Public Engagement

Last year I posted a guest blog by Dennis Donovan about Public Achievement. I recently was given an Evaluation Brief, which summarizes the nature of Public Achievement as follows:

Public Achievement is a youth civic organization initiative intended to help students learn the habits, skills, and commitments of citizenship necessary to be lifelong contributors to their communities. Sponsored by the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, the specific goals of Public Achievement are to help youth develop the desire, insights, and talents to address society's problems and improve the world. Students learn basic methods for taking public action and develop a conceptual framework for learning by doing. During the 2005-2006 school year, Public Achievement programs served 800 K-12 students at 40 sites throughout the United States.

The evaluation found the following positive impacts of Public Achievement:

• Participation in Public Achievement gave students wider perspectives on the world and better skills in working with others.
• Elementary school students who had sustained participation in Public Achievement were more likely than their peers to acquire civic skills and to believe that young people can make a difference in the world.
• Public Achievement students in Grades 4 and 5 gained valuable teamwork skills.
• Middle school students who participated in Public Achievement gained multiple civic skills and were more likely to take responsibility for helping their schools become positive learning environments.
• High school students who reported a high level of interest in their Public Achievement projects acquired multiple communication skills, including oral persuasion, and listening skills.
• Public Achievement coaches indicated that students at all grade levels benefited from the program.
• School administrators had positive perceptions of Public Achievement.

In other words, the active citizenship approach espoused by Public Achievement and the Center for Democracy and Citizenship benefits both the students and their schools, as well as planting the seeds of future citizenship. Given concerns about whether schools are adequately preparing students for productive lives, the Public Achievement approach seems well worth expanding.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:29 AM | Permalink

This is the third in a three part series examining a recent trip that University of Minnesota student Steve Mullaney took to North Carolina to observe the student group and non-profit Nourish International. The first part looked at innovation at NI and the second looked at the importance of culture within a movement.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. It appears that the Hegelian dialectic will finally get some use as I try to put what I learned on my trip to North Carolina into practice here at Minnesota.

Thesis: An organization with strong ideals and ideas, but doesn’t really have a handle on how it wants to implement them. Roles are sloppy, programming is disconnected, and newcomers lack an identity within the group. This, however, does not mean that the organization should be abandoned and the wheel reinvented; on the contrary the weaknesses of the organization are not in human capital, but rather in structure. Approaching the end of the year provides opportunity for critical reflection in an attempt to move forward. Organizationally we all understand what’s not working and are itching for change.

Antithesis: Nourish International. A very, very high-functioning organization in terms of mission/vision, structure, power sharing and execution. However, while there is much to admire in how they function, it would be foolish to assume that what works in one culture could transfer completely to another culture and work just as well. Obvious case in point: NI holds a series of weekly lunches outside. They do that because they live in North Carolina...any Minnesotans who decide that a year-round outdoor lunch would work are nuts. Culturally, there are also things that we can tap into at Minnesota like the rich history of such institutions as Public Achievement and the Jane Addams School for Democracy. It strikes me that this sort of thing would appeal to those students who have done service-learning in these contexts. This should be an advantage that we embrace, not neglect.

Synthesis: Well, we’re not there yet; so I’ll give a roadmap/guess. Step One: Talk to a lot of people. One of my favorite quotes is “A journey of thousand miles begins with a single Google search” in Colleen Kinder’s Delaying the Real World. For this project this could be expanded to Facebook, and the list of numbers in one’s cell phone. Right now I’m spreading the word, gauging interest and finding others who might want to take this project on. In my experience you never know where you might hit gold—even if it’s “my friend’s brother might be interested in that”, you could find someone who would love to do such a thing.

Step Two: Power share. Delegate, delegate, delegate. I’m graduating soon (next year?) and cannot become the face of the organization. Ideally everyone can combine in such a way that there can be real power sharing that isn’t tokenizing, setting up the future organization with young dynamic leaders.

Step Three: Learn as we go. There is no book, we must be adaptable and dynamic, celebrating small steps and not getting too down when things don’t go our way. I’m optimistic: it’s a good model, we have good people—and if you’re not an optimist most things in life aren’t much fun.

SO! There’s the report from North Carolina. I would welcome any feedback, thoughts, outright hostile disagreement or interest in helping with Nourish International at Minnesota. My e-mail is mull0321 at umn dot edu. Peace.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 12:02 PM | Permalink

This is the second in a three part series examining a recent trip that University of Minnesota student Steve Mullaney took to North Carolina to observe the student group and non-profit Nourish International. The first part looked at innovation at NI and the third will look at the implementation of exciting new ideas.

