The Engaged Institution - Association of Public and Land-grant

Returning toOur Roots

THE ENGAGED INSTITUTION

THIRD REPORT

Kellogg Commissionon the Future of StateLand-Grant Universities and

2 Returning to Our Roots

Kellogg Commissionon the Future of State and

Land-Grant Universities

The Engaged Institution 3

National Associationof State Universities andLand-Grant Colleges

An Open Letter to the Presidents and Chancellorsof State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges

Returning to Our Roots

THE ENGAGED INSTITUTION

In the end, the clear evidence is that, with the resources and superbly

qualified professors and staff on our campuses, we can organize our

institutions to serve both local and national needs in a more coherent and

effective way. We can and must do better.

KELLOGG COMMISSION ON THEFUTURE OF STATE AND LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES

FEBRUARY 1999




Kellogg Commission on theFuture of State and Land-Grant Universities

Graham Spanier (Chair) President, The Pennsylvania State UniversityDolores R. Spikes (Vice Chair) President, University of Maryland, Eastern ShoreJohn V. Byrne (Executive Director) Executive Director, Kellogg CommissionC. Peter Magrath President, NASULGCDaniel O. Bernstine President, Portland State UniversityRay M. Bowen President, Texas A&M UniversityLattie F. Coor President, Arizona State UniversityConstantine W. Curris President, Clemson UniversityPeter S. Hoff President, University of MaineMartin C. Jischke President, Iowa State UniversityWilliam E. Kirwan President, The Ohio State UniversityFrancis L. Lawrence President, Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyJohn V. Lombardi President, University of FloridaJoseph McDonald President, Salish Kootenai CollegeM. Peter McPherson President, Michigan State UniversityJames Moeser Chancellor, University of Nebraska-LincolnGregory M. St. L. O’Brien Chancellor, University of New OrleansBenjamin F. Payton President, Tuskegee UniversityJudith A. Ramaley President, University of VermontW. Ann Reynolds President, University of Alabama at BirminghamPaul Risser President, Oregon State UniversitySamuel H. Smith President, Washington State UniversityJames J. Stukel President, University of IllinoisLarry Vanderhoef Chancellor, University of California, DavisDavid Ward Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-MadisonMark Yudof President, University of Minnesota

Commissioners Emeriti

E. Gordon Gee President, Brown University(Former President, The Ohio State University)

Nils Hasselmo Former President, University of MinnesotaFrederick E. Hutchinson Former President, University of Maine

National Advisory Committee

Rogert R. Blunt, Sr. (Chair) Chairman & CEO, Blunt Enterprises, MarylandPaula C. Butterfield Superintendent, Bozeman Public Schools, MontanaWenda Weekes Moore Trustee, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, MichiganDonald E. Petersen Former President, Ford Motor Company, MichiganWalter Scott, Jr. President, Level 3 Communications Inc., NebraskaMike Thorne Executive Director, Port of Portland, OregonEdwin S. Turner President, EST Enterprises, Missouri



GRAHAM SPANIER

DOLORES R. SPIKES

DANIEL O. BERNSTINE

RAY M. BOWEN

JOHN V. BYRNE

LATTIE F. COOR

CONSTANTINE W. CURRIS

PETER S. HOFF

MARTIN C. JISCHKE

WILLIAM E. KIRWAN

FRANCIS L. LAWRENCE

JOHN V. LOMBARDI

C. PETER MAGRATH

JOSEPH MCDONALD

M. PETER MCPHERSON

JAMES MOESER

GREGORY M. ST. L. O’BRIEN

BENJAMIN F. PAYTON

JUDITH A. RAMALEY

W. ANN REYNOLDS

PAUL RISSER

SAMUEL H. SMITH

JAMES J. STUKEL

LARRY VANDERHOEF

DAVID WARD

MARK YUDOF






CONTENTS

Kellogg Commissionon the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities ........................................... 4

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................ 9

Preface ..................................................................................................................... 15

CHAPTER 1: The Imperative for Engagement ............................................................... 17

CHAPTER 2: The Engaged University ............................................................................. 27

CHAPTER 3: From Theory to Action:Reflections on Institutional Portraits .................................................................... 39

Appendices

Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. 53

Meetings, Guests, & Speakers ............................................................................................. 55

Holland’s Matrix: Levels of Commitment to Service .......................................................... 56

Gelmon Assessment Instruments ........................................................................................ 57






WE WRITE BOTH to celebrate the contri-butions our institutions have made toour society and to call on ourselves todo more, and to do it better.

Ours is a rich heritage of service tothe nation. More than a century and aquarter after Justin Morrill andAbraham Lincoln brought the conceptinto being, the land-grant ideal ofpublic university service to communityand nation has spread across theUnited States and its territories. Ourpublic institutions have provided accessto higher education at a level unparal-leled in the world. They have created aprodigious research engine. They havebrought the benefit of new knowledgeto millions of people.

Why, then, the need for change?Who says we need to do more? Andwhat exactly is it that we need to dobetter?

Nature of the Challenges

One challenge we face is growingpublic frustration with what is seen tobe our unresponsiveness. At the root ofthe criticism is a perception that we areout of touch and out of date. Anotherpart of the issue is that althoughsociety has problems, our institutionshave “disciplines.” In the end, whatthese complaints add up to is a percep-tion that, despite the resources andexpertise available on our campuses,our institutions are not well organizedto bring them to bear on local prob-lems in a coherent way.

Meanwhile, a number of otherissues present themselves. They includeenrollment pressures in many Western

and Southwestern states; long-termfinancial constraints and demands foraffordability and cost containment; agrowing emphasis on accountabilityand productivity from trustees, legisla-tors, and donors; and urgent requestsfrom policymakers for solutions tonational and international problems ofall kinds.

Against that backdrop, this Commis-sion concludes that it is time to gobeyond outreach and service to whatthe Kellogg Commission defines as“engagement.” By engagement, werefer to institutions that have rede-signed their teaching, research, andextension and service functions tobecome even more sympathetically andproductively involved with theircommunities, however communitymay be defined.

Engagement goes well beyondextension, conventional outreach, andeven most conceptions of publicservice. Inherited concepts emphasize aone-way process in which the univer-sity transfers its expertise to keyconstituents. Embedded in the engage-ment ideal is a commitment to sharingand reciprocity. By engagement theCommission envisions partnerships,two-way streets defined by mutualrespect among the partners for whateach brings to the table. An institutionthat responds to these imperatives canproperly be called what the KelloggCommission has come to think of as an“engaged institution.”

We believe an engaged universitycan enrich the student experience andhelp change the campus culture. It cando so by enlarging opportunities for

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY




faculty and students to gain access toresearch and new knowledge and bybroadening access to internships andvarious kinds of off-campus learningopportunities. The engaged institutionmust accomplish at least three things:

1. It must be organized to respond tothe needs of today’s students andtomorrow’s, not yesterday’s.

2. It must enrich students’ experiencesby bringing research and engage-ment into the curriculum andoffering practical opportunities forstudents to prepare for the worldthey will enter.

3. It must put its critical resources(knowledge and expertise) to workon the problems the communities itserves face.

Students. The data are clear. Part-timestudents are the fastest growing popu-lation in higher education, and most ofthem seek a degree; white males willbe a smaller and smaller proportion ofthe U.S. workforce; our student body isgradually becoming older; mostmaster’s degree candidates attend parttime; and enrollment in independentstudy programs is increasing.

Preparation for Life. The Commis-sion believes one of the best ways toprepare students for the challenges lifewill place before them lies in integrat-ing the community with their academicexperiences. Students are one of theprincipal engagement resources avail-able to every university. Service-learning opportunities undoubtedlyhelp everyone involved—student,community, and institution. Norshould we overlook the opportunities

to improve students’ exposure toresearch in this service endeavor. Thereshould be little distinction between thebenefits of students participating inresearch and in public service.

Putting Knowledge to Work.Finally, the application of knowledge isa unique contribution our institutionscan make to contemporary society.Because we perform the lion’s share ofthe basic research in this country, newknowledge is one distinctive thing wecan provide.

Here, the list of potential areas forengagement is endless. Hardly any ofour institutions could commit them-selves to the entire array.

The panoply of problems andopportunities incorporated in thephrase education and the economyrequires attention. The traditionalmainstays of extension on our cam-puses, agriculture and food, need tobe renewed. In the most importantway imaginable, our universities needto return to their roots in ruralAmerica with new energy for today’snew problems. Despite the nation’smassive investment in health care, anenormous agenda remains before us. Itneed hardly be said that we need anew emphasis on urban revitaliza-tion and community renewalcomparable in its own way to our ruraldevelopment efforts in the last century.We need to pay new attention to thechallenges facing children, youth,and families in the United States.Finally, we need to redouble our effortsto improve and conserve our environ-ment and natural resources.

The changing nature of the engage-ment agenda, in terms of our students,their preparation, and emergingproblems, presents us with a daunting



challenge. We are under no illusionsabout the difficulty of the task we haveset ourselves. In addition, the newquestions before us involve not onlyimportant issues requiring the applica-tion of hard data and science, butchallenging, and frequently fuzzy,problems involving human behaviorand motivation, complex social sys-tems, and personal values that arecontroversial simply because they areimportant. This engagement agendawill require the best efforts of us all—and the courage, conviction, andcommitment to see it through.

Institutional Portraits

Because no established body ofresearch could be tapped to explorequestions such as those, the Commis-sion encouraged its member institutionsto develop exploratory portraits of theirengagement activities. Eleven institu-tions provided portraits: Arizona StateUniversity; Iowa State University; TheOhio State University; The PennsylvaniaState University; Portland State Univer-sity; Rutgers, The State University ofNew Jersey; Salish Kootenai College;Tuskegee University; the University ofCalifornia, Davis; the University ofIllinois at Chicago; and the Universityof Vermont.

From these protraits, we concludethat seven guiding characteristics seemto define an engaged institution (seepage 12). These characteristics—responsiveness, respect for partners,academic neutrality, accessibility,integrating engagement into institu-tional mission, coordination, andresource adequacy—almost represent aseven-part test of engagement.

In addition, several common themesor lessons emerged:

■ A clear commitment to thebasic idea of engagement. Ourportraits reveal a set of institutionsdetermined to breathe new life intotheir historic mission by goingbeyond extension to engagement.

■ Strong support for infusingengagement into curriculumand teaching mission. Theseexamples also portray institutionswrestling with broader concepts ofoutreach and service and strug-gling to infuse engagement intothe life of the institution and itscurriculum.

■ Remarkable diversity inapproaches and efforts. In theend, designing engagement is alocal activity. It cannot be handeddown from on high. But viewedfrom the ground level of theinstitution and its partners, thescope and diversity of efforts areimpressive.

■ The importance of defining“community.” Each of these 11institutions is working with severaldifferent communities in manydifferent ways. Community hasmany different definitions extend-ing from the neighborhood inwhich the campus is located to theworld.

■ Leadership is critical. Leader-ship to create an engagementagenda is crucial. Engagement willnot develop by itself, and it willnot be led by the faint of heart.

■ Funding is always an issue.Despite the existence of theremarkable variety of funding




A Seven-Part TestSeven guiding characteristics seem to define an

engaged institution. They constitute almost a seven-parttest of engagement.

1. Responsiveness. We need to ask ourselvesperiodically if we are listening to the communities,regions, and states we serve. Are we asking the rightquestions? Do we offer our services in the right way atthe right time? Are our communications clear? Do weprovide space and, if need be, resources for preliminarycommunity-university discussions of the public problem tobe addressed. Above all, do we really understand that inreaching out, we are also obtaining valuable informationfor our own purposes?

2. Respect for partners. Throughout this report wehave tried to emphasize that the purpose of engagementis not to provide the university’s superior expertise to thecommunity but to encourage joint academic-communitydefinitions of problems, solutions, and definitions ofsuccess. Here we need to ask ourselves if our institutionsgenuinely respect the skills and capacities of our partnersin collaborative projects. In a sense we are asking that werecognize fully that we have almost as much to learn inthese efforts as we have to offer.

3. Academic neutrality. Of necessity, some of ourengagement activities will involve contentious issues—whether they draw on our science and technology, socialscience expertise, or strengths in the visual and perform-ing arts. Do pesticides contribute to fish kills? If so, how?How does access to high quality public schools relate toeconomic development in minority communities? Isstudent “guerrilla theater” justified in local landlord-tenant disputes. These questions often have profoundsocial, economic, and political consequences. Thequestion we need to ask ourselves here is whetheroutreach maintains the university in the role of neutralfacilitator and source of information when public policyissues, particularly contentious ones, are at stake.

4. Accessibility. Our institutions are confusing tooutsiders. We need to find ways to help inexperiencedpotential partners negotiate this complex structure so thatwhat we have to offer is more readily available. Do weproperly publicize our activities and resources? Have wemade a concentrated effort to increase communityawareness of the resources and programs available fromus that might be useful? Above all, can we honestly say

that our expertise is equally accessible to all the constitu-encies of concern within our states and communities,including minority constituents?

