A Brief History of Civic Engagement at Lewis & Clark College

The genesis of formal civic engagement at Lewis & Clark College began in fall 2003, when Kelly Hoover of the Office of Student Leadership and Service (then with the Center for Service and Work) initiated a grant proposal to Campus Compact, in pursuit of the Civic Solutions grant. Prior to and during this time, many faculty members had been interested and active with civic engagement and service learning on an individual level. Among these engaged faculty members were Janet Davidson (Psychology), Brynna Hurwitz (Education), Tom Schoeneman (Psychology), Helena Legaz Torregrosa (Spanish), Bruce Podobnik (Sociology/Anthropology) and Joanne Mulcahy (Northwest Writing Institute). Please see the Civic Solutions grant proposal for a full description of their courses. In spring of 2004, Lewis & Clark College received the grant and it fell to Kelly Hoover to distribute the funds. Spring semester of 2004 Brynna Hurwitz received a mini-grant to develop the practicum component of her course “Education and Modern Society.” Also during this time Bruce Podobnik was working on incorporating community engagement into the curriculum for his “Quantitative Research Methods” course for fall semester of 2004.

The program remained modest in size until Mei-Yen Hui joined the college as the first Civic Engagement Coordinator. Her position was funded by the budget of the Office of Student Leadership and Service, and was an AmeriCorps position through the Northwest Service Academy. Mei-Yen was instrumental in initiating the faculty forums, establishing the mini-grant program (wherein faculty could apply to receive a sum of $1,000 to fund the development of civic engagement in their courses), and facilitating lasting partnerships with various community organizations. Mei-Yen spent a considerable amount of time developing relationships with faculty members, supporting their community projects and working with faculty to create a unified definition of civic engagement for Lewis & Clark College. Mei-Yen stayed with the position for two AmeriCorps terms: from January 2005 to December 2006.

In the fall of 2006, after two and a half years, the Civic Solutions grant ended. To analyze the effectiveness of this grant, the college hosted Dr. Robert Franco from the Campus Compact Consulting Corps. During his time on campus Dr. Franco met with faculty, administrators, Student Leadership and Service staff and students. From the college perspective, the grant was essential in its role of initiating energy around civic engagement in the curriculum. The funds made it feasible for faculty to include civic engagement projects in their courses; it necessitated the Civic Engagement coordinator position and assisted in unifying faculty in their involvement in the community. In other ways, however, the grant was very limiting, because the funds could only be used for projects in three interest areas: K-12 education, the urban/rural divide and hunger. These restrictions severely limited the faculty members who Mei-Yen could easily approach, and necessitated her to think of creative ways diverse courses could involve themselves in these three interest areas. It is also noteworthy that during this time the college itself was in a period of transitional leadership and undergoing an extensive period of strategic planning. Ultimately, the Planning Task Force identified community and global engagement as two of the five core values of the college.

As the grant was ending, Laurel Nakanishi replaced Mei-Yen as the college’s second Civic Engagement Coordinator. During her year in the position, Laurel continued to work towards fostering a critical mass of faculty to engage with the community. Laurel’s year of Americorps service ended in September of '07, when Jacob Cohen came on as the third Civic Engagement Coordinator and Americorps volunteer at Lewis & Clark College. Jacob continued building the momentum of the program, successfully bringing the math department into the civic engagement initiative through a partnership between Naiomi Cameron’s Calculus one and two classes and Self Enhancement Inc. alternative charter school in North Portland. Jacob’s tenure also saw the implementation of Lewis & Clark’s first curricular “alternative spring break” trip with Eliot Young’s “History of the US- Mexico Borderlands” course. Students enrolled in the course worked with local immigrant’s rights organizations, traveled to Oaxaca, and Juarez Mexico, and presented on their work and experience before the larger Lewis & Clark Community.

(See: Oregon-Oaxaca Routes of Migration Project/ Spring Borderlands Alternative Spring Break Trip: Coordination, Travel, Reflection, and Reporting; an analysis., Cohen, May 2007.)

The Civic Engagement Coordinator position currently entails faculty outreach, individual faculty consultation, research of community organizations, liaison work with community partners, faculty logistical support and long-term sustainability support. A portion of time is spent searching for further funding sources and working with administrators on the big picture of civic engagement at Lewis & Clark.

Currently, we have an enthusiastic basis of committed faculty who have and are including civic engagement into their courses (See Civic Engagement in the Academic Curricula). The college is also embarking on a new public image campaign that emphasizes Lewis & Clark’s involvement in the community. The ideas of civic and community engagement are supported by President Hochstettler and other college leaders. The next step is to include more active leadership from higher-level administration. It would be helpful to convene a faculty advisory committee sponsored in part by the office of the Dean of the College. This initiative has the unique ability to unite the efforts of student life and academics at Lewis & Clark, and for this reason it would be helpful to include key voices from student life in the planning and steering process of this endeavor. Also, in order to step forward with confidence into this new project, we must be completely knowledgeable in the area of civic engagement. For this reason, an essential step is offering faculty development opportunities with experts in the field. And finally, civic engagement at Lewis & Clark will not be sustainable until the position of Civic Engagement Coordinator is full-time and sponsored, at least partially, by the office of the Dean of the College. This effort would include finding long-term funding for the Civic Engagement Coordinator and the programs for which he/she is responsible.