The story of why Nourish International is a high-functioning, successful, non-profit and student group is also the story of NI’s culture, created around engagement and involving people in the leadership process.

In a lot of student organizing at the University of Minnesota there is a constant search for more members, usually conducted with great zeal. The goal is numbers for the sake of numbers instead of really trying to find a win-win situation in which both organization and student benefit. Usually what happens is that numbers will be very high for the first couple of weeks or so, then plummet as individuals find they do not have the opportunity to become co-producers of the group’s output. When a small elite—no matter how well-intentioned—controls the decision-making process, there will be alienation and disengagement. When individuals are thought of as prizes (tokens?) and the goal is putting butts in seats instead of developing mutually beneficial strategies for newcomers to innovate and lead, there will be dropout and abandonment of the organization.

Conversely, NI creates many natural entry points to the organization for newcomers, and then encourages them to take on more leadership until they are seen as "voices of wisdom" for the next crop of newcomers.

The case study for this at the UNC chapter of NI is a guy named Graham Boone. When NI-UNC decided to hold the 2006 version of its highly successful series of poker tournaments, Graham wanted to be a dealer and through one of his friends was given that opportunity. As he met more and more people in the organization he took on more and more responsibility. This year, as a sophomore, he organized and led the 2007 version—one which raised $8,000 and is believed to be the largest poker tournament in North Carolina history. Next year, he’ll be turning over the reins and acting as a mentor to the next person.

Why? This culture helps bring in more people in an organic way. Graham could act on his ideas because the organization empowered him; the next person to run the tournament will be empowered in a similar way and there will be fresh ideas and innovation.

Why else? Needing to pass on the leadership puts a premium on relationships, the currency of engagement. Teaching, learning and innovating brings people together, builds relationships and strengthens the community. In my experience, folks are more likely to take active roles if they are accountable to other people instead of to a faceless entity.

Why else else? Without intentionality, those with the leadership experience will graduate and then, lacking experienced people, the organization will crumble. Organizing students in an undergraduate environment is challenging because of the constant turnover. Instead of moaning about this problem, wise student leaders should embrace the challenge and the potential it holds for a constant injection of new ideas into the organization.

Ultimately, in building a culture of engagement it’s important to look beyond the surface “do we have numbers?” question to a deeper “how can we create win-win situations?”. On a deep level most people want to give back to their communities. However, building a culture that can embrace new leadership and harness relationships into action will function on a higher level than one that uses coercion and artificial numbers-based goals as yardsticks.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:24 PM | Permalink

A couple of short items today. First, from Terry Cooper at USC, a notice of the 35th anniversary of the USC Joint Educational Project, which he thinks may have been the first service-learning project in the country. Be sure you're on a fast connection if you try to access the pdf newsletter, since it's about 30Mb. Terry writes:

I imagine most of you know of the USC Joint Educational Project (JEP) which may have been the first service learning project in the nation and which has come a long way over its 35 years of work.  I am providing below the link to the online version of the 35th anniversary JEP newsletter for those who might be interested.

 

http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/jep/resources/newsletterjep2007_spring.pdf

By the way, I was a witness to the founding of this program in a very "up close and personal" way.  I was working on my Ph.D. while leading an experimental urban studies program called "Urban Semester"--a highly experiential learning program in which the 40 students each semester took their entire 16 units of work in an integrated program with 5 faculty and 5 TAs.  Barbara Gardner, the founder of JEP, occupied an office across the hall from mine and we often chatted about her vision for the JEP program.  My lasting image of her is looking across a narrow hall seeing her bent over her desk talking to someone on the phone with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.  She was a woman with a mission and the sales skills to persuade others of its worth.

Second, we've added a new blog to our list of links, from the new Institute for Law and Politics (http://www.politicslaw.org) at the University of Minnesota. Not to belabor the obvious, law and politics are two of the crucial areas in which active citizenship plays itself out.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:52 PM | Permalink

This is the first in a three part series by University of Minnesota student Steve Mullaney, examining a recent trip that he took to North Carolina to observe the student group and non-profit Nourish International (NI) www.nourishinternational.org. The second part will look at the culture NI built around engagement, and the third will look at the implementation of exciting new ideas.

I’m on a million mailing lists.

There are days when I actually believe this and am sure that they deliver solicitations for money to my apartment in a dump truck. Or a tank.

