The Addressing Wicked Issues through Community-Engaged Scholarship series, hosted jointly by Campus Compact and the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship (ACES), takes a deep dive into the most critical issues threatening our communities to explore 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.
The 2024-2025 Addressing Wicked Issues series will focus on youth and 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. To move the needle on complex and nuanced issue like gun violence, we must apply a variety of different perspectives and approaches. This series will will offer context and dive into the root causes of gun violence, 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.