New intercollege public scholarship minor first of its kind

New intercollege public scholarship minor first of its kind

University Park, Pa. -- Penn State's new intercollege minor in civic and community engagement, the first minor of its kind throughout higher-education institutions worldwide, integrates academic excellence with the challenges of democracy by helping diverse groups of students, faculty and community members work together on public scholarship.

Developed by an interdisciplinary group of Penn State faculty, the intercollege civic and community engagement minor’s gateway seminar -- Youth and Family Education 211: Fundamentals of Civic and Community Engagement -- is being offered this semester for the first time.

Constance Flanagan, professor of agricultural and extension education and an internationally recognized expert in the area of adolescent civic and political development, said that the gateway seminar in the minor introduces students to the relationship between academic expertise and democracy. The gateway seminar, a prerequisite to field work in the minor, orients students to historical, theoretical and conceptual aspects of civic engagement and democracy.

Flanagan said students have expressed a great deal of enthusiasm about the minor and the gateway seminar since both were approved by the University Faculty Senate last spring.

"The goal is not to promote volunteerism," Flanagan said. "Rather, the goal of the course and the minor is to learn about the way higher education and our wider society do or do not prepare citizens to participate in democratic processes."

The minor, in part a response to student requests, is administered through the Office of Undergraduate Education and International Programs.

"The gateway seminar helps students understand from the start of the minor the connections between academic scholarship and the obligation to participate in and contribute to public issues in democratic society," said Jeremy Cohen, associate vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of communications.

Five years ago, Cohen began working with several other faculty members to develop Penn State's Public Scholarship Associates, a group of Penn State faculty, staff, students and alumni working to make sustainable the integration of academic excellence and the public good.

"When faculty members and community members collaborate with students on their scholarly projects, higher education can directly contribute to understanding and solving public questions -- issues of concern to everyone," Cohen said.

Cohen added that the Public Scholarship Associates identified the development of the minor as an important means of institutionalizing Penn State's commitment to public scholarship and its role in helping students combine academic excellence and democratic participation.

The minor, which requires junior standing, consists of 18 credits (including the gateway seminar), a minimum of three credits of faculty-supervised public scholarship fieldwork and a capstone project.

"Many universities support large institutionalized volunteer centers, and Penn State is among the leaders in the number of hours volunteered by students to community service," Cohen said. "But Penn State is the national leader in developing public scholarship, which integrates faculty and student achievement with the habits and practices of civic engagement."

Public scholarship is the conduct of scholarship -- teaching, research, creative performance and service -- in ways that contribute to informed engagement in democratic processes, Cohen said.

"Public scholarship places an emphasis on the public nature of the work, an idea meant to capture both the democratic obligation of schools and citizens, and the ideal of knowledge as a public good," Cohen said. "Colleges and universities interested in knowing more about public scholarship recognize the importance not only of learning to be scholarly but also of learning to use scholarship for public purposes -- as well as for personal and professional purposes."

Cohen said public scholarship adds academic depth to established ideals of service and outreach.

"It places the good intentions of community service and service learning squarely within the academic arena," Cohen said. "More than telling students that it is nice to serve, we want them to learn how to use their academic expertise and artistic talents over the long term to contribute to the health of democratic society, whether locally, nationally or internationally."

This semester's gateway seminar for the new minor is being taught by Flanagan and Nicole Webster, assistant professor of agricultural and extension education.

Flanagan co-chairs the new intercollege minor with Jeffrey Parker, associate professor of psychology. The faculty advisory board for the minor includes tenured and tenure-line faculty from 10 Penn State colleges.

In addition to attracting faculty and undergraduate students from across the University's curricula, the minor also is the basis of work now under way by a cohort of graduate students from the colleges of Communications, Health and Human Development, Agricultural Sciences and Education.

Conducting their scholarship through the Office of Undergraduate Education, the students are developing assessment tools to provide faculty with new understandings of the links between academic expertise and civic engagement.

Students and faculty who would like to participate in the minor can contact Flanagan at caf15@psu.edu or Parker at jgp4@psu.edu.

For more information, visit http://www.psu.edu/bulletins/bluebook/major/civcmmin.htm on the Web.