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 Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement

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 Campus Compact is a national coalition of colleges and
universities committed to the public purposes of higher
­
­education. Campus Compact publications focus on practical
strategies for campuses to put civic education and community
engagement into action. Please visit http://compact.org for
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 Assessing Service-Learning
and Civic Engagement
Principles and Techniques

Second Edition

SHERRIL B. GELMON, BARBARA A. HOLLAND,

AND AMY SPRING
WITH SEANNA M. KERRIGAN AND AMY DRISCOLL

B O S T O N , M A S S AC H U SE T T S
Distributed by Stylus Publishing, LLC.

ASCV.indb 3 27-08-2018 15:59:48

 COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY CAMPUS COMPACT

Published by Campus Compact

45 Temple Place
Boston, MA 02111

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, and information
storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gelmon, Sherril B., 1955- editor.
Title: Assessing service-learning and civic engagement : principles and
techniques / Sherril B. Gelmon, Barbara A. Holland, and Amy Spring, with
Seanna Kerrigan and Amy Driscoll.
Description: Second Edition. |
Boston, Massachusettts : Campus Compact, [2018] |
“Distributed by Stylus Publishing.” |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017050429 (print) |
LCCN 2018000183 (ebook) |
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Subjects: LCSH: Service learning--United States. |
Community and college--United States. |
Political participation--United States.
Classification: LCC LC220.5 (ebook) |
LCC LC220.5 .A85 2018 (print) |
DDC 361.3/70973--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050429

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-945459-09-2 (cloth)

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-945459-10-8 (paperback)
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that meets the American National Standards Institute
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Bulk Purchases

