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Public Engagement
in a Civic Mission Against this background, the Civic Mission Project investigation undertaken by the Center for Democracy and Citizenship had several goals:
In our historical investigation, we followed the path of Scott Peters, a former graduate student researcher with the Center. Peters discovered that a “public work lens” illuminated histories of public education in 20th century America which have heretofore been largely unexplored.[3] Our diagnosis of “the problem” and the solution to civic disengagement similarly drew from this theoretical framework. The public work approach highlights the public dimensions of work, both individually and institutionally. Thus it differs, in significant respects, from conventional liberal and communitarian approaches to citizenship and their attendant conceptions of democracy (See Appendix for the Obstacles to Civic Engagement). In conventional terms, civic engagement is largely understood in communitarian terms, as “service” to others. This has the virtue of leading to important questions about what values institutions promote and embody; how students learn responsibility; the moral obligations of institutions of higher education to surrounding communities and the broader society. The service focus has, most specifically, generated a large and growing service-learning movement on campuses. Yet understanding citizenship as a function of “service” also has limitations. It locates active citizenship in the “voluntary sector” of civil society. It defines citizenship largely as off-hours voluntarism, detached from the core work of faculty, staff, students, and administrators and institutions as a whole. Yet service experiences, however valuable they may be in teaching care and concern for others in young people’s immediate environment, have had little or no observable effect on their widespread feelings of cynicism, powerlessness, and profound distrust of public institutions of all kinds. For faculty and staff, calls to more service can sound simply hortatory, exhorting overworked and underappreciated people to “do more” and to “be better.” The public work philosophy shifts attention to the question of work itself. It explores the public dimensions of professions, disciplines, and individual faculty experiences—and the erosion of those dimensions. What would it look like if teaching were a public activity, for example? What are the public conditions and effects of scholarship? What happens if faculty and staff see themselves as “public people,” in partnership with other citizens? What new resources might be tapped and cultivated? What new energies unleashed? The public work approach also proposes that it is essential to conceive of college cultures as living wholes, not mainly as aggregations of discrete units in competition with each other, calling particular attention to the public dimensions of such cultures. Diagnostically, public
work examines the forces contributing to the erosion of public cultures
as modern institutions have become increasingly subject to a logic of
rationalization that holds ends constant and fixed, and focuses on efficiency
of means. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is
the knowledge we have lost in information?” asked T. S. Elliot in
his prophetic poem from 1937, “The Rock.” A public work perspective
looks at the ways in which we have lost wisdom in knowledge, and knowledge
in information. It asks questions about meaning and larger public purpose.
It looks at how publics that act and the public cultures surrounding and
sustaining such action might be revived and regrown in a modern, technological
society. What does public action and public culture look like in institutions
of higher learning and knowledge production, specifically? In many ways
these are “radical” questions, not in conventional partisan
terms of left or right but in etymological terms, going to the “roots”
of our disciplines and our work. The tie between work and democracy was the genius of American democracy, but it was a tie relatively untheorized. The tie lingers in our time in the term “productive citizenship.” But as work has lost public overtones and become increasingly seen as a means to a paycheck which supports “free time” in leisure, civic identities have turned from producers to consumers of democracy. The institutions of higher education are positioned in an information age to effect a reversal and transformation of these trends in both intellectual and practical terms. “When I came to the University of Minnesota in 1959, the Political Science department gave students credit for working in the community and on political campaigns. We had what some said was the finest internship program in the country.” “I thought of my job description as including work with communities. I believed in the ‘Wisconsin idea’ of public universities: the borders of the University were the borders of the state. I worked with the extension service in a rural public leadership program; there was a war of cultures at the University then. I felt pressure to focus only on publications. But I also had examples of rising stars like John Bochert in Geography, who went on to become a world-famous Regents Professor. John was working with communities to think through what factors make a small community grow and flourish or fail. John and I worked together all around the state. That was how we understood our work as faculty.” — Charles Backstrom, Retired Professor, Political Science
