Gian Parel, High-Impact Intern
July 9-10, 2013
High-Impact Institute Notes
All Contents
 Tuesday, July 9: Outcomes
o Role-Based Meetings: Students
o All-Group: Learning Outcomes and HIPs
o Building Community Capacity: Framing Our Outcomes
 Wednesday, July 10: Toolkit
o Breakfast with John Saltmarsh, NERCHE
o Project Shop
 Self-Assessment of HIPs
 Notes to Focus Project
o Pumped for Policy
o The Civic-Minded Institution and the Civic-Minded Graduate
o A Collaborative Paradigm for Teaching and Learning: Implications for Students,
Faculty, and Community Partners
o Working Dinner Notes
TUESDAY, JULY 9
Contents
 Role-Based Meetings: Students
 All-Group: Learning Outcomes and HIPs
 Building Community Capacity: Framing Our Outcomes
Role-Based Meetings: Students
 What makes students important in the HII teams? i.e., what makes them special?
 Common Themes
o Technology/social media
o Dreamers
o Underestimated
o Energetic
o Flexible
o Mobilizers
o Innovative
o Low risk/high yield
o Direct beneficiaries
o Manage high stress
o Open to new ideas
o Bridges between campus/community, student body
o Interdisciplinary
 Top 5 Reasons for High Impact
o Serve as a bridge
o
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Mobilizers and foot soldiers
Low risk/high yield
Flexible
Interdisciplinary approach
All-Group: Learning Outcomes and HIPs
 Focus on institutionalize change: student learning and student outcomes
 What is the mission of the institution?
o Tries to integrate goals of Conservatory and College, so mission is broad
o Says nothing about the City of Oberlin
o Does say things about working in communities
 “Making Progress,” Ashley Finley – new pub
o Employers want people who can work with diverse communities/backgrounds;
applied/integrative learning
 Assessment of BSP. Important are… 4th year important in social justice; dialogue across
difference – students are having meaningful reflection with each other, fac, Bonner
coordinators/directors; mentors
o 2010 survey: equanimity, BSP impacted students’ sense of well-being
 Discussion: external sources of guidance/validation about student learning and outcomes;
who is represented; how to leverage external validators
o As far as external guidance/validation, there are no other institutions who are in our
competitive range, maybe Davidson and Sewanee
 Macalester, Carleton, Grinnell; higher institutions like Swarthmore, etc. (who
we compete with for admission) are compared among fac
o AAC&U has sway with the administration, but necessarily with the fac
o Do have good infrastructure in comparison to competitor institutions
o Hosted 10 years ago a conference for selective liberal arts colleges about civic
engagement
 Caryn McTighe Musil, “High Impact Practices: But for What Ends?”
o Effect on high-impact practices on underserved students
o Cannot achieve excellence without diversity—in both civic and intellectual realms
o One 1/3 of college students agreed that their edu resulted in incr civic capacities
 Civic awareness expanded
 Skills learned to effectively change society for the better
 Commitment grew to improve society
 But why is this important?
o Key recommendations civic… ethos, literacy, inquiry, action
o Challenge in academia to advance civic learning
o Leverage points: Consensus about principles of excellence in college learning,
campuses as multicultural civic spaces, HI educational practices (HIPs)
 Principles: engage the questions, connect knowledge with choices and action,
foster civic intercultural and ethical learning
o HIPs
 Learning communities: learn about each other and each other’s different
backgrounds
 Diversity/global learning
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 SL, CBL/CBR
Deep learning
Two critical findings: power of the practice experience frequently; importance of
layering multiple practices frequently experienced
 Promising Practices for Personal and Social Responsibility
Within group comparisons by racial or ethnic category: Deep learning
 Bumped up Asian American significantly, but all also bumped up
Service-learning’s ground game
 Took fac out of their boundaries
 SEE SLIDES
Building Community Capacity: Framing Our Outcomes
 Bonner Transformation Goals
o Campus change:
 Individuals and places: Develop and engage students’ knowledge, skills,
values, and collective action
 Programs: Develop and integrate community engaged learning courses and
programs
 Organizations: Build campus center that leads effort to make place-based
community engagement
 Systems: Leverage Bonner network as a community of best practice resource
for higher ed locally and nationally
o Community change:
 Mobilize students, fac, staff, and community members
 Train and support leaders
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 Partner in capacity-building for collaboratives
 Focus on community outcomes and impact
 Cluster your community partners around a theme, common goal
 What is your organization’s mission? What kinds of impact do you want to make? How?