Unlike most people, I read all of my mail. As a college student I’m always hopeful that the free gift is a car and not just mailing labels with my name misspelled. So I was very excited to peruse Heifer International’s magazine Noah’s Ark. I really like the model of sharing livestock that Heifer uses; it seems sustainable, plays to the strength of community partners, and just seems cool.

As I paged through the magazine an article caught my eye: “UNC Students Fight Hunger on Their Lunch Break” which described how students raised money to fight poverty and hunger with a lunch that everyone threw in a little for. A month ago I guest-posted about how community engagement worked gathering people around meals. Naturally, this idea appealed to me; I maneuvered over to NI's website with the idea of learning as much as possible. Fortunately they’re incredibly user friendly and I quickly made contact with the organization—and within a day they responded.

SCOPE, a student group that I’m a part of, had the funds to send me to North Carolina for a week, and I spent two days observing NI and how they functioned. In short, NI is an incredible source for innovation. But innovation (as my title suggests) is not for the weak.

Innovation requires people to admit that they do not know everything and that they should be open to new ideas. In spirit this is easy—but in practice we fall into set patterns of the-way-we-always-do-things (TWWADT™). Frequently, innovation only happens when TWWADT™ isn’t working; the challenge for those engaging communities is how to strive for constant improvement.

Ultimately, innovation is not a one-time only slate of new ideas, but rather a way of going about work. One of NI’s strengths is the way that it naturally renews its leadership by giving younger members the opportunity to take ownership of the process and ventures they undertake. They make sure to have seniors act as advisors, not leaders, encouraging younger students to take an active role This year they even started a Freshman Executive position to give first year students the skills necessary to lead over the next three years. Giving up control is scary: intuitively I feel like I need to hold on to things that I’m leading. However, when that happens there’s a limit to what can be achieved. Especially for student groups at the undergraduate level a constant reenergizing is necessary to avoid staleness and burnout. The only way that I know how to do this is to lay a foundation in the hopes that those who come after can build it higher. Innovation isn’t for the weak-stomached, but it’s sure a lot better than stagnation.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:23 AM | Permalink

Yesterday I wrote about the indictment of American research universities by Jennifer Washburn in her book University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. I think it’s worth noting her proposed solutions (p. 228):

1. 'the creation of independent third-party licensing bodies … that would assume control over university tech-transfer and commercialization activities nationwide;


2. an amendment to the Bayh-Dole Act clarifying that the true intent of the legislation is to promote widespread use of taxpayer-financed research, not to maximize short-term profits;


3. new requirements that all federally funded university scholars comply with strict conflict-of-interest laws;


4. the creation of a new federal agency to administer and monitor industry-sponsored clinical drug trials submitted to the Food and Drug Administration."

Each of these strikes me as plausible and desirable, yet unlikely to fully reach the desired results:

1. Would those few universities (the University of Minnesota is one) that make a substantial profit from inventions be willing to participate? Could/should they be forced to?
2. If exclusive licenses are not granted, will companies be willing to commercialize inventions?
3. Conflict-of-interest regulations are already in place in most research universities, but seem not to have the desired effect.
4. Given increasisng lobbyist and corporate influence over the FDA, EPA, etc. under the current administration, do we really expect a new federal agency to improve things?

I think more far-reaching changes in both corporate influence on government and the willingness of the public to more adequately support higher education will be necessary to reach the goal.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:59 AM | Permalink

I have a deep conviction that public research universities are among the most valuable and most virtuous institutions in society. Therefore, I was dismayed to come across the book by Jennifer Washburn, University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic Books, 2005). Washburn is the co-author of the famous 2000 Atlantic Monthly article, "The Kept University", about the UC Berkeley-Novartis deal.

I haven't read the whole book, but Washburn lays out her case—which is hard to dismiss out of hand—in the first few paragraphs of her Introduction:

• Converting "courseware" into salable property
• Allowing "whole academic departments to forge financial partnerships with private corporations, guaranteeing these firms first dibs on the inventions flowing out of their labs"
• Allowing the institutional name to be used for product endorsements
• Permitting faculty, particularly in the pharmaceutical and medical sciences, to review or endorse drugs in which they have a direct financial interest
• Restricting unduly the results of research in genetics and cell biology
• Investing in disciplines that promise to bring in new grants or private money, while diminishing support for the core liberal arts
• Emphasizing research at the expense of good teaching
• Spending money on technology transfer operations that are unlikely to yield a profit

Washburn freely admits that much of this behavior is driven by decreasing funding by the states, but she still lays most of the blame on the universities rather than society at large.