5. Integration. Our institutions need to find way tointegrate their service mission with their responsibilitiesfor developing intellectual capital and trained intelli-gence. Engagement offers new opportunities for inte-grating institutional scholarship with the service andteaching missions of the university. Here we need toworry about whether the institutional climate fostersoutreach, service, and engagement. A commitment tointerdisciplinary work is probably indispensable to anintegrated approach. In particular we need to examinewhat kinds of incentives are useful in encouraging facultyand student commitment to engagement. Will respectedfaculty and student leaders not only participate but alsoserve as advocates for the program?

6. Coordination. A corollary to integration, thecoordination issue involves making sure the left handknows what the right hand is doing. The task of coordi-nating service activities—whether through a senioradvisor to the president, faculty councils, or thematicstructures such as the Great Cities Project or “capstone”courses—clearly requires a lot of attention. Are academicunits dealing with each other productively? Do thecommunications and government relations officesunderstand the engagement agenda? Do faculty, staff,and students need help in developing the skills oftranslating expert knowledge into something the publiccan appreciate.

7. Resource partnerships. The final test askswhether the resources committed to the task aresufficient. Engagement is not free; it costs. The mostobvious costs are those associated with the time andeffort of staff, faculty, and students. But they also includecurriculum and program costs, and possible limitationson institutional choices. All of these have to be consid-ered. Where will these funds be found? In special stateallocations? Corporate sponsorship and investment?Alliances and strategic partnerships of various kinds withgovernment and industry? Or from new fee structuresfor services delivered? The most successful engagementefforts appear to be those associated with strong andhealthy relationships with partners in government,business, and the non-profit world.






approaches, the lack of stable fundingfor engagement remains a criticalproblem.

■ Accountability needs to belodged in the right place. Of allthe challenges facing the engagementeffort, none is more difficult thanensuring accountability for the effort.Practically every one of the 11portraits cites the need to examinefaculty promotion and tenureguidelines closely to make surethey recognize and reward facultycontributions toward engagement.

Recommendations

The engaged institution—one that isresponsive, respectful of its partners’needs, accessible and relatively neutral,while successfully integrating institu-tional service into research and teach-ing and finding sufficient resources forthe effort—does not create itself.Bringing it into being requires leader-ship and focus.

We believe that five key strategiesneed to be put in place to advanceengagement. We recommend that:

■ our institutions transform their thinkingabout service so that engagementbecomes a priority on every campus, acentral part of institutional mission;

■ each institution develop an engagementplan measured against the seven-parttemplate incorporated into thisdocument;

■ institutions encourage interdisciplinaryscholarship and research, includinginterdisciplinary teaching and learningopportunities;

■ institutional leaders develop incentivesto encourage faculty invovlement in theengagement effort; and

■ academic leaders secure stable fundingto support engagement, through re-allocation of existing funds or theestablishment of a new Federal-state-local-private matching fund;

Among the significant problemsfacing society today are challenges ofcreating genuine learning communi-ties, encouraging lifelong learning,finding effective ways to overcomebarriers to change, and building greatersocial and human capital in our com-munities.

Engagement in the form of service-learning, outreach, and university-community partnerships can helpaddress these problems. And it can alsoput the university to work on thepractical problems of the day. In thisendeavor everyone benefits, andstudents stand to gain the most. Closepartnerships with the surroundingcommunity help demonstrate thathigher education is about importantvalues such as informed citizenship anda sense of responsibility. The newerforms of public scholarship and com-munity-based learning help producecivic-minded graduates who are as wellprepared to take up the complexproblems of our society as they are tosucceed in their careers.

All of this is a lot to ask. But it ishardly a more ambitious vision for the21st century than Justin Morrill’s 19th-century vision of the land-grantuniversity. Today, we are called on tore-shape Morrill’s conception anew. Ifwe succeed, historians of the futurewill continue to celebrate our contribu-tions because we insisted that we coulddo more—and we could do it better.






PREFACE

IN 1995, CONVINCED that the United States and its state and land-grant institutionswere facing structural changes as deep and significant as any in history, the Na-tional Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges sought the sup-port of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation for an effort to examine the future of publichigher education.

The Foundation, already funding several major institutional change initiatives,responded to this request promptly and generously. It agreed to support a multi-year national commission to rethink the role of public higher education in theUnited States and to lend its name to the effort. The first meeting of the KelloggCommission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities was held inJanuary 1996. The Commission’s first report, Returning to Our Roots: The StudentExperience, was issued in April of the following year; its second, Returning to OurRoots: Student Access, was released in April 1998.

This report, Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution, is the third of sixreports the Commission plans to issue during its existence. It addresses the historicland-grant mission of outreach and argues that our institutions must redefine theirpublic service responsibilities as a new century dawns. Between now and the year2000, we plan to issue three more open letters, one on the learning society, oneon campus culture, and a final summative report examining American publichigher education in the new century.

We want to thank our colleagues on the Commission for their commitment tothis assignment and the many thoughtful ways in which they shaped this letter.Although each of the members of our Commission might individually have writtena slightly different document, all are unanimous in supporting the broad themesand directions outlined here.

GRAHAM SPANIER (Chairman) DOLORES R. SPIKES (Vice-Chair)

President PresidentThe Pennsylvania State University University of Maryland, Eastern Shore

JOHN V. BYRNE (Executive Director) C. PETER MAGRATH

President-Emeritus PresidentOregon State University NASULGC






CHAPTER 1

The Imperative for Engagement

WITH A NEW century less than a yearaway as this letter is released, we writeboth to celebrate the contributions ourinstitutions have made to our societyand to call on ourselves to do more,and to do it better.

Ours is a rich heritage of service tothe nation. More than a century and aquarter after Justin Morrill andAbraham Lincoln brought the conceptinto being, the land-grant ideal ofpublic university service to communityand nation has spread across theUnited States and its territories. To-gether, state colleges and universitiesand land-grant institutions haveeducated hundreds of millions ofAmericans at very affordable prices.

As William C. Richardson, presidentof W. K. Kellogg Foundation, acknowl-edged when addressing this Commis-sion, “The land-grant ethic, whichembodies equal access to educationand service to communities, remainsone of the noble, worthy ideas inAmerican society.” For this discussion,we extend the concept of the land-grant ethic beyond land-grant institu-tions proper—the “1862” institutionsand the historically black colleges anduniversities and tribal institutionsbrought into the fold in 1890 and1994, respectively. We include everypublic institution intent on meetingcommunity needs through teaching,research, and service.

In pursuit of that two-fold ideal, ourinstitutions have provided access tohigher education at a level unparal-leled in the world. They have created aprodigious research engine that daily

pushes back the boundaries of humanknowledge. And, building on a founda-tion of agricultural experiment stations,cooperative extension service, andapplied research and outreach, theyhave brought the benefit of that newknowledge to thousands of towns andneighborhoods and millions of peoplein the United States and around theworld.

A Great Tradition ofOutreach and Service

Like you, we take pride in theseaccomplishments. Public institutionshave educated the lion’s share of allfour-year college degree holders in theUnited States. Nearly two-thirds of allbachelor’s degrees and nearly three-quarters of all doctoral degrees areawarded by public institutions. Weaward seventy percent of the nation’sengineering and technical degrees. Wehave provided the cutting-edge skillsand highly educated workforce thathave again made the Americaneconomy the envy of the world inrecent years. This is a remarkablerecord.

We also have special bonds with ourcommunities, states, and regions thatare, for the most part, taken forgranted. We provide the professionalson which our communities rely. Wetrain the doctors and nurses, theteachers and administrators, theengineers and architects, the businessleaders and public figures to whomcitizens turn in times of private andpublic need. There is scarcely a sector




of society where our influence is notfelt. In health care, education, publicadministration, science, agriculture, thearts, humanities, and technologicalinnovation, our graduates lead theway—and our research defines thefuture. Our institutions’ commitmentto their public purpose has helped leadthe United States from an agrarian pastthrough the Industrial Revolution, theSpace Age, the Information Age, andinto today’s emerging Age of Telecom-munications. We are the stewards of agreat tradition.

Land-grant institutions, designedmore than a century ago to provide anew kind of education to suit theneeds of agricultural workers andindustrial labor, have developed thatmandate into an impressive combina-tion of on-campus instruction, world-class research, and off-campus out-reach and service. We have remainedconstant to our mandate while devel-oping it into an instrument of nationalpurpose. That accomplishment remainsour signature contribution to Americanlife.

Evolution of Engagement: Iowa State UniversityIowa, with one-fifth of the world’s most productive

land, is one of the most agriculturally dominated statesin the nation. Its strong agrarian roots also led Iowa, in1864, to become the first state in the nation to acceptthe terms of the Morrill Act, which established thenation’s system of land-grant universities, the first large-scale effort in the world to engage higher educationwith the general population.

[U]ntil the past decade, agriculture completelydominated the state’s economy. That became painfullyclear in the middle of the 1980s, when the nationsuffered a serious recession in the agricultural sector andIowa’s entire economy suffered.

The ag crisis served as a catalyst for change in Iowa.Iowa’s political leadership quickly developed a plan torebuild and diversify Iowa’s economy. An important partof this plan was to use the research capacities of itsthree state universities as economic developmentengines. It was at this juncture that Iowa State Univer-sity, in particular, as Iowa’s land-grant university, began amore rapid move from outreach to engagement [involv-ing economic, agricultural and rural, and academicengagement].

Economic Engagement. The most visible evidenceof the university’s evolution from outreach to engage-ment is its involvement in the economic development ofIowa.

As a result of the ag crisis of the mid-1980s, IowaState developed an economic development plan and

launched several new technology development andtechnology transfer initiatives to support this plan, anda significant number of these initiatives were innon-agricultural areas. . .

Agricultural and Rural Engagement. Even with astronger and more diversified industrial sector, thefoundation of Iowa’s economy will continue to beagriculture. That’s why two of the three goals of IowaState’s economic development plan focus on strengthen-ing production agriculture and developing new productsand markets for Iowa’s ag commodities, which hasresulted in an increased engagement with Iowa’s agricul-tural sector. . .

Academic Engagement. As Iowa State Universitymoved from outreach to engagement in research andoutreach areas, a similar evolution of Iowa State’sundergraduate education programs started. . . The resulthas been a rapid growth in the number of undergraduateprograms and courses that engage students in real-worldactivities. For example, the College of Engineeringrequires all bachelor’s degree graduates to have a co-opor internship experience. Several corporate partnershipsprovide undergraduate business students with real-worldbusiness experience. “Project Opportunity” provideseducation students with partnerships with 13 area publicschools. In addition, engagement with the Iowa businesscommunity and business people wanting to improve theiropportunities for advancement were the primary reasonsIowa State launched its Saturday MBA program in 1992.



Rising Frustration:A Bill of Particulars

Among the significant issues we faceis growing public frustration with whatis seen to be our unresponsiveness.Despite our accomplishments, theattitude is very much “What have youdone for me, lately?” In some ways,this development is simply the latest

Why, then, the need for change?Who says we need to do more? Andwhat exactly is it that we need to dobetter? The answers to these questionslie in the many forces, internal andexternal, bearing down on us. Thenature of the service required of us isunder revision, with profound implica-tions for how we do our work andwhat we consider important.

The Ohio State University: From Outreach to EngagementIf universities ever really existed as “ivory towers” the

drawbridges were lowered a long time ago. Even in itsinception during the 1870s and the industrial andagrarian revolutions in middle America, Ohio Statealready bore a deep responsibility to serve the people ofOhio. A legacy of more than 300,000 living alumnitestifies to the education we have provided and theimpact our graduates are making on their communities.And the work of our faculty and staff in our hospitals,clinics, regional campuses, extension offices, andindustrial research programs weaves a tapestry ofpartnership across our state. . .

[In the early 1990s] Ohio State, like other institutionsof higher education, needed to demonstrate that itcontinued to deserve public support. Restructuringwas a part of that effort, as were improving thestudent experience and focusing on quality. But wewere compelled to move the university forward bymuch more than that. We needed to create a cultureshift that looked beyond our boundaries and outsideof our traditions. We needed to transform ourselvesfrom a land-grant university with strong outreach unitsto an engaged 21st century institution—one withliving and lively collaboration with our partners ineducation, business, industry, and the community. . .

Through the efforts of The President’s Council forOutreach and Engagement, and its partners OSU CARESand Campus Collaborative, several exciting projects andprograms have emerged including:

Campus Partners, an urban revitalization programthat unites business leaders, city officials, schools,neighborhood residents, students, faculty, and staff inefforts that improve the qualify of life in the universityarea. . .

Outreach and Engagement LeadershipSymposium provides a campus-wide forum forexamining the role of outreach and engagement in the21st century university. . .

Outreach and Engagement Database, now underdevelopment, will catalog the university’s statewide,national, and international outreach/engagement effortsand provide institutional access to our many activitiesand partnerships.

Ohio Partners and “Making a Difference” Mapare new publications highlighting the university’sengagement activities. Distributed regularly to faculty,staff, state officials, and the general public, they helpcreate awareness of the university’s many outreach andengagement efforts.

Roads Scholars Tours give Ohio State faculty afirsthand look at the ways the university is forgingpartnerships with business, industry, and thecommunity. . .

