Guidelines

Overview of the CIVCOM Minor

Administered through the Laboratory of Public Scholarship and Democracy by a program faculty drawn from across the university, the Intercollege Minor in Civic and Community Engagement is appropriate to undergraduate students seeking to apply areas of knowledge from their majors or General Education programs to issues of consequence beyond the classroom. Through courses, labs, studios, community fieldwork, and a capstone project, students integrate academic and creative discovery with democratic principles of contribution to others. In particular, the minor serves to encourage, recognize, and systematize student participation in public service or problem-based fieldwork and research that:

is substantial, sustained, and includes structured opportunities for student reflection and deliberative assessment; and
is integrated with and supported by traditional, classroom-based coursework.

Specifically, the minor consists of a balanced program of fieldwork experience and supporting coursework that is selected with the advice and consent of a minor advisor and approved on behalf of the minor by a program faculty. Fieldwork experiences are selected from a list of eligible courses (or approved comparable alternatives) and supporting coursework includes a conceptual foundations course that provides students with a critical orientation to contemporary issues and themes in public scholarship. The minor culminates with an approved capstone project, which may be a significant paper, or annotated portfolio, or other demonstration of substantial assessment and integration of the minor experience and the broader issue of application of academic theory and practice in the civic community.

The Civic and Community Engagement Minor Committee is authorized to award a minor certificate to any undergraduate who, in addition to satisfying the degree requirements of his or her baccalaureate major, satisfies the requirements for the Civic and Community Engagement Minor. The completion of the minor is reflected by a formal notation of the student’s official record at the time of graduation. To enter the program, a student must submit an application to the committee. Applicants to the minor in Civic and Community Engagement:

Must have a minimum overall GPA of 2.0.
Must present a proposed plan of study in the application process. The plan of study should include student’s contact information and GPA, a brief statement of student’s learning objectives in connection with the major, proposed supporting courses (include description of courses and syllabi if available), proposed fieldwork courses (include information about fieldwork, supervision, and reflection), and faculty advisor endorsement of the plan. Minor proposals must be approved by the student’s major faculty advisor and the committee.
May apply no more than 9 credits toward the minor that also count toward the major. Students with multiple majors may have some additional flexibility. Past fieldwork experiences and completed courses may be retroactively included in the plan of study, but must be approved by the minor advisor and the committee.

A grade of C or better is required for all courses in the minor.

Why a minor in Civic and Community Engagement?

Undergraduate education is strengthened when students have opportunities to apply, test, analyze and re-formulate academic material in faculty-directed experiential settings, such as those available through the Minor. A rigorous body of research now suggests that scholarship-based public service deepens disciplinary learning while providing opportunities for civic engagement and growth in other areas, including issues of multicultural responsibility and understanding. The Minor addresses student and faculty desires to make explicit the value of the curriculum in environments beyond the classroom and the place of undergraduate education in a student's civic engagement practices. It also directs students seeking public scholarship opportunities toward courses that are committed to a common standard of quality.

Student interest in extending their education beyond the classroom has surged recently, at the very time when universities and other intuitions of higher learning are being pressed to defend their relevance to problems of community, regional, national, or global significance. Students are seeking opportunities to extend their educational and social development through engagement in socially meaningful public service at the community or other levels.

Community-based learning and scholarship has many potential laudable personal outcomes for students (e.g., fulfilling civic responsibilities to one’s communities, gaining insight into one’s values and prejudices, developing career interests). More importantly, community-based public service is of potentially great academic as well as personal value to students. In traditional, classroom-based learning environments, facts and principles are acquired symbolically (e.g., through lectures, readings, discussion, multimedia presentations) and emphasis is placed on the logical, coherent presentation of information. Specific application of principles are learned primarily through deductive reasoning or “thought experiments.” In contrast, when done well, experiential-based learning can serve as a counterweight to the abstractness of much classroom learning by providing concrete examples of facts and theories. General principles are drawn inductively from direct personal experience and observation. In addition, even in courses somewhat removed in content, community service can enhance didactic classroom instruction as students raise and discuss the conclusions they reach inductively from personal experience.

To be of academic as well as personal benefit, however, it is necessary that students’ community-based public service experiences have coherent structure, be meaningful, be supervised and guided, and be integrated with classroom-based coursework. Service opportunities must be directed at issues of social relevance and possess high potential for students to have new experiences that challenge their prior understandings. They must also include a serious process of guided intellectual reflection and analyses that integrates the field experience with academic content. At present, few formal frameworks exist to guide or enhance the experiences of undergraduate students who wish to augment the processes of discovery and research within their major with substantial (versus ancillary) experience in civic engagement beneficial to the student and the community. As a result, many students gain these experiences in haphazard ways. This is especially true of undergraduate students whose areas of major or minor interest bridge college or disciplinary boundaries.