I think my discomfort with Washburn's case lies in three points:

• Although some of these ills are ubiquitous, particularly in the drug field, others are dramatic but uncommon examples.
• Research universities are paying more attention to ethical issues than they did a few years ago, as much because of internal faculty values as external scrutiny.
• The University of Minnesota has unquestionably had its lapses, but they are isolated incidents and have been promptly dealt with. We have strong and well-enforced policies against conflict of interest and exploitation of students, and we pay a lot of attention to quality of teaching in promotion and tenure considerations. We are recognized as leaders in ethics and responsible conduct of research training and policies, and in public engagement, but I don't think we're unique.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 04:27 PM | Permalink

One might think that the office of Secretary of State is pretty bureaucratic, but an active Secretary can do interesting things. Here's a paragraph from the newsletter of Mark Ritchie, recently elected Secretary of State for Minnesota:

"Another official job of the Minnesota Secretary of State is encouraging civic engagement. Two weeks ago our office pulled together 60 of the more than 100 groups we've found that are working on civic education and civic engagement. The goal of the meeting was to help people meet each other and to start a conversation about how we could all begin working more closely together.  It was a very high energy gathering -- with great ideas and lots of folks looking for partners and collaborators.  We talked about creating a state civic education council, hosting an annual summit, adopting a unifying topic during the Sesquicentennial, and finding new ways to communicate and cooperate. We had everyone from disability advocacy leaders to a State Supreme Court Justice. There were teachers, students and school board members along with a number of lawyers, including the president and the executive director of the MN Bar Association.  We'll meet again soon!"

Some faculty from the University of Minnesota participated in this meeting, and we're excited about the possibilities.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:33 AM | Permalink

I received in my mailbox a flyer from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, advertising the 2007 Summer Public Health Institute. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have paid much attention, but the title caught my eye: “Culturally Responsive Public Health Practice”. The courses are on

• American Indian/Alaska Native Health Care Issues
• Community-Based Participatory Research
• Community Health Data - Using Data From a Community Perspective
• Community Organizing and Advocacy: Building Political Power and Moving People to Action
• Culturally Based Community Health Immersion: Hispanic Community Focus
• Culturally Responsive Leadership and Management
• Risk Communication for Underserved and Limited English-Speaking Populations
• War and Public Health

The purposes of these courses, according to the flyer, are to

• Improve the diversity and quality of the public health work force
• Develop the skills of working public health professionals in the delivery of culturally responsive services
• Encourage the enrollment of individuals from under-served and under-represented communities into educational and career opportunities for public health

This is a clear recognition that, unless the cultures of communities are taken into account and members of those communities are enlisted as partners, public health efforts will fall far short of their goals.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:00 PM | Permalink

Cynthia Gibson and Peter Levine are two of the leading thinkers and writers in the part of the public engagement movement that deals with civic education and civic learning in the schools. In 2003 they organized and edited The Civic Mission of Schools Report., which among other things, “is probably best known for presenting evidence in favor of “six promising practices” for civic education in schools.”

Last week some of us received an email from Gibson announcing the publication of “A Letter from the Authors of The Civic Mission of Schools Report”, in which they reflect on the the progress made since the publication of that Report. The letter appears in the latest issue of CIRCLE’s newsletter, “Around the Circle.”

In the four years since publication of the Report, Gibson and Levine feel, much good work has been done. There are deep challenges ahead, however. Learning about civics theory and practice in the classroom, or even through service-learning or other programs for active participation of students, is not enough. The political system is seen as unresponsive to citizen input and in thrall to moneyed special interests. The No Child Left Behind Act has focused the attention of schools on standardized tests, leaving little room for “the teaching of values, deliberation, and collaborative skills.”

To help rectify this situation—to “prepare young citizens for politics but also improve politics for citizens”—Gibson and Levine report that

… the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools—a national coalition of more than forty educational, policy, and professional organizations committed to better school-based civic learning—was created.  Since then, the coalition has worked diligently to advance and promote the policy recommendations contained in the CMS report.

With a board led by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Governor Roy Romer, the coalition has commissioned a national poll that showed parents willing and eager to see civic education reinstituted in schools; created a national database of best practices, programs, and curricula that were vetted by teams of educators and experts; and helped to pass legislation that encourages more frequent testing of civic knowledge.