These and many other initiatives are helping OhioState move from an institution that merely reaches outto one that is actively and continuously involved in thelife of our communities [and] provide a structure. . . toidentify community needs and evaluate the impact ofour efforts.




manifestation of the old complaintabout the “ivory tower,” but we thinkit a mistake to dismiss it as nothingmore than that. At the root of thecriticism is a perception, fair or unfair,that we are aloof and out of touch,arrogant and out of date.

A wide variety of studies, reviews,focus groups, and “visioning” activitiesin recent years provide a coherent andconsistent picture of public perceptionsof the academy. This picture represents,if you will, a “bill of particulars” towhich institutional leaders mustattend. According to these views, ourinstitutions are slow and unwieldy, sointent on studying things to death thatit is impossible to get timely decisionsor responses out of them.

Part of the problem is the decentral-ized nature of academic governance. Tothe non-academic, the university is anear-inscrutable entity governed by itsown mysterious sense of itself. It’sdifficult to get a grip on this institution,understand its points of leverage, andfind a way through the academic maze.Even when we, as leaders of theseinstitutions, understand clearly whatwe want to accomplish, we are some-times not entirely clear on how toproceed.

Another part of the problem is thatalthough society has “problems,” ourinstitutions have “disciplines.” Accord-ing to the bill of particulars, we are soinflexibly driven by disciplinary needsand concepts of excellence grounded inpeer review, that we have lost sight ofour institutional mission to address thecontemporary multidisciplinary prob-lems of the real world. Our depart-ments, the allegation holds, are self-contained silos, frequently bearing littlerelationship to the challenges facing

our society. We hear complaints thateven the action-research agendas offaculty members are so narrowlyfocused, theoretical, and long-rangethat they are little more than fingers inthe dike behind which are building upvast, complex economic and socialpressures requiring immediate atten-tion of the most practical kind.

It needs to be said that these studiesalso indicate that most Americansactually know very little about Ameri-can higher education. They don’tunderstand its structure or purpose,even less how it functions or how it isfinanced. But that is almost beside thepoint; in today’s environment, percep-tions quickly define reality. The fact isthat the public, while thinking highlyof us in many ways, has a lot ofcomplaints to make.

And some of the complaints have areasonable foundation. Without con-ceding the general indictment, we notethat almost all of the problems ofcontemporary America require inter-disciplinary solutions. They cannot beattacked solely from the perspective ofa single discipline. And, all of usunderstand that our outreach activitiesare not always what they could be. Insome schools, colleges, and programs,we often find too many disconnected“outreach” activities. In other areas, wehave rested on our laurels. Tacitlyexcusing our inattention to the prob-lems of urban America, for example,we point to our work in rural commu-nities as evidence of our commitmentto outreach, overlooking indicationsthat many of our traditional ap-proaches in rural areas are tired andbehind the times.

In the end, what the bill of particu-lars adds up to is a perception that,



despite the resources and expertiseavailable on our campuses, our institu-tions could be better organized to bringthem to bear on local problems in acoherent way.

Other Pressures

Meanwhile, a number of otherpressures present themselves. Theyinclude enrollment pressures; long-term financial constraints and demandsfor affordability and cost containment;a growing emphasis on accountabilityand productivity from trustees, legisla-tors, and donors; and urgent requestsfrom policymakers for solutions tonational and international problems ofall kinds, the resolution of whichdepends heavily on data and researchthat we are in the best position toprovide.

In a seminal paper presented at aUnited States Agricultural InformationNetwork National Conference early inthis decade, G. Edward Schuh, thenDean of the Humphrey Institute ofPublic Affairs at the University ofMinnesota, identified a number ofmega-trends affecting the publicmission of land-grant universities.1 Hecited in particular, economic change,new developments in higher educa-tion, the changing nature of theconstituents we are called on to serve,and the value of our basic product,intellectual capital.

Openness of National Economies.The new openness of national econo-mies in an era of burgeoning interna-tional trade is one of the trends Schuhidentified. National and internationaleconomic developments have hadprofound effects on the relative

economic position of the United Statesand on its scientific and technologicalleadership, he pointed out. At the endof World War II, America accounted for50 percent of global GNP, and prettymuch dominated the world’s scienceand technology. As the century drawsto a close, we account for about 25percent of global GNP and our share ofglobal R&D continues to decline.Should this decline in share continue,our ability to engage productively withour communities, states, and thenation and the world, will doubtlessbecome an issue.

The Shape and Nature of HigherEducation. At the same time, the verynature of American higher education,its public shape, and its support mecha-nisms have changed radically. Andthey promise to change more.

In just the last generation publicfour-year higher education in theUnited States has grown enormously.The number of four-year public institu-tions increased dramatically andenrollment mushroomed. Since 1965,in fact, Americans have created anentirely new set of public institutionsin the form of a nationwide network oftwo-year community colleges.Community colleges represent newventures in the outreach business.

Meanwhile, federal and state finan-cial support is delivered increasinglythrough student aid instead of institu-tional support. Since Schuh offered hisobservations, a new factor has arrivedon the scene: Many public leaders areexpressing growing interest in alternateforms of educational delivery, somegrounded in the profit-making sector,others heavily reliant on the Internetand emerging telecommunications. It is




not too much to say that much ofpublic higher education today operatesunder the shadow of privatization.

Accompanied by a steady erosion ofstate funding, we have witnessedgrowing public anxiety about risingcollege costs. In some of our institu-tions, state support for our campuseshas fallen from about 80 percent of thebudget 20 years ago to 30 percent orless today. Little wonder that a formerpresident of the University of Michi-gan, James Duderstadt, liked to joke

that he had changed his description ofhis university over the years. Once,Duderstadt said, he had describedMichigan as a state university. Then itbecame a state-assisted university. Nextit was transformed into a state-relateduniversity. Near the end of his tenure,he quipped, he found himself describ-ing the University of Michigan as astate-located university.

Changes in state backing and thenew shape and nature of public highereducation itself are issues with

The Pennsylvania State University:An Engaged Institution

Penn State, like all land-grant institutions, was createdon a foundation of active partnerships between highereducation and the agricultural community, government,industry, and the public... Every aspect of the University’slong-term strategic planning and budget reallocation isinformed by the valuable input received from theseconstituencies. A recent statewide survey indicated thatone in every four Pennsylvanians had participated in aPenn State program within the previous year—atestament to the level of interaction between theinstitution and its public. . .

Engagement with Business. Penn State’s history ofinvolvement with business and industry across thestate—through faculty connections, student internships,trustee appointments, technology- transfer programs,and more—has resulted in a tremendous economicimpact. Penn State research generates nearly 14,000Pennsylvania jobs annually. The latest comparative datarank Penn State first among public universities nationallyin industry-sponsored research. Including investmentsfrom 379 Pennsylvania companies supporting more than800 projects, Penn State conducted $58.3 million in suchresearch in fiscal 1997. . .

Engagement with Students. Penn State in recentyears has devoted considerable resources to reorganizingits administrative structure and campus-specific programto better serve the modern needs of students with fast-

track career goals, family and location constraints, andinterests in new technologies. One example of PennState’s concentration on the academic needs of thecommunities where its campuses are based is the recentreorganization of the Commonwealth campuses to allowmore degree programs at more locations, making it easierfor place-bound students to earn their degrees. . .

Engagement with Communities and Others. Tostress the importance of engagement with the public,Penn State’s Faculty Senate has incorporated a measureof faculty outreach activities in its promotion and tenurereview process. . . Penn State outreach programs servemore than five million people. These efforts are seen bymany faculty as a logical extension of their instructionalresponsibilities—part and parcel of what it means to be ateacher. . .

Engagement with the Future. A new initiative, TheWorld Campus, launched this year with support from theAlfred P. Sloan Foundation, reflects ambitious distanceeducation goals that bring instruction in some of PennState’s signature courses to users wherever they may bethrough the Internet and other technologies for under-graduate and graduate degree work, professionalcertificates, and continuing education credits.

The World Campus is just the latest initiative thatharkens back to Penn State’s historic land-grant universitystatus.



profound implications for our ability tocarry out our public mission. Howeverwe measure state financial support—adjusted for inflation, per-studentfunding, or as a proportion of totalstate budgets—it has declined practi-cally everywhere in recent decades.

New Kinds of Constituents. Simul-taneously, our basic constituency, ourstudents, is undergoing its own meta-morphosis. Created to serve an agrar-

ian society, we exist today in anurbanized one. Indeed, the 1990Census indicates that a profound,practically unnoticed, human migra-tion occurred within the United States,every bit as significant as the rapidurbanization of America in the firstdecades of this century. By 1990, forthe first time in our history, moreAmericans lived in suburbs than incities. As this migration has matured,many inner-city communities have all

Portland State UniversityPortland State University (PSU) has moved beyond

outreach and service to a campus-wide commitment toengagement. . . [T]he institution has redesigned itsteaching, research, extension and service functions tobecome more sympathetically and productively involvedwith the Portland metropolitan community. . . Theengagement agenda that characterizes PSU todayemerged from. . . a confusing. . . external image andfrom a series of long-term reductions in state support forhigher education. . .

There is a history in higher education and a tendencyof academics to “serve” the community by offeringresources—student help, faculty expertise, training andclasses, and so on. During recent years, that thinking hasbeen adjusted to a mentality of collaboration and avision of engagement with community. The engagementhas taken multiple forms with different loci across thePSU campus. Those forms include community-basedteaching and learning activities; research and develop-ment efforts; program and curriculum planning; andprogram implementation and offerings...

Community-based Teaching and Learning. Since1995, the number of community-based learning coursesincreased from 8. . . to 150. . . in 23 departments. . .Those courses originated as traditional disciplinarycourses, but have been transformed by integration ofcommunity work with a direct relation to the academiccontent. . . Another form of community-based learningtakes place in senior capstone courses. The capstonesare designed as team experiences to address a significant

community issue or need. Faculty, students, and commu-nity partners work together to design the capstones, toimplement them and to assess them. In 1997, four pilotcapstones were initiated for development and study. In1997–98, 1,000 seniors participated with faculty andcommunity partners in 50 capstones, and 70 are plannedfor 1998–99. . .

Research and Development. A traditional approachfor faculty research has been to use communities asresearch samples or contexts for study. Currently asignificant number of PSU faculty collaborate withcommunity partners in the planning and design ofresearch projects. Instead of research questions derivedfrom a disciplinary knowledge base, their questionsemerge from community issues and needs and aresupported by the knowledge base. . . From 1995 to 1998,more than 45 such research projects were documented.

Program Offerings. Development. . . of a number ofundergraduate and graduate programs has recently beenplanned and carried out in partnerships with the Schoolof Extended Studies. . . A striking example. . . is thestatewide Masters in Business Administration, withcampus courses distributed to 15 sites throughoutOregon. . . Similarly, a master’s degree in curriculum andinstruction has been offered in Lincoln City, Salem, andHood River in cooperation with local school districts. . .Currently, PSU’s innovative Freshmen Inquiry courses areoffered collaboratively by teaching teams with participa-tion from neighboring school districts and communitycolleges.




but collapsed and many rural areashave struggled to preserve their eco-nomic and social vitality.

At the same time, the minorityproportion of the nation’s populationhas grown and diversified rapidly,women have entered the workforce inrecord numbers, and the aging of theAmerican population has transformedour campuses. In the face of thesedevelopments, the relative politicalimportance of rural issues for campussupport has changed, the intensity ofarguments about the relevance of thetraditional liberal arts has acceleratedsharply, and the utility of a traditionalcalendar, offered for the convenienceof traditional students, increasingly hasbeen called into question.

Intellectual Capital as an Asset.Today, notes Schuh, the importance ofintellectual capital as an engine ofeconomic growth, and the consequentneed to protect it, is increasinglyrecognized nationally and internation-ally. So in the 1990s, for the first time,we began to see bilateral and multilat-eral trade negotiations begin to hangon issues of intellectual property, whilerights to patents and the other eco-nomic fruits of the research processbegin to become an important potentialrevenue stream for major researchuniversities.

Implications. Several implications forour institutions and for the preparationof our students flow out of all of this.Schuh identified several of them.

First, there is growing pressure onour universities for internationaliza-tion. In the face of open markets andopen economies—and the globalnature of many of the issues our

research addresses—it is time we facedopenly what we have always acknowl-edged among ourselves. Our researchneeds to be global, not insular, and ourstudents need to be equipped tocompete in an increasingly internation-alized economy.

Second, the drive for greater aca-demic economy, for greater efficiencyand effectiveness, will continue un-abated. Undoubtedly, we will be calledon to pare down further, shed a fewmore pounds, and become a bit moreefficient. As financial support increas-ingly depends on student aid, we willalso have to become more aggressive,both in recruiting students and inraising funds. Most of us are already inthe midst of dealing with these newrealities.

