even enjoyable, but are deterred because engaged scholarship is often not adequately rewarded in promotion, tenure, and salary decisions. We're wrestling with how to strengthen the University of Minnesota's commitment to public engagement; here are some of the ideas we've come up with.

Promotion and tenure guidelines

• Urging from the Provost's office that departmental P&T statements be updated to more explicitly value engaged scholarships


• Noting that the Faculty Culture Task Force identified public engagement as a priority


• Incorporating peer review from community partners into P&T deliberations


• Extending the tenure clock for engaged scholarship, when extension is carefully justified

Faculty governance

• Discussing public engagement with faculty senate committees that deal with teaching, research, and faculty affairs

Orientation programs

• New faculty: How can engaged scholarship be a "safe" route to a successful academic career?


• New chairs/heads: How can engaged scholarship enhance departmental priorities and reputations, and expand the conception of faculty life and work?


• Providing examples/case studies of successful work and opportunities

Faculty recognition

• Outstanding Community Service Awards


• Competitive small grant program


• Incorporating engagement as a criterion in outstanding teaching awards

Enriching scholarly work

• Discussing with department and college leaders to discuss how engaged scholarship fits within and enhances unit missions


• Embarking on engaged scholarship during mid-career changes of emphasis


• Using service-learning as a change agent for curricular innovation


• Taking advantage of the diversity of an urban campus

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the past few days, two of our faculty (one active, one retired) have been the subject of major stories in the StarTribune.

Marti Erickson was featured (see http://www.startribune.com/389/story/457518.html because she and her daughter have just started a call-in radio show, "Good Enough Moms". Marti is no stranger to the media. In addition to her distinguished career as founding Director of the Children, Youth and Family Consortium and her current status as Professor of Child Development and Co-Chair of the President’s Initiative on Children, Youth and Families, her biography at The Center of Excellence in Children's Mental Health says

In addition to a busy schedule of public speaking, Marti appears regularly on television as the child and family expert on the KARE-11 (NBC) Today Show and Sunrise Show. She also writes music and is lead vocalist with Free Spirit, performing at professional conferences and community events to raise awareness about child and family issues.

From 1994 to 2001 Marti worked closely with former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper to help coordinate their series of annual family policy conferences(Family Re-Union) and related activities. She serves on several nonprofit boards, including Prevent Child Abuse America, the National Institute on Media and the Family, and the National Council on Family Relations. During her career Marti has received many awards from state and national organizations, most recently the Minnesota Psychological Association’s 2003 Outstanding Contribution to Psychology Award and the 2003 Distinguished Best Practices Award from the Minnesota School Psychologists Association.

Gerry Neubeck, retired as one of our most distinguished faculty in Family Social Science, was featured (see http://www.startribune.com/120/story/461546.html because as a 17-year-old Jewish boy in Nazi Germany, he nearly qualified for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games in the 3000m run. His story is told in an exhibit developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and currently on display at the Minnesota Historical Society, "NAZI OLYMPICS Berlin 1936".

Neubeck and his family left Germany in the late 1930s and emigrated to the United States, where after completing his studies he became a leader in the fields of human sexuality and marriage therapy. According to the Winter 2004 issue of the Family Social Science publication, Interactions, "In the 1960s he taught the first college course on human sexuality. Profiled in Look magazine, this course gained Dr. Neubeck scores of attention for his work. He’s credited for being the first to use group sessions for marriage therapy and also was the first to pen a book on the topic of extramarital affairs." In retirement, he's been an active, published poet.

Erickson and Neubeck are both leaders in their academic fields, but they have had the energy and talent to extend beyond academia - in very different ways - to engage with the broader concerns of society.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is sometimes concern among those who do community-based participatory research (CBPR) that it will be viewed as insufficiently evidence-based and rigorous by academic colleagues, and that efforts to help the community change will be seen to overstep the bounds of proper "objective" scholarship. I put these questions to Cathy Jordan, Director of the University of Minnesota's Children, Youth and Family Consortium, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, and one of our most effective practitioners of CBPR. Here are her responses, which strike me as quite convincing:

Although it is somewhat outside the usual definition, I see CBPR as one possible route to helping to establish evidence-based treatments, at least those that apply to community health problems. CBPR can be an effective, and possibly more effective, tool to study the efficacy of various community-based approaches to intervention around issues like smoking, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, etc. That research can establish the evidence-based treatments relevant to community health.

There is also no reason that CBPR could not utilize evidence-based treatments (traditional definition) in a research study. Just as the DREAMS Project used gold standard empirical prospective research methods and the Phillips Lead Project was essentially a clinical trial (and they were therefore rigorous) there is nothing to say that clinical research using evidence-based treatments could not be done in a CBPR approach. (The DREAMS Project and Phillips Lead Project were federally funded CBPR longitudinal studies, one on the developmental effects of lead and the other on the efffectiveness of a culture-specific peer education intervention.) I think you could even have wet lab research be part of a CBPR project.

CBPR doesn't dictate the methods. It speaks only to issues like co-creation of the agenda, co-design of the work, balance in decision-making power, use of the resulting information to make some community-defined impact, etc. If researchers working with a community group feel that such a research design would answer some question relevant to what the collaboration is trying to find out, they make that decision together and the community folks entrust the basic researcher to design the right study and help them understand it and make use of the resulting information, then the basic science project has a place in a CBPR project.

I have a real life example. I've been loosely part of a network of folks interested in the links between nutrition, brain biochemistry, health, and development. Various parts of the network have worked on various questions. There are folks doing collaborative research in Indian Country around nutrition and chemical dependency treatment. Others are interested in school breakfast and lunch changes and effects on school performance. There is a general understanding amongst the folks in the network that it is important to understand the brain piece and to base the interventions on an understanding of this basic science work. Therefore there is a basic science guy that does chemical dependency animal model work as part of this network.

Regarding the "help the community change" notion - faculty who do public health practice, for example, do this all the time. They aim to create improved community health outcomes through interventions and their evaluations, dissemination of evidence-based prevention information, etc. They may even use a "community-organizing approach" to do this but they would say that this can still be scholarship. They produce reports and practice recommendations, public education curricula, intervention protocols, training manuals, etc. If they submit these for peer review and they disseminate them to the audiences that are relevant for their purposes, should that not count as scholarship?

