Institutionalizing University Engagement: Building a Committed University in Seven Not-so-Easy Steps

No major research university in the 21st century can continue to ignore engagement as a major component of the academy's work. Doing so would prevent the institution from fully meeting its mission, goals or aspirations. Just take a look at the mission statements of major research universities, and you will see what I mean. Depending on the institution and its local context, "engagement" can take many forms. Most simply, at research universities, engagement has meant establishing an office or center for service learning, sometimes as on offshoot of teaching and learning centers, other times as an outgrowth of community service initiatives. However, engagement in today's higher education environment requires a more transformative approach, one that maximizes opportunities for faculty and student to engage with the community not only through service activities, but also through research and teaching. This type of engagement cuts across all departments, disciplines, and endeavors to become a defining characteristic of the institution and its faculty and students. In this kind of model institution, students seek relevance and want to learn in contexts that are personally satisfying and rewarding because they impact the real world; faculty engage in research that involves the public and/or has public impact (and is therefore well funded by outside sources); staff and administrators facilitate the endeavors of faculty and students and their collaborative enterprises with multiple and heterogeneous community (local, regional and global) partners. How does one go about embedding engagement like this at a major research university? What follows is a guide to the rough-and-tumble (ongoing) journey undertaken by Tulane University.

One: Use change or crises as opportunities to enhance engagement.

Universities are confronted with many adverse situations — budget crises, new university leadership, natural disasters, enrollment and retention shifts, deteriorating town-gown relationships, redefinition of educational priorities, just to name a few — that require change of some kind. These situations, and the uncertainties that come along with them, often cause great strife among campus community members. As situations go from bad to worse, morale decreases, faith in the institution's strength is weakened, and people's overall commitment to the institution is placed in jeopardy. But, sometimes good things can come out of the most adverse situations. Hurricane Katrina and the flooding caused by the breached levee system in New Orleans shut down Tulane Univesity for a semester, scattering its students, faculty and staff all over the nation. As the university struggled to get back on its feet after sustaining property losses of more than $250 million, it also recognized the need to redefine itself — quickly and assertively — in order to address the realities of a post-Katrina world. We were (literally) the only institution of any kind in New Orleans that was functioning and we recognized our responsibility to serve the community with our physical, creative, and intellectual resources. We also recognized that because of Katrina we had to become a different institution — not a lesser one, but a different kind of institution. The keystone of Tulane's "Renewal Plan" — our road map to recovery — became a conscious and deliberate commitment to engagement at all levels. (2005b). Although the commitment was there before Katrina, only a great upheaval made its implementation possible for us in this bold a fashion./p>

Two: Focus on what you do well and on what you need to do (i.e., the mission/vision thing and the money thing).

Before Katrina, Tulane, like many research universities, had a long tradition of supporting and nurturing undergraduate experiential and service learning initiatives. For its future, however, it has placed a broadly-defined concept of engagement and civic responsibility at the very center of its institutional mission: "The Tulane University undergraduate education serves to create engaged, ethical and thoughtful citizens whose actions and endeavors make a difference in society." (2005a) The keystones of the commitment are a new undergraduate graduation requirement in public service and a greater commitment towards engaged faculty scholarship and research that address important local and global issues. This shift marks a profound institutional change, spearheaded by our charismatic president, Scott Cowen (who is also a major community advocate, particularly on K-12 educational issues), the board of trustees and top administrators. Far beyond an opportunistic move to capitalize on the community's needs at this time, the shift revisions the entire university around engagement:

As appropriate, Tulane's programs will be shaped by the university's direct experience with the unprecedented natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina. This experience will provide faculty, staff and students with equally unprecedented research, learning and community service opportunities that will have a lasting and profound impact on them, the city of New Orleans, the Gulf Coast region, and other communities around the world. (2005a) Tulane University Mission

Alongside this philosophical statement, the university also recognized that, even as it had to contract in some areas (cutting programs and eliminating some endeavors) it also had to invest real dollars in its new central commitments. Without capital investments visions are rarely materialized. These investments help make the vision a reality.

Three: Establish a consultative process that identifies key players and gets buy-in (we could not)

This was a major challenge; I don't recommend our course of action for most institutions. With our faculty and students far from campus, it was impossible to establish a community-wide discussion about this strategic change to the culture and nature of the university.¹ There was much concern that this would be perceived as an imposition and would be stone-walled. However, we had some early positive signs that we could find support to build on:

1. Our students returned with a personal commitment to the university and the New Orleans community that exceeded our expectations: they created relief not-for-profits and fund-raised tirelessly; they volunteered for community service in unexpected numbers. The students that returned (and many more did so than we expected, close to 93%) did so because they wanted to make a difference and we were assured that Tulane's renewed commitment to engagement would echo positively with them and future students.
2. Even before the Renewal Plan was released, the faculty proposed new Service Learning courses and approached the Office of Service Learning in unprecedented numbers. Spontaneously, they too had begun to engage with the community in different ways; several who had done "pure" research began to develop community-based projects.