“We need a language for talking about what we stand for. Right now, that isn’t there.” — Michael Martin, Dean, College of Agriculture
The Mood
at the University of Minnesota The rural sociologist Mary Mims, a leader in the cooperative extension system who invented what was called the “community organizing approach” for extension work, argued in 1929 that, “We’ve been too much inclined to depend on beginning at the top in our efforts at reform. So-called ‘social workers’ cannot hammer a community into shape.” Mims declared in her widely-read book, The Awakening Community, “if a community grows, it must do so from the inside.” In subsequent years, the idea that powerful civic action must be grounded in the real life and relationships of a “community” has become central to the practice of networks such as the Industrial Areas Foundation network of large-scale citizen organizations.[5] Our strategy for interviewing was based on this approach, stressing the importance of grounding action in the life and relationships of the University, itself understood as a kind of “community.” We do not claim to be comprehensive. But we sought to gain an overall sense of the University from the vantage of those who have been at the institution for some period of time; who had some concern for the larger purposes and meaning of the University; and who were widely respected by their peers as leaders. This method, too, was informed by the dimensions of the theory of public work which draw especially from populist theories of collective action and community organization. We solicited the
views of senior faculty, especially. Interviews were spread across the
University, including the College of Liberal Arts (CLA), the Humphrey
Institute of Public Affairs (HHH), Heath Sciences, the Institute of Technology
(IT), and agricultural disciplines and other applied science programs
on what is called the St. Paul Campus. We were impressed by the similarity
of themes that emerged from different units, and how much the mood seemed
to parallel that at other research universities, as reflected in recent
studies. Scholarship: Many senior faculty—the majority interviewed—express unhappiness with the way “scholarship” is currently defined, and are interested in taking up questions of scholarship, assessment, and rewards, and more broadly, theories of knowledge appropriate for a first-class research university, with a public service emphasis. Civic Leadership:
There is a “hunger” in many areas of the University for deeper
public engagement, and a sense that rewards and norms should be aligned
to make this possible. Members of the professoriate increasingly are convinced
that the faculty must take leadership on such questions. “If we don’t
do the — Eugene Rice, Director, Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards, “Making a Place for the New American Scholar”
When Eugene Rice
and others in the Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards conducted interviews
with faculty at research universities across the country, they found patterns
that seem also true at the University of Minnesota: faculty feel caught
between the times, overworked and underappreciated, in the midst of changing
roles, expectations, even identities. Many note an erosion of a spirit
of community and public culture in their departments and the university
as a whole. Many said that much of the best work—teaching and public service especially—tends to be relatively invisible. “We have a lot of pride in our work. We’re engaged in a lot of collaboration with businesses and other institutions,” said one leader in IT. “But it tends to be invisible. We’re a little hunkered down in the University.” Overload, speed-up, and a narrowing of perspective is a widespread perception. Many expressed dismay at the increase in red tape, bureaucracy, and paperwork. “There had been a vast increase in bureaucratic workload at the expense of educational mission over the last 24 years,” said one faculty member who has chaired the Council of Chairs. “You’re constantly put in a reactive mode, responding to demands to churn out more paper. That doesn’t build the intellectual infrastructure of the institution.” A large number of
faculty expressed the fear that “marketplace values” are overwhelming
others: “The idea of ‘student as customer’ debases the
relationship,” said one senior faculty member. “I had a student
come in to see me not long ago. He said, ‘you changed my life years
ago.’ People who think the faculty-student relationship is about
customers completely miss that.” “Customer language and Incentive-Managed
Growth leads to an entitlement mentality. Students think if they don’t
get an A, it’s our fault.” “Marketplace values will destroy
the university unless there is a balance,” said a senior leader in
Agriculture. An English professor observed, “We feel the need for
a more moral tone in the University. A sense of overall integrity.”
One administrator in Health Sciences, observing the parallels between
the “reengineering” of the health field and the University,
argued that “in health, we need to see every interaction between
the provider and the patient as a civic act. There are always values involved.
If we let simply the market take over it will be very damaging.”
“We’re losing the academic and liberal tone of the University,”
said one Humanities scholar, who argued that “things are measured
increasingly by how many bodies you can pull in. There’s alarm about
the anti-intellectual implications of Incentive-Managed Growth.”
