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Student Learning in the Engaged Academy Eric J. Fretz 309 This handbook is part of the developing literature on engaged scholarship that reflects the intellectual maturation and the “thickening” of the movement. As the theories and practices of engagement evolve, the movement itself is, happily, acquiring a critical edge that it lacked in its nascent stages. The essays in this part serve up a series of critiques about the way higher education has organized itself, especially as it relates to the role that students can and should play within the engaged university. They question the way knowledge is produced and who can and should produce knowledge. They argue for a reinvigoration of teaching and learning models and improving the quality of graduate and undergraduate education. They question how we are shaping students’ professional lives and public imaginations. They critique the expert model of higher education. They worry that education practices have drifted from democratic principles and an attention to the civic roles of students and faculty. And they show how global and corporate trends are outpacing higher education practice. The authors in this part see a number of problems within higher education: They question the way knowledge is produced and who can and should produce knowledge . They argue for a reinvigoration of teaching and learning models and for improving the quality of graduate and undergraduate education. They question how we are shaping students ’ professional lives and public imaginations. They critique the expert model of higher education. They worry that education practices have drifted from democratic principles and an attention to the civic roles of students and faculty. And they show how global and corporate trends are outpacing higher education practice. Hope and idealism, the hallmarks of the civic engagement movement, balance these critiques. All of the essays in this part articulate a belief that engaged scholarship has the E R I C J . F R E T Z 310 potential to change higher education. They believe that engaged scholarship and learning can make higher education more relevant to a larger audience and that this movement can counter the powerful trends of consumerism that have so deeply affected higher education. They see hope in incorporating deliberative democracy and collaborative learning techniques into the classroom. For the authors in this part, engaged scholarship and learning is not an add-on to an already overloaded curriculum or research agenda—it is a robust way of thinking and generating knowledge that can change the way institutions accomplish their work and mission. Most importantly, they see students as agents of change within institutions , and they see students playing powerful roles in knowledge generation. The critical edge of the civic engagement movement is reflected in two major themes within this part. The first theme is about the need for the engagement movement to think beyond individual, faculty-led projects, and the second theme is about the changing nature of scholarship. Both of these themes are critical for engaged scholars, administrators, and students to consider. The everyday practices of higher education work against the collaborative practices that are the heart of the engaged-scholarship and service-learning movements. Faculty members are educated—and rewarded—to work in isolation or to work primarily with colleagues within their own academic disciplines. This set of received professional practices works against the fundamental sensibility of the engaged scholarship movement which, as John Saltmarsh writes in his essay, is “localized, relational, practice-based, active collaborative, experiential, and reflective.” There is a serious tension between engaged scholarship projects that are inspired by individual faculty members (the default mode) and department or institutional-wide commitments to civic education (a more challenging prospect). It’s an important question to consider as the engagement movement moves forward. Too often, civic engagement initiatives rest on the shoulders of individual faculty members. As a result, engagement activities are often isolated within academic units and not fully integrated into larger curricular initiatives. One of the arguments being made in these essays, then, is that students have the capacities and interests to shoulder some of the civic engagement weight of higher education institutions. As Judith Ramaley notes, “engagement has grown beyond primarily to individual experiences—how students learn and how faculty choose the questions they wish to pursue in their research—to encompass the collective work and institutional relationships that connect an institution to the broader community.” She argues, further, that as engagement initiatives move from individuals to institutions, “scholarship itself begins to change.” Universities that are serious about engagement...

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