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The April 23, 2006 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (p. 5) has a guest editorial by John C. Warner, Director of the Center for Green Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Dr. Warner begins by observing that "Society has traditionally dealt with hazardous materials in manufacturing by creating legislation limiting the use of certain materials." He goes on to ask "Why do we have toxic materials in our society?" and answers that "One possible reason is that chemists do not actually know how to make non-toxic materials." He calls for research and education in synthetic chemistry that would enable chemists to "consider at the very beginning of a design process the toxicological and environmental impacts of their various choices", and points out that ethically-minded chemists need to be able to invent new chemicals, not just monitor the effects of chemicals designed by others.

The Outreach page of the Green Chemistry web site says

Green Chemistry is not just teaching alternative synthetic techniques. We not only focus on change within the chemical community but also on how the community interacts and relates with society. We believe a fundamental understanding of chemistry is within the grasp of all members of society. Barriers, real or perceived, need to be removed in the understanding of chemistry. We believe this is beneficial and necessary to effect true change in the world.

Public engagement takes different forms in different disciplines. This is a very pertinent example of how we can shape our teaching and research to produce a more engaged chemistry.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A large public research university like the University of Minnesota reaches out with its teaching, research, and outreach missions to embrace the whole state and beyond. But there's always the question: how much can we achieve by focusing on a single neighborhood?

Among the potential virtues of concentrating engaged work in a particular neighborhood are developing synergy among related projects, establishing long-term relationships with and among neighborhood people, building partnerships with city and county government projects, building connections with official and non-official neighborhood leaders that can ease arrangements for off-campus work, devoting enough resources to actually make a difference, sharing knowledge of possible subtle neighborhood structures among researchers, and getting favorable notice from foundations and other funding agencies.

Potential downsides of concentrating in a single neighborhood are feelings of exclusion or neglect on the part of other neighborhoods or municipalities, accusations of partisanship, the possibility that if one project goes seriously wrong it can poison the well for many others, the possibilities that a particular neighborhood is not a good one for a particular project or that it's already saturated in that area or a control group in a different locale is needed, or that the neighborhood can feel besieged and manipulated by too much attention, however well-intentioned (particularly if it is not fully trusting of the university's intentions).

An example of how the positives outweigh the negatives comes from long-term efforts on the West Side of St. Paul, which has been a focus for some of our most conscious and grounded public engagement activities originating from the Center for Democracy and Citizenship in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Efforts on the West Side began about ten years ago with the establishment of the Jane Addams School for Democracy, "created ... by students and faculty from the University of Minnesota, the U of M’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, residents of St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood, staff of the Neighborhood House and the College of St. Catherine. The school’s mission is to assist immigrants to learn English, pass the U.S. citizenship tests and become engaged citizens. Immigrant families originally from 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are involved in the school. They meet at Humboldt High School each week and work on their English and citizenship tests with college students and volunteers." (UMNnews press release, 7/27/2005)

From the Jane Addams School has developed an additional - and broader - effort, the Neighborhood Learning Community (NLC). The NLC is supported in part by a $1.5 million grant from the Wallace Reader's Digest Fund to the Center for Democracy and Citizenship. To quote from a recent story

Through the West Side NLC, the people and institutions of the West Side neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota intend to create a culture of learning, an environment where the entire community is engaged in the ongoing work of connecting formal and informal learning opportunities to children and their families. The West Side NLC intends to build meaningful learning relationships across generations and ethnic groups, highlight existing, invisible learning resources and generate new ones, and develop people’s capacity to see themselves as contributing, creative members of their families, neighborhood, and our society. If this culture of learning can evolve and sustain itself, then learning for children ages six to ten will improve.

The West Side neighborhood, in many ways, is an ideal setting for this project. Sometimes called the Ellis Island of the Midwest, the West Side has been a portal of entry for immigrants dating back to the mid-19th century. Over the years many immigrant groups have settled in the West Side community, and the neighborhood’s rich cultural diversity has long been a source of identity and pride. West Side history is expressed in more than 60 public art pieces and murals visible along the streets and inside buildings in the neighbor- hood. Currently the largest immigrant groups are Latino and Hmong, with Somali beginning to find residence in public housing. While the West Side has been considered a low-income neighborhood, poverty has not marred the values embraced by its residents.

The West Side of St. Paul model shows the virtues of long-term, consistent engagement with a single locality, albeit one with an evolving population. It will continue to be an important model as the University of Minnesota develops its urban agenda.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning's StarTribune had an editorial "Higher ed is reaching a wider population" that cited the following statistics from a 2004 report of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education:

• A quarter of the undergrads in Minnesota colleges are children of parents who did not go to college.
  
• One-fifth of Minnesota college undergraduates are also parents.
  
• 83 percent of undergrads hold jobs during the school year.
  
• 35 percent are 24 years old or older.
  
• 12 percent have at least one parent who was born in another country.

The editorial notes the special role that community colleges play in the higher-ed system: "Two thirds of Minnesota's undergrads report that they enrolled in a community college at some point in their academic career. That includes about a quarter of students currently enrolled in four-year institutions."

Most faculty (and administrators, I suspect) at the University of Minnesota and similar public research universities across the country are unaware of this role of community colleges. We pay a lot of attention to demographic predictions about declining numbers of "traditional" college-age students, and to the need to attract students from non-traditional backgrounds through a more intentional and comprehensive preK-12 strategy. But we tend to overlook the importance of post-secondary "feeder" institutions. Clearer communication of needs and expectations and more thoughtful interactions between all levels of higher education are badly needed.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Prof. James Farr in the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota teaches a Practicum that challenges students to get civically engaged. This year much student effort has been devoted to developing the Student Committee on Public Engagement, or SCOPE. Here is a report by Nicolas Allyn, one of the Practicum Students, on the beginnings of SCOPE.

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The Student Committee on Public Engagement has had a successful first full semester. The organization has hosted two productive conferences and presented itself as a legitimate stakeholder on the University of Minnesota (the University) campus. Members of S.C.O.P.E, now known as Scopers, have made many important personal relationships with people on campus and in the organization itself. Since the workgroup’s inception there have been obstacles internally and externally that have been overcome and have overcome us. The most pressing obstacles facing SCOPE now is deciding what direction we will take in the future and the internal structure of the group. SCOPE has a blurred vision of what we want, and where we want to be, but no definitive strategy to get us there.

My current personal operational vision for S.C.O.P.E. is a three tiered approach. The first tier is providing support and connection to civically engaged organizations and people at the U of M, and in the community. The second tier is outreach and recruitment of non-civically engaged individuals in the University community. The third tier is integrating S.C.O.P.E. into the University community. Short term strategy is comprised of actions that can be made that would achieve the tiers of the operational vision. Some of the possible action items will be explored later in the report. In order to accomplish this vision and strategic actions S.C.O.P.E. needs to make internal changes to become more efficient and structured without losing sight of its origins. The organization also needs to think about expansion and how that will happen.

