In this commentary, author Barbara Holland reflects on her 1999 "Journal of Public Service & Outreach" article, "Factors and Strategies That Influence Faculty Involvement in Public Service" (EJ589785) reprinted in this 20th anniversary issue of "Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement." In the late 1990s, Holland participated as a team member in the evaluation processes of several multi-institutional grant programs. This work provided the opportunity to gather similar data across 32 diverse institutions, using the same protocols and methods. Those processes systematically collected data across faculty, students, community partners, and institutional leaders. After the evaluations were completed, Holland analyzed specific data gathered from faculty participants across those projects to inform the 1999 article reprinted in this issue and examined factors that influence faculty participation. What rings as relevant today? What progress has been made in the field--what has changed? What are contemporary trends and directions? In this reflective essay, Holland explores answers to these questions. She concludes now that community-engaged scholarship has gained considerable ground as a valued element of faculty work and culture and as a powerful strategy to advance major change goals for institutions, we must especially frame rigorous and large-scale studies of the impact higher education has on public issues, aims, and conditions through engaged partnerships. The current emphasis on developing systematic schemes for collecting institutional and national data on higher education's individual and collective impact on local and global questions should inform a great leap forward in the quality and rigor of the study of engagement practices and their effects. [For "Factors and Strategies That Influence Faculty Involvement in Public Service" (2016), see EJ1097178.]