o Oberlin Project: Sustainability is the default setting for Oberlin, i.e., food will be local
and easy to access. Areas of work: energy (transportation, energy efficiency),
economic development, education, local foods, local land, replication, green arts
district (physical/visual representation of what we’re trying to build in the
community; same concepts used in building in community), community engagement
(part of each of the above commitments)
 Clinton and other organization are emphasizing community engagement
 Goal of reducing poverty level  people feel heard (esp. those underserved)
 How to help people wean off services such that they don’t need them?
o OECC: healthy growth and development of young children with diverse backgrounds
and experiences; high quality early care and education; make sure children are
healthy, safe, etc.
 Affordable with sliding fee scale; subsidize 45% of tuition costs through
grants, endowment funds, investments, fundraising efforts, campaigns (15
years of endowment, 10% of funding)
 Oberlin Kids Project: prepare children for kindergarten; prevent intervention
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How students can be involved: work-study students to do screenings, recruit
families (skills: interested in early childhood development, mental health,
family dynamics/issues, wants to understand systems and how to change
them, how families gain access to services, barriers families face, access
services, home visits, able to establish rapport); work with Travis to do
research
Capacity building activities
o Volunteer management
o Training and program dev
o Fundraising
o Communications
o Research: policy, evidence-based practices
Capacity building areas
o Efficiency/efficacy
o Scale/reach
o Leverage
Set up levels of collaboration
o Steering committee, backbone org
o Working groups, partners, community members
Capacity building outcomes important for Oberlin
o OP: Internal communications; improved systems for org efficiency/effectiveness,
scale/reach, and leverage
 Research and academic projects: community benefit agreements
o OECC: Set up expectations in community collective impact, volunteer
generation/management, improving tracking, research and academic projects
 Research and academic projects: establish relationships with more fac,
building systems via enviro (Rumi)
o Collaboration between different orgs in managing volunteers!
Role-based teams: Feedback
o Community partners
 Want to be co-educators
 Sustainable projects that go beyond the academic year
 Want professors involved so students are supported
 Feedback
 Are the vehicle and also the GPS into the community
o Faculty
 Bound by structural implements
 Different disciplines, different approaches/frameworks
 Clearly defined roles so they don’t let partners down; voice in designing the
work
 Are the agents of learning (engaged learning), provide the theory
 But so can community partners
 Stewards of the curriculum
o Center Directors
 Intermediary between different partners
 Worldview of collaboration rather than competition
 Face of the college in the community
o Staff
 Educators 24/7/365/4
o Academic Leaders
 Help with buy-in with faculty, incentives through, e.g., T&P
 Timing for initiatives
 Faculty acculturation
 Need data, stories, results presented in clear and timely fashion
 Need you to understand reality of resources
 Understand that change can be slow
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10
Contents
 Breakfast with John Saltmarsh, NERCHE
 Project Shop
o Self-Assessment of HIPs
o Notes to Focus Project
 Pumped for Policy
 The Civic-Minded Institution and the Civic-Minded Graduate
 A Collaborative Paradigm for Teaching and Learning: Implications for Students, Faculty,
and Community Partners
 Working Dinner Notes
Breakfast with John Saltmarsh, NERCHE
 From New England Resource Center for Higher Education at UMass Boston; previously
faculty at Northeastern and then worked for Campus Compact
 Allegheny faced challenges that they didn’t anticipate. Last year they were thinking about
structural changes, e.g., centers. At this point, structural changes are easy; cultural changes,
however, are difficult.
 We have a draft for a Civic Engagement concentration/certificate, but there is some pushback
from different parties.
