Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement

A Promising Practice to Move from Charity to Solidarity: Community-Engaged Experiential Learning in International Development Studies

Samantha Blostein — 2025-10-01

Community-engaged experiential learning (CEEL) has emerged as a model of teaching and learning that provides postsecondary institutions with a framework for meaningfully connecting with their wider communities in ways that ensure mutual benefits. This study explores CEEL, including the challenges and value of CEEL, in the context of international development studies (IDS), using evidence from multiyear research with a 3rd-year undergraduate course offered at the University of Guelph. Using a multistakeholder approach, we examine experiences and perspectives of students, community partners, and university stakeholders to provide a comprehensive understanding of the course impacts and CEEL more broadly. Each stakeholder group identified numerous shared benefits of CEEL. This work indicates that actualizing community-engaged experiential learning that is grounded in justice and committed to critical reflection and reciprocity has the potential to dismantle knowledge hierarchies, promote solidarity, expand worldviews and project reach, and act as a catalyst for transformative change.

Navigating Changing Maps for Public Engagement in Higher Education Contexts

Jared L. Talley — 2025-10-01

Public engagement is becoming a critical element of U.S. universities’ missions. Defining public engagement has become increasingly complex, however, and navigating the significant and diverse literature on public engagement can be daunting. This essay addresses this challenge as well as two others that make public engagement difficult for those feeling called (or pressured) to perform such work. We draw on our own public engagement experience and research to (1) conceptually scope out the terrain of public engagement literature and approaches, (2) articulate how the emerging problems of rapid intensification and hyperpolarization in American political culture make public engagement work ever more challenging for both faculty and students, and (3) call attention to the ways universities are often not bureaucratically or structurally aligned to meaningfully support and advance public engagement work. We conclude with some recommendations for how faculty, staff, and administrators might navigate these concerns.

Creating Institutional Supports for Epistemic Equity: A Social Ecological Approach to Engaged Scholarship

Michael Rios — 2025-10-01

A social ecological framework is proposed that identifies institutional supports to increase public scholarship. The framework offers an analytical structure for conceptualizing how motivations interact at multiple levels of influence, as well as utility to increase epistemic equity and encourage behavior change through institutional supports that reward and recognize multilevel motivations. The authors draw on prior work that analyzed data from 49 interviews detailing practice stories to understand motivations for public scholars and found that faculty report motivations at individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy levels.

Wellness and Worth: A Reflection on Community Engagement and the Academic Career Path

Disa Cornish — 2025-10-01

There is a disconnect in higher education between higher education professional practices and valuing the community impact of engaged scholars. In this reflective essay, the authors highlight personal experiences with the process of working toward and earning promotion and tenure in academic settings. Those personal experiences are then contextualized through an examination of the literature regarding evaluation processes, engagement-ready institutions, the history of campus engagement, and the role of community-engaged scholarship in the civic purpose of institutions of higher education. There are clear systemic contradictions that create misalignments between institutional aspirations and individual metrics for success. Faculty serving as boundary spanners advance institutional missions and create transformative student learning opportunities, while sometimes sacrificing personal and professional well-being.

Exploration of the Conceptualization of the Third Mission of Agricultural Faculties: A Qualitative Metasynthesis Study

Hoda Izadi — 2025-10-01

This study addresses the ambiguity surrounding the third mission of universities, which stems from a lack of a unified definition. It provides a comprehensive investigation of this mission within agricultural faculties by employing a systematic review of 150 articles, culminating in the selection of 32 final articles for qualitative analysis. The findings identify six primary approaches to the third mission, extracting their key components and corresponding activities. These approaches are then compared based on 16 distinct features. By clarifying the factors that influence the selection of each approach, this research offers a clear picture of the third mission and the outcomes associated of each path. The results show that the most suitable approach for implementing this mission must be holistic and tailored to the specific conditions of each country and society. Ultimately, by providing a transparent view of the third mission, the study’s findings can guide policymakers in selecting the appropriate approach for this critical mission.

The International Service-Learning Network: A Community of Practice Designed for a Pandemic

Phillip Motley — 2025-10-01

The International Service-Learning Network is a group of university teaching faculty and staff in the United States and United Kingdom who formed a community of practice in 2020 around issues of service-learning and community engagement and to provide cross-institutional support during the COVID-19 pandemic. This reflective essay analyzes two sets of reflections written by Network members—the first set written in 2021 and the second set in 2023. The reflections describe many of the disruptions and impacts that affected community engagement for students, teaching staff, and community partners as well as the changes and innovations that emerged from the global crisis in both countries. We analyze these reflections, synthesizing noted observations that broadly affected our institutions, and offer suggestions and guidance for other community-engaged practitioners to consider.

