Scholarship of Community Engagement (SoCE)
Working PapersService Learning Publications (2006-2007)
Melissa Kesler Gilbert
Terry Hermsen
John Kengla
Deanne E. Knoblauch
John Krygier (Ohio Wesleyan University)
Stephen Morrow
Valentine Mukuria (Ohio State University)
Barbara H. Schaffner
John Weispfenning
Gilbert, M. Kesler & Valentine Mukuria. The Social Justice Continuum: Student Learning Outcomes in Service-Learning.
Hermsen, Terry & Morrow, Stephen. Aces in the Deck: Four Principles for Assessing and Strengthening Student Poems.
Gilbert, M. Kesler & John Krygier. (2007). "Mapping Campus-Community Collaborations: Integrating Partnerships, Service-Learning, Mapping, and GIS." In D. Sinton and J. Lund (Eds). Understanding Place: GIS and Mapping Across the Curriculum. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press.
EXCERPT: Participatory GIS, or Community Mapping, has roots in local interventions. One strand began as participatory ethnographic work, primarily in rural areas of the developing world, a means of encoding "local knowledge" and empowering local populations in response to government and business initiatives (Peluso 1995, Kwaku Kyem 2002). Another strand can be found in bioregionalism, an approach to planning and empowerment based on defining natural and human regions and understanding the relations of environment and human activities in those regions. Mapping specific areas, and their myriad human and environmental phenomena, is a primary goal of bioregionalism (Aberly 1993). Finally, GIS use is burgeoning in the planning dimension of community development. Asset mapping, for example, is a methodology for conceptual and geographic mapping of community "skills, abilities, and experiences" as a means of moving towards community stability and economic development (Kretzmann, McKnight, and Puntenney 1996).
Community GIS raises a fundamental question, "How does GIS affect the ways in which communities are able to build awareness of their surroundings, develop consensus, and argue persuasively for a better future?" (Goodchild, 2002, p. xxiii). Liberal arts colleges, many with close ties to their surrounding communities and a strong desire to be active participants in making their community better, seem ideally suited to engage in Community GIS. Indeed, a primary way for community groups to access GIS is through educational institutions. Collaborations between community groups and colleges (including faculty, staff, and students), addressing community issues of mutual concern, can mutually benefit all stakeholders. Community GIS, then, is a viable, relevant, and important means for liberal arts colleges both to apply GIS and to engage with the community. . .
Gilbert, M. Kesler, J. Weispfenning, J. Kengla. (April, 2007). "A Geography of Collaborative K-16 Partnerships for the Common Good." The Higher Learning Commission, NCA Annual Conference. Chicago, IL.
EXCERPT: An emerging vision for higher education includes leadership models that are collaborative and community-oriented, especially as we move toward more inclusive and diverse student populations (Bringle, Games, and Malloy 1999; Kezar 2005). Higher education is being challenged to reconsider our social charter to serve the common good and to reinvest in commitments to local and global communities (Schneider 2005). Critical to the new partnership movement are K-16 collaborations that increase post-secondary awareness, develop college readiness, and provide educational pathways for diverse youth (Kezar 2005). Exemplary national initiatives to address community engagement are welcoming new geographies where Student Affairs meets Academic Affairs and campuses meet communities.
We have learned through our efforts at Otterbein College in order to grow a culture of community engagement, new intermediary infrastructures can provide the most productive spaces for collaboration where a diversity of voices from multiple communities flourish. The field of geography reminds us that between two dissimilar ecosystems lies a biologically rich transition zone, known as the ecotone, a habitat with a high degree of both diversity and health (Risser 1993). An ecotone is a powerful metaphor for the communities of practice that are necessary to grow exemplary internal and external partnerships for the common good. Where any two or more communities co-exist, innovative new systems must emerge that lead, support, enhance, and sustain collaboration.
Like a balanced ecotone, new infrastructures to support community engagement require cooperation and innovation. Our history of engagement at Otterbein suggests that the healthiest and most diverse internal campus partnerships and external community partnerships rest on the following key principles of effective collaborations. . .
Long, J.F., Monoi, S., Knoblauch, D., Harper, B., Murphy, P. K. "Academic Motivation and Achievement among Urban Adolescents." In Press, Urban Education.
