Toward the engaged institution: Rhetoric, practice, and validation: Qualitative, quantitative, and historical research

This multi-case study of land grant institutions examines how campus executives, faculty, and staff at large research universities articulate and demonstrate their commitment to outreach and engagement. This study also sheds light on how community partners validate and make sense of this commitment. Findings suggest that community partner perceptions of institutional engagement are informed by rhetoric and behavior of top university leaders, and the extent to which faculty and staff successfully form communityuniversity partnerships built on mutual respect, trust, and shared goals. The impact of various organizational structures on community perceptions of engagement is also discussed. The study provides implications for how land grant universities might better align their leadership, organizational structures, practices, and policies to be more responsive to societal needs. D the last decade, a number of forces have challenged public colleges and universities to be more committed to serving societal needs. One of the most high profile challenges came from the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities established in 1996. In their third report, Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution, the Kellogg Commission argued that colleges and universities will face multiple challenges in the decades ahead, and at the center of these challenges is the public perception that higher education institutions are out-of-touch and unresponsive to the needs of society (Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities, 1999). Critical Issues in Higher Education 240 The Commission’s stinging assertions have been supported by other studies conducted in the late 1990s suggesting that land grant institutions have drifted from their missions to be universities of the people. Among them, Bonnen’s (1998) extensive critique of the modern land grant institution argued that university outreach and public service “is poorly focused and not well internalized in the value system of the modern university” (p. 39). His analysis led him to conclude, “We must face the fact that the covenant that has governed the university’s relationship with society since World War II has dissolved” (p. 45). In response to these criticisms and growing accountability pressures from legislators and the public, various national organizations have emerged to steer colleges and universities toward a more public agenda. Among them, a national clearinghouse has been established to help faculty members evaluate the quality of outreach scholarship as they seek promotion and tenure (Scholarship of Engagement, 2004) and organizations such as the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good have been established to “significantly increase awareness, understanding, commitment, and action relative to the public service role of higher education in the United States” (National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good, 2004, para. 1). The movement to create more publicly engaged institutions has gained momentum due to key scholarly contributions that have placed outreach scholarship in a more prominent light. Important works such as Scholarship Reconsidered (Boyer, 1990), Scholarship Assessed (Glassick, Huber & Maeroff, 1997) and Making the Case for Professional Service (Lynton, 1995) have been especially important influences on how faculty work might be reconceptualized to focus on serving broad public interests (Knox, 2001). Purpose of the Study and Research Questions The purpose of this study is to contribute to an understanding of how land grant universities might better align their leadership, organizational structures, practices, and policies to be more responsive to societal needs. A unique aspect of this study is that it is concerned with the perspectives of community stakeholders and the factors that these partners believe are key to demonstrating a university’s commitment to outreach and engagement. Stemming from this rationale, two primary research questions guide this study. First, what are the factors that shape or characterize a land grant institution’s commitment to outreach and engagement? Stated another way, what is the rhetoric and practice that defines and guides institutional efforts in outreach and engagement? Second, in what ways and to what extent do these institutional