Third, we need to do a better job ofserving our educational constituents.We know that we have already servedthem very well. We will have to dobetter in the future. By constituents,we mean our students and we meanthe various publics that support themand us. With a more diverse and olderstudent population, we need a morediversified set of educational offerings.As people mature and move throughsuccessive careers, we need to be thereto help them retool and retread, withspecial courses and offerings availableat their convenience. Above all, weneed to reach out to our communitieswith the special resources we can bringto bear on their problems—knowledge,technique, scholarship, and science.New knowledge is the value we add asthe nation approaches a new century.Research is the well from which wedraw, and the quality of that researchwill determine the quality of thecontribution we can make.



Against that backdrop, this Commis-sion concludes that our institutionsmust offer first-rate undergraduate andgraduate programs that prepare stu-dents to respond effectively to thecomplex issues of the society they willenter while promoting social responsi-bility and creating good citizens.Moreover, we must directly respond tothe social and economic concerns ofthe communities we serve. Aninstitution that responds to these

imperatives will be involved with itsstudents and community in suchmeaningful ways that the students canadvance local interests while thecommunity relationships simulta-neously improve the institution’seducational and research missions.Such a university may properly becalled what the Kellogg Commissionhas come to think of as an “engagedinstitution.”






IT IS TIME to go beyond outreachand service to what the Kellogg Com-mission now defines as “engagement.”By engagement, we refer to redesignedteaching, research, and extension andservice functions that are sympatheti-cally and productively involved withthe communities universities serve,however community is defined.

This Commission defines engage-ment as something that goes wellbeyond Cooperative Extension andconventional outreach. It even goesbeyond most conceptions of publicservice. Our inherited ideas emphasizea one-way process of transferringknowledge and technology from theuniversity (as the source of expertise)to its key constituents. The engage-ment ideal is profoundly different;embedded in it is a commitment tosharing and reciprocity. By engagementthe Commission envisions partner-ships, two-way streets defined bymutual respect among the partners forwhat each brings to the table.

Such partnerships are likely to becharacterized by problems definedtogether, goals and agendas that areshared in common, definitions ofsuccess that are meaningful to bothuniversity and community and devel-oped together, and some pooling orleveraging of university and public andprivate funds. The collaboration arisingout of this process is likely to bemutually beneficial and to build thecapacity and competence of all parties.

One member of our Commission gotto the heart of the matter in describing

a community needs-assessment withwhich his research-intensive institutionwas involved: “Our attitude is: ‘If it’spart of the community’s agenda, wewant to think about how we can makeit part of ours.’”

Universities can make thecommunity’s agenda part of their ownin a number of ways. Some are admin-istrative and managerial—perhapsproviding a single point of contact forentering the complex modern univer-sity. Others are academic and schol-arly—providing specialized technicalassistance of one kind or another to alocal community group. And most arelikely to be time-bound in somefashion, with some issues requiringemergency rapid responses, otherssusceptible to a one-year or multi-yearcommitment, others requiring long-term research agendas—with the mostcomplex and difficult challenges oftenrequiring all three.

It hardly needs to be said thatpartnerships of various kinds areuniquely embedded in our land-grantmission and tradition. They are derivedindeed from the public purpose of ourinstitutions. The land-grant movementwas motivated, in part, by a recogni-tion that public higher educationneeded to attend to the problems ofthe community supporting it and directits teaching, research, and servicetoward the issues of the day. In the lastcentury, the problems demandingattention were found in agriculture,rural development, mining, engineer-ing, and the need for military officers.

CHAPTER 2

The Engaged University




Today the problems have changed,but the animating impulse remains thesame: we must direct teaching, re-search, and service toward the chal-lenges of contemporary society.

Changing Nature ofEngagement

We believe an engaged universitycan enrich the student experience andhelp change the campus culture. It cando so by enlarging opportunities forfaculty and students to gain access toresearch and new knowledge and bybroadening access to internships andvarious kinds of off-campus learning

opportunities. The engaged institutionmust accomplish at least three things:

■ It must be organized to respond tothe needs of today’s students andtomorrow’s, not yesterday’s.

■ It must enrich students’ experi-ences by bringing research andengagement into the curriculumand offering practical opportunitiesfor students to prepare for theworld they will enter.

■ It must put its critical resources(knowledge and expertise) to workon the problems its communityfaces.

Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyEstablished by royal charter in 1766 as Queen’s

College and the eighth oldest institution of higherlearning in the nation, Rutgers, the State University ofNew Jersey, is unique in American higher education asthe only colonial college that went on to become both aland-grant institution and a state university. . .

Rutgers is engaged with all levels of society: state andlocal governments, NGOs, corporations, municipalities,and individuals. Rutgers faculty are policy-makers,planners, investigators, pollsters, advisers, andcommunitarians tackling the challenges and problemsthat shape New Jersey’s future: health care, education,the environment, workforce, technological innovation,lifelong learning, diversity, and economic development.In turn, theses activities are funded from a variety ofsources including all levels of government, corporatecontracts, partnerships, private donations, universityfunds, and volunteered services. . .

Organizational Issues. Like other land-grantuniversities, Rutgers has grappled with organizationalissues that have an impact upon fruitful engagement.These include the delivery of service, faculty rewards,and resources: human, physical, and financial. While

centers, bureaus, institutes, and academic departmentshave traditionally provided the essential locus or origin ofoutreach activities, our experience leads us believe thatrapidly emerging societal needs may better be addressedby alternative structures such as...flexible-teamapproach[es], especially as interdisciplinary approaches tothe solution of societal challenges are becoming morethe norm.

Faculty Incentives. Faculty reward structures are alsocritical to successful engagement. At Rutgers, this isbeing addressed by dedicating a growing amount offaculty compensation through the allocation of meritawards. The awards are determined largely by the facultythemselves with sufficient flexibility to allow academicunits to determine their own balance of teaching,research, and service that is most appropriate to themission of their unit and the individual strengths of thefaculty. Although scholarship continues to be heavilyweighted in tenure decisions, Rutgers has moved inrecent years to allow increasing flexibility for othercriteria to be considered in promotions subsequent totenure, and for their assessment during periodic post-tenure reviews.



Potential Students. It is hard to findanyone who disagrees with the propo-sition that lifelong learning is aprerequisite as the United States entersa new century and that we need tocreate the conditions for maintaining a“learning society.” The data are incon-trovertible:2 part-time students are thefastest growing population in highereducation, and most of them seek adegree; white males will be a smallerand smaller proportion of the U.S.workforce; our student body is gradu-ally becoming older; most master’s

degree candidates attend part-time;and enrollment in independent studyprograms is increasing. Indeed, thedata indicate that executive andprofessional personnel are the largestpopulation group seeking job skills, inpart because the rapid development ofan economy grounded in informationand telecommunications means thatthey have to struggle to stay abreast ofthe latest developments.

The future looks like more of thesame: we have to be prepared to dealwith an older, more diverse, often

Engagement: A Portrait of Tuskegee UniversityFounded in 1881 only 16 years after the Civil War

ended, and only 40 miles from the original capital of theConfederacy, Tuskegee University’s very establishmentwas an act of engagement, which included the localcommunity, the State of Alabama, and privatephilanthropy.

Tuskegee University is a national, independent, co-educational institution of higher learning that has anhistorically unique relationship with the state of Alabamaand performs a land-grant function as a member of the“1890 institutions.” With distinctive strengths in thesciences, engineering and other professions, theUniversity’s basic mission is to provide educationalprograms of exceptional quality. . .

[After the Civil War], Lew Adams, a former slave and alocal community leader, wanted a school for blackpeople. Col. W.F. Foster, publisher of the Macon Mail,needed the support of black voters to win election to theAlabama legislature. Adams promised to deliver the blackvote if Foster would [support a school].

Foster won election [and] introducedlegislation. . . authorizing $2,000 for salaries in supportof the proposed school to “train colored teachers.”

A local church provided the building, 30 adults wererecruited, and Booker T. Washington was recruitedfrom Hampton Institute to be the first principal.“Engagement” was a reality. . .

When the Southern economy of the post-Civil Warera faltered, it was the genius of Dr. George Washington

Carver, who introduced crop rotation and otherscientific inventions, which revolutionized Southernagriculture.

Thus the concept of Tuskegee as an engageduniversity is indeed as old as the University itself. Thefounder was particularly determined to minimize anybarriers. . . which would prevent the collective compe-tencies of Tuskegee from being shared with the externalcommunity. “If the people can’t come to Tuskegee, thenTuskegee will go to the people,” Washington insisted. In1899, Dr. George Washington Carver developed plansfor a mule-draw wagon to carry farm implements, dairyequipment, seeds, and other items into surroundingrural communities to demonstrate improved agriculturalmethods of farming. . .

[Today], Tuskegee University continues to engage[and] to champion the special needs of the nation’sunder-served with a focus on the challenges that faceAfrican Americans. [K]ey recent developmentsare. . . construction of the Kellogg Conference Center;designating an associate provost to manage engage-ment and outreach; participation in the Southern FoodSystems Education Consortium; assisting nine Alabamacommunities apply for designation as federal Empower-ment Zone/Enterprise Communities; helping MaconCounty establish a Community Development Corpora-tion; and a variety of partnerships to encourage minoritystudents in public schools consider research andengineering careers.




more highly educated, group of stu-dents, many of them interested inpolishing their skills through part-timestudy in undergraduate, graduate, andprofessional programs of study.

We simply must respond to thosedemands while recognizing that thesociety in which they are made haschanged dramatically. Single womenhead many more American familiesthan they ever have before; Americabecame “urbanized” in the first half ofthis century and “suburbanized” as itdraws to a close; job growth is fastestin occupational groups requiring moreeducation; knowledge is becoming amore important factor in work life atthe very time our labor force is aging;job security for all workers appears tobe a thing of the past; and the olderpopulation is working longer andretiring later.

The implications for our institutionsare clear. Public colleges and universi-ties, created to respond to the needs ofvery young, rural white males workingin stable industries and communities,can look to a future in which theirmission will require them to respond tothe needs of considerably older menand women, many of them minorities,and most of them from urban andsuburban communities in which theoutlook for employment security isoften bleak, and social civility is some-times hard to find. These new condi-tions present us with a formidable newagenda.

Preparation for Life. One of themajor premises of this report is theconviction that an increasing propor-tion of our population “must con-stantly integrate new knowledge intotheir everyday activities” in the words

of Mary Walshok, in Knowledge WithoutBoundaries.3 She argued that in thenear future all Americans will need a“knowledgeable base” from which tomake informed, considered judgmentsin their varied roles as professionals,citizens, and members of their familiesand communities. The Commissionbelieves that promising ways of creat-ing that knowledgeable base includeintegrating the community into theacademic experiences of our studentsand engaging our students in meaning-ful research.

As NASULGC’s Council on AcademicAffairs suggested to the Commission,students are one of the principalengagement resources every universitypossesses. Developing student talentsrepresents one of the major contribu-tions we make to our communities. Atthe same time, our institutions need towork harder to create and maintaininternships, practicums, and service-learning opportunities of many kinds,particularly for undergraduates. Suchopportunities undoubtedly help every-one involved—student, community,and institution. Students acquire asense of citizenship and communityresponsibility and stewardship; theydevelop valuable employment skills;and they broaden their horizons andexperiences. Community leaders, fortheir part, are able to become betterinformed about the institution; theyoften obtain a sense of satisfactionfrom helping a student develop; andthey clearly gain the benefit of thestudents’ skills and expertise. For itspart, the institution is able to diversifyits repertoire of instructional ap-proaches, improve instructional quality,and enhance the community’s sense ofgoodwill. Engagement as part of the



student experience makes winners ofus all.

Nor should we overlook the oppor-tunities to improve students’ exposureto research in this service endeavor.Problem-solving, critical thinking,working with others, and clear com-munication through improved speak-ing, writing, and listening are all skillspolished by participating in researchactivities. There should be little distinc-tion in our minds between the benefits

of students participating in researchand in public service.

Putting Knowledge to Work.Finally, the application of knowledgeis the unique contribution ourinstitutions can make to contemporarysociety. Because we perform the lion’sshare of the basic research in thiscountry, new knowledge is a distinctivething we bring to the table.

Salish Kootenai College and the Flathead IndianReservation

The principal characteristics of Indian life in Bicenten-nial America were poverty, brevity, and illiteracy. Indiantribes ranked last in every government measure ofemployment, income, health, life expectancy, andeducational attainment. The data were shocking:

■ Indian unemployment on reservations averaged 50percent, with some reservations reporting 80 percent.

■ The average Indian income of $1,500 was about 25percent of the national average.

■ Indians led the nation in health problems: hepatitis,tuberculosis, alcoholism, suicide, accidental death, eardisease and respiratory infections.

■ The Indian infant mortality rate was 50 percent higherthan the national average.

■ Indians had an average life span of 44 yearscompared to 65 years for all Americans.

■ Less than 20 percent of all Indian adults completedhigh school.

■ Only 3 percent of Indians who enrolled in collegereceived a degree.

■ Only 1 percent of Indian college graduates earned agraduate degree.

■ In 1976, Montana colleges and universities conferreddegrees on 5,232 graduates; 80 were Indian (23

associate degrees; 55 bachelor’s degrees; 2 master’sdegrees; 0 doctoral and first-professional degrees)

■ Two research studies reported that only 40 Indiansfrom the Flathead Reservation earned college degreesbetween 1935 and 1976.

