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Introduction “To Serve a Larger Purpose” But, at a deeper level, I have this growing conviction that what’s . . . needed is not just more programs, but a larger purpose, a larger sense of mission, a larger clarity of direction in the Nation’s life . . . creating a special climate in which academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and creatively with each other. —Ernest L. Boyer, The Scholarship of Engagement (1996, pp. 32–33) John Saltmarsh and Matthew Hartley Background and Context W e conceived of this book with a sense of urgency that has emerged from reflections on civic engagement work in higher education— the current state of which points to fragmentation and drift. Seemingly, civic engagement efforts have not, in large part, fulfilled Ernest Boyer’s call for higher education “to serve a larger purpose” (1996, p. 22). What Boyer was referring to was the democratic purpose of higher education, or what he called its “civic mandate” (1990, p. 16). Here, we are primarily concerned with two related dimensions of this deficit of purpose: first, that the dominant paradigm of civic engagement in higher education does not express or actively seek to fulfill a democratic purpose, and second, that colleges and universities, in the absence of this larger sense of purpose for civic engagement work, have failed to pursue the kind of institutional change needed to realign the central premises and core work of the academy. The focus of this book is the reclamation of the democratic purposes of civic engagement and an examination of the requisite transformation of higher education that would be required to achieve it. The observation that the civic engagement movement in American higher education is adrift has been advanced by a growing number of civic engagement proponents over the past decade. In 1999, two influential documents pointing to significant challenges facing the movement were published. The “Wingspread Declaration on the Civic Responsibilities of Research Universities” (Boyte and Hollander 1999) admonished higher education 2 • Introduction institutions to reclaim their historic legacy and to again be “filled with the democratic spirit,” a phrase from Harvard’s Charles Eliot. A report from the Kellogg Commission, a group of university presidents, entitled “Returning to Our Roots” (1999) argued that land-grant universities ought to intentionally reclaim their public purposes. In 2000, the “Presidents’ Declaration on the Civic Responsibility of Higher Education”—signed by more than 500 college and university­ presidents—argued that civic engagement had failed to address the political disengagement of America’s youth, pointing out that although volunteerism had increased, political understanding and engagement remained perilously low. Two years later, a report from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), representing over 400 public institutions, found that not only was there a lack of definition and clarity regarding civic engagement efforts, but many universities espouse the importance of public engagement but do little internally to align the institution to support its achievement. The result is that public engagement remains on many campuses very fragile and person-dependent. At most institutions, the idea of public engagement is not so deeply rooted in its culture that its emphasis would continue unabated after the departure of a committed CEO or other academic leader. (p. 8) This candid report concluded that “there is considerable evidence that deep engagement is rare—there is more smoke than fire, more rhetoric than reality . . . Most [campuses] have some form of community interaction, but in the main it is piecemeal, not systemic, and reflects individual interest rather than institutional commitment” (p. 13). In 2004, a group of movement leaders met at the Wingspread conference center to discuss the state of civic engagement in higher education (Brukardt et al. 2004). They concluded that while the movement had prompted some change, it had plateaued. Their report, provocatively entitled Calling the Question, inquired whether engagement should become a core value of the university of the twenty-first century—that is, a central feature informing the academic mission of higher education in generating and transmitting new knowledge. The report noted that “engagement has not . . . been embraced across disciplines, departments and institutions” (p. ii) and that “the momentum needed for engagement to become fully identified with the mission of higher education” was waning (p. 4). Echoing the concerns from the AASCU study, the Wingspread participants concluded that despite widespread evidence of innovative engagement activities across higher education, “few institutions have made the significant, sustainable, structural reforms that will result in an academic culture that values community engagement as...

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