Scholarly Publications
From Rhetoric to Reality: A Typology of Publically Engaged Scholarship (2010)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Diane M. Doberneck, Chris R. Glass, & John Schweitzer
Despite significant institutional rhetoric about engaged scholarship, scant empirical research focuses on the activities that constitutepublicly engaged scholarship from the faculty perspective. This study's purpose was to develop a typology of publicly engaged scholarship based upon faculty descriptions of their scholarly work. An interdisciplinary research team conducted an interpretive content analysis of 173 promotion and tenure forms provided by successful tenure-track faculty at a research-intensive, land-grant, Carnegie Classifed Community Engagement institution. The 14-category typology that emerged from the data and literature comprises four types of publicly engaged research and creative activities, five types of publicly engaged instruction, four types of publicly engaged service, and one type of publicly engaged commercialized activity. The typology may be useful as a basis for cross-institutional comparisons, institutional responses to public accountability, more effective faculty development programs, and strategic career decision-making by individual faculty members and emerging engaged scholars.
Assessing Michigan State University's Efforts to Embed Engagement across the Institution: Findings and Challenges (2006)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Lunsford, C. G., Church, R. L., & Zimmerman, D. L.
This article describes how Michigan State University has sought to facilitate faculty involvement in outreach and engagement. These efforts began with the development of an institutional framework that identifies outreach and engagement as a scholarly activity that cuts across research, teaching, and service. Additional measures described in this paper, such as altering the tenure and promotion process to account for outreach, align with this framework. To assess the impact of these efforts, the authors draw on interview data collected from faculty involved in this type of work. These findings suggest that academic units must find ways to align faculty work with the institutional framework to encourage faculty involvement in outreach and engagement. Faculty must also be rewarded for their outreach work in order for outreach to flourish.
The Transformative Engagement Process: Foundations and Supports for University-Community Partnerships (2006)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Brown, R. E., Reed, C. S., Bates, L. V., Knaggs, D., Casey, K. M., & Barnes, J. V.
This article describes a transformative engagement process practiced by University-Community Partnerships at Michigan State University which encourages all partners to apply critical thinking to complex community issues. Each step in the engagement process leads to new understandings that in turn lead to changes in attitudes and beliefs, resulting in new perspectives on the problem. Examples illustrate how this process can be applied to community based research and to projects that promote the application of best practices to address community problems. The process is based on accepted principles of engagement within a framework of a scholarship-based engagement model adopted by Michigan State University. Also described are the supporting structures maintained by University Outreach and Engagement that provide multiple modes of connecting and sustaining engagement on the individual and systemic levels, including electronic and face to face venues.
Leveraging Resources and Sustaining Partnerships in Tough Economic Times (2004)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Booth, C., Vaidya, S., Farrell, P., & Bokemeier, J.
During times of economic uncertainty, how can universities develop and sustain resources for engagement efforts? This article focuses on how a university-wide research and outreach coalition at Michigan State University called Families and Communities Together (FACT) is exploring a variety of funding approaches and implementing successful strategies for supporting engagement. By making the best use of its collaborative and multidisciplinary structure, by demonstrating impacts and maintaining visibility, and by building long-term partnerships, the coalition has been successful in forging alliances with government and nonprofits, sharing resources, and sustaining funding for engagement work.
Families and Communities Together (FACT) Coalition: Evolution of a University-wide Engagement Model(2002/2003)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Booth, C., Vaidya, S., Farrell, P., & Bokemeier, J.
A university-wide coalition at Michigan State University called Families and Communities Together (FACT) offers a model for university-community engagement that is responsive to increasing public demand for relevance in higher education through a novel institutional arrangement that drives scholarship, catalyzes multidisciplinary collaboration, and addresses pressing social issues and community needs. In implementing this model, the coalition is working through challenges and issues related to effective community engagement, such as identifying new avenues for linking faculty and communities, supporting diverse outreach methods, addressing faculty rewards and incentives, maintaining long-term institutional commitment, and developing meaningful roles for communities that sustain their involvement. This article examines how the coalition is addressing these issues and offers our lessons learned from putting this engagement vision into practice.
Measuring Scholarly Outreach at Michigan State University: Definition, Challenges, Tools (2002)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Church, R. L, Zimmerman, D. L., Bargerstock, B. A., & Kenney, P. A.
This article describes the instrument that MSU developed to gather institution-wide faculty outreach activities, including: MSU's definition of outreach and engagement and how it is represented on the survey; challenges in creating the survey; impediments to assessing outreach activity; the data collection strategy; and the types of data sought.
Community-University Partnerships: The Best Vintage (2002)
NHSA Dialog
Schiffman, R, Fitzgerald, H. E., & DeLuca, M. C.
This paper described the research partnership between Michigan State University and the Community Action Agency in Jackson, Michigan, and how these two entities have collaborated since 1995 to support the Early Head Start program in their area. Strategies for developing and sustaining research partnerships are presented.
Counting Public Service: Can We Make Meaningful Comparisons Within and Among Institutions (2001)
Prepared for an Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Symposium on "Broadening the Carnegie Classification's Attention to Mission: Incorporating Public Service"
Church, R. L.
This paper addresses the challenges in attempting to find verifiable indicators across institutions and disciplines for classification of public service or engagement within institutions of higher education. By describing MSU's process and effort to measure its commitment to university engagement, Church provides the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching with some recommendations and considerations.
From Inreach to Outreach: Innovations in Higher Education (2000)
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
Fitzgerald, H. E.
