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8: Assessing the Effects of Institutional Culture on Leadership Educationat Tufts University
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Assessing the Effects of Institutional Culture on Leadership Education at Tufts University � Elizabeth Hollander, Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Peter Levine, Duncan Pickard, and Jonathan Zaff There are strong theoretical reasons to believe that a college or university that provides substantive, enriching civic experiences for its students will encourage the development of active citizenship in its student body. That is the basic assumption that has persuaded many institutions to provide programs, courses, internships, counseling services, events, extracurricular opportunities, and other supports (such as offices to coordinate community partnerships) as strategies for enhancing their students’ civic engagement. Researchers have tested this theory to a degree, finding that well-implemented service-learning programs can have a positive effect on the civic skills, attitudes, and behaviors of participating students (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda, and Yee 2000). The best of these studies have ranged from large-scale longitudinal studies of several thousand students spread across numerous universities, and spanning their years in school (Astin and Sax 1998; Astin, Sax, and Avalos 1999; Vogelgesang and Astin 2000), to more modest, quasi-experimental evaluations of students on one campus (Myers-Lipton 1998). Meanwhile, as noted in the Introduction to this volume, leadership education is a burgeoning field. One way to put civic education and leadership education together is to enlist students as leaders in providing civic opportunities for their peers. At Tufts University, this combination is an explicit strategy—with some additional elements. We are concerned with the overall civic culture of the institution, as well as specific courses and programs, and we are committed to measuring our impact in order to improve our work. Although focusing on programs, courses, majors, events, and the like is useful , it can miss the effect of the broader university culture on students’ develop- 170 practices ment of their civic identity. A consensus statement by scholars and practitioners found little research on the civic effects of campus cultures. The report called for scholars to “focus on relevant characteristics of institutions: not just size, type, mission—for which data are easily available—but also campus culture; policies (such as promotion and tenure criteria, allocation of the faculty to first-year courses, campus work-study allocations, and financial-aid policies); institutional leadership at all levels from the department to the university as a whole; and the array of civic engagement opportunities provided across each campus and community for full- and part-time students and for students in different fields of study” (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and circle 2006). Tufts is committed to creating a strong institutional culture for civic education; in this chapter, we call it a civically promoting culture. Moreover, Tufts enlists students to advance civic education broadly defined. Student leaders are expected to create, lead, or influence specific programs for civic education at Tufts and also to influence the whole campus culture to be more civically promoting. In turn, effective programs and a positive overall culture should help to cultivate student leaders for civic engagement. There is also an important relationship between the campus and its surrounding community. Students’ civic work should benefit the community, and the community should challenge and educate students and enrich the campus culture. Important aspects of programs at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service include careful orientation to the geographical communities around Tufts and training on how to work respectfully and effectively in partnership with community organizations. So we may summarize the Tufts student leadership model visually (see fig. 8.1). A final distinctive element of our strategy is a strong commitment to selfevaluation and measurement. We recognize that a university can be blessed with students who score relatively high on measures of civic engagement and leadership , yet the institution might not be doing as much as it should to enhance their civic engagement or leadership. We are committed to maximizing our impact; to make sure that happens, we try to self-evaluate constantly. Because the model shown above has many parts, evaluation is a complex business . For our ongoing Civically Promoting Culture study (outlined in this chapter), we have focused on four primary aims: Document the civically promoting culture that Tufts has created • Examine the effect of that culture on current students’ and alumni’s civic at- • titudes and behaviors Evaluate the impact of student leadership on the campus culture • Determine the additional capacity that Tufts’ civically promoting culture • provides to its surrounding communities [3.82.232.31] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:58 GMT) assessing effects of institutional...