Efforts like these will bring to our colleges and universities students who are knowledgeable, practiced, and eager to continue their civic learning and activism. We need to figure out how to be ready for them and to raise their engagement—and ours—to even higher levels.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 04:32 PM | Permalink

Yesterday afternoon I participated in a Public Engagement Day workshop on "Community: A Partner in Knowledge Production". Let by Elder Atun Azzahir of the Powderhorn-Phillips Cultural Wellness Center, the workshop examined "questions that are central to community-university collaboration in the production of new knowledge. What are community cultural knowledge systems? Is academic knowledge cultural? How can academic knowledge systems and community knowledge systems come together for scholarship, and to solve real world problems?"

The participants came up with a list of characteristics of community cultural knowledge systems, including:
* Based largely on oral tradition
* Transmitted from elders to the young
* Treasured within the community
* Binds the community together
* Grounded on unspoken assumptions

I was struck with how well these describe academic as well as community culture. Not culture at a particular university, but rather academia in general. Not something that undergraduate students are a part of, but something that is inculcated in graduate school and takes some years to become firmly fixed.

I think it would be helpful - perhaps even necessary - for productive community-university engagement to recognize that both sides are coming from deep cultural assumptions, and that it is just as necessary for community to acknowledge academic culture as it is for academia to acknowledge community culture. First to acknowledge, then to understand, then to get behind the uniformities or stereotypes of the culture to the complexities and individualities that lie below.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:46 PM | Permalink

The University of Minnesota celebrated Public Engagement Day today with an all-day series of lectures, workshops, and exhibits. Our leadoff speaker was Dr. Xolela Mangcu, from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mangcu's talk, "Public Engagement: On Whose Terms?", put university public engagement efforts into an important context. South African universities, like ours, have had public engagement activities (that is, academic activities expressly intended to affect society) since the mid 1800s. Also like ours (though we tend not to recognize or admit it), those public engagement activities were on terms that justified the existing power structure. In particular, they provided an academic justification for white supremacy and apartheid, in terms of eugenics and other scientific fads of the time.

When the first black African scholars obtained university posts, they tended to be patrician and conservative, counseling a go-slow attitude toward societal change. They were eventually challenged by Steve Biko and his followers, urging a transition from a conservative to a radical conception of public engagement.

Mangcu draws from this the lesson that universities will inevitably be used for leverage to effect societal change, whether patient or radical. Universities must both stand apart from and contend within society; they are places of both reflection and action.

We see these themes playing out in today's universities, even if not usually for such dramatically high personal stakes as in South Africa.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:55 PM | Permalink

Tomorrow, April 11, is our first annual Public Engagement Day. Information about the event can be found on the Office for Public Engagement (OPE) web site, an associated news story, and the complete schedule.

As my part in the big day, I've been asked to provide a brief overview of the history and context of the establishment of our public engagement activities and of OPE. I thought this would be a good opportunity to review some of the developments that were independent of OPE and its action committee arm, the Council on Public Engagement (COPE), but which have strongly influenced us. I began at the very beginning, with some key dates:

• 1851 Founding of the UM predates founding of the State (1858)
• 1862 Morrill Act - Land Grant Colleges and Universities
• 1887 Hatch Act - Ag Experiment Stations
• 1914 Smith-Lever Act - Extension Services
• 1994 Citizenship and Public Ethics Liberal Education requirement
• 1996 Jane Addams School for Democracy in the Cener for Democracy and Citizenship
• 1996 Center for Small Towns at UM Morris
• 1997 Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships
• 2002 Establishment of COPE
• 2005 Establishment of OPE
• 2006 University-Northside Parntership, University Metropolitan Consortium
• 2007 University of Minnesota Urban Agenda

A noteworthy trend is the recent transition from rural to urban emphasis. My colleague Geoff Maruyama, in drafting a report for the University of Minnesota Urban Agenda Task Force, has explained the transition eloquently:

When land grant universities were envisioned in 1862, most of the population of states like Minnesota was rural, and the economy was heavily agricultural. Over time land grant-related funding supported the University as a driver of engaged scholarship, but focused primarily on rural areas and limited parts of the University. The Minnesota Extension Service (now University of Minnesota Extension) and the Agricultural Experiment Stations (now University of Minnesota Research and Outreach Centers) coupled community education with research and outreach that addressed major needs of Minnesotans ranging from farms and crops to those of families and youth.

Now, in the 21st century, 60-70% of the population of Minnesota lives in metropolitan areas, and ”urban“concerns that historically were viewed as limited to Minneapolis and Saint Paul have become issues that reach all across Minnesota. We are part of national trends of suburbanization, de-population of rural areas, and people leaving “rust-belt” and Eastern areas for the West and South. Therefore, we believe that it is important to formally extend the research and outreach land grant mission to look more broadly at Minnesota, particularly including urban/metropolitan issues as well as rural ones.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 12:36 PM | Permalink

Sunday's StarTribune had a good story by staff writer Kim Ode entitled "A study in serving." It's about the Pay It Forward Tour, an activity started by students at the University of Minnesota four years ago to provide a worthwhile and fulfilling spring break experience for college students.