New tribal educational leaders and new businessleaders believe that both the Indian people on theFlathead Reservation and the tribe as a whole would bebetter served, their lives improved, and the tribestrengthened if a tribal college were created. . .

Salish Kootenai College was established by the TribalCouncil in 1976. It appointed a Board of Directors with afull charter of powers to carry out the development andoperation of the College. . . The College began with noland, no budget, no classrooms, no faculty, and nolibrary. However, it had an advantage over existing publicand private colleges and universities: it promised to servethe needs, and develop the talents of, Indian people onthe reservation. That promise made all the difference.

The College began to gather resources to createinstructional and support programs. It had the simpleidea that Indian people and Indian organizations knewthe degree and certificate programs that they wanted. Inaddition, it decided to ask them. In the first ten years, itcompleted three educational need assessments and thedata from those surveys became the degrees andcertificates that the College offered.




In her book, Walshok discussed thenation’s research universities and whatresearch can mean in such areas aseconomic and community develop-ment, professional practice, workplaceimprovement, and civic life and de-mocracy in the United States. As shepoints out, all fields of knowledge—from the arts, humanities, and socialsciences to the biological and physicalsciences and professions—have under-gone major transformations andparadigm shifts as a result of newresearch findings. Such developmentsin new knowledge and theory continu-ously transform how we understandour world and how we shape ourphysical, economic, and social systems.

Here, the list of potential areas forour engagement is endless. Hardly anyof our institutions could committhemselves to the entire array. Buteach of us can commit ourselves tomany of them, and the whole of ourefforts will far exceed the sum of theparts. Among the issues calling forthoughtful engagement by universityleaders we find:

The entire panoply of problemsincorporated in the phrase educationand the economy—require attention.These issues include maintaining thenation’s competitive edge; improvingthe skills of unskilled labor and creat-ing career ladders for entry-levelworkers; developing the manufacturingabilities of small- and medium-sizedAmerican firms which are creatingmost new jobs; improving basic educa-tional skills; addressing the shortage ofscientists and engineers in the UnitedStates; and improving schooling inurban America and low-income ruralareas. Perhaps our greatest opportunity

to make a contribution in this wholearena lies in improving teacher prepa-ration on our own campuses.

The traditional mainstays of exten-sion on our campuses, agricultureand food, require renewed attention.The Green Revolution sparked by ourresearch has helped feed the world byhiking farm productivity to levels thatonce seemed unattainable. We need asimilar Food Safety Revolution. Ourfarms and food-production industriesare this nation’s greatest source ofever-renewable wealth, but seriousproblems persist on the land. The useof fertilizers and pesticides has boostedproduction but given rise to real andgrowing concern about food safety andtoxicity in our soil and waterways.America’s eating habits are changing,as new links are discovered betweennutrition and health. Our researchagendas must engage these issues.

Our universities need to return totheir roots in rural America withrenewed energy for the new problemsof a new day. The changing economicsof family farming present new chal-lenges for agricultural innovation andrural economic development. Cornprices today, for example, are basicallywhat they were a generation ago,although the cost of production (andprices for practically everything else)have increased many times over. Whatcan only be understood as an economicmeltdown in many small farmingcommunities has been accompanied bythe collapse of social and economicstructures in many rural areas. Ruralschools have been particularly hard hit,but their situation is but a symbol ofthe frayed social fiber holding sparsely-populated areas together. The future



for small farmers is hardly promising.Can our expertise help cushion thelanding? How can the rural economicinfrastructure be rebuilt? Finding thewill and the way to address suchchallenges provides us with freshopportunities to deepen and extendour roots in rural America.

Despite the nation’s massive invest-ment in health care, an enormousagenda remains before us. Much of itrequires additional basic research; agreat deal of it involves improving thedelivery of services. We have somepromising signs of progress, but canceris still not cured, AIDS remains afrightening epidemic, and Alzheimer’sDisease continues to rob the elderly oftheir memories and their families ofpeace of mind. Many other condi-tions—ranging from heart disease,stroke, and blindness and deafness todebilitating spinal cord injuries, emo-tional illness and depression, and

infectious disease—await the cures,insights, and treatments under devel-opment on our campuses.

It need hardly be said that we needa new emphasis on urban revitaliza-tion and community renewalcomparable in its own way to our ruraldevelopment efforts in the last century.Here the list of urgent issues requiringpriority attention is overwhelming:improving the life chances of low-income, minority families in violence-wracked inner-city communities;providing the services needed tomaintain family stability as welfarereform requires the mothers of infantsand children to leave the home for theworkplace; replacing crumbling high-ways, bridges, and water and sewersystems; rebuilding housing stock andproviding market structures to encour-age minority-owned businesses;improving public schools while main-taining access to higher education; and

The Great Cities Program at the University of Illinoisat Chicago

UIC’s Great Cities program expresses the university’scommitment to direct its teaching, research, and serviceprograms to address urban issues in the Chicago metro-politan area. Great Cities refers to the mission of theuniversity as a whole, and as such encompasses workdone by hundreds of faculty and university departments.

The Great Cities concept combines the older “urbanmission” of the urban campus of the University of Illinoiswith the Carnegie Commission Research I designationthat the campus achieved in 1983. The. . . concept restson the idea of a close relationship between research andthe issues faced by people and institutions in the metro-politan area. . .

UIC’s engagement includes virtually all aspects ofsociety. With a university hospital and a full complement

of health sciences colleges, UIC is engaged with partnersin all aspects of health and healthcare, from individualpatients to neighborhood, city and state health centersand public agencies, to pharmaceutical corporations andprofessional associations. As a partner in the ChicagoTechnology Park, UIC works with city and state agenciesand other institutions. . . on issues of technology transfer.The colleges of business and engineering have multiplepartnerships with companies ranging from Fortune 500corporations to family- and minority-owned start-upfirms. The college of education has extensive contactswith individual schools throughout the metropolitanareas. . . Other colleges work with neighborhoodorganizations, civic groups, government departments,legislators, and other partners throughout the world.




trying to find ways to make work bothavailable and attractive as employersmove decent jobs out of town andmany jobs abroad. The needs of urbanAmerica, and of the poor and working-poor families found there, present uswith a full and complete agenda that issobering in its scale and magnitude.

A special word is needed also on thechallenges facing children, youth,and families in the United States.Reported incidents of child abuse areon the rise, and educators note smallchildren arriving in kindergartenunprepared for the demands of learn-ing. Adolescent turmoil reaches newlimits, with teenagers precociouslyproducing off-spring while little morethan children themselves. Youthalienation from the larger culture canbe tracked in data about teenage useand abuse of alcohol, cigarettes, andother drugs. And it’s no secret that thefamily itself, society’s shock absorber ofchange, is in trouble. Divorce ratessoared in the 1960s and 1970s andhave remained high. Finding time forparenting in single-parent and two-income families is often a major causeof stress, for both adults and children.Research, experience, and commonsense tell us that anything we can doto strengthen the family will pay bigdividends in the years ahead.

Finally, we need to redouble ourefforts to improve and conserve ourenvironment and natural re-sources. Major portions of the nation’s(and the world’s) surface are befouled.Evidence is practically everywherearound us that our insensitivity to thenatural environment is reaching itslimits—acid rain, contaminatedgroundwater, holes in the ozone layer,

and fisheries polluted with farm-wasteand the run-off produced by clear-cutting timber and abandoning mines.In some years, recreation and touristinterests on both coasts have to con-tend with polluted beaches. Theperiodic newspaper dramas about thedifficulties of disposing of nuclearwastes have given rise to new fears ofa “mobile Chernobyl.” Sooner or later,it seems, nature strikes back.

Tools at Hand. It must be said that wecome to this work with considerableexperience to draw on. Next to access,outreach and service have been ourinstitutions’ distinctive hallmarks. Inpursuit of that service mission, ourinstitutions have created a remarkablearray of institutional resources andcapabilities designed to extend thecampus’s reach:

■ continuing education throughoff-campus and extended degreeand credit programs, includinginstructional telecommunicationsand distance-education effortsand specialized programs forprofessional continuing education;

■ a number of extension activitiesincluding Cooperative Extension(with federal, state, and countypartners) and general extension inthe form of non-credit continuingeducation and opportunities forlifelong learning;

■ specialized outreach units ofvarious kinds including centers,institutes, special programs andconferences;



■ agricultural experiment stations;

■ cultural and arts programming andcreating a public forum to addresscommunity issues, including themaintenance of public radio andtelevision outlets and universitybroadcast services;

■ services to business and industry inthe form of specialized program-ming for industrial and manufac-turing concerns and Small BusinessDevelopment Centers;

■ targeted on-campus academicprograms such as elderhostel andspecial opportunities for childrenand pre-college youth; and

■ major investments in health careprogramming, including hospitals,clinics, emergency care facilities,and area health education centers.

To note that our universities makemajor contributions to the quality oflife in many communities is simply toacknowledge the obvious. They havedone so locally; they have done sonationally; and they have done soglobally. Properly led, organized, andleveraged with new technologies,organizational structures, and deliverymodels, many of these activities canbe incorporated into the buildingblocks for the engaged universityof the future. In this regard, it isimportant to consider how to reshapecooperative extension so that it devel-ops into what it has always had thecapability of becoming, a powerfulorganizing center for total universityengagement.

A Daunting Challenge

The changing nature of the engage-ment agenda, in terms of our students,their preparation, and emergingproblems, presents us with a dauntingchallenge. We are under no illusionsabout the difficulty of the task we haveset ourselves. Simply in terms of thekinds of problems presented to us—ineducation and the economy, agricul-ture and food, rural economic develop-ment, health care, the family, urbanrevitalization and community renewal,and the environment and naturalresources—an engagement agendamight usefully be developed solelyaround the domestic considerationsinvolved. But each of them, also, islikely to be most fruitfully approachedif examined from an internationalperspective.

In addition, the new questionsbefore us involve not only importantissues requiring the application of harddata and science, but challenging, andfrequently fuzzy, problems involvinghuman behavior and motivation,complex social systems, and personalvalues that are controversial simplybecause they are important. That is tosay, our institutions have always beengood in developing responses totechnical questions such as “How canwe help farmers grow more corn?”But questions such as “How can wehelp improve the environment?” or“How can we improve the climate forminority Americans?” raise much morecomplicated challenges revolvingaround both the organization of oursociety and its economy and individualbehavior and motivation. Part of thechallenge of improving public




education, promoting rural economicdevelopment, or encouraging urbanrenewal lies in the complexity andvalue-laden nature of the issuesinvolved. These issues raise difficultquestions, and the answers to them arelikely to be even harder to find.

In each of these target areas andothers, our institutions must payparticular attention to the special anddistinctive needs of low-income urbanand rural communities. It will not begood enough for us to point to asuccess here and there in communities

that would have found a way tosucceed anyway. The true measure ofour accomplishment depends ondeveloping and replicating successfulstrategies for communities which haveall but abandoned hope for theirfuture.

However approached, none of theagendas outlined above will be carriedto completion by the faint of heart.They will not be solved with simplisticslogans from public officials; they willnot yield to the public relations blan-dishments of the private sector; and

University of California, Davis: A Community Memberin Good Standing

The University of California, Davis, and, indeed, allland-grant institutions, have an obligation to shareknowledge and expertise with the communities weserve. The challenge of engagement today is to expandthe philosophy and practice of the land-grant model toreflect the profound transition of American society froma rural, agricultural economy to a largely urban popula-tion heavily dependent on technology and information.Our parallel challenge is to move from a knowledgedissemination mode more common in an earlier time toone of engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships witha wide variety of constituents. . .

To be fully engaged is an essential element of themission of UC Davis, and we are working in many waysto live up to this concept. The following are a fewexamples, of many that might be cited, of mutuallybeneficial partnerships in service to society.

■ Partnership Programs with K–12 Schools. Thereare more than a hundred distinct programs, in theDivision of Education as well as many other campusacademic units, which provide resources to addresscritical issues in California’s public schools. . .

■ Planning for Regional Economic Developmentand Growth. UC Davis is working with partners inthe cities and counties of the Sacramento region in avariety of ways to create a positive vision of our

regional future. In particular, the University works withValley Vision (the Chancellor is a member of its boardof directors), a regional coalition of business, aca-demic, and community groups created to addressissues of regional growth and development. . .

■ Human Corps. This program promotes studentinvolvement in community service and provides aliaison between students and agencies needingassistance. Projects range from short-term to long-term and include. . . teaching adults how to read,adopting a grandparent, or working in a communityhealth clinic.

■ UC Davis Medical Center Clinics. UC Davis medicalstudents and physicians make significant contributionsto the health of under-served populations, particularlyin the Sacramento urban area, through their volunteerwork at community clinics. . .

■ University in the Library. California’s small townsand rural areas support local public libraries thatrepresent a significant network of learning opportuni-ties. This network is now being enriched by a newpartnership [involving] the California State Library andUC Davis. Faculty speakers travel to communitylibraries. . . to give presentations on topics. . . ofparticular interest in the community.



they will not respond to wishfulthinking inside or outside the academiccommunity. Each of them will require

the best efforts of us all—and thecourage, conviction, and commitmentto see them through.






