The Classroom as Public Space: Civic Mission and the Community College

Abstract

The role of the two-year, or “community,” college as a dimension of the academy is often overlooked by senior scholars in four-year colleges and universities. The potential contribution of the community college to current efforts, promoted by such organizations as the Imagining America consortium, to engage in “public scholarship”—academic efforts that reach beyond student enrollment to engage with the broader population—has been similarly little considered. This article nonetheless argues that certain national trends are situating community colleges in a uniquely felicitous position to reclaim the university’s “civic mission” in twenty-first-century America, and offers the author’s personal experience as an instance of how training in disciplinary research can be applied to achieve this objective through teaching community college students.