This essay is an account of student civic engagement in action. It stresses the vital role of environments in which students learn to be civic actors. The student experiences recorded in this account point toward a form of campus politics that places students in a role of coworker and cocreator, where they must negotiate differences and…

This article explores both the potential and challenges associated with the widespread use of social networking among college students and the implications for civic engagement, equity and inclusion, and student success.

Today’s young generation (often called "Millennials," "GenY," or "Generation Me") are the first to grow up with the Internet and social networking websites. Have these experiences led to more and better social connections, or fewer and atrophied ones? Social media use may lead to online political action such as signing an e-mail petition but does…

Using longitudinal data from the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education, this research explored the impact of students' interactions with student affairs professionals on socially responsible leadership development during the first year of college. Overall, students' interactions with student affairs professionals were…

In this article, the author explores the existing research on the characteristics of Millennials within historical, social, and economic contexts. While many researchers have made claims about Millennials, they fail to consider how parenting styles, economic factors, historical events, and shifts in educational priorities may have created the…

Pluralism and engagement with diverse religious, secular, and spiritual worldviews can contribute significantly to college student growth and civic engagement. But these concepts can be difficult to measure in the framework of student learning. This article describes a process and product undertaken by Elon University, Interfaith Youth Core, and…

The Values, Ethics, and Social Action (VESA) minor at Allegheny College has been an academic program since 1999. This article describes the unique strengths of VESA and some of the institutional and conceptual challenges faced by the program and presents details of practices employed to meet these challenges in order to sustain this community…

This article articulates a model for the "engaged campus" through academic programs focused on community engagement, broadly construed. Such academic programs--usually coalesced in certificate programs, minors, and majors--provide a complementary vision for the deep institutionalization of civic and community engagement in the academy that can…

Since the early 1990s, Portland State University has furthered its commitment to civic engagement education by adopting an integrated approach to its general education curriculum. As an outgrowth to this initiative, the minor in Civic Leadership was developed in 2004-05. This interdisciplinary minor was designed with the intent to further…

This essay is an excerpt from a keynote speech delivered by Benjamin Barber at the 2nd Annual Summer Research Institute on the "Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education." The speech focuses on six conditions that will impact community service-learning and voluntarism efforts in the years ahead: the ideology of neo-liberalism and…

Institutions of higher education have continuously struggled to find ways to keep young adults engaged. In order to do so, they have introduced a number of techniques and programs into the curriculum, but these programs do not necessarily translate to transformational learning for students. This article discusses the transformation of an…

This article analyzes the experience of teaching and learning in a "Literature of Service" course in its attempt to utilize the best of civic learning and faith-based reflection to make sense of social inequality. The language of students' final portfolios for the course suggests a direct connection between their classroom talk about literary…

This article examines relational ways of knowing--a concept both broad and deep--as a strategy we have infused throughout our design of one first-year Living and Learning Community (LLC). As outlined here, the authors teach faith as relationship; justice as being in just relationship with others, research as the concept of putting ideas in…

The authors explore ways that faith and a commitment to social justice can be integrated into learning in higher education today. They also seek to highlight six foundational insights emerging from the proceedings of the National Faith, Justice, and Civic Learning (NFJCL) conference related to the importance of effectively reintegrating the…

Our colleges and universities have the opportunity to play a role in transforming the tone of our current national discourse and model the core values of our democratic society as we prepare students to be civically responsible.