The first tier of supporting and connecting those engaged organizations and individuals on campus and in the community was a large component of Civic Summit on March 31st, and the Capstone Conference on April 29th. The conferences have connected many good people in various communities. We always figured that even if the conferences flopped at least the people invited will create something constructive. Having students, faculty, staff and administration on the same level was refreshing and useful. The ideas that were expressed by the participants were from a variety of perspectives.

Information that was gathered really needs methodical analysis that will be compiled into some sort of summation document. This document should be sent out by mid summer. The document should have the main values, endangerments to those values and actions that were discussed at the Civic Summit. Also in the document should be the thoughts on the five action items that were discussed at the Capstone Conference. Most importantly a list of all people who attended the conferences should be included. The list ought to include their organization and contact information. This will hopefully facilitate communication and collaboration between the participants. The newsletter could be an E-newsletter or a traditional newsletter but it needs to get out sooner than later. If it comes in the summer it will keep people thinking about S.C.O.P.E. and how we can help them and how they can help us.

For S.C.O.P.E. to be successful at connecting the stakeholders that need to be connected we need to know about them. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to know about every individual and organization and what they are doing, but we need an organized database to locate this information. This project would be a very powerful tool and could be worked on over time. The only immediate need is infrastructure that would enable the organization to build this contact database. Also, a search of existing contact lists needs to be made.

The second tier of outreach to the un-engaged University Community members needs to be done on a few different levels. This requires specifically reaching out to students, faculty and staff that are not currently engaged but have shown interest or promise. For students a broad and possibly influential strategy could incorporate civic values and experiences into the first year experience. This could start at orientation and making freshman seminars that would be focused on public work. Faculty outreach could be a top down approach of a requirement for departments to implement more service learning classes, but the best way would be by making personal relationships with faculty. Scopers need to talk to professors and instructors during their normal, daily interaction to get them interested in teaching public work. Also, some type of collaboration with Student Activities Office would be productive.

The Free Spaces Initiative is also a tangible action that would contribute to outreach and both connecting those currently engaged and integration into the University Community. The initiative has many facets from the “Conversation Bracelets”, the “Front Porch Project”, or finding existing free spaces to utilize. This initiative would be a public action that S.C.O.P.E. would be behind. The project has the potential to reach many and get them to become interested in what is going on. Catching and holding individual’s attention long enough to put this in their mind is difficult but because the features of this initiative are original they will take notice.

The “Conversation Bracelets” project is an idea from the University of Maryland Baltimore County that uses popular silicon bracelets to indicate individuals who are open to having a conversation with new people. If a person is standing in line at the coffee shop and sees a person with a bracelet then they could feel free to start a conversation with them. The purpose of the project is to open up dialogue between students and others on the U of M campus. If this is successful the trend of declining person to person contact and technological isolation could be turned around. The “Conversation Bracelets” is a project that needs quick action so that the implementation can happen next fall. The search for funds and logistics needs to happen over the summer so we can make this happen.

The “Front Porch Project” is my personal favorite of all the slated projects. Building a permanent front porch on the future student services building would be a legacy for S.C.O.P.E. and a possible home for the organization. This project stems from the front porch meetings that have been held by Harry Boyte and others and Amir Pinnix’s speech at the Civic Summit about the southern tradition of front porch conversations. The front porch could be a place where the University President could have community meetings once a month and people could voice their concerns or questions. It would be strongly suggested that technology like iPods and cell phones are kept off the porch and only person to person conversations are held on the porch. The first step in getting the front porch would be getting on the planning committee and presenting the plan.

My dream is to have the S.C.O.P.E. office right off the porch so those with great ideas for change could come to the organization for support. The need for an office is something that cannot wait five or six years but needs to be secured very soon. Ideally, we would have a space by this fall so we have somewhere to store things and a place where people can find the organization. There are rumors that there might be space in the old Newman Center and this lead needs to be followed up. If that does not come to fruition space in Coffman or elsewhere is needed.

The office is a physical manifestation of the third tier of integration into the University community. The organization has made good progress on this front with the relationships built with administration and other stakeholders in the community. Also, getting on the Student Engagement Initiative and other gatherings of stakeholders has been crucial. Scopers need to continue this work and connect with more people at different levels. We have to strategically find our niche in the University. This must be done without crowding people’s turf and if we do, we need to do it carefully. This integration also concerns keeping the organization legitimate in the eyes of students, faculty and the administration. The most pressing concern with integration is not being co-opted by the administration. We must find a balance between being a force of change for the institution and being just another part of the institution. The organization needs to stay flexible and organic, while still being able to work within the system.

S.C.O.P.E.’s history has been filled with internal conflict and change. Personalities have clashed, ideas have conflicted and this has hindered progress, while providing perspective. Even with these internal conflicts S.C.O.P.E. has made good progress with the two conferences and the personal connections made. However, in order to accomplish the above stated projects, the organization needs a more efficient internal structure. The structure needs to be efficient while still allowing members the current ability to express their ideas in an open atmosphere. If the mistake is made and the organic nature of the group is lost we have lost one core objective of our group.

One possible internal structure for S.C.O.P.E. would be too have an executive board, a support committee, an outreach committee, and an integration committee. The committees then would have sub-committees that would handle individual projects. The executive board would handle the money, day-to-day operations, long-range strategy, and expansion. The board would be elected or possibly have a rotation of members. The executive board members would also be part of a work committee and work on individual projects but have no greater authority than other members. None of the committees would have hierarchy within them and they would be run like a normal S.C.O.P.E. meeting. The three work committees would be in charge of coming up with projects and dividing themselves into sub committees. Members would be able to be in multiple committees and sub-committees if they have the time and energy.

This above structure is far from complete and is missing many details that need to be addressed if the organization chooses this structure. The proposed structure would work well if the organization grows in numbers because there are many possible committees. Also, if the organization is going to be taking on multiple projects there needs to be a division of labor. If we have the same decision making process we have now it will take too long to move on one project, much less three simultaneously.

S.C.O.P.E needs to have a discussion about the organization’s direction and structure before it considers expansion into other schools. Once we have made these decisions we can then make concise documents that will aid us in presenting the S.C.O.P.E model to other people. Concise documents will be useful for both expansion and explaining S.C.O.P.E to interested parties. For the immediate future we can piggyback the expansion on Public Achievement and the contacts of Dennis Donovan and others. In the future people will possibly come to us once we get larger and better known.