A diary by Tony Schuster, a student at the University of Minnesota, relates painting, housecleaning, trash pickup, and tree chopping in Peoria IL, Marietta GA, Blacksburg VA, and Washington DC. As important as the service projects was the sense of teamwork and relationship-building that the bus developed. A similar story was told in the Spring break diary of Kari Foley, also a UM student, whose bus went to Milan IN, Nashville TN, Louisville KY, and Canton OH.

The Pay It Forward Tour is organized by Students Today Leaders Tomorrow (STLF), whose website tells us that STLF "was initially founded by four college freshman as a student organization at the University of Minnesota. When a late night dorm room conversation turned into a vision to leave an impact on the world, the idea for the Pay It Forward Tour was created."

STLF now includes chapters on nine Midwestern college campuses. Counting this yeer's spring tour, over 1250 students have made service visits to more than 75 communities.

The national organization, headquartered in Minneapolis as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is completely organized and run by students, as are the individual chapters. The national runs several leadership development programs throughout the year.

The last paragraph on the "About Us" page is worth quoting in its entirely:

We realize that the Pay It Forward Tour is only nine days out of the year, and we realize that we can’t solve a community’s social issues in one service project.  However, we do believe in the power that people united under a common purpose has on this world.  We know that we can make a direct impact on thousands of people throughout the country through service, and we can never know what they will go on to accomplish in their life as a result.  We know that we can make an even bigger impact on each other as students who are involved in STLF.  STLF has a vision of instilling in people values of leadership and service that they will take with them throughout their life. It is about finding ways for us to “pay it forward” as individuals and as an organization.  It is this concept of “paying it forward” rather than “paying it back” that results in having an immeasurable impact that has endless potential. 

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 03:51 PM | Permalink

Constructing a good web site is hard. Our Public Engagement web site has an engaging home page and lots of useful linked content, but it's not easy to grok or navigate.

A book I came across, Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, 2nd ed. by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Yale UP, starts with first principles by urging articulation of goals and strategies at the beginning of the planning phase:

• What is the mission of your organization?
• How will creating a Web site support your mission?
• What are your two or three most important goals for the site?
• What is the primary audience for the Web site?
• What do you want the audience to think or do after having visited your site?
• What Web-related strategies will you use to achieve those goals?
• How will you measure the success of your site?
• How will you adequately maintain the finished site?

We've defined the mission of the Office for Public Engagement on our brochure, connecting it to the relevant part of the University of Minnesota's mission statement:

Extend, apply, and exchange knowledge between the University and society by applying scholarly expertise to community problems, by helping organizations and individuals respond to their changing environments, and by making the knowledge and resources created and preserved at the University accessible to the citizens of the state, the nation, and the world.

The mission of the Office for Public Engagement is to advocate and foster the public engagement activities of the University of Minnesota, so as to support the University's mission and its goal of becoming one of the world's preeminent public research universities.

Answering the questions posed by the next few bullets is harder. I'll put down some thoughts, which need much more discussion.

How will creating a Web site support your mission? A Web site is primarily a source of information, which society can use in various ways (either directly or with the help of university personnel) and which can keep university faculty, staff, and students informed of the resources, activities, and opportunities that will facilitate and encourage their engagement work.

What are your two or three most important goals for the site?

• Make the University community aware of the U's many exciting and important public engagement activities, so that they value engagement more highly and see how it is relevant to their own interests.
• Provide a source of information for public engagement activists at the U and their community partners.
• Provide an entry point that enables the public to learn about the U's public engagement activities and connect with potentially helpful resources

What is the primary audience for the Web site? There are three important audiences: the University community as a whole (faculty, staff, and students); public engagement activists at the U and their community partners; and the public at large who turn to the University of Minnesota for help and information. If I have to choose just one, it is the U community as a whole, since changing the culture of the U to more highly value public engagement will be the most important factor in realizing our mission.

What do you want the audience to think or do after having visited your site?

• I want the broad U community to think that public engagement work is interesting, significant both academically and societally, and something they could imagine doing themselves. I want them to feel that engaged scholarship supports the U's aspiration to be among the preeminent public research universities in the world.
• I want the public engagement activists to feel that this kind of work is recognized, to be assured that there is a community of like-minded people, and to see opportunities for connections and resources to further their work.
• I want the public to understand the extent and nature of the important public engagement work being done at the U, to realize that resources at the U may be available for fruitful collaborations on their issues, and to be able to find those resources without undue hassle.