The Civic and Community Engagement Minor is designed to remedy this gap. Among other things, it: (a) provides a framework to ensure that student fieldwork experiences extend and integrate traditional classroom-based learning, (b) provides faculty with a program faculty peer group in which appropriate scholarship and pedagogical practices may be shared and critiqued; (c) provides guidelines and expectations for advising students with these interests, (d) sets forth minimum standards for field and supporting coursework for students who elect this direction (with the added expectation of exerting downward pressure on the individuals and institutions that offer community-service experiences to ensure that the field experience operates as a serious educational enterprise in which theoretical concepts and research findings are fully integrated), (e) provides students with information on the conceptual foundations of public scholarship though a required orientation course, and (f) mandates a capstone project which requires students to examine the integration and application of academic theory and practice in the civic community that maximizes the learning that takes place in both the field and the supporting coursework

Requirements for the Minor

18 credits

PRESCRIBED COURSES (3 credits)

The Foundations of Civic and Community Engagement (3): Offered as CAS 297 (SP 08, SP 07); YFE 211 (SP 05 & 06)

SUPPORTING COURSES AND RELATED AREAS (15 credits)

Supervised Field Experience (SFE) (Semester 5-8; minimum 3 credits)

The SFE may be selected from the Program List of public scholarship courses, an equivalent course chosen in consultation with your Minor advisor, or an approved and supervised independent study.

Public Issues and Democracy (PI&D) Courses (3-6 credits)

These credits may be selected from the Program List of public scholarship courses or may be equivalents selected in consultation with your Minor advisor.

Related Areas (3-6 credits)

These credits are to be selected in consultation with your Minor advisor.

Public Scholarship Capstone (PSC) (Semester 7-8; 3 400-level credits)

The PSC may be fulfilled through a 400-level course or a supervised independent study.

A Supervised Field Experience may be credited through a course or independent study providing a) substantial and preferably sustained direct involvement in teaching and research related to issues of consequence in the lives of people both within the campus environment and beyond, b) structured opportunities for student reflection and deliberative assessment, c) regular contact with a faculty member to facilitate the integration of academic content with the fieldwork experience, and d) the core pedagogical approach is the acquisition of principles and facts inductively through guided direct personal experience and observations.

Public Issues and Democracy Courses investigate the roles academic disciplines play in their contribution to public debate and participation in civic issues and community problem solving. Through the lens of specific academic disciplines and the examination of their civic meaning and public purpose, these courses contribute to student understanding of the democratic process and the reciprocal relationship between academic and democratic practices. These courses may also promote civic and leadership skills through class deliberation and debate, as well as other classroom activities and assignments.

A Public Scholarship Capstone requires students to integrate the coursework, fieldwork, and research they have completed as undergraduates. Students are asked to demonstrate reflective analysis and substantial synthesis of their academic and field experiences in the Civic and Community Engagement Minor and to relate their work to the broader context of public scholarship and relevant societal issues. These goals are achieved through further consideration of the principles provided by the CIVCOM foundations course and deliberation concerning the role of the student’s discipline in society. The required capstone project may be a thesis, annotated portfolio, or other original scholarly or creative work, which includes reflective thinking from a substantial out-of-the-classroom-walls learning experience. Public presentation of the capstone project is also required; this requirement might be fulfilled by a poster at the Undergraduate Exhibition, an online portfolio, a class presentation, or some other presentation suitable to a student’s field of study.

Capstone projects must be approved by and completed under the supervision of a faculty advisor, who must be a full-time, tenure-line academic faculty member. Written notification of the selection of a capstone advisor and a brief description of the proposed project must be submitted in advance of the project and approved by the Minor advisor (if different). A completed capstone project requires the approval and signature of the capstone advisor.

Program Faculty Committee

The minor is administered through the Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy by a co-chaired committee with a membership of faculty drawn from across the university. The program faculty committee meets as appropriate to review policies, student issues and outcomes, and program goals.

Co-chairs

Constance A. Flanagan, Professor, Agricultural and Extension Education/ Youth and Family Education
Laura Guertin, Associate Professor, Earth Sciences, Penn State Delaware County

Committee Members

Assistant Pete Aeschbacher, College of Arts and Architecture
Associate Professor Ian Baptiste, College of Education
Assistant Professor Chris Benner, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
Associate Professor Dawn Blasko, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Penn State Erie
Assistant Professor Kathleen Brown, Communications, Penn State Greater Allegheny
Professor Jeremy Cohen, College of Communications
Associate Professor Rosa Eberly, College of Liberal Arts
Professor Yvonne Gaudelius, College of Arts and Architecture
Associate Professor Laurie Grobman, Humanities, Arts, & Sciences, Penn State Berks
Associate Professor Terry Hartman, College of Health and Human Development
Professor W. Kenneth Jenkins, College of Engineering
Assistant Professor Elinor Madigan, Information, Sciences, and Technology, Penn State Schuylkill
Professor Patti Mills, Academic Affairs, Penn State Altoona
Dr. Mary Lou Zimmerman Munn, Laboratory for Public Scholarship & Democracy
Professor Elias Mpofu, College of Education
Associate Professor Judy Ozment, Schreyer Honors College
Professor Ken Tamminga, College of Arts and Architecture
Assistant Professor Nicole Webster, Agricultural and Extension Education
Professor Lakshman Yapa, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences