Creating a Culture of Community Leadership

Abstract

Many innovative higher education initiatives become ephemeral because they are not adequately integrated into the incentive structures of the academy. When an initiative is simply work, done without alignment to larger learning goals or the inducements faculty follow in seeking tenure and rank promotion, that initiative usually fails. Roughly 20 years into the era of civic skill-building focus in the academy, civic engagement is still at a place where it is ‘finding its way' at universities where it has been implemented. To fully integrate and become a stable, mission-central commitment, civic engagement must become something from which faculty, staff, and students can see the tangible benefits. Three developments in the evolution of civic engagement in the academy are hallmarks of the success intentional incentives have in advancing civic skill-building in college students. The chapter will focus on those three best practices of civic engagement: student civic engagement learning outcomes, incentives for faculty participation, and curricular integration.