The most pressing concern for the future of S.C.O.P.E is figuring out the internal structure for the organization. Other projects that need work done soon are finding an office, the “Conversation Bracelets,” and the contact database. These projects do not need to be finished by the end of the summer but having some of the legwork done will help make fall semester more productive. The projects discussed are an ambitious amount and realistically many will not be worked on but this is ok. If a fraction of the proposed actions are accomplished the organization is still doing well. The future of S.C.O.P.E is bright with opportunities to create a strong culture of civic engagement at the University of Minnesota and beyond.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thomas Fisher, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, has been asked to write a series of "education" columns in Architecture Magazine. The first, to appear in the June 2006 issue, deals with the crucial issue of designing for "the billions of ill-housed people around the globe, who need our design skills and who have no direct way of paying for them" , and the connection to educating architecture and design students. My thanks to Tom Fisher for letting me present his column here.

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One of the great missed opportunities we have as architects lies in serving the needs of the billions of ill-housed people around the globe, who need our design skills and who have no direct way of paying for them. That may seem like a noble, but unreachable goal in a profession not structured to meet such needs, but a large and growing number of architects, academics, and activists have begun to take this challenge seriously, engaging in a range of humble and very hard-headed projects. (www.onesmallproject.com) A few of the academics leading this movement include Wes Janz at Ball State, Tom Dutton at Miami University, Dan Pitera at Detroit Mercy, and Victoria Beach at Harvard. Some recent projects we’ve done at the University of Minnesota show the potential of this way of working.

Do the Right Thing and Money Follows

Adjunct faculty member, John Dwyer of Shelter Architecture (www.shelterarchitecture.com) recognized that global slum-dwellers most need access to electricity, clean water, and toilet and bathing facilities, and so he designed the “Clean Hub,” a 10- by 20-foot unit with a V-shape metal roof that collects rainwater, an adjustable array of 16 photovoltaic panels able to generate up to 2,640 watts of electricity, a reverse-osmosis water system that cleans water stored in a below-ground reservoir, showers and sinks whose grey water gets recycled back to the reservoir, and waterless, self-composting toilets. He is now working with McGough Construction (www.mcgough.com) to build a couple prototypes, which will later also serve as “green” construction trailers. Meanwhile, the World Bank, after seeing an article about this in the Utne Reader, called to say they have financing available for such projects. “The World Bank spends $15 billion a year on slum upgrades,” says Dwyer, “and for only $1 billion, we could build and deliver enough Clean Hubs to meet the UN’s Millennium Goal of improving 100 million slum-dwellers’ lives by 2020.”

Design with the Poorest in Mind

Cass Gilbert visiting professor and executive director of Architecture for Humanity, Cameron Sinclair, gave students 48 hours to design a laundry building for Kathy Everad and her granddaughter living in a FEMA trailer in Waveland, Mississippi. David Vilkama and Mark Lescher produced the winning scheme and they, along with a group of New York City firefighters, built the structure for Everad. (http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/programs/katrina/Spring_Break/index.htm) “She was crying through the whole construction," says Sinclair, “A lot of people down there expressed interest in living in this structure because of the poor conditions," adds Lescher. Sinclair also had students design a pier for a village in India separated from its school after the tsunami rerouted a river, and he gave students “a small peek at what it is like to be without a home-how difficult it is to live when it is a matter of survival," by having them find or buy materials for under $20, erect a structure on campus, and spend the night.

The Best Way to Find Work is to Volunteer

You don’t have to go to India to do this work; there’s plenty in your own backyard. Last semester, I co-taught a course with Virajita Singh that looked at homelessness in the Twin Cities. Our students spent a day as homeless people, designed props for people living on the streets, had homeless men in for reviews, redesigned a local homeless shelter, and envisioned a daytime drop-in center for the group Homeless Against Homelessness. Students in a simultaneous seminar researched what other cities have done, interviewed architects working on homeless issues, and gathered information on built projects. Meanwhile, a our teaching assistant, Rebecca Celis (http://activistarchitect.blogspot.com) completed a thesis on the redesign of homeless service systems, showing how new kinds of hybrid buildings – not currently allowed by code – could go a long way to housing a diverse homeless population. All of this work is being published as a book for use by a commission in the city charged with ending homelessness in ten years.

If you want to join this movement, you might start with books such as Architecture for Humanity’s Design Like You Give a Damn, Bryan Bell’s Good Deeds, Good Design, and Sergio Palleroni and Cristina Merkelbach’s Studio at Large. And you might check out organizations like Public Architecture, directed by Minnesota grad John Cary. He has created a way for firms to do pro bono work with its 1% Solution program, directing “one percent of all architects' working hours to matters of public interest” (www.publicarchitecture.org) and enabling firms to serve the needs of non-profit agencies in the normal course of practice. Efforts such as Cary’s, Sinclair’s, and Dwyer’s may seem idealistic or impractical, but they are just the opposite: they solve real problems, practically. The truly idealistic and impractical course is our continuing to ignore what most of the world needs from us.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I talked to the University of Minnesota Extension Service Leadership Group about our Office for Public Engagement. In the question period, someone who had read my chapter in the book cited below asked me a leading question about my concept of universal and local public scholarship, giving me a good opportunity to revisit that theme. I reproduce below the relevant section from that chapter, "Public Scholarship: An Administrator's View", Chapter Ten in Peters, S.J., Jordan, N.R., Adamek, M. and Alter, T.R. (Eds.). 2005. Engaging Campus and Community: The Practice of Public Scholarship in the American Land-Grant University System. Dayton, OH: The Kettering Foundation Press.

Public scholarship: universal and local

"Universal" public scholarship is work that benefits humanity, but without a specific local context in mind: the Human Genome Project is a good example. There is little doubt that this project will lead to biomedical insights that will benefit people all over the world, but the specific benefits to people in Minnesota, for example, will be diffuse, long-term, and hard to identify. "Local" public scholarship might involve using the results of the Human Genome Project to identify a gene in the members of a Minnesota family who suffer from a genetic

“Local” public scholarship has three typical manifestations within universities: (1) traditional agricultural- and continuing education/extension-based work; (2) research on social science and public policy issues such as housing, transportation, criminology, or the rural-urban interface; and (3) scholarship that is characterized by reciprocal engagement between researcher and community. This third type is featured in the other chapters in this book, and is viewed by those who practice it as a vehicle for improving the science and methodology of research in and with communities.

Of course, the distinctions between these two broad categories are not always neat. A new AIDS drug (universal), for example, might need adaptation to local conditions and attitudes before it could become an effective treatment. Conversely, the understanding of the factors influencing exposure of children to lead poisoning in the Phillips Neighborhood (local) will very likely have broad consequences in many other communities.