Connecting Theory and Practice: Our Experiences Developing Assignments and Opportunities for Undergraduate Students to Serve Communities

Alan Santinele Martino — 2025-10-01

This article explores innovative pedagogical approaches in a Canadian critical disability studies program, showcasing liberatory pedagogy through praxis. It emphasizes integrating community engagement with academic theory, exemplified by diverse assignments empowering students as social change agents. Assignments include collaboratively developed applied outputs (e.g., comic books, board games), involving community leaders’ lived experiences, and nontraditional capstone projects (e.g., educational materials, community events) fostering advocacy and inclusion. These initiatives challenge academic boundaries, transforming societal attitudes. The article enriches discussions on higher education best practices, urging educators to embrace critical, community-engaged learning opportunities. These initiatives prepare students to navigate and influence disability and societal dynamics. The authors advocate for an educational paradigm as dynamic as society, ensuring students effect tangible, positive change.

From Margins to Mainstream: Strategies for Integrating Community-Engaged Learning Into Higher Education

Brooke Covington — 2025-10-01

In the face of troubling public sentiment regarding the usefulness of college, this article shares a model for incorporating intentional and sustainable community-engaged learning (CEL) into the curriculum through a yearlong professional development faculty fellowship program. The authors share their experiences moving through the training, development, and implementation of their CEL courses as members of the inaugural cohort of the Tidewater Faculty Fellows program at Christopher Newport University. Drawing evidence from postfellowship critical reflection data, we (the authors) share our challenging and transformative experiences with integrating community engagement into the curriculum at a regional public liberal arts and sciences university in southeastern Virginia. Ultimately, we argue that community-engaged learning—as a curricular and extracurricular activity—is an ethical and viable strategy for demonstrating the value of the university to not only its graduates, but also the community where it is situated.

Building Faculty Capacity: Initial Impact of a Service-Learning Faculty Learning Community Model

Douglas Strahler — 2025-10-01

Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) offer a collaborative and structured environment for professional development, enabling educators to build their capacity to incorporate service-learning into their teaching practices. This study examines the initial impact of a FLC for institutional awareness and implementation of service-learning at Slippery Rock University. The FLCs allowed scholars to gain theoretical and hands-on experience in service-learning pedagogy. This article outlines a FLC model based on a conceptual framework of six course attributes to promote structure, clarity, and inquiry. Through intentional structural revisions, the FLCs evolved to more effectively provide a space where faculty could integrate service-learning into their courses. Participants increased both their self-reported awareness of the six attributes and confidence in their ability to implement the attributes in their teaching practices. Further research is needed as the FLC model is adjusted; however, the results indicate a positive impact on faculty development and support institutional change.

CARE-ing for Rural West Texas: Conducting a Needs Assessment to Support a Community-Engaged K-12 Education–University Partnership

Catherine Lammert — 2025-10-01

The success of outreach hinges on whether programs are authentically rooted in the needs and strengths of a particular community. Here, we describe the process of conducting a needs assessment intended to provide this foundational information. This needs assessment, conducted by boundary spanners from a large public university, focuses on the needs of rural K-12 educational settings in West Texas. The article describes how the needs assessment shifted as we reflected on our initial attempts. It also highlights how the use of an assets-based framework enabled the team, as boundary spanners, to highlight community resources that can be leveraged for the design of future outreach and engagement efforts.

(Re)imagining Graduate Education Professional Development Spaces for Community-Engaged Practitioner-Scholars

Trina Van Schyndel — 2025-10-01

This basic, exploratory qualitative dissertation study (Van Schyndel, 2022) examined professional identity development of community-engaged practitioner-scholars through their participation in a U.S.- based community engagement professional association’s graduate student fellowship program. Semistructured interviews with 15 program alumni revealed six common themes grouped into two sections. “The people” focused on participants’ backgrounds and ways of work, and “the setting” focused on participants’ experiences of tension within the academy and their development of new conceptualizations, new relationships, and new practices through the fellowship program. Findings suggested that program participation was critical to not only their ongoing professional identity development as community-engaged practitioner-scholars, but also their ability to persist through graduation in the face of challenging higher education environments. Professional associations can provide an alternate setting to what graduate students may experience inside the academy, especially by offering programs designed with principles of relationship-building, community, wellness, and inclusion. Additional recommendations and implications for practice are included.

29(3) Entire Issue

2025-10-01

29(3) Entire Issue

29(3) Editorial Board

2025-10-01

29(3) Editorial Board

29(3) Table of Contents

2025-10-01

29(3) Table of Contents

29(3) Note from the Editor

2025-10-01

29(3) Note from the Editor