Higher Education’s Role in the Community:  Tulane University as a Case Study
Scott S. Cowen, President, Tulane University and Seymour S Goodman Memorial Professor of Business in Tulane's A.B. Freeman School of Business and Professor of Economics in the School of Liberal Arts

Scott Cowen, President of Tulane University, will discuss how community engagement enriches research and instruction in higher education.  After Hurricane Katrina, Tulane created several new initiatives to simultaneously enhance its educational offerings and contribute to the recovery and renewal of New Orleans and the region.  Dr. Cowen will describe the benefits of community engagement for the campus and the community and the challenges involved in developing new initiatives like the Center for Public Service and the Cowen Institute for Public Education. In addition to overseeing community engagement at Tulane, the Center for Public Service is also charged with developing new strategies for engaging faculty and students in community based research.  Generating new research paradigms community-based research and increasing this kind of research portfolio at the university are two of its primary goals.

The World’s Third Biggest Lie: “Hi, I’m from the University and I’m here to help you”
James D. Wright, Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Central Florida

The world’s three biggest lies, in order, are:  (1) “The check is in the mail.”  (2) “I promise I will respect you in the morning.”  And (3) “Hi, I’m from the University and I’m here to help you!”

Historically, universities have been “in” their cities and communities, but not “of” them.  While all universities have worried about “town-gown” relationships from time to time, the nature of the concern has traditionally been how to persuade the locals – the “besotted rusticus,” in the words of Royal Ford – to accept the moral and intellectual superiority of the university and otherwise keep still.  On the other hand, towns often care about little or nothing that relates to the university except the fortunes of the football team.

Various recent developments in universities and in communities have started to undo these often negative historical relationships.  Collectively, these new developments are called university-community partnerships and they take a number of different forms, of which service-learning initiatives are among the most important.

I have been involved twice in trying to implement service learning programs in universities that did not have them – first here in New Orleans back in the CAP days (CAP having provided the initial impetus and funding for Tulane’s original service learning initiative), then again in Orlando, when I left Tulane for the University of Central Florida, which also had only a nascent and under-developed SL program going.  I regard both of these as highly successful ventures, as initiatives that managed to avoid some of the more serious pitfalls of forging mutually profitable university-community linkages.  My talk today basically speculates on the conditions for success, i.e., what it takes on both sides to make these partnerships successful.

My talk is a from-the-trenches view of SL initiatives and what they say about universities and their sometimes pitiful efforts to reach out to their own communities.  On the downside, I discuss the “arrogance of expertise,” the “imperialism of the disciplines,” faculty resistance, and student disinterest as principal barriers to community-university partnerships.  On the upside – the more important side! – based on my experiences at Tulane and UCF, I also outline a blueprint for what is required to make these partnerships truly successful.  Finally, I share some of my observations on evaluations of SL and of university-community partnerships more generally.

Monday, October 27:  IARSLCE Membership Meeting

Participation at this conference includes membership to the International Association for Research on Service-learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE).  You are invited to attend the annual breakfast meeting of the membership.  Learn more about the association’s activities, next year’s conference in Ottawa, and ways you can become actively involved.  The meeting also includes the presentation of the Annual Service-learning and Community Engagement Research Award.  Please join us!

Civic engagement and service learning: The challenge and promise of research
Lori Vogelgesang, Research Analyst, Office of Residential Life, University of California – Los Angeles. 

Research in the area of civic engagement and service learning continues to grow. Yet even as support for engagement efforts grows, criticism of the state of research remains strong.  Longitudinal work is difficult and remains limited, but offers promise to deeply understand the impact of experiences. In this talk I want to speak broadly on longitudinal research in civic engagement, and reflect on what have been and can be the challenges and benefits of the work. Skeptics and supporters alike would suggest that more work is needed; I want to suggest what a 'big study' might look like.  I will also and make the case that the research agenda of civic engagement and service learning needs to be integrally connected with other bodies of research that inform and strengthen the work - globalization, diversity, faculty culture, community activism and social change movements to name but a few.

New Directions and Strategies for Community Engaged Scholarship: International Perspectives
This plenary panel will offer provocative presentations from a panel of international speakers, suggesting potential new directions and strategies to promote community engaged scholarship.  Panelists will address topics across the educational spectrum and multiple disciplines, and will raise questions for the audience to stimulate discussion on new research ideas.

	Moderator:  Sherril Gelmon, Professor of Public Health, College of Urban and Public Affairs, Portland State University
	Panelist:  Steve Garlick, Professor of Regional Engagement, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
	Panelist: Tim Stanton, Visiting Senior Fellow, John Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities, School of Education, Stanford University
	Panelist: Maria Nieves Tapia, Academic Director for CLAYSS, Centro Latinoamericano de Aprendizaje y Servicio Solidario (Latin American Center for Service-learning)