I contend that both universal and local public scholarship are worthy of the name, but only local public scholarship is commonly recognized as such. The understanding of what should be considered public scholarship, and the agreement by university faculty, staff, and administrators that public scholarship as broadly conceived is a major piece of what major research universities should be doing, needs bolstering.

An essential additional aspect of scholarship is that it needs to be written down and made available for use by subsequent generations of people — perhaps other scholars, perhaps non-academic users, perhaps a community. Scholarship involves not just doing research and gathering data, it involves writing up those data and ideas, subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny, and publishing the results for others to critically assess and use. Subjecting these writings to judgment in the promotion and tenure process is also not to be sacrificed. However, an interesting and important issue in peer review of public scholarship is "Who are the peers?" Are they just the traditional peer group of academic specialists, or should members of the affected publics—perhaps less expert in the scholarly details but more expert in the relevance of the research questions and the impact of the answers-also be included as peer reviewers?

Universal public scholarship

The public served by a modern public research university is no longer just a local public. Federal granting agencies hope that the research they sponsor will help people throughout the country and the world. There was a rancorous dispute between French and American scientists about who had discovered the HIV virus, but the more important point is that progress in understanding AIDS and other diseases benefits all sufferers around the world: truly public scholarship.

Even in the world of agricultural research, the traditional focus of land grant universities, things are changing from local to universal. There is a shift from commodity crops to genetically engineered, high value added products. This introduces a lot of uncertainty in a global economy with depressed commodity prices and a populace wary of the environmental and health effects of genetically modified organisms. It means that a lot of the research has moved from (to take an arbitrary example) the plant breeder and extension agent specializing in soybeans in the state college of agriculture, who spends much of his time working directly with local farmers to develop strains for local climate and soil conditions, to plant genome sequencing projects involving international networks of collaborators (including molecular biologists and computer scientists) and to large agrichemical corporations which are exploring not just the genetic basis of disease and pesticide resistance but the potential of soybeans as "nutraceuticals". Both in the private sector and in universities, much more attention is being paid to intellectual property and patenting issues, with the result that the understanding—and, some would claim, the reality— that agricultural research serves a public good is diminished.

A modern land grant university, of course, does much more than agricultural research or research related to rural populations. The faculty and students at these institutions do research in molecular biology, condensed matter physics, feminist studies, international relations, management information science, housing policy, and educational psychology, to name just a few currently important areas. This research is supported largely by federal agencies such as NIH, NSF, DOE, NEH, and DOD. Much more than half of the external research funding for a modern land grant university these days comes from these agencies, and relatively little from the USDA and state appropriations targeted to agricultural commodities.

Note that these agencies are all funded by public money, and that they are expected by the taxpayers, and the legislators who appropriated the funds, to do useful things for the public. Public funds are invested in the hope that diseases will be cured, new magnetic materials invented, cultural insights developed, international conflicts understood, more efficient methods of commerce devised, ways to build affordable housing conceived, and better ways to cope with the diverse educational needs of our children explored. These are all public scholarship, but tend not to be recognized as such for three main reasons:

1. They touch the lives of the public only indirectly, after passing through many stages of development, refinement, and (often) commercialization.

2. Their roots are geographically dispersed, depending on interlocking developments from researchers around the world, rather than being focused at the local state university.

3. Faculty themselves, bound up in the specialized arcana of their research, often forget the broader public purpose that motivates and supports their work.

Despite (or perhaps because of) these reasons, I think it is crucial to emphasize the importance of universal, generalizable scholarship to the public—that is, scholarship for the public, in the public interest. This, I think, is what higher education and research institutions have traditionally tried to do, in part because scholars are motivated to do good through their research, perhaps in greater part because research is largely paid for by public funds and therefore approximately represents the areas (such as health and biomedical research) that the public feels are important.

Local public scholarship

Local public scholarship, the type emphasized in this book, is involved with particular communities or groups of people. It is important to recognize that there are many publics, and they don't all have the same interests. Many of the researchers who are part of the public scholarship movement tend to be liberals, to want to help poor and oppressed people, to empower them to take better charge of their lives. They concentrate attention on the working class, recent immigrants, and the poor.

On the other hand, the most commonly thought-of purveyors of local public scholarship in land grant universities—the Agricultural Experiment Stations and Extension Services—traditionally have served farmers, who are not necessarily poor and are generally not oppressed (although their dependence on banks, international commodity marketing companies, and world-wide factors totally out of their control, might indeed be making many of them feel oppressed these days). The aim of a traditional extension service is to give them practical advice—and perhaps these days counseling—but not to liberate and empower them politically.

There are groups that would like to have university faculty help them—entrepreneurs who would like engineering or business management help, for example, or mid-career engineers or teachers who would like some continuing education courses—but that might be suspicious of politically liberal activity. There are patient advocacy groups, coming to the University for help with incurable diseases such as AIDS, autism, cancer, or Alzheimer's Disease, and at the same time joining with others across the country in pressing the National Institutes of Health to fund more research to quickly find better treatments. There are many interest groups in our society, and each has a reasonable claim to being a "public" worthy of attention by researchers.

“Scholarship”, too, has multiple and complex meanings. To some in the public scholarship movement, I think, it's the activity of being out among the public, working with them in collaborative research and teaching, in programs formulated by spending time with them discussing their issues and trying to improve their lives—since the publics of interest have usually been needful and disempowered in some way.

An important question is the extent to which the affected publics should be involved in setting the research agenda. The public are sometimes skeptical of academic questions and answers, which may strike them as trivial or confirming the obvious, not recognizing the need to carefully define questions and methodologies. The Phillips community is always asking "Why does this research matter to me, that I should help you by participating in it?" They want to help set the research agenda, to ask questions that they feel will help them, rather than the academic careers of the university researchers. While populist critiques of science and scholarship can go too far, sometimes they have validity, and it never hurts researchers to be forced to explain why what they're doing could truly be valuable both to scholarship and to society.

If poor, not very well educated inner city people can play a valuable role in formulating research questions and helping to carry out studies, how about better-educated, more middle-class publics? I would think that farmers, such as those worked with in the Food System studies presented in this book, already function in many ways as amateur scientists and economists themselves. They're generally college educated, computer savvy, very familiar with the causations and correlations in their environment. While they may not have formal scientific knowledge, or be particularly interested in engaging in academic research, I would think that they could be enlisted as valuable collaborators.