MAKING ENGAGEMENT REAL on ourcampuses will require broad strategiesto identify community needs, cataloguecommunity resources, highlight aca-demic strengths and capacities, andcoordinate the work of many individu-als and groups, frequently over longperiods of time. There are no quickfixes or painless solutions for many ofthe challenges our states and commu-nities face.

The Commission is convinced thatuniversities and colleges can no longerbe self-contained. Engagement essen-tially asks us to learn how to openourselves structurally to externalinfluence while insisting that the worldbeyond the campus grounds respectthe imperatives of the university. Thiswill not be an easy balance to master.Achieving it will require us to seriouslyexplore:

■ the role of engagement within theuniversity mission so that it is seenboth as a central purpose and as ameans of enhancing the studentexperience;

■ the organizational dimensions ofengagement so that success doesnot have to depend on serendipity,individual influence, or acharismatic leader;

■ the reward and benefits structurefor faculty and staff (and students),and the possibility of incorporating“engagement” into that structure;and

■ a variety of tools for financingengagement in the midst of con-straints on resources.

Institutional Portraits

Because no established body ofresearch could be tapped to explore thedegree to which institutions are en-gaged on a national basis, the Commis-sion encouraged its member institu-tions to develop exploratory portraitsof their engagement activities. Thepurpose of developing these portraitswas to characterize the varieties ofoutreach and engagement that nowexist in order to describe how engage-ment can evolve and develop. All told,11 Commission institutions provided uswith portraits, excerpts from whichappear throughout this document. Theportraits, in their entirety, are repro-duced in a companion volume to thisreport.

We hoped that these descriptionswould not only assess the impact andscope of involvement with the broadercommunity but also yield an approachthat any institution might use toevaluate both the extent of its engage-ment and how public service is incor-porated into its mission and the workof its faculty, staff, and students.

The complete institutional portraitsare provided in a companion volume.Here we comment on several lessonswe draw from the portraits and offer aseven-part test against which stateuniversity and land-grant leaders

CHAPTER 3

From Theory to ActionReflections on Institutional Portraits




can assess their progress towardengagement.

Institutional leaders who want topush beyond the seven-part testoutlined below might do well to assessthemselves against Appendices C andD. Appendix C reproduces the 1997matrix of “levels of commitment toservice” recently published by BarbaraHolland.4 In addition, to measure thescope and impact of various aspects ofengagement, we modified another1997 assessment approach developedaround the health professions bySherril Gelmon at Portland StateUniversity.5 This approach (included inAppendix D) is thought to be uniquefor its attention to the impacts ofengagement on all participants,

including students, faculty, academicunits, the institution, and communityparticipants.

Themes Revealed

Several common themes or lessonsemerge from these portraits. Theseinclude:

■ A clear commitment to thebasic idea of engagement. Ourportraits reveal a set of institutionsdetermined to breathe new lifeinto their historic mission by goingbeyond extension to engagement.Whether the situation involves theGreat Cities Program of the Uni-versity of Illinois at Chicago, rural

Arizona State UniversityArizona State University is the only public research

university in metropolitan Phoenix, a city of 2.7 millionpeople constituting 62 percent of the state’s population,in one of the fastest growing regions of the country. Inpreparation for that growth, ASU is “one universitygeographically distributed” with three anchor campusesand an extended campus designed to respond to localneeds, national trends and opportunities. Enrollment atASU’s multiple campuses stood at 49,500 in the fall of1997, and is expected to increase to 75,000 by 2015. . .

ASU has proceeded on the assumption that “engage-ment” and “partnerships” mean that we are not guestsor occasional participants in the leading policy arenas ofmetropolitan Phoenix, our primary service area. Rather,we see our role as full-fledged, continuing partnersbringing what we can to the table, fully cognizant thatour contributions must be made in conjunction with theother major partners from the community. We view ourcontributions as those that are unique to the expertiseand mission of the university. . .

Choosing the activities in which the University willengage on a sustained basis occurs in three ways. First,we focus on the community-driven agenda, drawing

heavily on the issues identified through communityprocesses. Currently, involvement with K–12. . . , urbangrowth management, and environmental quality are atthe top of the list.

Second, we continue to develop a longer-term univer-sity/community agenda, but one we seek to sustain over alonger period of time. A long-term commitment tostrengthening neighborhoods, “building them from theinside out” as one school of thought described it, is anexample of one of our longer-term university-identifiedendeavors.

Finally, we encourage and seek to focus the myriad ofindividually initiated research and service projects thatrelate to our metropolitan area. We recently identified300 such projects in one college alone and conservativelyestimate that activities across the entire university double,if not treble, this number. These activities range fromseven-figure, multi-year projects, run by one of our majorpublic policy institutes, to small one-faculty, one-groupprojects. The nature of the activities in each of these threegeneral areas involve University contributions of basicresearch, application of strategy and techniques, measuresof assessment, technical assistance and formal instruction.



economic development effortslaunched by Iowa State University,or the Southern Food SystemsEducation Consortium involvingTuskegee University, the threadholding them together is a com-mon commitment to staying intouch with needs of real commu-nities. There is no sense in thesedescriptions of an academic ivorytower, distant from the needs ofthe real world. Quite the contrary,

what emerges clearly is a portraitof institutions struggling mightilywith how best to work with theircommunities, i.e., how to engagethem.

■ Strong support for infusingengagement into curriculumand teaching mission. Theseexamples also portray institutionswrestling with broader concepts ofoutreach and service and

The University of Vermont and the Community:The Path to Engagement

Throughout its history, the University of Vermont(UVM) has managed a creative and somewhat paradoxi-cal conflict between its original identity as a privateinstitution (1791) and its land-grant mission (1865). In its1988 mission statement, UVM describes itself as a smallland-grant comprehensive institution that “blends theacademic heritage of a private university with the servicemission in the land-grant tradition.”. . .

[In the 1990s] Vermont legislators and many campusfaculty and administrators continued to voice their beliefthat UVM should remain loyal to its Vermont constitu-ents and insisted that the University needed to attend toits stated mission of public service. . .

[M]any faculty at UVM still assume that the land-grantmission is confined to the limited number of academicprograms originally affiliated with the State AgriculturalCollege. . . A land-grant mission is better described as astate of mind rather than a definition of particular formsof interaction or particular areas of disciplinary emphasis.

Drawing upon both the traditions of the land-grantmovement and contemporary criticism of the land-grantuniversity today, UVM has begun to use the term“engaged university” to describe the features of aninstitution committed to service to society. The principles[include]:

■ The primary purposes of the 21st century engageduniversity are to conduct research on the pressing

problems facing society today, to promote theapplication of current knowledge. . . , and to prepareits students to address these problems. . .

■ Scholarly work consists of discovery, integration ofnew knowledge into an existing discipline or body ofknowledge, interpretation to a variety of audiencesand application of knowledge to a variety ofcontemporary problems. . .

■ The classic tripartite mission of research, instruction,and service must encompass a broader and richerdefinition of scholarship that supports a full range ofinquiry and application both within the. . .environments created by the university and in field,community and other applied settings.

■ [T]he engaged university is distinguished by thecomprehensiveness of its academic mission and itsrange of graduate and undergraduate programs andby the effective integration of scholarship and servicewithin both the curriculum and the researchmission. . .

■ [T]hrough intensive study of a particular discipline atthe undergraduate as well as graduate level, as wellas by participating in research or field experiences andservice-learning opportunities. . . , our students canlearn to discover, interpret, and apply the knowledgenecessary to address the challenges of society today.




struggling to infuse engagementinto the life of the institution andits curriculum. At Ohio StateUniversity, the challenge was todefine a common language so thatengagement could be identified aspart of the teaching, research, andservice mission of the university.The Great Cities program atUniversity of Illinois at Chicagoencourages the notion that aca-demic work transcends the artifi-cial barriers implied by categoriessuch as teaching, research, andservice. Portland State uses itsengagement thrust to supportcommunity-based teaching andlearning, and effort involving some150 courses in 23 departments aswell as 1,000 seniors participatingin community-based “capstone”courses on local issues. Practicallyevery one of the eleven institu-tions points to interdisciplinaryefforts as an important element intheir engagement agenda.

■ Remarkable diversity inapproaches and efforts. Wewere doubtless naive to anticipatewe might discern a commonpattern in all these efforts. Theportraits are marked by a diversityof efforts. The University of Cali-fornia at Davis mounts more thanone hundred education initiativesfrom its campus. Salish KootenaiCollege explicitly sets out toaddress the startling rates ofpoverty, illiteracy, mortality andmorbidity among the Salish andKootenai Tribes on Montana’sFlathead Reservation. And institu-tional engagement has been builtinto the strategic planning process

at Rutgers, which uses four criteriato evaluate strategic planninginitiatives: excellence; centrality tomission; diversity; and responsivenessto emerging societal needs. Penn Statethinks of itself as simultaneouslyengaged with the business commu-nity, students, the state, its alumni,and even the world, through itsWorld Campus designed to providesome of the university’s signaturecourses over the Internet.

In the end, designing engage-ment is a local activity. It cannotbe handed down from on high.But viewed from the ground levelof the institution and its partners,the scope and diversity of efforts isimpressive.

■ The importance of defining“community.” Each of these 11institutions is working with severaldifferent communities in manydifferent ways. Engagement atPortland State is intensely relatedto its host city’s vision of what thelocal community needs for thefuture. What emerges from theportrait submitted by the Univer-sity of Vermont is a clear consen-sus that research and scholarshipneed to be put to work on behalfof the citizens of the state. PennState and Tuskegee consciouslyextend their concept of “commu-nity” to the international stage,particularly international agricul-ture. Moreover, as several of theportraits make clear, different partsof the local community need to beunderstood and engaged on theirown terms. Large structuredsystems, such as the local healthcare community or municipal



government, probably have at leastsome clear entry points into theuniversity; community-basedorganizations, on the other hand,probably require help in negotiat-ing the complex modern univer-sity. Community, in brief, hasmany different definitions extend-ing from the neighborhood inwhich the campus is located to theworld.

■ Leadership is critical. Becauseuniversities are, in the terms ofsome organizational theorists,“organized anarchies,” leadershipto create an engagement agenda iscrucial. Left to their own devices,most faculty members (and theirdepartments) will bend theirattention to the daily preoccupa-tions of research and teaching,satisfying “service” requirementswith a campus or faculty commit-tee of one kind or another. “En-gagement” to the extent it isthought of at all, will be left to theextension division. Reforming thatentire mind-set requires leadership,and it can come from manysources. The University of Illinois’chancellor initiated the great citiesconcept and saw to it that hismanagement team served as itschampion. Political leaders in Iowasupported Iowa State in an initia-tive in agricultural biotechnologyto help diversify the state’seconomy; a similar economicdevelopment role at Arizona Stateis played by business and munici-pal leaders through groups such asGreater Phoenix Leadership andthe Greater Phoenix EconomicCouncil. Whether the leadership isfrom within or without, engaging

the university requires a particularform of academic leadership callingon presidents, provosts, deans, anddepartment chairs who are open tonew ideas, eager to hear newvoices, and comfortable amidst theoften-conflicting demands ofdifferent community partners.Engagement will not develop byitself, and it will not be led by thefaint of heart.

■ Funding is always an issue.Despite the existence of the re-markable variety of fundingapproaches described in ChapterTwo, the lack of stable funding forengagement activities remains aproblem. Institutions have attackedthe difficulty in several ways.Some institutions (e.g., SalishKootenai) make a strong case thata major part of their engagementsimply involves financing theeducation of low-income, minoritystudents to address communityproblems. Others have sought andgained special allocations (one-time or recurring) for specificengagement activities. For ex-ample, Iowa State has receivedspecial state support for itsagricultural biotechnology effort;Portland State has successfullysought funds from the philan-thropic community; Arizona Statefunds its engagement endeavorsfrom a combination of internaluniversity funds, governmentgrants of various kinds, andpartnerships with the privatesector where they make sense.Finding the funds for engagement,and securing them in a stable way,remains a difficult problem.




■ Accountability needs to belodged in the right place.Of all the challenges facing theengagement effort, none is moredifficult than ensuring accountabil-ity for the effort. Here againthere are no templates. The de-partment is perhaps the rightplace, but just as engagement,university-wide, should not be theresponsibility solely of extensionagents, so too, in departments, itcannot be a responsibilityrestricted to one or two facultymembers. The effort to encourage

accountability must see to it thatstudent needs are served, thequality of community life (how-ever defined) is enhanced, andthat engagement flows out of theuniversity’s basic mission of teach-ing and research. In this context,incentives for motivating facultyinvolvement must be put in place.Practically every one of the 11portraits cites the need to examinefaculty reward guidelines closely tomake sure they recognize andreward faculty contributionstoward engagement.



A Seven-Part TestSeven guiding characteristics seem to define an

engaged institution. They constitute almost a seven-parttest of engagement.