Another CLA professor argued that, “Our values are getting inverted,
with things that should be central now on the periphery. We need to regain
a balance between responding to market pressures and liberal and civic
values.” Some warned of thinking the problem was simply “corporatization”:
there is a large dynamic (to which many businesses in our time are also
subject) which tends toward “rationalization,” holding ends
constant and fixed and focusing simply on efficient means. This is a well-known
intellectual concept—Max Weber’s “iron cage” of technical
rationality; or the “managerial mindset” associated with the
spread of the cult of efficiency. It seems to be afflicting institutions
across the board in American society, draining them of public purpose
and a vibrant sense of mission and spirit. “There would be little wrong if this winnowing produced valuable knowledge, as it often does in the sciences. But in the humanities and the social sciences, the system often produces perverse results. Instead of sharpening knowledge, specialization dulls it; the audience, being small, also feels beleaguered...Sharing a tiny corner of the world, scholars have little need for the rigorous clarity imposed by the need to make one’s ideas available to outsiders.” — Alan Wolfe, Higher Education Exchange, 1997
Alan Wolfe, one of the nation’s premier sociologists, in the article quoted defended a conservative methodology of scholarship. He upheld what might be called “the German model,” the ideal of the individual scholar alone in the library in pursuit of knowledge “for its own sake.” Such a model of scholarship is supposedly associated with the “scientific researcher,” who seeks objectivity though philosophers of science have pointed out that scientific inquiry is far more social and open-ended. Nonetheless, Wolfe also offered a critique of dominant patterns of research and faculty rewards as sharp as any partisan of public scholarship these days. Perhaps the most surprising conclusion from the interviews at the University of Minnesota was how widely Wolfe’s views of the flaws in the current system seem to be shared by senior faculty. There are obviously obstacles to change in definitions of scholarship at the University, but the moment seems ripe for the topic. In 1990, Ernest Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered, a study of the professoriate for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, launched a wide re-examination of the ways scholarship is defined, practiced, and rewarded at major research universities. Boyer argued that the current reward system privileges what he called the “scholarship of discovery”—individualized scholarship based on basic research, drawing especially from the model of experimental science. He proposed that three other forms of scholarship deserve equal emphasis: “the scholarship of integration,” which “makes connections across disciplines, placing the specialties in larger context, illuminating data in a revealing way;” “the scholarship of application,” or more public scholarship, which is based on “the application of knowledge to consequential problems” and often draws its research questions from interactions with publics; and “the scholarship of teaching,” which not only is about the transmission of knowledge but its transformation and extension in the learning process. To date, most discussion and debate surrounding Boyer’s argument have been among administrators. Yet there are signs that faculty are beginning to engage these questions. A three year faculty-led process at Oregon State University recently focused on definitions of scholarship and the institution’s process of evaluating it. The faculty concluded that scholarship needs to be more broadly defined, as “creative intellectual work that is validated by peers and communicated” in a variety of ways—by no means limited to refereed journals. It should be understood to include discovery, development and integration of knowledge, and also creative artistry. Conrad Weiser, a leader in the process, has noted that “faculty understanding and acceptance of this concept of scholarship were remarkably widespread and enthusiastic. Most are convinced that “standards of performance are likely to be raised rather than lowered” by the new definitions and evaluation methods, which include individualized job descriptions for every faculty member at the university. At the University of Minnesota, only a few defended current approaches to defining and evaluating scholarship, though they were vociferous: “Our first priority should be to attract cutting-edge scholars,” said one. “We need to worry about our national rankings much more.” Far more common was
the sense that scholarship is balkanized and narrow. “There’s
a loss of public judgment about each other’s work. People don’t
read each other’s files because we’re too busy,” said one
faculty. A sense of loss of intellectual community in some departments
also emerges clearly: “E-mail is balkanizing our department. People
prefer to talk to colleagues elsewhere.” “The journal review
process already evaluates the work; we think, ‘what more could we
add?’” Operative definitions of scholarship are controversial.
“To date, a good deal of the most creative intellectual work is not
well-recognized in the whole promotion and tenure review process,”
said one senior scholar. Another observed that public journalism and similar
work oriented toward broader publics simply does not count for tenure,
promotion, or merit review. “We have people who do public scholarship,
who interact with wide publics on important topics, but it is not regarded
as scholarship by current definitions. It creates hard feelings.”
Overall, most agreed that coming to some clearer definition of scholarship
is central to a robust sense of mission and the articulation of the actual
values that the University embodies: “What we define as scholarship
is a fight about what you value, a fight for the future,” said one
leading scholar. —
Shirley Garner, Chair, English Department “The future of public universities depends on renewing their public commitments. Research is better, and teaching is far more lively, if faculty are involved in public issues.” — Robert Bruininks, Provost The University of Minnesota is part of a land-grant and public university tradition which once strongly tied mission to conceptions of public service, and self-consciously combined practical with liberal education. By the early 20th century, the ideas of higher education’s public service mission had spread widely, affecting even elite private institutions such as Harvard. At the end of the 20th century, notions of—and rewards for—public engagement had eroded. Nonetheless, our interviews suggest that faculty and administrators are beginning to look “outward” and think about how norms and rewards might better align with public commitments. Many faculty members emphasized that given current norms and rewards, the first years at the University strongly discourage public service. “For my first years here the message I got was unmistakable: focus only on publishing,” as one summarized. On the other hand, most interviewed also thought public service or public engagement is undervalued: “We need to deepen the public nature of our work across the board at the University,” said one administrator. “This should apply even in some of the ‘hardest research’ areas.” Evidence in at least some fields suggests the benefits of public engagement. Once recent survey of scholars taking part in humanities council programs in California revealed that 90% percent reported a positive influence on their scholarship, and 82 percent a positive influence on their teaching. On the basis of his own observations over the years, Jamil Zainaldin, director of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, argues that “for scholars truly engaged in a public program (hit and run doesn’t count), enrichment is practically inevitable.” Many faculty at the
University of Minnesota voice similar views about benefits from deeper
or more extensive public engagements. “There is a palpable hunger
from faculty to be more involved in the world,” said one historian.
