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           Bobbi Gentry, City University of New York, Graduate Center and
           Queens College
           Kelli Moore, James Madison University
           Thomas C. Ellington, Wesleyan College

This civic-engagement track focused on the intersection of civic engagement, political engagement, and service learning in an attempt to find common ground in theories and practices, explore contested areas, and contribute to the development of all types of engagement in university, civic, and political communities. In our discussions, the major issues that emerged were sustaining engagement, definitions of key terms, and implementation of engagement in many different contexts. In the end, we focused on three areas in which our discussions could contribute to the field at large: contested areas, developmental issues, and creation of a handbook.

Contested Concepts
Track participants recognized a number of areas of contention, starting with the vocabulary of civic engagement. Participants grappled with the meaning of terms such as service learning, civic engagement, and political engagement.While an extended debate over semantics for its own sake would not be productive, participants agreed that some distinctions are important. For instance, the categories of civic and political engagement, while perhaps overlapping, seem to encompass different realms of activity. Drawing a clear (if contestable) distinction between political engagement and other forms of civic engagement has a real value for such substantive concerns as understanding which types of activities are most effective in stimulating greater political participation among young people.

Participants also noted several challenges in institutionalizing civic-engagement programs. Some institutions, especially liberal arts and religious institutions, explicitly name the education of engaged citizens as a part of their mission, but at others administrators may be reluctant to embrace civic-engagement programs. This reluctance may stem from doubts about the academic rigor of such programs or concerns about politicization of the classroom or  indoctrination of students. It is thus the task of advocates of civic-engagement programs to design them with academic rigor and clear connections to learning outcomes in mind.

The question of politicization is somewhat more complex. The literature indicates that classroom experiences do not easily alter students’ ideological orientation, a finding that could be publicized more effectively. However, there are legitimate concerns that carelessly designed projects may alienate some students, leading them to silence themselves or doubt the credibility of information conveyed in the classroom. This is an issue in a larger debate over whether it is better for an instructor to maintain a stance of strict neutrality to avoid undue influence on students or whether it is better share a particular viewpoint as a way of modeling active citizenship.

Participants agreed that well-designed civic-engagement programs can provide students of any political orientation with the tools and knowledge to participate more effectively as citizens. This is not to say, however, that advocacy for civic engagement is a value-free endeavor. It is not. The inclusion of civic-engagement programs in the political science curriculum is predicated on the belief that it is better for citizens to participate than not and that it is a legitimate goal of the profession to prepare students to engage the political system more effectively.

Developmental Issues
In our discussions of different aspects of participatory behaviors, we found there to be a disconnection between the work of civic engagement to political engagement. The larger literature on participation finds that young people are more likely to participate in civic activities than their older counterparts, but are less likely to participate in politics.Our students find a distinction between civic
and political engagement and at times want more of a connection between civic participation and the political structures in an attempt to create more sustainable change. In our observations, our  students tend to think of politics too narrowly and miss occasions when they are already participating in civic activities or events as political actors. Students are asking formore than just volunteerism, but they do not always know how to connect their civic activities to political
action. We found this opportunity to connect civic engagement and political engagement by including political concepts with practices in service-learning and civic-engagement environments.

Bridging this gap with our students is a key component to encouraging sustained involvement in the causes for which our students work and in general in the political system. Connecting civic engagement with political action allows for additional teaching opportunities that explore how to make changes to public policy, political structures, and politics.

As teachers in political science we have the opportunity to help our students perceive a world that is larger than the single organization or civic-learning opportunity and to connect these moments to sustained engagement to create civic and political change. It is also a learning opportunity for academics to assess the goals of civic engagement. How can we include different types
of information into our curriculum that not only focus on civic and service learning but also include connections to structures, policies, and politics? Should we be concerned about continuing participation in civic and political life after college? What skills can our students take from these learning moments for future participation? How can we encourage lifelong learning, interest, and participation in both civic and political life? While in the academic environment we hope thatwe are teaching our students how to think critically about their world and their place in it.We need to help our students to connect scholarship with service and understand how the theories relate to reality. Opportunities abound for the university to encourage civic and political participation through modeling participatory behaviors and adhering to college mission statements that discuss service as a component of college education.We need to think about alternative ways to inform our students about the civic and political connections, whether it is bringing more structural and policy literature into the classroom, creating a documentary about local politics, sharing our experiences as political and civic actors, or offering international opportunities for comparative structure and policy analysis. In the end,we need to know that our students can learn about civic and political engagement in a variety of ways and that successful learning can come from circumstances where everything did not work out perfectly. The power of civic engagement is that our students learn not just through lectures, textbooks, or class discussions, but through engaging in the civic and political system around them.

The Handbook
The Civic Engagement Track II group explored the broad need to catalog the civic-engagement vocabulary and the learning outcomes from courses and programs aimed at encouraging civic engagement. This track recognized the broad applicability of civic/political engagement in the discipline in the different subfields due to our own differences as academics from across political science. Participants proposed that a handbook could serve as a reference in the discipline for course structure, as a glossary of terms related to civic engagement, and as a resource for effective assessment practices in non-traditional pedagogies. This handbook could evaluate and catalog best practices in service learning and study abroad programs with a civic and/or political engagement learning outcome.

There was considerable agreement around the need to define, distinguish, and specify the language used with civic engagement, political engagement, and service learning. A glossary of terms would clarify how political science as a discipline operationalizes civic engagement as a learning outcome, recognizing just how diffuse the term has become across colleges and universities and across different disciplines. This glossary could also deepen and sharpen existing knowledge and better serve faculty and administrators in creating, implementing, and assessing engagement opportunities for students. Several papers presented refined definitions, and participants agreed that well-placed terms such as informed advocacy and political efficacy better informed the outcomes of student learning (Lorenzini 2009).

Participants discussed many methodologically and programmatically rich ideas about how students can best learn to be engaged through service learning and study abroad. Faculty realized that students often want to learn more and desire deeper engagement. This goal might be best achieved by requiring students to enroll in a series of classes or indeed by the professor modeling engagement in the classroom. A handbook would highlight courses and pedagogical styles that vary in structure, length, and activity that best demonstrate and teach engagement. The effective use of group activities or the requirement of a research methods course are examples of prerequisites that may heighten
learning during a service-learning or abroad experience. Finally, a handbook would allow space to enumerate best practices and discuss how to take advantage of less predictable teachable moments that occur when learning civic or political engagement outside of a traditional classroom setting. In sum, a resource or reference consolidating core ideas and theories, providing examples from all subfields, and explaining effective assessment techniques in these non-traditional courses would be valuable to professors who seek to and already include civic-engagement components in their classrooms, and would also contribute to the discipline’s understanding of our role in fostering civic and political engagement.

References
Lorenzini, Michelle. 2009. “Beyond Civic Engagement to Informed Student Advocacy and Awareness.” Presented at the Teaching and Learning Conference of the American Political Science Association, Baltimore.