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99 Engaged Scholarship in Land-Grant and Research Universities Lou Anna Kimsey Simon Engaging to Empower: Serving as an engine of prosperity for the common global good by leveraging the land-grant conviction that extraordinary potential lies in ordinary individuals and creating circumstances in which that potential can be achieved. Creating prosperity that goes well beyond finances and fortune is at the heart of Michigan State University’s purpose, vision, and our twenty-first-century engaged scholarship. Throughout our nation’s history, the challenges and opportunities inherent in monumental economic and demographic shifts have fueled fundamental changes in the shared covenant between institutions of higher education and the public they serve. Today, our nation must transform from a manufacturing-based, national economy into a knowledge -based, global economy well positioned in the green revolution, generating national capacity to light our future (Friedman, 2008) in new and innovative ways. Further, we must both meet these challenges and create opportunities in the midst of national and global economic and social stresses (Duderstadt, 2000; Duderstadt & Womack, 2003; Wegner, 2008; Zemsky, Wegner, & Massy, 2005). Changes driven, in part, by this economic chill call us to develop and use cutting-edge knowledge to power and empower an improved quality of life for all people through clean and sustainable energy, access to quality education, safe and plentiful food, affordable health care, an enduring sense of humanity, and undaunted hope. As democratizers of knowledge and education, research-intensive universities with land-grant heritage and values collaborate with their partners to play critical roles in empowering individuals and the communities in which they live and work. Similarly, we are engaged with and empowered by ideas, energy, and the support of our partners outside the university. Connecting these engagements is at the heart of the partner relationships and the work of engaged scholarship. L O U A N N A K I M S E Y S I M O N 100 At Michigan State University (MSU), we have embraced an approach to engagement that arises directly from our land-grant traditions and values—an asset-based, action-driven approach that places a premium on collaboration with and within communities to identify problems and find solutions. The articulation of research questions and development of innovative solutions through evidence-based scholarship requires embracing a full range of community-based approaches and integrating them into the university’s academic approach to engaged scholarship, and vice versa (MSU, 1993). This approach engages students as agents of change along with faculty and is inclusive of our community, government, and business partners. It takes on the difficult but essential work of embedding an ever-increasing capacity for discovery, analysis, and innovation in the community. The diverse disciplines and interdisciplinary activities that comprise highly regarded and relevant researchintensive land-grant universities, coupled with a commitment to education that is both practical and theoretical, not only make this approach feasible but also help create a potent lever for creating sustainable global prosperity. In this chapter, I describe and consider MSU’s approach to engaged scholarship, particularly the institutional imperatives that anchor this work in our land-grant philosophy. I then address how Michigan State is building on its founding values and, through collaborative work, has established itself as a globally engaged research-intensive university for the twenty-first century. I describe several grassroots examples of engaged scholarship to illustrate our action-driven approach. Finally, I identify a set of organic tensions that are reframing higher education and engaged scholarship. Core Land-Grant Values—Quality, Inclusiveness, and Connectivity: Good Enough for the Proudest and Open to the Poorest Abraham Lincoln’s signature on the Morrill Act of 1862 created the legislative mandate to found land-grant institutions, whose covenant with society included advocating for the public good. At its essence, the land-grant idea is a set of beliefs about the university’s social role (Anderson, 1976; Bonnen, 1992; Campbell, 1998; Cross, 1999). Michigan State’s visionaries imagined a learning institution unlike any other the world had ever seen. Like other land-grant institutions, Michigan State was founded on the innovative idea that practical knowledge could be united with traditional scientific and classical studies to create a rigorous curriculum that melded the liberal arts tradition of knowing and being with the practical capacity for thinking and doing. We were created to be elite without being elitist, to provide access to knowledge and education to those previously denied such access. The Land-Grant Idea is not just access to...

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