Research

The Lasting Impact of College on Young Adults’ Civic and Political Engagement 2005
By examining college experiences that enhance student civic and political engagement, this study explores the ways in which colleges and universities foster social responsibility. The paper examines certain college environments and experiences, including community service activities, diversity coursework, interaction with diverse peers and religious involvement to explore their impact on developing and maintaining socially responsible behaviors six years after leaving college. The study concludes with ways in which colleges and universities can provide curricular and co-curricular activities for their students to become socially responsible citizens – well into post-college years.

How Service Learning Affects Students
This 2000 report from the HERI investigates firstly, the comparative effects of service learning and community service on the cognitive development of college undergraduates and secondly, how learning in general is enhanced by this service. The report examines this through a longitudinal sample of students at different college campuses. It further demonstrates that service learning positively affects academic performance, self-efficacy, leadership, choice of a service career and plans to participate in service after college. The results of the study are hoped to provide a firm empirical base for both faculty and administrators to formulate policy concerning the use and possible expansion of service learning on the campus, and at the same time, offer new insights for faculty regarding how to make service learning courses more effective

Methods of Assessing the Quality of Public Service and Outreach in Institutions of Higher Education: What's the State of the Art?
This 1999 report from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation was commissioned to cull from the literature data that addresses questions about outreach and service and that offers new ways to think about assessment, effectiveness, and impact. The report examines the changing nature of outreach and how institutions are attempting to assess and reward quality work. Topics include: Findings from the Literature; Definitions of Outreach/Service; Assessing the Quality of Outreach Service; Synthesis and Implications.

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital by Robert D. Putnam
Published in 1995 by the Journal of Democracy, which is sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, this article reports on Putnam's research into the state of civic engagement in the U.S. Putnam, the Dillon Professor of International Affairs and director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, finds a pervasive decline in voluntary association and mutual trust among Americans and posits a trend of disengagement from civic life.

"The Strange Disappearance of Civic America" by Robert D. Putnam, The American Prospect 1996
One year after the author set off a national debate with his article, "Bowling Alone," which reported a pervasive decline in voluntary association and mutual trust among Americans, Robert Putnam examines possible explanations and finds evidence of a link between the arrival of television in the 1950s and the erosion of social connections beginning in the 1960s and accelerating in the 1970s and 1980s. A more extended version of this article, complete with references, appears in the Winter 1995 issue of PS, a publication of the American Political Science Association. This work, originally delivered as the inaugural Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture, builds on Putnam's earlier articles, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy (January 1995) and "The Prosperous Community," The American Prospect (Spring 1993).

The Electronic Forum Handbook: Study Circles in Cyberspace
Written by Pamela B. Kleiber, Ed.D., Margaret E. Holt, Ed.D. and Jill Dianne Swenson, Ph.D., and dedicated to the memory of Susan Ginsberg Hadden, this handbook presents the basics of planning, conducting, participating in, and evaluating electronic forums and study circles. The text grows out of the experience of moderators trained in traditional face-to-face approaches to moderating forums and study circles who experimented with an electronic version on the Internet, linking classrooms in an electronic study circle.

The Benefits of Diversity in College and Beyond: An Empirical Analysis, by Patricia Gurin, University of Michigan
Data from this in-depth empirical analysis that measures the educational benefits of diversity shows that students educated in diverse classrooms learn to think in deeper and more complex ways, and are better prepared to become active participants in a pluralistic, democratic society. Full text of the study can be found on the University of Michigan's web site.

Diversity and The College Curriculum: How Colleges & Universities Are Preparing Students For a Changing World, by Debra Humphreys, AAC&U
This paper explores current developments in curriculum transformation. It presents a brief overview of what these changes seek to accomplish and what they mean for today's college students. The paper includes a summary of the most recent research on the impact of these kinds of changes on students' cognitive development and attitudes toward diversity, and provides a list of additional resources on curriculum change in higher education.

Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey
A group of three dozen community foundations has released the largest-ever survey on civic engagement in the United States. The survey identified a general tolerance of cultural diversity and widespread religious involvement as two of the most important components of civic engagement. The survey sampled 3,000 respondents in 40 communities around the U.S. A survey press release from 3/1/2001 is also available.

"Core Missions and Civic Responsibility: Toward the Engaged Academy" by Carol Geary Schneider, in Thomas Ehrlich, ed., Civic Responsibility and Higher Education, Oryx Press, 1999
This excerpt discusses an alternative "Engaged Academy," which views higher education as a means for renewing the public sphere through educating for democratic citizenship and social activism. Schneider describes new scholarly fields and campus programs, including learning communities, hands-on pedagogies, relational learning, and education for pluralism, that have integrated into their foundational mission active engagement with social issues.

Diverse Democracy Project
One of the primary objectives of this project is to understand the link between diversity and learning on college campuses and to extend the development of promising practices among participating institutions.