Date and Time: Tuesday, August 18, 2026, 2-3:30pm (CT)

Registration closes Friday, August 14, 3:00pm (CT)

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Presenter: Dr. Laura Wilmarth Tyna, Director of Community Engagement and Experiential Learning and the Lewis University Community Schools Consortium (LUCSC) at Lewis University

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Dr. Ferrarini’s multi-institutional study examines the potential of fully online community-based learning to foster global citizenship in college students. A mixed-methods analysis of pre/post surveys (n = 187) and alumni interviews (n = 23) found that first-generation students participating in an online community-based learning program during the COVID-19 pandemic reported greater learning gains than their non-first-generation peers. The most influential program factor in shaping student learning and future actions was the development of trusting relationships with partner community members (i.e. mentors, peers, or community members). Recommendations include practical resources that global and civic educators can utilize in their own classrooms.

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 7, 2025, 2:00-3:30 PM

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Moderator: Diane Doberneck, Ph.D., Director for Faculty and Professional Development, Office for Public Engagement and Scholarship; Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University

About our Next Speaker: 

Dr. Stephanie Brewer is the Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning with the Center for Community Engaged Learning, as well as the Program Director for the Community Engagement Scholars. She works with a team responsible for developing, supporting, and advancing academic community-engaged learning at MSU. She supports faculty, students, and community partners in the creation and facilitation of these opportunities. Stephanie worked for many years as a mental health professional before making her way to the field of higher education. Stephanie holds a BS in Psychology from Central Michigan University, a MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from Purdue University, and a PhD in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education from Michigan State University.

Date and Time: Monday, April 14, 2025, 2:30-4:00 PM

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Dr. Rachel Brand teaches in the Child Studies department at Santa Clara University. Rachel has over a decade of experience teaching community-engaged learning, critical food systems education, and environmental studies. Her scholarship focuses on participatory action research in higher education, student agency and collective action, humanizing education, and food and environmental justice. Rachel holds an MA in Sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz, and an EdD in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco.

Title: Students as Co-researchers: Using Participatory Action Research to Address College Food Insecurity. 

Abstract: Studies indicate that college students experience high rates of food insecurity. Growing awareness of food insecurity on college campuses has resulted in efforts by many institutions to address the problem through innovative programs such as food pantries, campus gardens, and educational workshops. While these initiatives play an important role in facilitating food access, they fall short of meeting students’ needs. There is little research on how students’ experiences or knowledge can inform strategies to address food insecurity, nor is there extensive research on how students view this issue for themselves and their peers. This study looks at the benefits of engaging students in participatory action research (PAR) to address college food insecurity. PAR is particularly well suited to address campus food insecurity given its tenets of research, reflection, and action. This paper examines how a PAR project, conducted throughout a semester-long community-engaged learning course at the University of San Francisco (USF), resulted in innovative strategies to address college food insecurity. This justice-based research approach deepened students’ understanding of the issue and inspired them to want to change their campus food systems. Students worked to shift the narrative of food insecurity on campus away from an individual experience that carries stigma toward one of community, relationships, and collective action. This study shows the opportunities to address food insecurity not only through immediate needs-based solutions but also through a justice-based research methodology that centers student experiences and knowledge.

Date and Time: Tuesday, January 14, 2025, 2:30-4:00 PM

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Abstract: The aim of this research study is to provide a macro picture of Black student’s experiences in service-learning through reflective semi-structured interviews (Creswell, 2015; Shah, 2020). To better understand the experiences of Black students’ service-learning experiences, a grounded research study was used to highlight themes that emerged from the data collected by participants (Charmaz, 2017; Kimball et al., 2016; Mertler, 2019). Together the conceptual frameworks of transformative learning theory and student voice theory provided a lens into how students make meaning of their service-learning experiences. By sharing their own narrative stories about what they learned (transformative learning theory) and how they learned through their service-learning experiences (student voice theory) (Cook Sather, 2002; Cook- Sather, 2006; Kiely, 2005; Matthews & Dollinger, 2022; Mezirow, 1997; Welch & Plaxton- Moore, 2019).

Date and Time: Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 1:00–2:30 PM

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Promoting academic development and life skills through the high-impact practice of service-learning, the book explores a new ecological framework for reflecting on and improving practice. This book describes new models, offers advice on coalition building, and presents the narratives of community-engaged professionals and faculty, offering a sense both of tensions inherent in this work and examples of initiatives in local contexts. Chapters primarily reflect on what action is required for fulfilling our public purpose and what’s holding us back.