1. Responsiveness. We need to ask ourselvesperiodically if we are listening to the communities,regions, and states we serve. Are we asking the rightquestions? Do we offer our services in the right way atthe right time? Are our communications clear? Do weprovide space and, if need be, resources for preliminarycommunity-university discussions of the public problem tobe addressed. Above all, do we really understand that inreaching out, we are also obtaining valuable informationfor our own purposes?

2. Respect for partners. Throughout this report wehave tried to emphasize that the purpose of engagementis not to provide the university’s superior expertise to thecommunity but to encourage joint academic-communitydefinitions of problems, solutions, and definitions ofsuccess. Here we need to ask ourselves if our institutionsgenuinely respect the skills and capacities of our partnersin collaborative projects. In a sense we are asking that werecognize fully that we have almost as much to learn inthese efforts as we have to offer.

3. Academic neutrality. Of necessity, some of ourengagement activities will involve contentious issues—whether they draw on our science and technology, socialscience expertise, or strengths in the visual and perform-ing arts. Do pesticides contribute to fish kills? If so, how?How does access to high quality public schools relate toeconomic development in minority communities? Isstudent “guerrilla theater” justified in local landlord-tenant disputes. These questions often have profoundsocial, economic, and political consequences. Thequestion we need to ask ourselves here is whetheroutreach maintains the university in the role of neutralfacilitator and source of information when public policyissues, particularly contentious ones, are at stake.

4. Accessibility. Our institutions are confusing tooutsiders. We need to find ways to help inexperiencedpotential partners negotiate this complex structure so thatwhat we have to offer is more readily available. Do weproperly publicize our activities and resources? Have wemade a concentrated effort to increase communityawareness of the resources and programs available fromus that might be useful? Above all, can we honestly say

that our expertise is equally accessible to all the constitu-encies of concern within our states and communities,including minority constituents?

5. Integration. Our institutions need to find way tointegrate their service mission with their responsibilitiesfor developing intellectual capital and trained intelli-gence. Engagement offers new opportunities for inte-grating institutional scholarship with the service andteaching missions of the university. Here we need toworry about whether the institutional climate fostersoutreach, service, and engagement. A commitment tointerdisciplinary work is probably indispensable to anintegrated approach. In particular we need to examinewhat kinds of incentives are useful in encouraging facultyand student commitment to engagement. Will respectedfaculty and student leaders not only participate but alsoserve as advocates for the program?

6. Coordination. A corollary to integration, thecoordination issue involves making sure the left handknows what the right hand is doing. The task of coordi-nating service activities—whether through a senioradvisor to the president, faculty councils, or thematicstructures such as the Great Cities Project or “capstone”courses—clearly requires a lot of attention. Are academicunits dealing with each other productively? Do thecommunications and government relations officesunderstand the engagement agenda? Do faculty, staff,and students need help in developing the skills oftranslating expert knowledge into something the publiccan appreciate.

7. Resource partnerships. The final test askswhether the resources committed to the task aresufficient. Engagement is not free; it costs. The mostobvious costs are those associated with the time andeffort of staff, faculty, and students. But they also includecurriculum and program costs, and possible limitationson institutional choices. All of these have to be consid-ered. Where will these funds be found? In special stateallocations? Corporate sponsorship and investment?Alliances and strategic partnerships of various kinds withgovernment and industry? Or from new fee structuresfor services delivered? The most successful engagementefforts appear to be those associated with strong andhealthy relationships with partners in government,business, and the non-profit world.




RECOMMENDATIONS

Maintaining institutional commit-ment for engagement strategies thatmeet the seven-part test is far fromeasy. The engaged institution—onethat is responsive, respectful of itspartners’ needs, accessible and rela-tively neutral, while successfullyintegrating institutional service intoresearch and teaching and findingsufficient resources for the effort—doesnot create itself. Bringing it into beingrequires leadership and focus.

We believe that five key strategiesneed to be put in place to advanceengagement:

■ Our institutions must transformtheir thinking about service so thatengagement becomes a priority onevery campus, a central part ofinstitutional missions.

■ Each institution should develop anengagement plan.

■ That plan should encourageinterdisciplinary scholarship andresearch, including interdisciplinaryteaching and learning opportuni-ties.

■ It should also provide incentives toencourage faculty involvement inthe engagement effort.

■ Stable and secure funding must befound to support the engagementagenda.

I. Make Engagement aPriority on Every Campus

WE RECOMMEND that institutionalleaders work to make engagement such apriority that it becomes part of the coremission of the university.

As one of the members of thiscommission noted during an academicinauguration, the measure of aneducated person is defined as much bywhat that person can do (and has thewill to do) as by what that personknows and by how much he or shegenuinely notices and cares about theconsequences of his or her actions. Thisapplies to our students and to ourfaculty members. And it applies to ourscholars and to our collective work as acommunity of scholars. “Something islost when we separate knowledge andresponsibility.”6

What we have in mind is literallythe substitution of the term “engage-ment” for the word “service.” But thechange we seek is much more thansimply rhetorical. We hope to changeinstitutional realities as well. Engage-ment must become part of the coremission of the university.

In this effort, the Commissionbelieves that institutions must be heldto very high standards. All existingservice and outreach activities must beexamined to see if they are truly“engagement” as the Kellogg Commis-sion understands it, i.e., two-waypartnerships, reciprocal relationshipsbetween university and community,defined by mutual respect for thestrengths of each.

We emphasize that in the pastservice and outreach have often beendefined as the manifestation of theland-grant mission, but that



manifestation has been attached to alimited number of fields, primarily inagricultural colleges and throughextension services. This attitude mustchange. The land-grant philosophy ofknowledge harnessed to responsibilitycan be applied in various ways topractically every academic unit. And itcan be used to shape and refine under-graduate education and graduate andprofessional programs, as well as whatresearch is conducted and how it ispursued and disseminated.

Engagement must become part ofthe core missions of our institutions.We will know we have succeededwhen faculty and students at ourinstitutions understand that the land-grant concept is more a state of mindthan it is a practical definition ofparticular forms of interacting with ourcommunities or special offices respon-sible for managing the relationships.

II. Develop Plans forEngagement

WE RECOMMEND that institutionalleaders develop plans for engagement, plansthat recognize engagement is not somethingseparate and distinct from the university butpart of its core mission.

A transformation of attitudes towardengagement of the sort sought by theCommission will not create itself.Planned, purposeful effort will berequired to bring it into being.

To that end, the Commission recom-mends that institutional leaders,including presidents, chancellors,provosts, and deans develop specificinstitutional plans to advance engage-ment measured against the templatelaid out in the seven-part test includedon page 29.

These plans should be explicitlydesigned to assess and monitor each ofthe seven areas: responsiveness; ourwillingness to collaborate respectfullywith the communities we serve; ourcapacity for maintaining our role asneutral facilitators; access to ourcomplex institutions; integratingscholarship with outreach, service, andengagement; coordination of theengagement agenda; and the adequacyof resources committed to the task.Among the questions we need toexplore in developing this plan:

■ Are we asking the right questionsand offering our services in theright way and at the right time?

■ Do we understand that we have asmuch to learn from our partnersas they do from us?

■ How do we maintain our capacityto advance the public interestwhile maintaining our reputationfor neutral facilitation.

■ Are members of the public able tonegotiate our often-complexstructures relatively easily?

■ Does the institutional climatefoster outreach, service, andengagement?

■ Does the left hand on campusknow what the right one is doing?

■ How do we plan to fund thiseffort? And are the resourcesallocated to it sufficient?

To be sure, developing such a planwill be challenging. But time andtrouble invested in the effort at the




front end will pay significant dividendsdown the line.

III. EncourageInterdisciplinary Work

WE RECOMMEND that institutionalleaders find new ways of encouraginginterdisciplinary research, teaching andlearning as part of the engagement agenda.

It need hardly be pointed out thatthe struggle to develop the engagedinstitution will be won or lost in themotivations of faculty, staff, andstudents and the incentives available tothem. Simply put, if we find ways toevaluate and reward engagement, wewill have it; if we do not, we will not.

Scholarship grounded in individualdisciplines has been one of the signalcontributions our institutions havemade to the world. Disciplinary-boundscholarship and research, moreover,will continue to be among our hall-marks. But, as we noted earlier, societyhas problems while we, for the mostpart, value our disciplines.

It is clear that attacking most oftoday’s technical and scientific prob-lems, not to mention the nation’sserious social challenges, will requirecross-disciplinary collaboration andscholarship. In fact, research at theleading edge already acknowledges thisreality in many areas. Biology andchemistry are hard distinctions tomaintain at the cutting edge of today’sscience. And it’s difficult to knowwhere to assign many of the research-ers examining today’s challenges tourban and rural America—economics,sociology, or geography.

But research funding mechanismshave yet to catch up to this reality. For

the most part, research dollars flowfrom public agencies constrained bythe same discipline-bound outlook wefind on campus. It is time public andacademic leaders created some seedcapital to encourage more interdiscipli-nary research.

To that end, we suggest that institu-tional leaders plan on developingfunding for interdisciplinary researchand that public officials at the nationaland state levels place some weightbehind their commitment to inter-agency collaboration and cooperationby establishing similar funds.

Academic researchers will pursueresearch opportunities wherever theyare found. If funds are not available tosupport interdisciplinary research,researchers will seek funds along thetraditional disciplinary lines. If, on theother hand, interdisciplinary supportbecomes available, they will undoubt-edly seek it.

IV. Create New Incentives toAdvance Engagement

WE RECOMMEND that institutionalleaders develop incentives to encouragefaculty and student participation in theengagement agenda.

Research and scholarship obviouslymean discovering new knowledge. Butwe must also find ways to reward thescholar who steps back from herinvestigation or his contributions to ascholarly audience in his discipline andlooks for ways to put that knowledgeto work. Too often, despite our bestefforts, we think of teaching, research,and service as separate—and, whencounting what is important incompensation and tenure reviews, tend



to overemphasize peer judgmentsabout the importance of research at theexpense of student or communityjudgments about the importance ofteaching and engagement.

Two separate and intertwinedchallenges confront us here. We needto find ways to reward individualfaculty members for their contributionsto engagement. We also need to thinkabout how departments can makeengagement a part of their collectiveresponsibility and how the institutioncan encourage greater collaborationand involvement across departmentsand disciplines.

As Ernest Lynton, Richard Chait,Ernest Boyer and other academicleaders have pointed out, thinkingabout this dual challenge of providingindividual and collective incentives toencourage engagement inevitablybrings us to shared governance.7 Thesharing of decision making with facultyis a distinctive administrative feature ofour institutions. Ideally, faculty partici-pate in decision making in a collabora-tive way that helps integrate individualfaculty contributions into the collectivepurposes of our institutions.

These academics argue that collabo-rative task-setting must be accompa-nied by collective accountability, on aregular basis. Such an approach,according to Lynton, requires that bothindividuals and academic units assumeresponsibility for holding up their endsof the bargain. It calls for a new kind ofinstitutional flexibility that permitsassigning different profiles of activitiesto different faculty members (in thesame department and across depart-ments). It insists that it is time to re-define scholarship to create a parity orequivalence between teaching,

research, and professional servicebecause each of these is a special formof scholarship. And it suggests thatengagement as defined in these termsis not simply a defensive reaction toexternal pressures but a highly positivestep toward re-establishing what theuniversity is intended to be, acommunity of scholars.

By the same token, as the portraitspoint out, universities committed tothe engagement ethic have found anynumber of innovative ways to encour-age student participation. Internships,co-op experiences, team-learningactivities, and capstone courses—all ofthese and more offer students theincentives they need to participate inservice-learning opportunities.

Finally, we point out that providinggreater balance in incentive structuresto encourage engagement not onlyrequires support from faculties onindividual campuses but also moreencouragement from accreditingagencies and various disciplinarybodies. We want to note, moreover,that an engaged university cannot bebrought into being with a “service”requirement in tenure and compensa-tion reviews that can be met solelythrough service to campus committeesor to disciplinary organizations. Serviceto campus and discipline is important.But if engagement means anything atall, it reaches beyond the campus andthe disciplines that shape it.

V. Secure Stable and SecureFunding.

WE RECOMMEND that institutionalleaders and higher education associationsseek secure funding streams to supportengagement activities, perhaps through




internal re-allocation of funds or throughestablishment of a federal-state-local-privatematching fund.

Universities across the nation havebeen involved with their communitiesin various ways for a century or more.In the course of these efforts they havedeveloped a number of ways of financ-ing their activities that can be adaptedto the new engagement agenda. Theseinclude:

■ Fee-based professional updating,credentialing, and flexible degreeprograms.

■ University-industry partnerships ofvarious kinds, including industrialand corporate-affiliate programs.

■ Membership and subscriber-basedprograms addressing significantcommunity needs and diversecommunities of interest, includingtechnology networks, small-business incubators, informationand distance-learning services, anda number of affiliate programs insuch things as arts, science, andcultural programming for thegeneral public.

■ Contract-based work with publicand private entities for appliedresearch and for specialized educa-tion and training services.

■ Student field studies, communityprojects, service-learning activitiesand a wide variety of internships.