 We have the least activity in civic engagement from the Conservatory and Natural
Sciences/Math.
 Faculty working with undergraduates to do research still is not rewarded.
o e.g., Travis: The work at OECC has to be in the scope of his track for tenure.
o It’s not in the reward structure for faculty to work with community partners.
 Community-based research: examples from Saltmarsh
o e.g., Bridgewater State in Massachusetts: Specifically targets underserved students.
o Describing community-based research to faculty: There is a distinction between
community-engaged research, in which the community/community partners needs are
satisfied as well as the faculty’s. But this will bring up questions about the quality of
the research product when there is shared authority. At the same time, the research
will have to be communicated accessibly to the community, e.g., in a community
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report rather than the publication. These are parallel tracks, but how can they be
closer together/intersected?
o How Oberlin Psychology defines “scholarly”: publish in the top two journals. There
are different standards in each department.
o This definition is limiting, and so researchers who want to do the research they want
to do (i.e., in communities) will go to the institutions that will help them. This may be
the case for underrepresented people, i.e., POCs, women, etc. Elite institutions who
catch on will take on those researchers and produce that “scholarly” work.
o See Syracuse promotion and tenure guidelines. “Honor traditions of scholarship in the
academy, but also recognize that knowledge is evolving.”
o At Tulane, public service is part of curricular requirements. However, this has not
gotten into the culture of the faculty. Tulane is not a teaching university.
o At Middlebury, complementary epistemology: creating new knowledge for the sake
of creating new knowledge--but the faculty didn’t care about pedagogy as much...?
However, this frame of generating knowledge produced and supported great servicelearning. This ties into reward structures focused on advancing knowledge. i.e., Focus
on epistemology vs. pedagogy.
At Oberlin, faculty governance is important, but trustees must be on board for there to be
significant change.
Project Shop
Self-Assessment of HIPs
 First-year experience
o Strengths: first-year seminar (FYS), residence halls, orientation, day of service.
o Opportunities: More civic engagement can be incorporated in FYS early and often
 Learning communities
o Strengths: commonly defined as curricular and co-curricular; program houses;
possible Bonner via Bonner Life 101
o Challenges: communities exist, but the connection to the academics are not strong;
faculty are not strongly tied to program houses
o Opportunities: Dascomb’s community service wing (first-year dorm); ExCos
 Core/common experiences
o There is no core at Oberlin, but there are curricular exploration requirements.
 Writing-intensive courses
o Strengths: first-year seminars incorporate writing-intensive guidelines; writing
requirements in the curriculum
o Challenges: no faculty development in training; no coordinated content--no
guidelines for what to teach
o Opportunities: guidelines can be shaped to serve students better
 Service-learning/community-based learning (CBL)
o Strengths: 25-30 CBL courses, 3-5 courses
o Challenges: varying quality of CBL courses; faculty involvement, promotion and
tenure guidelines; no code in PRESTO for CBL courses; free agents in the faculty
who go out on their own to do community-engaged learning; faculty do communitybased learning but don’t recognize that that work is community-based; ExCos do not
really welcome community members
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Opportunities: ExCos in which community members/partners have been/can be coeducators
Undergraduate research
o Strengths: OCRF, Mellon, and other students doing research; programs that cater to
underserved students
o Challenges: don’t know where level of faculty involvement is; undergraduate
research counts for “PIR,” i.e., for teaching; tenure and promotion guidelines;
coordinating between the different departments; showing how the departments that
what they already do are community-based; how to incentivize community-based
undergraduate research to students and faculty; how to integrate the research into the
community and, once implemented, how to lead to publication and create new
knowledge; IRB, consent forms can slow progress down
o Opportunities: tenure and promotion guidelines; Travis (Psychology) can serve as a
model for undergraduate research that is community-based--overarching goal is
systems and policy change; grant-writing to sustain research projects; research for
writing the grants themselves; summer fellows for community-engaged research with
faculty mentorship (faculty paid at least the $300 that Mellon/OCRF faculty mentors
are paid); Afia and Marcelo are new staff
Diversity/global learning
o Strengths: Shansi; MRC; events from February and March
o Challenges: global learning is lifted up just to US-based diversity; the language for
“global” learning does not accommodate “community” learning--understand the
community to understand the global scale; admitted underrepresented students lack
the support to be successful, i.e., recruitment and support/retention must be
emphasized together, especially for students who come from public, urban high
schools that aren’t well funded; MRC is poorly funded; MRC is expected to take
responsibility of certain tasks when instead everyone should take responsibility
o Opportunities: Full Participation model; ExCo course which is taught by community
and college--about ecosocial context; definition of why diversity is important in the
institution--tying excellence with diversity
Capstone
o Opportunities: Oberlin Kids Project, which has a formal memorandum to be a
collaborative project
Notes to Focus Projects
 Students could be involved in research, grant writing (sequenced course in which students do
research, followed by grant writing), internships, website development.
