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Public Scholarship Associates engage undergraduates in the scholarship of outreach By Celena E. Kusch
“Penn State didn’t invent the idea of public scholarship, but it really does capture the most fundamental values of the University — scholarship, problem-solving and civic engagement.” —Dr. Jeremy Cohen Director, Public Scholarship Associates	Throughout the United States, more undergraduates than ever before are engaged in volunteer community service, but their attitudes toward civic engagement have reached record lows. A growing group of Penn State faculty hopes to change student attitudes and stimulate learning by turning to models of “public scholarship.”   “Public scholarship is not just service where you volunteer in a soup kitchen or spend time at a nursing home; it is really the act of bringing scholarship to bear to support the community,” explained Dr. Jeremy Cohen, associate vice provost for Undergraduate Education. He is director of Penn State’s Public Scholarship Associates.   According to Cohen, research on public scholarship has shown that at-risk students who participated in these programs improved academic achievement and reduced rates of teen pregnancy compared to those not involved. His research confirms that students who have a public scholarship experience become deeply engaged in their learning.   “By engaging in public scholarship and applying their knowledge to real problems, students’ substantive learning in a given area is much deeper,” he said. “They know their work is going to mean something to real people.”   Beginning this summer, a new partnership between Outreach and Cooperative Extension and the Office of Undergraduate Education is providing support to faculty who want to incorporate public scholarship into their undergraduate courses. Out of 50 candidates, five faculty members have been awarded Course Development and Enhancement Grants to design learning activities that link academic content and objectives with community problem-solving.   Examples range from urban forestry students assisting the Borough of Newburg Shade Tree Committee in mapping, inventorying and planning the city’s forest resources to students of adolescent development working with Centre County Youth Services to practice the intervention strategies they learn in class. Together, the 2001 award recipients will incorporate public scholarship into courses that reach nearly 500 students per semester.   Dr. Patricia A. Book, associate vice president for outreach and executive director, Division of Continuing Education, commented, “The efforts of these faculty in helping students apply the discoveries they make on campus to issues of consequence in the community go to the heart of our University mission. It is a pleasure to support these proposals to link courses with community problem-solving through public scholarship and service learning.”   The five grant recipients are: Dr. Stephen R. Couch, professor of sociology at Penn State Schuylkill, for a course in social change. Dr. Nancy Kurtz, internship coordinator and instructor in human development and family studies (HDFS), for the Adolescent Development and Adult Development and Aging courses, with Dr. Dena Swanson, HDFS assistant professor, and Dr. Carolyn Johnson, lecturer. Dr. Peter E. Linehan, assistant professor of forestry at Penn State Mont Alto, for Urban Forestry, Forest Valuation and Forest Mapping. Dr. Rebecca Moore Peterson, instructor of biology, for a new course for undergraduate mentors of high school students enrolled in the Action Potential Science Experience summer program. Dr. Shannon Sullivan, assistant professor of philosophy and women’s studies, for Race, Space and Place: Philosophy and Critical Race Theory.   In addition to these grants, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) provided funding for another four public scholarship faculty whose proposals met the criteria for the Fund for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (FELT). FELT grants were awarded to Samuel Dennis, assistant professor of landscape architecture; Dr. Kevin Galbraith, assistant professor of health and human development at Penn State Altoona; Christine Gorby, assistant professor of architecture, working with Michael Rios, assistant professor of architecture and director of the Hamer Center for Community Design Assistance; and Dr. Nancy Love, associate professor of political science and speech communication.   All nine faculty will join the Public Scholarship Associates in moving forward with a University-wide agenda for public scholarship.   “With these latest appointments to the Public Scholarship Associates, we have established a core faculty who really do want to integrate teaching, research and service in a scholarly manner that shares the University’s intellectual wealth with the Commonwealth,” Cohen said. “Having students develop these projects as undergraduates, rather than waiting for them to be graduate students, is really an exciting way for our students to apply their work.”   The Public Scholarship Associates program began in 1999 with the appointment of six faculty and administrators. In 2000–01, another six associates joined with the original group to develop plans to implement public scholarship programs at Penn State through the creation of a University-wide minor in which students would learn the theories of public scholarship and participate in civic issues by applying their disciplinary knowledge to community problem-solving.   Current plans for the minor include introductory courses, a capstone course for disciplined reflection with other students and a fieldwork experience. Fieldwork may include a credit-based summer project, modeled after Dr. Lakshman (Lucky) Yapa’s Philadelphia Field Project, or a campus-based project where students are involved in the local community.   “We see the minor as enrichment,” Cohen noted. “It’s not a program that all Penn State students would do, but we hope to get to the point where several hundred students would be involved in the minor each year — comparable to other minor programs.”   In addition to proposing the minor to the University Faculty Senate, one of the major goals for 2001–02 is to make the Public Scholarship Associates program truly intercollege and interdisciplinary.   “To date, we have seen wonderful interaction of the faculty, and we hope to build on that,” Cohen said. “The funding from Outreach and Cooperative Extension has enabled us to expand beyond the University Park campus and to bring together faculty from across the state,” he added.   Already, a statewide, public scholarship research program is organizing to support community democracy. The group has established the Public Scholarship Enfranchisement Program to study voting practices and to provide information to students, government and communities about where we have problems with full enfranchisement due to lack of voter education and other factors.   “Given the questions raised by the last presidential election, we wanted to ask what our job is — not in partisan ways or in the ‘Rock the Vote’ model — but as scholars,” Cohen explained. “We envision that by the next presidential election, students will be able to go out into target communities armed with the information they have gathered about barriers to enfranchisement. They will be able to help people across the state register to vote and learn to use ballots properly. This is classic public scholarship. The enfranchisement program will help students become deeper learners and will benefit the entire Commonwealth at its most fundamental level, in the heart of the democratic process.”   As part of the program, Yapa, associate professor of geography, is applying geographic information systems (GIS) techniques to map statewide voting practices. Dr. Robert E. O’Connor, associate professor of political science; Dr. James Eisenstein, professor of political science and program director of the Center for the Study of Public Policy; and Dr. Richard Barton, professor and associate dean of the College of Communications, are incorporating scholarly questions about enfranchisement into journalism and political science courses. Dr. Carol Colbeck, assistant professor and research associate for the Center for the Study of Higher Education, is also studying the way faculty adopt this innovative curriculum in order to learn how to best achieve an interdisciplinary organization to work toward common goals.   Other faculty involved in the enfranchisement program include Dr. Arthur Carter, assistant vice president for Student Affairs; Dr. Constance A. Flanagan, associate professor of agricultural and extension education; and Dr. Kidane Mengisteab, professor and head of the Department of African and African American Studies. The group has also engaged a number of graduate students to conduct research. Their work is supported by funding from the Pennsylvania Campus Compact, a program committed to fostering greater civic responsibility among college students. “We are hopeful that interest in public scholarship will continue to move forward, and we are thrilled at the level at which the faculty are embracing it,” Cohen said.