Warren and Venzant Chambers (2020) raised an important concern about the marginalization and elimination of social foundations of education in educator preparation. Yet, their focus on “an essential tripartite coalition of disciplinary perspectives” encapsulated in sociology, history, and philosophy runs counter the interdisciplinary nature of social foundations.
This article examines the path toward engagement at the university level, college level, and departmental level at the University of North Texas (UNT). We explore the history of concepts such as public service, applied research, service learning, outreach, and community engagement at UNT by examining the university's strategic goals and the expansion of new programs. We highlight the tensions that emerge from inconsistencies in strategic goals at varying levels within the university. We feature the anthropology department's place within those developments and highlight our unique position within our college and university through examples of engaged scholarship from faculty and students in our department. The national trend toward an engaged university will undoubtedly benefit the field of applied anthropology. The field has been doing community engagement for decades, ahead of the national trend. However, a lack of clarity or uniformity in the concept of engagement is systematic in the academy—across universities and within universities. The field of applied anthropology has an opportunity to position itself in the discussion of how and why our way of doing community engagement is not only relevant, but necessary.
The goal of promoting diversity is deep-rooted in the post-civil rights activities of U.S. educational institutions. Universities across the country attempt to foster diversity by seeking a diverse student body, creating initiatives that promote diversity, institutionalizing committees and administrative positions with the sole purpose of overseeing diversity, and implementing curricular strategies to support academic diversity. The pursuit of diversity is so integral to the survival and attractiveness of college campuses that some universities even lie in order to appear diverse to potential students and public supporters. Such was the case of the University of Wisconsin, Madison whose officials digitally inserted the face of a black student into an image of white football fans in order to portray a diverse picture of the university's student body. Etemonstrating that diversity is valued is a staple of any academically competitive US university.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.