o This would help the program because students wouldn’t need to be paid to do their
work, i.e., their work is for academic credit.
 The research could involve assessment of the needs of the community partner
 The collaborative: United Way, Community Schools, Guidestone, Help Me Grow, OECC
 Somewhat related: In Sharon and Tania’s ExCo, students will learn about about place,
understand the community, understand how students relate to the community and its
members, learn about Lorain County, do readings, do reflections on the wiki (OPortfolio?).
 ExCo
o The program should be better publicized to the community.
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It is a student-run organization, but the students in place are not necessarily
Bring Jan Cooper to the conversation.
Three ideas
o Oberlin Kids Project
o Summer Community-Based/-Engaged Research Fellowship Program
 Structures could be implemented for students doing service in Oberlin in
general for the summer, e.g., trainings and other support for students’ service
work.
o Community Engagement ExCo
Another project could be about telling the story of HIPs and HICEPs to faculty, the
community, etc. We could let the faculty know that they are doing civic engagement work.
Pumped for Policy
 Public Policy: A Student’s Guide for What It Is, How It Works, and Who Can Use It
 Common myths
o Policy is the same as politics.
o Policy is all about research.
 Research helps, but policy first starts with the relationships you have with
community members to inform policy.
o Policy isn’t for undergrads.
 Undergrads can do some of the best groundwork to distill what exactly the
community needs → inform policy.
o Policy is boring.
 Policy helps with long-term systemic change.
 Different layers of policy
o People
o Policy Analysts: current state of community, which systems work best, stakeholders
o Government: make laws and legislative changes, ideally what’s best for the people
 Redefine public policy as... solutions proposed by policy analysts, enacted by the
government, and utilized by the people.
o Policy should start with the people, whose information is gathered by analysts. But
people are also involved in other parts of the process.
 What can you do?
o Help community partners develop their programs and structures.
o Make faculty connections on campus.
o Educate your peers.
 Example: Princeton Backpack Program
o Understanding the problem: People don’t understand that there are kids in public
schools who live in marginal conditions, e.g., don’t have access to healthy breakfast,
are in free/reduced lunch programs. For the weekends, backpacks are filled with food
for students. They are looking to expand this program into the summer during which
schools aren’t open but hunger persists. Breakfast/nutrition is tied to performance in
school.
o Gathering stakeholders: e.g., superintendents, teachers, food suppliers. Each backpack
is ~$4.80 → need $60,000 total.
o
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Discussing policy suggestions: i.e., regarding child hunger, nutrition, local food,
summer feeding program. Federal funding depends on what proportion of students
qualify for programs.
Implementing solutions: e.g., through benefits, fundraisers, raised $60,000 needed for
2 years within 2 months. In terms of public policy, this is a partnership between the
schools, the city, and other partners. Programmatic changes rather than policy
changes can also contribute, since programs can actually implement those policies.
The Civic-Minded Institution and the Civic-Minded Graduate
 This session pulls from literature such as Crucible Moment, Civic Engagement in Higher
Education, etc.
 Imagine a civic-minded graduate: What do they know? What do they value and believe?
What do they do?
 How do you make relevant civic responsibility in professions that are not traditionally under
the umbrella of civic-minded work? e.g., athletics, business, sciences, bankers--not in nonprofit, government, public realms.
