No abstract

The value of the liberal arts and humanities has increasingly been called into question on multiple fronts. Attempts to bridge the practical and liberal arts through forms of civic professionalism have been gaining traction in larger spheres of influence. This article outlines the results of a deliberative civic engagement forum (n = 42) that created a space for community members from business, education, and non-profit sectors at the National Conference on Service and Volunteerism, to consider the role civic leadership education and development has in liberal arts and humanities programs. The forum was intentionally designed to have participants consider the role of the liberal arts and humanities in redefining the purposes and process of democratic engagement through a lens of civic leadership education and development. This forum was able to gather a group of people from sectors that do not normally speak to the intersection of leadership education and the liberal arts.

Colleges and universities continue to respond to the call for a deepening of community-engaged research and teaching that contributes tangibly to the public good. Coupled with a new generation of scholars eschewing traditional markers of academic success, the authors set out to discover what faculty members at an urban university identify as priorities for teaching and research to advance democratic engagement. They collected quantitative and qualitative data from faculty members and their community partners. The study findings suggested that while community-engaged activity continues to grow and even thrive among an increasing number of faculty members, there remain three targeted areas needing improvement in order for democratically informed scholarship to better serve the public good: (1) The need to transform “thin” student learning goals into more robust, “thick” civic learning goals; (2) increasing what now is minimal, if existent, discussion of the political opportunities for and constraints to community work; and, (3) a fuller integration of faculty interests, personal and professional, with teaching and research priorities centering on democratic engagement.