This book provides guidance, examples, and benchmarks for best practices in community engagement that are particularly relevant to this time of crises and unrest and will be relevant to community-engaged professionals, higher education faculty, and college administrators.

Please join us for a conversation with the book editors and authors on Thursday, February 29, 2024, 12:00-1:30 PM.

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All registrants will receive a 20% discount on the purchase of the book at the webinar!

In this session, co-authors Emily Ozer, Jennifer Renick, Bruce Jentleson, and Bemmy Maharramli will share findings from the project, including recommendations for funders, who are increasingly pursuing investments in the structures, cultures, and conditions that enable more societally-impactful research. Benjamin Olneck-Brown will discuss TEFN’s interest in supporting coordination among funders, university leaders, and other partners to build on the substantial momentum outlined in the white paper and catalyze innovations that lead to more dynamic, equitable, and impactful research systems.

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This webinar is a collaboration between LEAD California and Collaboratory and North Carolina Campus Engagement.

Abstract: Community engaged scholarship has gained attention as public universities begin to answer calls to return to their roots of serving the public good. The scholars at the heart of community engagement play an important role in this mission, but their experiences in the academy are not well understood. As institutional leaders endeavor to support this important work, they need more information about the ways institutional support is experienced by the faculty. Research largely advocates for institutionalization efforts and more responsive promotion and tenure systems. However, the literature has yet to investigate how these strategies for support are felt among the faculty involved, or whether other forms of support are being overlooked. A deeper understanding of the nuanced lived experiences of community engaged scholars could improve their ability to attend to the public purpose of the institution.

Speaker: Dr. Emily Phaup, Professional Development Manager, Campus Compact

Date and Time: Monday, February 1, 2024, 3:30–5:00 PM

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REGISTER HERE. 

Abstract: Community engagement has become an important part of the higher education landscape and, as a result, developing mutually-beneficial community-university partnerships has become a common interest for practitioners and researchers. However, building these partnerships, often distinguished by reciprocity, shared goals, and effective communication is a complex endeavor. The partnerships between communities and universities often involve challenges such as paternalism, unequal power, clashes in values, and often-wrought histories. As a way to support building partnerships based on mutuality, and to address some of the challenges present in the complexity of community-university partnerships, community engagement centers on college campuses have created Community Advisory Councils (CACs). While CACs have recently become a structure within the practitioner-realm of the community engagement field, the higher education research that investigates CACs is still in its infancy. Thus, through a multi-site qualitative case-study, I aim to fill the gap by comparing, contrasting, and analyzing themes about the formation, role, and responsibilities of two Community Advisory Councils housed within community engagement centers at two different institutions.

Date and Time: October 23, 2023, 3:00-4:30 PM

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Registration is now open for the next Dissertation Dish webinar on August 30, 2023 at 12:00 PM, which will feature Dr. Mayada Kanj, Lecturer of Health Promotion and Community Health at the American University of Beirut, and her dissertation entitled “Partnership Experience in Service Learning Between a Private University and Community Organizations in Lebanon.”  We are thrilled to present our first international Dissertation Dish research!

Our next Dissertation Dish will be presented by Dr. Trina L. Van Schyndel, Membership Director for Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA).

Abstract: When rhetoric does not match reality for higher education institutions’ commitment to community engagement, graduate students may find counterspaces to the academy are necessary and allow them to reset and reframe, collectively organize, and push back against normative socialization processes of the academy that do not serve their needs as emerging community-engaged practitioner-scholars. This basic, exploratory qualitative study examined professional identity development of community-engaged practitioner-scholars through participation in a community engagement professional associations’ graduate student fellowship – the Imagining America (IA) Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) Fellows program.

Date and Time: June 8, 2023, 1:00 PM

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Watch here.

Date and Time: Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 12 noon to 1:30 pm (Pacific Time)

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Webinar: Re-Envisioning Publicly Engaged Scholarship in Promotion and Tenure – February 13, 2023 

Panelists included:

• Dr. Timothy Eatman, Dean of the Honors Living-Learning Community, Rutgers University
• Dr. Emily Janke, Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, and Director of the Institute for Community and Economic Engagement, UNC Greensboro
• Dr. David Donahue, Professor of Education, University of San Francisco

Dissertation Dish – February 2, 2023

Organization Development for an Engaged Campus: Assessing Narratives and Architecture to Direct Future Change

Dr. Jamilah Ducar, Executive Director of the Engaged Campus, University of Pittsburgh