Engaging Higher Education: Purpose, Platforms, and Programs for Community Engagement

Co-published with 

For directors of campus centers that have received the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement, this book offers research and models to further advance their work. For directors starting out, or preparing for application for the Carnegie Classification, it provides guidance on setting up and structuring centers as well as practical insights into the process of application and the criteria they will need to meet.

Building on the findings of the research undertaken by the author and John Saltmarsh on the infrastructure of campus centers for engagement that have received the Carnegie Classification for Community, this book responds to the expressed needs of the participating center directors for models and practices they could share and use with faculty, and mid-level and upper-level administrators to more fully embed engagement into institutional culture and practice.

This book is organized around the purpose (the “why”), platforms (the “how”), and programs (the “what”) that drive and frame community engagement in higher education, offering practitioners valuable information on trends of current practice based on Carnegie Classification criteria. It will also serve the needs of graduate students aspiring to become the future professoriate as engaged scholars, or considering preparation for new administrative positions being created at centers.

Marshall Welch served as the Assistant Vice Provost forCommunity Engagement at Saint Mary’s College of California. Prior to that, he was the Director of theCatholic Institute of Lasallian Social Action (CILSA) overseeingservice-learning and social justice programs at Saint Mary’s College. Marshall began his work in the field ofcommunity engagement by teaching service-learning courses at the University ofUtah as a tenured full professor, where he later became the Director of theLowell Bennion Community Service Center. In 2003 he hosted the third research conference on service-learning andcommunity engagement in Salt Lake City prior to the establishment of InternationalAssociation of Research on Service-learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE)and has served two terms on its board. Marshall also took a leading role with Campus Compact in conceptualizingleadership institutes for new center directors and hosted the first one at theUniversity of Utah. In addition towriting numerous articles and book chapters in the field, he is the author of Engaging Higher Education: Purpose,Platforms, and Programs and the co-author of The Community Engagement Professional published by Campus Compactand Stylus Publishing. His recent workhas been researching campus center infrastructure to advance communityengagement leading to the creation of the National Inventory of InstitutionalInfrastructure for Community Engagement (NIIICE). He is now an independent scholar living inthe Portland, Oregon area.

Learn more about Marshall Welch on his personal website, www.marshalljwelch.com.

John Saltmarsh is Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Leadership in Education in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is also Distinguished Engaged Scholar at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University, where he leads the project in which the Swearer Center serves as the administrative partner with the Carnegie Foundation for elective Community Engagement Classification.