I'll leave the last three bullets for some other time, since they relate to strategies rather than goals. Of course, that's the hard part.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:44 PM | Permalink

Yesterday I received in my email a copy of the latest issue of the Active Citizen Newsletter produced by the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. After overcoming a twinge of jealousy about how attractively the newsletter is put together, I went on to admire the content.

I was particularly interested in the article that described how “Tisch College Dean Rob Hollister met with faculty and administrators from Israeli colleges and universities last month in Tel Aviv to expand the Talloires Network, a global effort that aims to redefine the relationship between institutions of higher education and the communities in which they function.” Hollister met with representatives of both Israeli and Palestinian academies.

The article referred to a meeting that Tufts University hosted in September 2005 with 29 university leaders from 23 countries in Talloires, France, who “inaugurated a global movement to develop strategies to advance the role of higher education in encouraging active participation in civic life.” A product of this Talloires Network was The Talloires Declaration On the Civic Roles and Social Responsibilities of Higher Education .

There’s considerable overlap between the Talloires Declaration and the Declaration on The Responsibility of Higher Education for a Democratic Culture, Citizenship, Human Rights, and Sustainability of the Network for Higher Education and Democratic Culture that I wrote about a few days ago in this space. The Talloires Declaration is considerably more specific in its specification of the ways in which higher education institutions should connect their activities with civic purposes, but the two efforts share highly congruent goals. One hopes that they will find ways to work together productively, rather than proceeding along parallel paths.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 02:51 PM | Permalink

Yesterday this blog listed major items identified in a SWOT analysis of our Public Engagement efforts at the University of Minnesota. At a meeting of COPE, our Council on Public Engagement, yesterday afternoon, I asked the group to identify three concrete, actionable steps that might be taken to capitalize on our strengths and opportunities, and to mitigate our weaknesses and threats. Here's what they came up with.

Strengths

Interdisciplinary Work

• Focus on a variety of funding levels, not just 2 million plus.
• Help to smooth the path for this work. Okay to start small.
• Use campus compact model for help in promoting.

Role Models

• Develop system for identifying and communication about exemplary people and programs.

Promotion and Tenure

• Putting language in the documents is the beginning, but need to have some carry-through.
• Have examples/case-studies that are discipline specific.
• Faculty Motivation, develop through positive reinforcement but subtle and overt.

Weaknesses

Communication

• OPE needs a communication person and a communications plan
• Need to know what messages to consistently promote
• Where to promote communications both internally and externally
• Continue to catalog stories that will have impact

Support

• Continue to provide and expand opportunities for people already “engaged” to come together and support the work.

Values

• Identify and showcase exemplars—people who are models of good work and partnership
• Establish platforms for partnership as in the case of the University-Northside partnership

Opportunities

Continue to play the role of convener

Focus on Public Engagement Day

• Have a series of programs and events with different stakeholders culminating in Public Engagement Day

Use grants program (new or current) to start a cohort model

Engage interdisciplinary institutes/centers/programs to leverage expertise on public engagement

Threats

External benchmarks do not value public engagement

• U should be voice for reform in those benchmarks
• U should established more enlightened benchmarks internally

Culture shift from cooperation to individualistic means faculty work too much in isolation

• Engage community in cooperatively defining research and service agendas
• OPE could monitor grant opportunities and bring them to the attention of potentially interested units and individuals.

U seems overwhelming, inaccessible and hard to navigate

• Review financial systems to identify impediments to effective cooperation with external organizations.
• Try to make OPE easier to find on web for external users (i.e. community portal).

These are all very useful suggestions, in many cases because they suggest new or more focused ways to build on activities that are already underway.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 03:20 PM | Permalink

In February the University of Minnesota's Council on Public Engagement (COPE) met for a SWOT exercise to assess our internal Strengths and Weaknesses, and external Opportunities and Threats. The results of that exercise were supplemented by those from a similar workshop conducted by our Children, Youth, and Family and Consortium and the College of Education and Human Development. A small group of us met to shape the results into a more manageable ten in each category; see below. This afternoon COPE will have a follow-up exercise to propose three concrete, actionable ideas in each category. That will give us a dozen initiatives to work on in the next year.

Although this list is specific to the University of Minnesota, I suspect that a similar list could be compiled at almost any research university.