The author describes his transformation from campus-based research (inreach) to community-based research (outreach) and the organization of the Applied Developmental Science Interdepartmental Graduate Specializations at Michigan State University. He argues that the same criteria for evaluating faculty performance can apply regardless of where research takes place. Applied developmental science (ADS) at Michigan State University is an approach to outreach scholarship that has three broad objectives: (1) to facilitate university-community partnerships and interdisciplinary affiliations, (2) to emphasize the integration of theory, research, policy, and practice, and (3) to address issues of concern to the community that simultaneously enhance university research and instructional programs. In this essay I comment on the relationship between ADS and the university's land-grant mission and infrastructure support and the benefits and barriers related to faculty involvement in outreach. My comments are based on my own experiences and must be evaluated within that context. Finally, I freely refer to the individuals and events that influenced my research career, particularly those that helped shape my transition from inreach research to outreach research and that helped fashion the ADS model as it has emerged at Michigan State University.
Family T.I.E.S. Family Support Program for Adolescent Mothers and their Children: A Collaboration Between Mott Children's Health Center and Michigan State University (1999)
In T.R. Chibucos & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Serving Children and Families Through Community-University Partnerships: Success Stories
Bates, L., Luster, T., Massie, D., & Key, J.
This chapter discusses the partnership between Michigan State University and Mott Children's Health Center, a privately endowed health center for low income children in Genesee County, Michigan. The partnership was formed to design a support program for low income teenage mothers and their children, one that promotes better outcomes for both mothers and children. The program that developed as a result of the partnership was Family T.I.E.S. (Trust, Information, Encouragement, Support), a five-year family support program based on "best practice" in the field. MSU was the program evaluator. This chapter discusses the benefits and challenges of the partnership from the perspective of each partner and presents some of the "lessons learned" about successful partnerships.
Checkpoints: Building Capacity to Enhance Program Impact Through Evaluation (1999)
In T. R. Chibucos & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Serving Children and Families Through Community-University Partnerships: Success Stories
Fitzgerald, H. E., Abrams, L. A., Andrews, M., Villaruel, F., Brown, R. & Reed, C. S.
This chapter describes one Michigan State University response to pressures for universities to take an active role in developing innovative solutions to societal problems. MSU did so, in part, through its Applied Developmental Science Program, which forms university-partnerships that focus on resolution of community-defined problems. The authors describe a partnership between MSU and the United Way of Michigan, the collaborative process they used to develop a model curriculum (Checkpoints) for teaching about evaluation, and the assessment of the program's long-term impact.
Applied Developmental Science and University/Community Partnerships (1997)
In F. L. Parker, J. Hagen, C. Clark, & R. Robinson (Eds.). Conference Proceedings: Making a Difference for Children, Families, and Communities: Partnerships Among Researchers, Practitioners, and Policymakers (Head Start's Third National Research Conference)
Fitzgerald, H. E.
This paper discusses a two-way interdisciplinary partnership between a university and a community - the Applied Developmental Science and University/Community Partnership.
Conversation Hour: The Reality of Partnerships(1997)
In F. L. Parker, J. Hagen, C. Clark, & R. Robinson (Eds.). Conference Proceedings: Making a Difference for Children, Families, and Communities: Partnerships Among Researchers, Practitioners, and Policymakers (Head Start's Third National Research Conference)
Epps, W. H., Greene, S., Herndon, R., Sherrod, L., Fitzgerald, H. E., Brown, R., Williams, S., Schauer, M. H., Abrams, L. A., Fulbright, M., Smith, W., & Rice, L. M.
Applied Developmental Science at Michigan State University: Connecting Knowledge and Community Via Programs for Children, Youth, and Families (1996)
Journal of Research on Adolescence
Fitzgerald, H. E., Abrams, A., Church, R. L., Votruba, J. C., & Imig, G. L.
Universities are being challenged to connect with communities in ways that will produce solutions to the major problems affecting contemporary society. Pressures to build strong university-community collaborations pose difficult problems for the academy because they demand interdisciplinary cooperation, rejection of provincial disciplinary turfism, and changes in the faculty reward system. Applied developmental science (ADS) represents a theoretical and methodological approach to university-community collaborations that emphasizes long-term commitment, asset building, individual differences, and the reciprocity of knowledge application and knowledge generation. In this article, we describe the emergence of ADS at Michigan State University and provide examples of youth-oriented educational, outreach, and applied research programs that invite faculty from broadly diverse disciplines to actively embrace the university's land-grant mission.
Fulfilling Higher Education's Covenant with Society: The Emerging Outreach Agenda (1996)
Summary of the Capstone Symposium of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation - MSU Lifelong Education Grant
In 1988, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded Michigan State University a $10.2 million grant to help support an institution-wide realignment process aimed at broadening, strengthening, and more fully integrating outreach as a primary mission of each of its major academic units. In October 1995 Michigan State University celebrated the completion of its Kellogg Foundation grant with a capstone symposium designed to focus on institutional strategies to strengthen and integrate outreach. The intent was to share what MSU had learned from its own efforts as well as learn from similar efforts at other universities. Fulfilling Higher Education's Covenant with Society: The Emerging Outreach Agenda was published in 1996 both as an archival repository of the symposium and as a reference tool to promote continued dialogue about and development of higher education's outreach agenda.
Rather than providing full text of the symposium's general and concurrent sessions, the 186 pages of Fulfilling Higher Education's Covenant with Society are composed of short summaries organized into the following major sections: Redefining and Repositioning Outreach in the University; Intellectual Challenges in the Twenty-First Century: New Roles and Rewards for University Faculty; Leadership Roles and Responsibilities; Assessing Outreach; Problem-Focused Community Collaborations; Instructional Outreach; Change Model; Higher Education: Purpose and Promise in a Changing Society. A publication prologue, epilogue, and appendices are also included.
This publication is available in both HTML and portable document format ("PDF") files. Summaries of each of the symposium sessions are available as separate PDF files (of varying sizes) and as a complete set. View the summary of the Capstone Symposium
