Important Note: Research must be at the center of all proposals submitted.  To be sufficiently competitive, proposals that focus on program descriptions, program evaluations, or “how-to” strategies must describe how the topics discussed will advance the nature, quality, and/or quantity of service-learning and community engagement research.  Pure descriptions of service-learning or other engagement programs are unlikely to be accepted unless they are accompanied by rigorous research and/or analysis that advance understanding and knowledge in the field.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: New deadline for Conference Proposals, MARCH 11, 2009 at 12:00 pm EDT.

The theme of the conference is Research for What? Making Inquiry Matter. While papers and posters on all aspects of research on service-learning and community engagement are welcome, the conference organizers are particularly interested in receiving proposals that address the goals underlying research, the most effective means of achieving them, and the implications of such goals for society; communities and community-based organizations, schools, colleges,  universities, faculty, students, and scholarship. Is the research meant to transform academe? Deepen student learning? Improve community life, particularly for its more marginalized members and groups? Encourage engaged citizenship, participatory democracy, community mobilization, and/or social justice? What models or approaches are most effective? From an academic standpoint, does the research indicate that service-learning and community engagement are too often ideologically or advocacy-driven?