 Identity has to do something with your ethic. What you do has something to do with your
identity which is shaped by your curricular/co-curricular experiences.
 Identity, educational learning experiences, and civic experiences--all under cultural and
social context--together are important in civic-minded graduates. (See IUPUI Civic-Minded
Graduate Model.)
o How do these different aspects intersect?
o What happens when students don’t intersect all three?
o Identity + educational learning experiences:
 When graduates identify with certain professions--“I am a teacher” or “I am a
social worker”--for the purposes of getting a job.
o Educational learning experiences + civic experiences:
 Someone who understands the problems of the world but doesn’t really see
themselves as agents of change.
 When students go abroad, they appreciate what they have back in the US but
don’t deeply analyze their privileges.
 Fulfill their civic engagement requirements just to graduate.
 Episodic short-term experiences like immersion programs need
structured/unstructured reflection to tie into identity.
o Identity + civic experiences:
 Students don’t attach what they do in their communities (when they identify
with those communities) with what they’re learning in the classroom.
 Students don’t understand the theories behind phenomena such as poverty,
homelessness, etc.
 Identities are wrapped up in their faith, and civic work is motivated by their
faith.
 Students who disengage from the politics of their service.
 See Crucible Moment (p. 15): What would a civic-minded campus look like? (Figure 4)
o Civic ethos: This can support identity formation in students. Culture of service has
helped to develop a civic ethos. In other schools, ethos has grown out of their
religious roots, engaging students who are looking to engage their faith. Institutions
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could invite students to decision-making meetings to empower them and let them
practice civic engagement on a micro scale, especially students who come from
communities/backgrounds that don’t often get a voice.
Civic literacy
Civic inquiry
Civic action
All four of these need to be priorities in institutions to produce civic-minded
institutions.
How has the institution integrated some of these? How can the institution be better in
these different areas?
A Collaborative Paradigm for Teaching and Learning: Implications for Students, Faculty, and
Community Partners
 How can we get deeper and deeper involvement with students?
 Learning paradigm: “purpose is not to transfer knowledge but to create environments and
experiences that bring students to discover and construct knowledge for themselves, to make
students members of communities of learners that make discoveries and solve problems.” -Barr and Tag, “From Teaching to Learning,” 1995
 Teaching-centered paradigm (pedagogy) vs. learning-centered paradigm (engagement)
o Instructional vs. learning paradigms
o Add collaborative paradigm (see below)
o Consider thinking of these as modalities instead
 From National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE): “Such experiences [service-learning]
make learning more meaningful, and ultimately more useful because what students know
becomes a part of who they are.”
 Why are HIPs effective? (also measured by NSSE)
o Time on task
o Substantive interaction w/ peers and fac
o Encounter diversity
o Get frequent feedback
o Require reflection and integration
o Real-world application
o ^ All of these happen in service-learning. But how/why? That’s not measured by the
NSSE.
 What is deep learning?
o Attend to underlying meaning as well as surface content.
o Integrate and synthesize different ideas.
o Discern patterns of evidence.
o etc.
 How to increase impact
o Collaborative knowledge generation
o Trans-disciplinarity: brings together knowledge from outside the academy with
knowledge inside the academy, recognizing that there is valid knowledge outside the
academy
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Asset-based education: i.e., vs. deficit-based approach in which students are
knowledge consumers (students falling asleep in the back of the room). In assetbased, students are knowledge producers.
 Implications for community partners: produce knowledge collaboratively, i.e.,
shared authority in all stages of the research process.
 Where will the research be published? Who is a peer in peer review?
Impact comes through bringing together knowledge from the academy with knowledge from
the community.
Broader impacts
o What skill sets and partnerships do scientists need to develop in order to optimize the
transformation of their science into actionable and useful knowledge?
Who are the agents of knowledge creation?