■ Licensing, patenting, copyrighting,and commercializing intellectualproperty.

Of all of them, the greatest promiseof increased financial support lies indeveloping and extending new kinds ofpartnerships between universities andpublic agencies, and universities andthe private sector.

The Need for Stability. We note thatour institutions’ history of outreachwas encouraged from the outset byexplicit decisions to put public fundsbehind the service mission. Thathistoric commitment by public officialshas eroded in recent years. Threefactors appear to be at work. In thefirst place, the sheer political impor-tance of rural issues has diminished aspopulations have shifted in the UnitedStates. In consequence, rural issuesoften appear to be of less policyconsequence. Finally, the shift tocategorical funding at the expense ofbroad institutional support has erodedour ability to support outreach andengagement.

Regardless of the causes, what wefind is that as the need and demand forservices has increased, the federalcommitment has either diminished orbeen maintained in an on-again, off-again fashion. Sometimes, as with theDepartment of Commerce’s manufac-turing extension program, the need tosupport outreach appears well under-stood. In other cases we find trivialamounts of money put into specialfunds for academic outreach for ruraland inner-city America. Across theboard, we find extension andprograms in the Department ofAgriculture constrained and squeezed.There is little consistency and evenless coherence across government inits willingness to support engagement.



We believe it is time to breathe newlife into the government’s historiccommitment to outreach. One thing isclear: our institutions cannot longsustain a broad-based engagementstrategy in the conditions characteriz-ing the current environment.

The place to start is by thinkingabout how to re-allocate internalfunds. Many existing sources of fundsfor service and outreach can be exam-ined to see if they might serve assuitable sources of support for thelarger engagement mission definedhere.

Next, we need to think about howto stabilize public support for engage-ment. Then our institutions and theirgovernmental partners need to developand stand behind new principles toguide this institutional/governmentpartnership. We want to suggest thatone way to move forward would be toadapt the approach originally used tofinance community college construc-tion, one that required the federalgovernment, states, and localities eachto provide one-third of the funding.

In similar fashion, instead of relyingsolely on federal funds, a financingmechanism for engagement might beone in which a modest fund wascreated at the national level to encour-age state, local, and private support,which would be matched on a one-for-one basis. The truth is that such afinancing mechanism merely recog-nizes what is already in place in thecooperative extension system, a signifi-cant engagement network. Cooperativeextension embodies a tripartite fundingapproach of federal, state, and localfunding, complemented with publicand private grants and fee-for-servicearrangements. This time-tested match-

ing fund model can potentially beexpanded to match a broader univer-sity mission of engagement that servesthe multiple needs of many communi-ties and their diverse clienteles.

Results We Can Expect

Among the significant problemsfacing society today are challenges ofcreating genuine learning communi-ties, encouraging lifelong learning,finding effective ways to overcomebarriers to change, and building greatersocial and human capital in ourcommunities.

Engagement in the form of service-learning, outreach, and university-community partnerships can helpaddress these problems. And it can alsoput the university to work on thepractical problems of the day. In thisendeavor, everyone benefits.

Our communities benefit throughthe development of a highly skilledworkforce, one that is capable ofrenewing its “knowledgeable base”throughout its life. They also obtainthe latest science and scholarshipapplied to their very real and verypractical problems. Moreover ourgraduates constitute a renewableresource of young leaders skilled inanalyzing complicated, value-ladenproblems, good citizens with a sensethat they need to “give somethingback” to their communities.

Our institutions benefit as much, ifnot more. An engaged institution is alearning community, one that encour-ages effective learning in environmentscharacterized by close and caringrelationships among faculty, students,and staff (and community), andsuccessful alliances with community




organizations. Above all, our institu-tions daily build a constituency readyto step forward and defend the campusagainst the charge that it is aloof andout of touch. Improved town-gownrelationships are not to be dismissed asan important by-product of the en-gaged institution.

Finally, our students stand to gainthe most. Close partnerships with thesurrounding community help demon-strate that higher education is aboutimportant values such as informedcitizenship and a sense of responsibil-ity. The newer forms of public scholar-ship and community-based learninghelp produce civic-minded graduates

who are as well prepared to take upthe complex problems of our society asthey are to succeed in their careers.

All of this seems a very tall order,perhaps. But it is hardly a more ambi-tious vision for the 21st century thanJustin Morrill’s 19th-century vision ofa new kind of university that wouldopen access beyond the favored fewand make knowledge useful toeveryone. Today, we are called on toreshape Morrill’s conception anew. Ifwe succeed, historians of the futurewill continue to celebrate ourcontributions because we insisted thatwe could do more—and we could do itbetter.

NOTES

1 G. Edward Schuh, “Political and Social Trends Affecting the 1860 Land-GrantInstitutions,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Information. Vol. 1 (1), 1993.

2 For an excellent compilation of data on lifelong learning, see: Gehres, Edward D. III,(ed.), Lifelong Learning Trends: A Profile of Continuing Higher Education (Fifth Edition).Washington: University Continuing Education Association, 1998.

3 Mary Lindenstein Walshok, Knowledge Without Boundaries: What America’s ResearchUniversities Can Do for the Economy, the Workplace, and the Community San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,1995.

4 Barbara Holland, “Analyzing Institutional Commitment to Service,” Michigan Journal ofCommunity Service Learning (pp 30–41, Vol. 4, Fall 1997).

5 Sherril Gelmon et al., Health Professions Schools in Service to the Nation: 1996–1997Evaluation: Portland State University, August 1997.

6 Judith A. Ramaley, “Inaugural Remarks,” University of Vermont, 1997.

7 See for example, Ernest A. Lynton, “Reversing the Telescope: Fitting Individual Tasks toCommon Organizational Ends.” AAHE Bulletin, March 1998, pp. 8–10.



THE COMMISSION WANTS to express itsgratitude for the contributions of manyindividuals and organizations whoseassistance made this report possible.

Our first acknowledgment goes tothe board and officers of the W. K.Kellogg Foundation for their support ofthe Commission. In particular, we wantto thank the President of the Founda-tion, William Richardson, for hiscommitment to this effort. TrusteeWenda Weekes Moore was a faithfuland hard-working member of theCommission’s National AdvisoryCommittee and Richard Foster and GailImig from the Foundation’s staff weretireless and committed friends of theCommission.

Next we want to note the contribu-tions of a subcommittee which guidedthe development of this report underthe leadership of Martin Jischke ofIowa State University. The members ofthe subcommittee, including Judith A.Ramaley (University of Vermont), PeterS. Hoff (University of Maine), Ben-jamin F. Payton (Tuskegee University),Constantine W. Curris (ClemsonUniversity), Daniel Bernstine (PortlandState University), and Frederick E.Hutchinson (Commissioner Emeritus)worked diligently to frame the issuesdeveloped in this document and toinvent the portrait methodology thathelped us explore them.

We also want to acknowledge thecontributions of the members of ourNational Advisory Committee, underthe leadership of Roger R. Blunt, Sr.,Chairman and CEO of Blunt Enter-prises. Paula Butterfield (BozemanPublic Schools), Wenda Weekes Moore(Kellogg Foundation), Donald E.Petersen (former President of Ford

Motor Company), Walter Scott, Jr.(President of Level 3 Communications,Inc.) Mike Thorne (Executive Directorof the Port of Portland) and Edwin S.Turner (President of EST Enterprises)made major contributions to ourunderstanding of these issues.

We thank the friends and colleaguescited in Appendix B who took the timeto share their views with us. In par-ticular, we appreciate the contributionsof the Honorable Michael O. Leavitt,Governor of Utah, and of Charles B.Knapp, former President of the Univer-sity of Georgia now serving as Presi-dent of The Aspen Institute. We hopethis document reflects their contribu-tions to our work.

We are grateful to the capable andhard-working staff that helped guideour work. John V. Byrne, PresidentEmeritus of Oregon State University,served ably as Executive Director ofthe Commission (and an ex officiomember of the Commission). Dr.Byrne had the assistance of a SteeringCommittee that included RichardFoster (W.K. Kellogg Foundation), C.Peter Magrath (President of the Na-tional Association of State Universitiesand Land-Grant Colleges), JamesHarvey (Harvey & Associates), RoselynHiebert (Director of Public Affairs,NASULGC), Stephen MacCarthy(Executive Director of UniversityRelations, The Pennsylvania StateUniversity), Richard Stoddard (Directorof Federal Relations, The Ohio StateUniversity), Teresa Streeter (ExecutiveAssociate to the President, NASULGC),and Michael Vahle (Staff Assistant tothe Kellogg Commission). Each ofthese contributed immeasurably to ourefforts.

APPENDIX A ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




We also want to acknowledge theassistance of a task force put togetherby the Extension Committee onOrganization and Policy. The task forcehelped us think through how continu-ing education and extension activitiescould help advance the concept of theengaged university.

Several consultants assist us also:Cathy Henderson has developedworking papers for many of ourreports, and James Harvey helps withdrafting and editing these documents.

Many assistants to members of theCommission provided significant help.We are indebted to Moira Ferguson(University of Nebraska-Lincoln),Christine Haska (Rutgers, The StateUniversity of New Jersey), Martha L.Hesse (Michigan State University),Stephen MacCarthy (The PennsylvaniaState University), Richard Schoell(University of Illinois), and RichardStoddard (The Ohio State University)for their interest and contributions.

This particular report of the Com-mission could not have been developedat all without the contributions of eachof the eleven instituions which pro-vided us with detailed portraits of theirengagement activities. We gratefullyacknowledge our debt to each of these

institutions and the individuals at themwho made our work possible:

Arizona State UniversityRuth S. Jones

Iowa State UniversitySherry Glenn

The Ohio State UniversityCouncil on Outreach Engagement

The Pennsylvania State UniversityStephen MacCarthy

Portland State UniversityAmy Ross

Rutgers: The State University ofNew Jersey

Paul Snyder and Harvey Trabb

Salish Kootenai CollegeMichael O’Donnell

Tuskegee UniversityBenjamin F. Payton andVelma L. Blackwell

University of California, DavisLarry Vanderhoef andthe Outreach Staff, UC Davis

University of Illinois at ChicagoWim Wiewel

University of VermontKelly Clark and Jill Tarule



APPENDIX B MEETINGS, GUESTS, AND SPEAKERS

Date(s) Location Guests and Speakers

April 14–15, 1998 Washington, D.C. The Honorable Michael O. LeavittGovernor of Utah

June 23–24, 1998 Washington, D.C. David Ward, Chancellor,University of Wisconsin-Madison

Gary Augustson,chair of the Internet 2Networking, Planning, and PolicyAdvisory Board,The Pennsylvania State University

Mike Roberts, Vice President,Educom

October 13–14, 1998 Washington, D.C. Charles B. Knapp,President, The Aspen Institute

December 1–2, 1998 Washington, D.C. William C. RichardsonPresident, The Kellogg Foundation




APPENDIX C HOLLAND MATRIX

Levels of Commitment to Service Characterized by Key OrganizationalFactors Evidencing Relevance to Institutional Mission

Source: Barbara A Holland, “Analyzing Institutional Commitment to Service.” MichiganJournal of Community Service Learning, Vol. 4, Fall, 1997.

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,noitomorPgniriH,eruneT

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gnidrawerdnaecivres

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msireetnulov

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,supmacsetutitsni/sretnec

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;tnemelelartnecsahgnisiardnuf

secivresytinummocsucofasa



APPENDIX D GELMON ASESSMENT APPROACH(SELECTED INDICATORS)

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sucof,weivretni,yevruStcerid,puorg

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,weivretni,yevruSweiversuballys

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sucof,weivretni,yevruSlanruoj,puorg

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sisylanasuballys,yevruS

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sucof,weivretni,yevruStcerid,puorg

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tseretniylralohcSgninraelecivresni

,selcitranoecneulfnIylralohcsdna,snoitatneserp

ytivitca

ativ,weivretni,yevruS

lanoitutitsnIyticapaC

latnemtrapeDtnemevlovni

;devlovniytlucafforebmuNadnegaecivreslatnemtraped

puorgsucof,yevruS

fotnemtsevnIsecruoser

lanoitazinagronitnemtsevnIytlucafdnaerutcurtsarfni

tnempoleved

weivretni,yevruS

tnemtimmoCcimedacagnoma

sredael

sdrawer/noitingocerfonrettaP weivretni,yevruS

notcapmIytinummoC

srentraP

evresotyticapaCytinummoc

stnedutsdnastneilcforebmuN weivretni,yevruS

stifenebcimonocE ;dedivorpsecivresfotsoCseitinutroppognidnuf

weivretni,yevruS

htiwnoitcafsitaSpihsrentraP

snoitalerrentrapnisegnahC sucof,weivretni,yevruSpuorg

Impact of Enlightenment

Adapted and abbreviated from: Sherril Gelmon et al, Health Professions Schools in Service to theNation: 1996–1997 Evaluation Report. August 1997.

NASULGC

National Association of State Universitiesand Land-Grant Colleges

Office of Public Affairs

1307 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 400Washington, DC 20005202-478-6040http://www.nasulgc.org

February 1999

The Engaged Institution - Association of Public and Land-grant

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