From the point of view of direct service to the state and local publics, we need to clarify the contemporary scope of public scholarship, with emphasis on urban and suburban issues gradually replacing the dominant rural emphasis as populations shift—but with clear recognition that rural and urban/suburban issues are tightly coupled in such areas as food, recreation, transportation, and immigration. As Boyer has written, "We are impressed by the service potential of doctorate universities, especially those located in large cities. For years, there has been talk of building a network of "urban grant" institutions, modeled after the land grant tradition. We support such a movement and urge these institutions to apply their resources creatively to problems of the city-to health care, education, municipal government, and the like. What we are suggesting is that many doctoral institutions have not just a national, but more important perhaps, a regional mission to fulfill, too, and faculty should be rewarded for participating in these more local endeavors."

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Bakken Trio is one of the Twin Cities' premier chamber music groups. It plays an adventuresome mix of contemporary and classical music, some of which requires additional musicians beyond the three permanent members of the ensemble (two of whom are members of the Minnesota Orchestra and the third a leading local pianist and teacher).

Perhaps the Bakken's most common guest is Korey Konkol, who is Professor of Viola in the University of Minnesota School of Music. He also plays frequently with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and will perform Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No. 6 with the SPCO at its final concert next weekend.

Another connection between the Bakken Trio and the University of Minnesota is Robert Solotaroff, emeritus Prof. of English, who writes the program notes - adroit mixtures of biographical information, historical context, and musical analysis - for the Trio.

Solotaroff also is an instructor in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI),, where this winter he led discussions of two Chekhov plays: Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard. OLLI is an affiliated program of the University of Minnesota College of Continuing Education, and is run entirely by volunteers. According to the OLLI web site, "The membership is comprised of intellectually curious people who are vitally interested in the world around them. OLLI programs focus on active learning in dynamic and respectful environments. No tests, no prerequisites--this is learning just for the joy of it."

Note the intertwinings and reciprocal partnerships between community and university at work in these examples, with both sides bringing expertise and deep involvement to the partnership. On a small scale (much good stuff is on a small scale), this is what we mean by engagement. Replicated many times in many ways, formal and informal, the university partners with the community to enrich our cultural and civic life.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Aging is one of the biggest issues facing modern society. In Minnesota, the number of people over 65 is expected to double in the next 30 years, while the number of younger people is expected to decline. The common view of older people is that they are a problem: think Medicare Part D, Social Security, long nursing home stays, etc.

However, an increasing number of people, including some energetic and highly effective elders, are recognizing that older adults can be more a resource than a problem. At the University of Minnesota and throughout the state, this recognition is embodied in the Vital Aging Network (VAN), developed by Jan Hively - an extraordinary exemplar of an energetic and effective elder - through the College of Continuing Education and the Children, Youth, and Family Consortium.

According to its web site, VAN is composed of "individuals who are sharing our strengths to promote and support the self-sufficiency, community participation, and quality of life of older adults....VAN is open to all who share the following values:

• Self determination is central for the realization of civil and human rights.
  
• Everyone should be encouraged and supported in being as self-sufficient as possible.
  
• The vital involvement and integration of older adults in communities is necessary for individual and community health.
  
• Older adults are a community resource. Their productivity and contributions must be recognized, encouraged and supported.
  
• Communities should recognize and support the mutuality of interests across generations.
  
• Ageism is a pervasive form of bigotry that must be challenged.

The web site notes that

Public officials and service providers tend to see aging as a problem, as they struggle to meet the needs of a growing population of old-old, frail elderly. However, improvements in health status have done more than expand longevity. They have also resulted in the active independence of more than three-quarters of older adults into their eighties. The growing population of healthy, active, young-old adults constitutes a new generation in the world. For many of us who are part of this new generation, these years are turning out to be the best years of our lives, when the opportunities for rich life experience outweigh the challenges of coping with decline. In this time of life called the Third Age, there are unique opportunities for self-actualization -- for seeking and finding meaning and balance.

Although an aging population is an issue everywhere, the social problems it produces are most evident in rural parts of the state as young people leave for better economic opportunities in urban areas. "When the baby boomers become seniors, Minnesota and the nation will experience the most dramatic age shift in history. The future is already here in farm communities and retirement communities where older residents must share their strengths, get the community's work done, and take care of each other. "

To help enlist and focus the efforts of those "who are interested in developing and practicing their leadership skills as advocates for vital aging", the University of Minnesota has established an Advocacy Leadership in Vital Aging Certificate Program . It lists the benefits to participants as

• Gain knowledge, skills and confidence to advocate for yourself and others;
  
• Learn how to use information to organize and advocate at the community and state level;
  
• Raise public awareness and advocacy on issues relevant to vital aging;
  
• Explore the match between your personal skills and interests and the leadership needs of advocacy organizations;
  
• Expand your network; and
  
• Develop individual plans for activities that will sustain your leadership work.

The VAN is a superb example of how the university can work together with community partners to mobilize skills and energy to achieve important social goals.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here in Minnesota we're proud of our quality of life, including our healthy and prosperous population. Yet we have a rapidly-growing population of low-income native-born and immigrant people of color who do not share in this prosperity. As a result, Minnesota has some "of the nation's largest discrepancies between races in income, education, employment, health, and home ownership." (StarTribune, April 24, 2006).

These disparities are greatest in our urban areas. According to a 2005 legislative report by the City of Minneapolis, "Minneapolis has 8% of the state's total population, but 38% of state's populations of color, making it a focal point for addressing these gaps.

• Statewide, Infant Mortality rates among the American Indian and African American communities are two to three times higher than Whites. In Minneapolis, Infant Mortality rates in the African American community are three times higher than Whites; rates among American Indians are almost four times higher than whites.
  
• Minneapolis is experiencing an increase of tuberculosis (TB) cases in immigrant populations. From 1995-2000, reported cases of TB increased 65%.
  
• The teen pregnancy rate in Minneapolis is three times higher than that of the state. However, the percentage of teen births is declining for every race/ethnic group in the city.
  
• The heart disease mortality rate in Minneapolis is a third higher than that of the state."

Similar discrepancies occur in incidence of diabetes and cancer. The overall result is a notably shorter average life span for people of color, including American Indians.

The report also shows disparities in health insurance coverage. "In Minnesota, one person in 20 doesn't have insurance. This rate varies widely among racial and ethnic groups. One in five African Americans and more than one in three Hispanics are without health insurance. Many of those without insurance are children."

The Winter issue of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health publication, Advances, has a strong feature story about health disparities among ethnic and minority groups, and what some SPH faculty members are doing to better understand and remediate these problems.

