Higher education in the United States and elsewhere is being forced to respond to several disparate social and economic pressures: social trust and connectedness is down, empathy across citizens is deteriorating, political awareness and participation are low, and job prospects and financial security are sobering for many citizens, even the college educated. The response to these pressures is not to double down on one mission of higher education, namely job creation. Instead, higher educati...

Self-determination in the European Union rests on the strength and skills of a country’s representatives to manage and leverage relationships with other nations, and for individuals it rests on the ability to use autonomy and freedom wisely. To flourish, an individual must consciously determine their own path. Similarly, we can say a country can flourish. Self-determinism for a country is conditioned on the forces that facilitate or hinder its ability to succeed as a society. The same forc...

Scholarship is a multi-generational collective enterprise with a commitment to advancing knowledge, inspiring reflection, and facilitating stronger neighborhoods, cities and countries. This book explicitly adopts this lens as a recognition of the contributions of Prof. Terry Cooper to scholarship and practice, and as a mechanism to connect the past to the present and ultimately the future of scholarship in public ethics and citizen engagement. This “multi-generational” approach is designed...

National service and volunteerism enjoy a rich history in the United States and an emergent future in other parts of the world. However, there remains relatively scant evidence of overall impact of national service programs and volunteer effectiveness. This condition continues to threaten national service and volunteer programs with the risk of defunding and/or the risk of not investing sufficiently from the start. This book brings together a selection of diverse chapters written by a comb...

This book argues that active citizenship and poverty are inextricably linked. A common sentiment in discussions of poverty and social policy is that decisions made about those living in poverty or near-poverty are illegitimate, inadvisable, and non-responsive to the needs and interests of the poor if the poor themselves are not involved in the decision-making process. Inside this intuitively appealing idea, however, are a range of potential contradictions and conflicts. These conflicts are...

Community engaged universities prepare students to participate in societies in ways that are inclusive. This book presents a coherent argument for higher education institutions not only to encourage students to engage in their communities, but also to develop themselves as community engaged institutions. Analyzing the design and implementation of community engaged teaching and learning practices, author Thomas Bryer explores training in democratic practices and envisions a future in which ...

This volume provides an in-depth, qualitative analysis of volunteers and volunteerism in the U.S. National Parks Service (NPS). Over the course of the 50+-year history of the Volunteers-in-Parks (VIP) program, there has been no systematic research undertaken about the history or impact of volunteers serving in parks. This book corrects this deficiency, filling a large gap in the scholarly literature and advancing theory on volunteerism within a critical space in the nation’s environmental,...

“In their comparative analysis of several universities from different parts of the world, the authors make a case for the critical roles that higher education institutions can play in building the civic framework in a society.”—Kyle Farmbry, Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University-Newark, United States“By defining community, discussing how universities are often contested spaces, and covering how universities and students engage their comm...

Social media is playing a growing role within public administration, and with it, there is an increasing need to understand the connection between social media research and what actually takes place in government agencies. Most of the existing books on the topic are scholarly in nature, often leaving out the vital theory-practice connection. This book joins theory with practice within the public sector, and explains how the effectiveness of social media can be maximized. The chapters are w...

Contemporary public policy challenges are increasingly called “wicked problems,” or problems that cannot be solved by one sector or one agency of government alone. Solutions to wicked problems often further require the recognition and acceptance of tradeoffs or drawbacks, which might include a cost or sacrifice for the whole of society or a subsection of society. Based on the premise that government of, by, and for the people is not sufficient to rise to and meet wicked public policy probl...