We knew then that we would have at least a sizable group of faculty and students to count on as the planning process proceeded throughout the spring 2006 semester. Above all we had our champions in the upper levels of the administration, which was a blessing (though, for some faculty stalwarts, a curse, since to them anything the administration supports is by definition suspect). However, as the engagement focus gained momentum and prominence, it became evident that Tulane could not fully realize its potential as an engaged campus without the full support of the broader campus community. The need to move quickly and operationalize large scale engagement activities within a short time frame, all while academic programs were being restructured or eliminated, created much resistance, especially from faculty and deans. It was not until we began to implement more collaborative processes for dialogue and debate that we began to garner broader support for making engagement a more central feature of Tulane's work.

Four: Keep the focus and address challenges clearly and decisively.

Given the broad range and impact of Tulane's engagement initiative, the campus's Renewal Plan identified two new entities to serve as the hubs of university engagement: the Partnership for the Transformation of Urban Communities (PTUC)² and the Center for Public Service (CPS). I will focus my discussion on CPS, which is at the heart of student engagement at the new Tulane University.³ CPS was envisioned as independent of any school and charged with strengthening and expanding the connections between academic study and public service (it would subsume the Office of Service Learning), creating new innovative initiatives, providing better integration and collaboration among existing programs, and seeking service opportunities that contribute directly to the reconstruction of New Orleans. Above all, it was charged with the creation and maintenance of the new undergraduate graduation requirement in public service. Again, making this happen, quickly, presented several challenges, especially establishing an inclusive organizational structure and negotiating the needs of others with ongoing investments in engagement (namely, the Office of Community Service in the Student Affairs division). With the support of the Provost's Office and other administrators, CPS is now organized as Tulane University's principal gateway to the community, encompassing service learning, community-based research, community-based internships and research projects, and community service. This has allowed CPS to begin to forge deeper relationships with its community partners that will create better learning environments for Tulane students as well as enabling us to contribute more effectively to building community capacity. Building a central unit that connects and coordinates engagement efforts allows Tulane to optimize engagement activities by reducing program overlaps and addressing gaps in engagement work.

Five: Integrate engagement into teaching, learning and research.

Mandated by the new undergraduate core curriculum, all incoming Tulane undergraduates must satisfy a public service requirement that includes one service learning course at the 100-, 200-, or 300-level before they earn 70 credit hours and, after completion of 70 credit hours or four semesters of coursework, participation in one of the following CPS approved programs (at the 300-level or above): service learning course, academic service learning internship, faculty-sponsored public service research project, public service honors thesis project, public service-based international study abroad program, or capstone experience with public service component. Working from the assumption that it had to be meaningful, process-based, and with the potential to be transformative, the requirement was developed by the CPS Executive Committee and vetted by the Undergraduate Core Curriculum committee. Throughout the spring 2006, CPS held information sessions and course development seminars for faculty, recognizing that one of our biggest challenge will be to have enough public service offerings for our students and that we need the broad buy-in of faculty and deans to achieve this. Simultaneously, CPS has also established funds for seeding faculty community-based research projects, recognizing that engaged scholarship will be a crucial component of our success. We have encountered resistance from some faculty and deans, who worry about faculty workloads and the impact on promotion and tenure. These are the challenges we face in the upcoming year: we will continue to "educate" our constituency via seminars and workshops and we will strive to establish procedures for formal and informal recognition. At a major research university, research will always trump service when it comes to faculty rewards (and tenure), but where we can make a huge difference is educating faculty on how useful to their research engagement can be (especially in terms of getting funding from major federal agencies). Still to be addressed is whether more or what kind of "green carrots" will be necessary to sustain this initiative at the levels envisioned. Interestingly, we opted to focus on our new commitment to engagement as a major theme of our recruitment efforts this past spring. The new public service requirement, experiential and engaged learning, and making a difference in the real world were the leitmotifs of our recruiting. After speaking at innumerable recruitment events, I sense that this message impacted students (and their parents) positively: this is something they yearned for. We will soon know whether in fact the students we recruited are in some measurable way different from our pre-Katrina student-body (after scanning the facebook to learn something about them, I begin to fear not?). Above all, our challenge will be to deliver the possibility of undergoing a transformative experience while at Tulane University.