Strengths

• Public engagement is being mentioned in revising the promotion and tenure standards. 
• We have diverse outreach offices and a lot of U unofficial "deputies" to carry this message out into the community
• Broad-based expertise of university community
• The U’s reputation for quality
• The U's land-grant mission and our heritage in doing this kind of work
• The large amount of resources available
• The role models available
• New emphasis on interdisciplinary work
• Our ability to use our statewide network of coordinate campuses, Extension and Academic Health Center outreach. 
• MN Campus Compact

Weaknesses

• Uncertainty about how to define "public engagement" and "community"
• Disconnect between accomplishments and rewards in public engagement work, and difficulty in evaluating it
• Inadequate infrastructure (staff support, direct and ICR funding) and fragmentation of those resources that are available
• Difficulties in applying for grants (Which are the best bets? Who gets to apply? Unusual costs in community-based research? Inadequate ICR from local funders)
• Lack of understanding of time needed to develop partnerships and accomplish work, on both U and community sides
• Competition between interdisciplinary and departmental priorities (e.g., TA-ships, NRC disciplinary rankings)
• Inadequate valuing of public engagement work by professional societies
• Sometime lack of quality control and protection of communities in public engagement work
• Difficulties in faculty appointments, promotion, and duties, esp. for junior faculty
• Complexities in getting public engagement messages out to the public

Opportunities

• Growing opportunities for collaboration with specific cultural groups, international NGO’s and other organization
• New opportunities presented by the growing diverse population in MN
• The U's ability to be perceived as a convener and a place for learning where everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner
• Long--term public engagement models such as the Jane Addams School and the Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships.
• Potential of Imagining Minnesota to provide external connections and additional resources for engaged arts, humanities, and design work
• Potential for national leadership in addressing achievement gap in K-12 education
• Potential of issue-driven initiatives such as the Institute on the Environment
• Geographic location in a large urban area where economic, cultural, educational, and political power is concentrated
• The University’s participation and leadership in national higher education networks
• Opportunities for dialog and personal engagement suggested by the Front Porch movement of SCOPE, the Student Council on Public Engagement

Threats

• Little or no ICR recovery from foundation and state grants
• The University is viewed as monolithic, inaccessible, difficult to navigate, and overwhelming
• Inadequate state money and changes in the legislative attitude towards higher education
• Change from a culture of cooperation to an individualistic culture (shift from We to Me) means faculty work too much in isolation
• Unrealistic public expectations of the U by the public
• Cultural shift from a relationship model to an expert model
• External benchmarks, such as higher education ranking systems, that may not value public engagement

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:24 AM | Permalink

I spent last Thursday and Friday at an international meeting at the University of Pennsylvania, hosted by Ira Harkavy and his collegues: the Symposium on Universities, Democratic Culture & Human Rights: An Action Agenda. More than 60 academics, administrators, and a few students from 14 countries met to discuss how to follow up on the Strasbourg meeting of last June 23 which led to the formulation of the Declaration on The Responsibility of Higher Education for a Democratic Culture, Citizenship, Human Rights, and Sustainability. The Declaration is available from the home page of the Network for Higher Education and Democratic Culture.

The Declaration is a stirring and important document, but the challenge is to figure out what to do next. One realization was that the Declaration itself should be translated into a variety of languages. In thinking about doing this, one realizes that some of the key terms—democracy, civil society, etc.—have quite different meanings in different languages and societies. Successfully accomplishing this would be a significant step toward an international understanding of the civic aims of higher education.

Beyond this, there are interesting differences among academics in different countries about what their roles should be, based on different national and academic cultures. To oversimplify, the Europeans tend to focus on the theory and meaning of democracy and human rights, while the Americans focus on practical community engagement through things such as service-learning but—for the most part—don't think very deeply about the nature and current (difficult) state of democracy. Further learning from each other about these various approaches should raise the level of the whole enterprise.

The real challenge is to build these issues into our teaching and scholarship, which will require rethinking of many things we now take for granted in higher education. We're most likely to succeed in this if we take care to involve our students going forward.

Postscript: By coincidence, I was catching up with some old New Yorkers, and came across an essay in the January 8, 2007 issue by Milan Kundera entitled "Die Weltliteratur: How we read one another". Kundera writes "All the nations of Europe are living out a common destiny, but each is living it out differently, based on its own distinct experience." He formulates his "own ideal of Europe thus: maximum diversity in minimum space." The ideas Kundera explores help to explain some of the differences in approach and emphasis between European and American participants in the meeting.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:45 AM | Permalink