One of these faculty is Wendy Hellerstedt, Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology & Community Health. Prof. Hellerstedt lists as her research interests: Birth outcomes for underserved women; adolescent reproductive health and pregnancy prevention; pregnancy intention; relationship of parity to chronic disease and birth outcomes, women's health, perinatal and reproductive health, socioeconomic status and health disparities.

Prof. Hellerstedt's expertise and passion in teaching and guiding graduate students about these areas has led to her being selected as a recipient of the University of Minnesota's 2005-2006 Graduate and Professional Award , our highest honor for graduate and professional teaching. Her citation is here.

Such engaged teaching and research is challenging beyond the norm, but it is increasingly being valued as among the most important work our universities can be doing.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow, May 10, students and faculty members from the College of Architecture and Design (CALA), will discuss and exhibit work created in a service-learning based seminar and design studio course focused on finding solutions to homelessness in the Twin Cities and beyond. Collaborations with St. Stephen’s, a Minneapolis shelter, and Homeless against Homelessness (HAH), a Minneapolis organization, will be featured.

When I learned about this event, I asked its organizer, Virajita Singh, who is a Research Fellow and adjunct faculty member in the Center for Sustainable Building Research in CALA, for more information. Here is what she sent me.

CALA Dean Tom Fisher and I applied for a grant from the Center for Writing to integrate writing and design in our courses (seminar and studio) on homelessness. The grant allowed for a TA, Rebecca Celis, a graduate student in architecture whose master's thesis this semester also focused on finding solutions to aid the the end of homelessness. Though the integration of writing and design has been very interesting, Tom Fisher and I have found that the real strength of the courses - the civic engagement - lay in the content and connection to the larger community. The students participated in a workshop organized by St. Stephen's Human Services, an organization that runs one of the Minneapolis shelters where they lived the life of a homeless person for a day and had an incredible eye-opening experience. The student projects in studio ranged from developing "props" - design for homeless persons living on the street, to becoming designers for a client - St Stephen's - and making proposals for the redesign of the existing shelter that will be handed over to St. Stephen's to use for fundraising and development. The final studio project of the semester was design of a "Solidarity" center - a day drop in center for the homeless for which they developed the design brief with HAH (Homeless against Homelessness) as the client group. Through the semester, the students interacted with homeless people and got input to their projects from homeless persons, some of whom were invited to the college to give their input.

The seminar work focused on research: exemplary best practices across the nation on solutions to help the homeless were studied followed by case studies of architectural projects that accommodate needs related to the homeless population. In addition to these, each student interviewed an architect with a list of questions that the class generated collaboratively about how the professionals perceived the problem and what might be done in their opinion.

The timing of the courses parallels a renewed focus by the City of Minneapolis / Hennepin County on homelessness. There is a new City/County coordinator on homelessness, Cathy Tenbroeke, and also a 100-day, 70 member Commission (of which Tom Fisher is a member as a result of Cathy's hearing of our classes) which has begun its work on a strategic plan to end homelessness in Minneapolis. As part of our grant from the Center for Writing we are in the process of compiling a book of the studio and seminar work that will be given to the commission. The national magazine "Architecture" has also asked Tom to write an article on the studio as well.

This is an impressive example of engagement: interdisciplinary cooperation and university collaboration with homeless people, service organizations, and government to address a serious societal problem.

Those of you who are in the Twin Cities and would like to learn more can attend tomorrow's event at the University of Minnesota:

4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Presentation by students and instructors, Rm 155 Nicholson Hall

5:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Reception and Exhibit, Nicholson Commons*

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Fossum, Associate Dean in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, drew my attention to the Graduate Volunteer Consultants (GVC), a group of students in Carlson School graduate programs who do pro bono work for non-profit and public sector organizations in the Twin Cities. The organizations get good advice and structure on business processes and the students gain consulting and problem-solving experience. GVC recruits and renews itself annually and has been in
operation for about three years.

I am indebted to Robert E. Smith, a graduating MA student in Human Resources and Industrial Relations, and former Managing Partner of GVC, for some further information about the program:

Our Goals

Our first goal is to help non-profit organizations through providing professional-level consulting services free of charge. GVC consultants are committed to adding value to clients through professional assistance with different projects, bringing in fresh ideas and perspectives, drawing on the broad experience, and committing time and energy.

Our second goal is to tie learning to doing in a unique format. For students, the GVC experience offers the opportunity to contribute to the Twin Cities community, and to apply business skills and concepts in a "real world" setting.

The GVC Experience

GVC gives Carlson School of Mgmt (CSOM) MBA and MA-HRIR students a chance to help the non-profit community by providing local non-profits with…
• New Ideas, creativity, and enthusiasm
• Business expertise to assist the non-profit sector
• A better understanding of how non-profits affect the community
• A change to continue developing teamwork and leadership skills

Projects are centered around one of the areas listed below and are typically cross-functional teams with members possessing experience in one or two of these areas:
* Accounting & Finance
* Human Resources
* Marketing
* Operations & Strategic Planning/Management

In spring 2006, 36 students actively participated in projects with the following non-profits:
* Goodwill
* Epilepsy Foundation
* Camp Courage
* Minnesota Campus Compact
* Northstar Museum of Boy Scouts
* Amherst H. Wilder Foundation
* Immigrant Law Center
* MN Charter School
* CommonBond Communities

Here are a few examples of the work that was done, all of it requiring advanced skills to achieve down-to-earth and useful outcomes.

Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota

About the Project
For this cross-functional project, Accounting/Finance and HR team members assessed budget, expense, and revenue records information to update organizational financial practices. To accomplish this, the GVC team reviewed current salary schedules, benefits policies and interviewed employees to ensure sustainable compensation and financial solutions.

Project Outcomes
Updated accounting/finance functions. Revised compensation (salary and benefits) processes. Made recommendations regarding employee benefits packages consistent with budgetary levels and regional standards for Non-profit organizations.

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation

Project Goal
Create a revised analysis of cost data and strategy recommendations about how they can save money while co-developing low income homes.

About the Project
The Wilder Foundation partners with CDC (Community Development Councils) and contractors to build low-income houses. Industry-wide there is no standardized way to characterize the bid process. The GVC team assisted Wilder in analyzing the entire bid process and provided recommendations on how to improve it at the industry level.

Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota

Project Goal
Create performance benchmarks for their used clothing operation.

