A Civic Engagement Model for Business Disciplines
Janice Buddensick (Wagner College), Mary Lo Re (Wagner College)
Abstract
This presentation will focus on how to create a model for business disciplines that uses a single community partner and embeds a civic engagement component in courses across all student grade levels. The model’s challenges and successes will also be discussed.
The challenges stem from four main areas: creating a positive support system, integrating a related service-learning/civic-engagement component to the course, pedagogical changes, and assessing the efficacy of the model.
A support system needs to be created among the College’s Administration, the Community Partner’s Senior Administration, the Faculty, the Community Partner’s Site Supervisors, and the students. We argue that support and open lines of communication among the College’s administration and the faculty member teaching the civic-engagement class is required. Similar approval and support must exist among the community partner’s top management and the local site supervisor or person working directly with the faculty member and the students. This system of support is especially important for the acceptance of this work at the college-wide level in furthering faculty scholarship.
The selection of a community partner is one of the most important decisions in building a civic engagement curriculum. While faculty members are the primary educators of the students in the classroom, our community partners are our counterparts when our students are on site. Accordingly, we wanted a partner that would be able to offer diverse experiences to students—appropriate at all grade levels. We then designed a model that would integrate the students’ community-based activities with their classroom activities. Our Civic Innovations Model is broadly based on the concept of social responsibility.
Pedagogical styles as well as our syllabi were altered to recognize a shift from traditional teacher-student learning to an educational process shared by our community partner and the students. In this model, students take a more active role in the learning process and become a source of knowledge to be shared both with other students and with the community partner. Students are empowered to make connections between what they learn in the classroom and what they see at the community placement with the intent of synthesizing their knowledge and experience.
To measure and evaluate the efficacy of any initiative, goals must be identified and an assessment program must be formulated. While most community partners would espouse that they are teaching students about their organizations and how their services are delivered, we argue that in the course of so doing, they are also creating an environment in which students acquire and/or enhance skills necessary to be successful in their professions. Such skills include how to work collaboratively, conflict resolution, creativity, problem solving, methodical reasoning, critical analysis and a deeper appreciation of civic responsibility. In these assessment efforts, evaluation surveys (completed by all students and site supervisors) were created to measure the students’ social transformation and value-added in delivering a civic engagement course. Furthermore, students’ reflective journals and portfolios were evaluated; students’ interest extending past the completion of the course, and students’ registration for additional civic-engagement courses, were measured.
Incorporating civic engagement into the business curriculum can be done effectively if the requisite support is present and a viable model is designed and implemented. A successful model can benefit students, the community partner, the faculty involved, as well as the institution, in powerful ways.
