Public Work and the Academy: An Academic Administrator's Guide to Civic Engagement and Service-Learning (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Public work and the academy: An academic administrator's guide to civic engagement and service-learning Barbara Jacoby, Director Public work and the academy: An academic administrator's guide to civic engagement and service-learning by Mark Langseth and William M. Plater (eds.). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co., Inc., 2004; 338 pp. Cloth $39.95. ISBN 1-882982-73-8 Public Work and the Academy: An Academic Administrator's Guide to Civic Engagement and Service-Learning is based on the belief that colleges and universities must increase their civic engagement on all levels and in ways that advance their teaching, research, and service missions. Recognizing the critical role of academic administrators in this imperative, the editors state that the book is written specifically for "academic leaders—chief academic officers, provosts, deans, division and department chairs—who have significant responsibility for the campus's academic programs" (p. xvii). Mark Langseth and William M. Plater succeed in assembling a series of high-quality essays that speak directly and powerfully to their intended audience. As a director of community service-learning organizationally housed in student affairs, I found the book to be a powerful tool for understanding the myriad possibilities, constraints, concerns, and issues that academic administrators must face in making decisions related to civic engagement and service-learning for their institutions. Its many chapter authors include names that are well known and respected as well as those that were previously unfamiliar to me. I was immediately pleased to note that the volume focuses squarely on the nexus between the pedagogy of service-learning and institutional civic engagement. It nicely forms a bridge between two bodies of literature, one about the how and why of service-learning and the other about colleges and universities as citizens. Further, the volume remedies the dearth of resources on these topics specifically for academic administrators. It is a worthy complement to Campus Compact's nuts-and-bolts Strategies for Creating an Engaged Campus: An Advanced Service-Learning Toolkit for Academic Administrators. The book is well organized and pleasingly readable, either from cover to cover or by choosing among the chapters. It is organized into two sections. The first section consists of five topical essays that provide an excellent foundation for the 11 case studies that follow in the second. In chapter 1, Bill Plater outlines ways in which academic officers can—and should—provide individual leadership to civic engagement and service-learning at their institutions. He also offers helpful definitions of critical yet often confusing terms, including "service-learning," "civil society," and "civic engagement." Andrew Furco and Barbara A. Holland, in chapter 2, suggest strategies that are grounded in their own fine research for use by chief academic officers in institutionalizing service-learning. Furco and Holland rightly view the institutionalization of service-learning in terms of defining academic culture and developing a complex web of both internal and external relationships. Chapter 3, by Edward Zlotkowski and John Saltmarsh, two other stars in the service-learning constellation, situates service-learning in the context of issues [End Page 548] often discussed as part of the agenda of higher education reform. In chapter 4, Amy Driscoll and Lorilee R. Sandmann address the complex process of building institutional support of faculty scholarship of engagement. In addition to an overview of the concept, Driscoll and Sandmann suggest specific criteria to assess and evaluate engaged scholarship. Both advocates and skeptics of service-learning will appreciate chapter 5, Jim Ostrow's reflections on service-learning as a means of increasing the depth of student engagement with academic subject matter. I urge readers not to limit themselves only to chapters in part 2 that address their particular institutional type; I found relevant and useful material in each chapter. All types of institutions are represented in these chapters, as are a wide range of institutional approaches and efforts. In chapter 6, Donald W. Harward focuses on Bates College, but engages us all in considering how institutions of higher education must be both "places apart" and "places connected." To fulfill DePaul University's Vincentian mission to serve the poor and to respond to its urban setting, Richard J. Meister and Charles R. Strain describe in...