About the Project
Worked with employees to perform value stream mapping and time studies of transportation routes. The GVC team helped determine the most efficient way to run the clothing operation and provided recommendations to enhance business performance of the used clothing operation.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Educating students about the ideas and methods of public engagement has largely focused on undergraduates. With that movement well underway, the focus should shift to graduate students. This is a challenging prospect, because most graduate students - with the strong encouragement of their faculty advisors - concentrate on their disciplinary studies and research. However, there are many reasons to pursue the challenge. Graduate students have said that they want to know more about the public aspects of their disciplines. In some fields, research cannot be done well without collaboration with community partners. Experience with community partnerships can help students get jobs outside academia or in non-Research 1 universities. And attention to the public implications of scholarship will enhance public support for research universities.

Public engagement should become part of the responsible conduct of research (RCR) or research ethics training that our institutions now give to our graduate students. Discipline-specific public engagement content would enrich RCR training, making it less legalistic and more connected to broader societal concerns. Ethical aspects of publicly engaged research include IRB issues, formulating and publishing research in ways meaningful to community partners, and compensating partners for their time and effort.

In order to encourage the inclusion of public engagement with research ethics, it will be important to develop and disseminate suitable pedagogical material tailored to disciplinary specialties. Developing such material could be a scholarly project in its own right.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday was full of meetings, all of them connected to public engagement in one way or another.

Continuing the Discussion on Student Engagement and Student Success Outcomes: A session of about 80 students, staff, and faculty, following up on Fall's Civic Summit, with "the goal to update [participants] on progress towards an engaged campus and to focus discussions on how to create opportunities within our own areas that enhance intentional learning and engagement."

A search committee meeting to recruit a new chair-holder and director for our Science and Technology Policy program. A standard academic exercise, but what could be more pertinent to university-public joint interests than science and technology policy?

A discussion with Gail Dubrow, Dean of the Graduate School, to plan a paper we've been invited to write for the 20th Anniversary of Campus Compact, about integrating public engagement with other aspects of the ethical conduct of research in our programs for graduate students.

A retirement party for Executive AssociateVice President Al Sullivan, who among his other demanding assignments has led a task force to develop metrics and measurements for the University of Minnesota's self-assessment and comparisons with other institutions. Among the most challenging: How to measure our public engagement efforts? The metrics, at least for now, are a survey of citizen satisfaction with the U, our patent and licensing activity, and an undergraduate student survey of their engagement activities.

An end-of-semester show-and-tell by students from Eric Daigre's Literacy Lab class, about their community work teaching citizenship skills to immigrants, assisting in a charter school that focuses on social justice, and working in a school for children with special needs.

Being in touch with this variety of manifestations of public engagement is one of major attractions of my job.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are many ways to approach public engagement in academia. Perhaps the most prominent approaches are those that view it as a subject in its own right, with a theoretical and practical base that needs thoughtful scholarly presentation and debate. Harry Boyte and Peter Levine are prime exponents of this approach.

My motivation in this blog and in my role as Associate Vice President for Public Engagement is more pragmatic. My contention is that public engagement pervades virtually everything we do at a public research university like the University of Minnesota, but that most faculty and students don't make the connection. Therefore, what I've been trying to do is to find and publicize examples of engaged teaching, scholarship, and outreach that sample the amazingly wide range of activities at a university such as ours.

The challenge is not so much to do more public engagement, though that would not be a bad idea. The challenge is rather to help people within the university realize the public importance of what they're doing; to get them to value and reward the engaged work that their colleagues are doing; to persuade students - especially graduate students - that engaged research and teaching are not detours on their career paths; and to point out that the increased range of interactions - both with community members and with university people from different specialties - that typically accompany engaged scholarship can enrich both academic and personal life.

Academics are used to dealing with generalities and abstractions. But all of us respond to, and learn from, good stories. That's what I'm trying to do: tell good stories about public engagement.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the key issues in public engagement of colleges and universities is how to recruit and retain students from minority and immigrant communities. The piece I've reprinted below addresses some of the main obstacles: need to communicate effectively with students and their families in culturally appropriate ways, to explain the higher education system and available options for financial aid, and to provide effective counseling. This piece is addressed specifically to the needs of the Somali communities in Minnesota, but they are relevant for all.

---

Best Practices for Recruitment and Retention:
A Report on Somali Colloquium in Metro Area

Prepared By
Abdimalik Askar
Metro Alliance Outreach Coordinator

Executive Summary

On March 10th, 2006, Metro Alliance’s community outreach program invited members of the Somali communities in Minnesota for a colloquium discussion to find ways and means of recruiting and retaining Somali students in colleges. Thirty three Somali community members were involved in the discussion. They consisted of influential community leaders, educators, members drawn from various non-profit organizations and students in different colleges in Minnesota. Among the diverse audience were two current college presidents, one dean and other school officials representing different institutions within the Metro Alliance. The discussion was held in the Normandale Community College Auditorium.

The discussion was organized into five different panels. The first panel consisted of people drawn from high schools within the Twin Cities. The second panel consisted of Somali professionals who work in different fields. The third panel was made up of the Somali community organizations and members of the local Somali media. The fourth panel was Somali women professionals. The last panel included students from different colleges and universities.

The main objective of the colloquium was to find the root causes that lead to low enrollment and high drop-out rates of Somali students in college. The panels raised a lot of issues affecting the Somali community, particularly the students, as well as possible solutions. The main concern raised was that educational institutions were not doing enough to cater to the needs of this community. Lack of effective communication between the institutions and Somali families was identified as the main problem. It was mentioned that families often had no idea about how to navigate the educational system, that this leads to a lot of frustration, and results in under-representation of Somali students in higher education institutions. One of the speakers challenged the Metro Alliance to change the topic of the discussion from how to recruit and retain students to “what the Metro Alliance needs to do to change current policies.”

The panels stressed the need for community involvement and academic enrichment for students. They stated that the way to do this is by cultural accommodation within the systems governing these institutions. Among the recommendations offered were hiring more bilingual staff and providing more scholarship support for minority communities.

The panel speakers were also explicit in their recommendation that more information be provided to the community to educate parents and students about their options and, also, to provide workshops on financial aid and scholarship opportunities. Often, these students have no idea of what resources, like scholarships, are available and, therefore, fail to take advantage of them.

The issue of counseling came up time and time again. The panels expressed the need for effective, honest and culturally sensitive counselors so that students may make good choices about their classes and eventually their careers. One of the panelists shared a personal story about her college days when her counselor told her that she would never make it in her chosen field. The counselor told her that she had more chances of being a fire-fighter than a nurse. This greatly offended her. She felt those comments were discouraging and rude. This was a sentiment echoed by the student panelists who also added that ineffective counselors prolonged the students’ stay in college as they didn’t tell them what classes would benefit them. This led to frustration and resulted in students giving up on college entirely.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)