New Voices: In University-Community Transformation

Abstract

a 1993 national conference in Los Angeles focusing on diversifying the university curriculum, a panel of non-tenured faculty of color from local institutions voiced deep frustration at their experiences in the wake of the previous year's riot/rebellion. After responding to multiple demands from communities, government agencies, and the media for analysis and assistance in relation to the complex racial, cultural, economic, and political dynamics during that crisis, they discovered that their heroic interventions counted for little in their annual reviews. Penalized by their institutions' traditional reward systems, they each had privately concluded that genuine leadership in responding to Rodney King's question of the decade {Can we all get along?) would not come from universities. In Creating a New American College, Ernest Boyer wrote that institutions of higher learning must join in the effort to rebuild their communities, not just for moral reasons but also out of enlightened self-interest. The long-term futures of both the city and the university in this country are so intertwined that one cannot or perhaps will not survive without the other. Recalling Boyer, Jerry Gaff, vice president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, recently advised faculty and students engaged in revising the general education requirements at one university that their success would depend on whether the curriculum adequately linked critical issues of society with the classroom. These ideas are not new. In the 1930s, John Dewey emphasized that school and society are one that higher education is intertwined with what he termed the dilemmas and the perplexities of its time. Dewey and others since have argued that real advances in knowledge occur when educational institutions focus on those central issues facing contemporary society. Current reform efforts in higher education each reflect and extend this tradition, albeit in largely separate and relatively marginalized ways. Consider Boyer' s redefinition of scholarship and Ernest Lynton's articulation of criteria to assess faculty professional outreach activities. How have these efforts intersected with the lessons and interests of Campus Compact members and others committed to service learning and experiential education in the curriculum? And what relationship do any of these activities have with the demands for expansion of Ethnic Studies in the curriculum articulated by Evelyn HuDehart or Jesse Vasquez? It was clear at the Los Angeles conference that situations might have evolved differently for those faculty of color if Boyer' s definition of applied scholarship or Lynton's views of professional service had influenced the review criteria at their institutions. Similarly, they might have found greater support if their community interventions had been linked to teaching in the service-learning programs of their institutions or if they had been affiliated with their institutions' Ethnic Studies programs. This was not the case, however. Instead, a cadre of energetic junior faculty found themselves becoming increasingly cynical about their own roles while the communities were left without further access to crucial resources during a time of dire need. Rodney King's question has continued to echo since that Joan Arches is Assistant Professor in the College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston and an advisory board member for CIRCLE Boston; Marian Darlington-Hope is Associate Dean of the College of Public and Community Service and CIRCLE'S site coordinator at UMass Boston; Jeffrey Gerson is Assistant Professor in Political Science at UMass Lowell and the facilitator of Lowell CIRCLE'S Political Leadership Trainings; Joyce Gibson is Assistant Professor in Education at UMass Lowell and the facilitator of Lowell CIRCLE'S Educational Leadership Trainings; Sally Habana-Hafner is an Instructor in the Center for International Education at UMass Amherst and the site coordinator for CIRCLE in Western Massachusetts; Peter Kiang is an Associate Professor in Education and Asian American Studies at UMass Boston and CIRCLE'S co-principal investigator.