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The addressing wicked issues through community-engaged scholarship initiative takes a deep dive into some of the most critical issues threatening our communities and explores how we—higher education community engagement professionals, practitioners, and scholars—can make a difference.
Each year, participants will engage in a series of webinars and discussions that explore how knowledge about a particular issue is being generated and how people can come together to put that knowledge to good use—creating local solutions to these wicked problems. This series is jointly hosted by Campus Compact and the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship (ACES).
2024-2025 Series: Youth & Gun Violence
Gun violence has become a vast and daunting issue that has impacted lives of youth across the country—as direct victims of violence, as witnesses to violence, and in day-to-day public life. In 2020, homicide was the second leading cause of death for 15-24 year-olds, with the vast majority involving firearms. Instances of gun violence in our schools and public spaces are prevalent in the media, and have led to growing calls to action from youth across the country.
To move the needle on complex and nuanced issue like gun violence, we must apply a variety different perspectives and approaches. This series will generate resources, highlight promising examples, and create space to explore how higher education can make a difference through community-engaged research, community-engaged teaching and learning, anchor strategy & community partnerships, and student-led civic engagement. Over 6 sessions, we will provide the necessary context and then dive into the root causes of gun violence, the interrelated individual, familial, and community factors that put youth at risk, and how higher education can respond
Knowledge Creation Fellow
Dr. Camille Williamson, DSW, LCSW
Program Manager, Center for Health Equity
American Medical Association
Read Camille's full bio
Characteristics of wicked issues
From "The 10 Characteristics of 'Wicked Problems'" by Courtney Johnson-Woods, Resonance, published March 17, 2023
- They do not have a definitive formulation
- They do not have a “stopping rule.” In other words, these problems lack an inherent logic that signals when they are solved
- Their solutions are not true or false, only good or bad
- There is no way to test the solution to a wicked problem
- They cannot be studied through trial and error. Their solutions are irreversible so, as Rittel and Webber put it, “every trial counts.”
- There is no end to the number of solutions or approaches to a wicked problem
- All wicked problems are essentially unique
- Wicked problems can always be described as the symptom of other problems
- The way a wicked problem is described determines its possible solutions
- Planners, that is those who present solutions to these problems, have no right to be wrong.
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Hosted in partnership with the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship
Campus Compact is proud to partner with the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship (ACES) to host the Addressing Wicked Issues through Community-Engaged Scholarship program.