New production of knowledge (FIND CITE)
o Pure knowledge generation vs. ...
o Engaged knowledge generation:
 Problem-centered
 Heterogeneous
 Hybrid
 Demand-driven
 Entrepreneurial
 Network-embedded
 Trans-disciplinary
Collaborative paradigm: academy and community together teach students, co-producing
learning
e.g., College Unbound: Students start by going out into the community, work with a
community partner, and then choose what they want to learn.
Working Dinner Notes
 6 current ideas
o Oberlin Kids Project
o Best practices in CBL (similar to GSFS morning session)
o Summer community-engaged research
o Community Engagement ExCo (currently linked to BLP but can be expanded)
o Telling our story
 CP-CP mentoring
 Wiki-CP needs/fac interest
 Educating CPs, fac, community on BCSL opportunities on BCSL
opportunities, HIPs, and HICEPs
o Summer training/enrichment/reflection for students doing direct service
 Oberlin Kids Project
o HIPs involved: Service-Learning, Undergraduate Research, Collaborative
Assignments & Projects, Internships
o HICEPs involved: Place, Humility, Integration, Depth, Sequence (consider the 5 E’s
from Bonner), Learning, Capacity Building, Evidence, Impact
o Who is needed: Jan Cooper, Bonner Center, Travis Center, Afia Ofori-Mensa
 Best practices in CBL (a morning session for faculty)
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Community partners should co-facilitate this morning session.
The outcomes would be for faculty to have a better concept of how to create a
community-based course, how the Bonner Center can be a resource, how they can
work with community partners, what a sample syllabus would look like--support in
general.
 This could be developmental and ongoing over time as the number of CBL
courses increase.
 (1) This could be a half-day institute that (2) offers support financially and
logistically. We could also propose (3) a faculty fellows program with
stipends for experienced faculty who can mentor other faculty. End goal:
Increase CBL courses.
o Curriculum development grant exists. A faculty fellows program would allow faculty
to come together and learn the best practices. $500 during the year and then $1000 for
the summer could be incorporated during which those curricula could be developed.
o There are faculty who are already involved in CBL. Those faculty’s involvement
could be furthered with stipends as incentives, and a week-long seminar in which
faculty voluntarily attend.
 Who will really care if faculty have had a community-based learning
fellowship?
 Tenure and promotion/reward structures are beyond our powers.
o For interdisciplinary work, there do exist funds for faculty from different departments
to work together.
Community Engagement ExCo
o This can be a three-year project.
o Sharon and Tania are determining if it can be taken to the next level.
o As a practicum, the course could offer heavy readings, etc. This level will take place
this coming year (Fall 2013).
 Another level has more structure.
 A third level...?
o The first week introduces students to the wiki/OPortfolio, BCSL, Oberlin Project.
 Next... history of the community and college
 Oppression, power, and privilege
 Asset mapping
 Social media
 Community-based research
 Poverty
 Community learning agreements
 etc.
o Sharon sees it as development over the next few years.
o This ExCo builds/trains skills for social change--how to organize and respond to
something like the events that happened in early spring.
Summer community-engaged research fellows
o Meredith Raimondo’s idea: Students would have research projects with community
partners. During the week they would get touch points to check up on progress of
their research and receive trainings.
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AmeriCorps grant for BLP (Bonner Leader Program) will be focused on capacitybuilding. A 300-hour term could be dedicated to this.
Oberlin College Research Institute (OCRI) brings all researchers for the summer
together and make a community. There are IRB/research ethics training; faculty talk
about their career trajectories; alumni talk about their graduate school experiences;
etc.
Orientations/meet-and-greet where representatives from the community partners can
communicate their needs for the summer and potential fellows can determine if they
have a match.
There could be a website instead where community partners put into a database what
their needs are and how research can be incorporated into their needs.
This could be integrated to ObieOpps, which is run through Career Services.
Alternatively, OberlinServes--the wiki--is another option as a searchable database.
These systems can bring together community partners, faculty, and students.
Can place-based social activities be put in place for Mellon/OCRF/OCRI, i.e., the
existing summer programs?
 In LEADS (Leadership for Engagement in Activism and Direct Service), e.g.,
eco-social context/location trainings are incorporated. Beth has an exercise for
this.