Six: Develop an accountability structure.

In addition to reporting directly to the Office of Academic Affairs, CPS is accountable to its Executive Committee, an Advisory Board of faculty, community partners and students, and a separate Student Advisory Committee. In addition, its curricular responsibilities — the public service graduation requirement — will be regularly measured and assessed: beginning with the fall 2006 freshman class, we will regularly track student progress and faculty, student and community partner satisfaction through several new instruments that we are in the process of developing. This assessment will, in turn, generate new research initiatives for our faculty. We are also developing an eportfolio system that will allow students to record and track their engagement from the time they enter to the university to graduation. We hope that in the majority of cases, the eportfolios will track their civic education and their growth as they meet the challenges of democratic and committed citizenship. Ultimately, an institution that sees itself as engaged campus will need to show that engagement indeed has positive impacts on student learning, faculty productivity, and community development.

Seven: Don't even think about breathing easily

Every time we achieve a significant milestone (securing the proper administrative space, holding another well-attended developmental seminar, hiring qualified and enthusiastic staff, successfully establishing a new initiative like "Semester in NOLA"⁴), new challenges emerge. One that caught us by surprise has been the difficulties of meeting the demands of the Office of Insurance and Risk Management. Now that service has become more than a volunteer activity, but a requirement for obtaining a degree at Tulane University, Risk Management has established a much higher threshold of due diligence in our dealings with community partners and student placements. Issues we never considered before (insurance and proof of it, transportation, training, "hazardous" placements, etc.) now have to be addressed and vetted. To address this, we have set up a new unexpected committee charged with establishing criteria and assessing the "business risks" to the university of certain potential and/or otherwise desirable community placements for our students. The lesson here is that while the continued advancement of Tulane as an engaged institution is exciting and worthwhile, it is a process that brings with it a set of new challenges and issues to be addressed. This large initiative is still in its infancy, and there are undoubtedly many other obstacles in its future that we have not even imagined. Yet Tulane University is committed to embedding engagement as deeply as possible throughout the entire institution and particularly, within the undergraduate experience; we will meet the challenges head on. The fortitude that helped Tulane make it through one the nation's worst natural disasters will help us in the difficult task of transforming a major research university into a fully engaged campus. Having this mindset throughout our work is what will allow us to address and overcome whatever obstacles confront us.

Conclusion

Our goals are multiple, but we seek to help produce engaged, ethical and thoughtful citizens whose actions and endeavors make a difference in society. While we have only begun our journey, we know that the strong commitment, will, and sense of purpose for engagement at Tulane will help us realize our vision. We hope that our experience to transform our institution into a more fully engaged campus can serve as a model for major research universities that want to sustain cutting edge research and learning while simultaneously being grounded in a unique interactive relationship with the local community, the region, and beyond.

¹The Renewal Plan was generated over a frantic two month period in late 2005 via extended conversations, debates, and analyses held by Tulane University President Scott Cowen, top administrators, the board of trustees, a small number of faculty and a panel of outside experts (primarily former university presidents) that provided counsel on all of its parts. back

²PTUC emerged as a result of Tulane's partnership with Dillard and Xavier universities, and neighboring Loyola University, to provide classroom and administrative space in spring 2006 while the heavily damaged campuses of the two Historically Black Colleges/Universities (HBCUs) were being repaired. Taking that partnership further, PTUC is focused on building healthy and sustainable communities locally, regionally and throughout the world and will sponsor educational programs, generate research initiatives and produce activities of national and international relevance, many of which will emanate from the Hurricane Katrina experience. It is also the home of a new Institute for the Study of Race and Poverty, charged with an agenda that spans research, education, policy and advocacy, and a new Institute for the Transformation of Pre-K-12 Education, which will combine research on educational practices and policy with grassroots advocacy at the community level to foster positive change in urban public school systems. As it develops, PTUC will collaborate with the Center for Public Service on new partnerships and initiatives. back

³The CPS website, though still under construction, defines pubic service at Tulane University and outlines its mission, goals, and principles. back

⁴"Semester in NOLA" is a 6-credit summer academic internship experience for students from both Tulane and other colleges which allows students the opportunity to participate in a 5-week internship with local organizations focused on assisting with New Orleans rebuilding and renewal. back

Bibliography

Tulane University (2005a). "Renewal Plan:" http://renewal.tulane.edu/renewalplan.pdf. Retrieved August 6, 2006.

Tulane University (2005b). "Survival to Renewal:" http://renewal.tulane.edu/ Retrieved August 6, 2006.