Only one expressed strong reservations about making “public service”
or “public engagement” more rewarded. “I’m a little
negative about a greater emphasis on public engagement. I think we need
to upgrade our emphasis on first-class scholarship. Harvard can afford
to pay more attention to public engagement—everybody quotes Harvard
professors.” Secondly, outreach or service activities, including the dissemination of specialized knowledge and expertise, was understood to be best carried out as part of collaborative “public work,” work by a mix of people that produced public benefits for the commonwealth. Public service was not simply “for” communities and citizens. Skills of collaborative work “with” others were highly prized. Moreover, faculty and student self-interests, broadly understood, were embedded in such work: the professoriate imagined themselves and were imagined as part of the civic community, not apart from it. Awareness of this tradition has recently spread, especially on the St. Paul campus where Scott Peters, previously an historical researcher with the Center, now holds the position of “Extension Specialist in Public Scholarship and Public Work.” “The idea of partnership takes us back to our roots early in the 20th century,” said one faculty member on the St. Paul campus. “Civic engagement should be seen as catalyzing citizen work, not simply doing things for people.” Others pointed out
the need for faculty and other constituencies to learn how to engage in
a “partnership” or “public work” approach. “There
is a lot of difference in public engagement between the expert model and
the public work or partnership model,” said one professor in CLA.
“The partnership model usually works better, but the problem is,
most faculty haven’t had much experience in it,” argued one
department chair. In a similar vein, an administrator in Health Sciences
observed that “partnership” approaches require learning new
skills and approaches for a lot of faculty: “To do public engagement
well, we need to pay attention to dimensions like culture, that we’ve
never considered much.” Most felt that for public engagements to
become more visible and widely practiced—for the norms to change—it
will take strong leadership and broad changes in reward patterns. “There’s
almost no recognition for public commitments,” said one senior faculty
member involved in community affairs. “No one in the department ever
mentions it to me when I do things beyond the U [University].” One
dean argued that the University needs a range of ways to reward service
or public engagement, in order to change the norms and messages to young
faculty in his unit. “Especially, we need examples of senior faculty
whose public involvements have improved and enriched their scholarship.”
Many expressed views
like that of C. Wright Mills many years ago: the only way to turn “personal
troubles” into action is to make them matters of public concern and
deliberation. “We need to make these issues public. Most people don’t
talk beyond their friendship circle.” There was a general agreement
that change will require shifts in rewards and institutional priorities:
“Change isn’t going to happen unless there is change in the
norms and rewards.” Finally, many faculty believe that the questions
of mission, rewards, scholarship, and public engagement need to be taken
up by the faculty—they can’t be mainly the province of administrators.
“We will take up the mission ourselves—or it will be done to
us,” as one observed. 1]
Purposes Allocation of resources and faculty effort are pushed toward their most remunerative uses with a slighting of other institutional values. As counterpoint to such internal changes, the traditional mission of public service takes on a commercial cast, aimed at meeting the needs of public relations, private companies, and government agencies. This dynamic often renders the meaning of public mission as public-private partnerships for the sake of economic growth and competitive advantage. While such partnerships have value, they are far from the full, rich range of work with communities and citizens conveyed by the public university as an instrument of democracy. Overall, the question of how to integrate the uses of the market into a larger set of public purposes and principles is of critical importance—and still largely unexplored. All these dynamics
have been operative at the University of Minnesota specifically. Over
the last ten years, Minnesota has been in a reactive mode according to
most faculty, administrators, and staff we interviewed. It has responded
to economic pressures with tendencies toward over-regulation, bureaucracy,
and wide use of marketplace categories like “student as customer.”
“Every time something goes wrong we create a dozen rules,” as
Robert Bruininks, University Provost, puts it. The result has been a drawing
back from a larger connection to the whole. “A relatively decentralized
institution like the University works well when there is a strong sense
of common purpose,” says one senior financial administrator. “But
over the last decade, that sense of common vision and direction has greatly
weakened.” In the last two years, these pressures culminated in a
tenure fight, paralleled by a nearly successful union-organizing campaign
among the faculty.
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