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First Edition, 2018

ASCV.indb 4 27-08-2018 15:59:48

 CONTENTS

PREFACE vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

1 REFLECTIONS ON THE PROGRESS OF MEASUREMENT OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, 2001–2018 1

2 ASSESSMENT PRINCIPLES AND STRATEGIES: AN OVERVIEW31

3 STUDENT IMPACT 45

4 FACULTY IMPACT 65

5 COMMUNITY IMPACT95

6 INSTITUTIONAL IMPACT 113

7 METHODS AND ANALYSIS 129

REFERENCES 137

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 145

INDEX 147

ASCV.indb 5 27-08-2018 15:59:48

ASCV.indb 6 27-08-2018 15:59:48

Service-learning is an educational methodology
that combines community-based experiences with
explicit academic learning objectives and deliberate
reflection. These learning experiences require a part-
nership between the community (nonprofit, schools,
government, business, human services organiza-
tions, or other entities) and the institution or aca-
demic unit/program and are characterized by a focus
on mutual benefit. Improvement and sustainability
of the experiences and the partnerships are enhanced
through formal assessment activities that involve
community, faculty, student, and institutional voices
and perspectives. This handbook presents a set of
well-tested strategies and techniques for gathering
data about the impact of service-learning and similar
programs.
The Evolution of This Monograph
This handbook was first published by Campus
Compact in 2001 and remains one of Campus
Compact’s best-sellers. The third reprint of the
original book was published in 2009 and has long
been sold out. The ongoing demand for copies of
this handbook signals that the core material of the
original publication is still relevant. Now, 17 years
after it first appeared, and on the occasion of the
30th anniversary of Campus Compact, the original
author team has developed an updated chapter 1
that brings the handbook into this new and dynamic
time of innovation, progress, and growth in the
work of community and civic engagement in higher
education.
We considered rewriting the entire work to cre-
ate a new edition, but as we talked with others who
have found the book useful and reviewed the content
in detail, we concluded that the original text contin-
ues to have utility for practitioners in the field. It is a
clear and straightforward description of the basics of
how to design and implement a comprehensive data
collection plan including the development of instru-
ments and tools for capturing data from the diverse
constituencies involved in community engage-
ment, service-learning, and related activities. The
vii
ASCV.indb 7
PREFACE
handbook offers guidance on how to clarify meas-
urement goals and objectives; select and develop the
best instruments and tools most relevant to specific
goals for assessment and evaluation; craft clear ques-
tions that help respondents give accurate and rele-
vant responses; and focus on the diverse perspectives
of each constituency involved in engaged activities:
students, faculty, community partners, and institu-
tional voices.
The creation of the core content that became
this handbook began with an internal research
project at Portland State University (PSU) in 1994.
The 1990s were a decade of major institutional trans-
formation at PSU. Campus leadership and a large
and diverse group of faculty, staff, students, and
community partners were involved in participatory
planning and visioning that led to a new identity as
an engaged urban research university with the focus
that continues today: “Let Knowledge Serve the City.”
Completely new models were developed for general
education and the undergraduate experience, teach-
ing improvement infrastructure and other faculty
development support, an innovative faculty pro-
motion and tenure policy that incorporated Ernest
Boyer’s vision of multiple forms of scholarship, and
a research agenda that incorporated an emphasis on
community-relevant research issues, among other
changes. Service-learning (often referred to at PSU
and other institutions as community-based learning)
was a prominent strategy, emphasized throughout
undergraduate learning and culminating in a final
year community-based capstone for all undergradu-
ate students. Engaged learning was also integrated
into graduate and professional education. With such
a sweeping commitment to engagement strategies as
a core of the institution’s plan and identity, leaders
and scholars worked together to develop a compre-
hensive agenda of evaluation and research on the
effects of community-based learning and engage-
ment on the participating constituencies.
This monograph emerged from various projects,
first at PSU and then through national and regional
research initiatives and at other institutions. Our goal
in 1994 when we began this work was to develop an
assessment model that responded to the complexity of
27-08-2018 15:59:48
 viii  Preface
service-learning and other strategies for community
engagement in higher education. When we began,
a literature review revealed there was little available
in terms of relevant models, approaches, and instru-
ments. We used a case study method to test multiple
assessment strategies at PSU that would give value
to both our service-learning and other community
activities. Over four years (1994–1998), the research
team (composed of the authors with other occasional
participants and graduate assistants) conducted an
extensive series of studies using multiple methods to
develop questions, instruments, and an understand-
ing of which approaches generated the most accurate
and useful data for each constituent group. From the
beginning, there was an intentional focus on under-
standing how to hear the voices of students, commu-
nity, faculty, and campus leaders; build knowledge
of the kind of infrastructure, staffing, and funding
needed both for start-up and for ongoing sustain-
ability; and investigate how to measure impacts and
benefits and then apply that information for program
improvement and support.
Using Multiple Methods With Multiple
Constituents
Early on in our development and testing of our con-
ceptual framework and approach, we learned that
an intentional examination and testing of diverse
methods was necessary, and it ultimately led to
the structure that became this handbook (Driscoll,
Holland, Gelmon, & Kerrigan, 1996). We observed
that approaches to data collection had to be specifi-
cally tailored for students, faculty, community part-
ners, and institutions. By testing a range of methods,
we concluded that diverse methods offered different
value and purposes in the context of the unique con-
stituents and individual purposes. We also found that
multiple methods of data collection were important
for each constituent group to gain a full perspective
on activities and outcomes. We relied on existing lit-
erature of the field to draft instruments that would be
relevant to any institution or community setting. We
observed that practitioners in the field needed advice
on planning and sustaining strategies for data collec-
tion, selection of methods, design of tools, methods
of data analysis, and reporting, so we also included
guidance for methods and implementation in the
original handbook.
We began presenting our conceptual model in
various venues in 1995. We immediately received
ASCV.indb 8
many requests for copies of our assessment methods
and instruments and decided to prepare a handbook
that could be widely available. We published a first
edition of this handbook in June 1997 through the
Center for Academic Excellence at Portland State
University (Driscoll, Gelmon, et al., 1997). That edi-
tion was based on development of a large number of
assessment instruments, and our experiences pilot-
testing those instruments in 10 service-learning
courses at PSU. We quickly learned from our analysis
of those results that we could make refinements in
the conceptual matrices that guided our assessment
activities, and that many of the instruments could
benefit from further refinement. These refinements
were made, and a second edition was published,
again by PSU, in April 1998 (Driscoll, Gelmon, et al.,
1998). Over 2,000 copies were printed and distrib-
uted nationally and internationally through PSU.
Campus Compact then invited us to expand the
handbook and provided us with support, made pos-
sible by the Corporation for National Service, to pre-
pare and publish the 2001 edition. This edition, while
grounded in the earlier PSU versions, offered a much
broader perspective on assessment strategies as the
authors had worked with this conceptual material in
various projects at multiple higher education institu-
tions across the country and with multiple commu-
nity organizations. This provided broader insights
into background, supporting literature, advantages
and limitations, and practical guidance on use of the
various instruments. Well over 2,000 copies have
been sold through Campus Compact. This hand-
book’s popularity reflects awareness of the need for
quality tools to gather even basic information about
service-learning and engagement activities.
In PSU’s planning environment, which empha-
sized evidence-based decisions and attention to
the corollary impacts of those decisions, and in
the c­ontext of rapid implementation, we had a
unique opportunity to focus on measurement at the
same time that engagement programs were being
launched. We realized that the core focus was on
partnerships, and the reality that each participat-
ing constituent group comes to a partnership with
its own goals (and some shared ones as well) meant
that any plan to describe, measure, or analyze activ-
ity design and outcomes would have to be organ-
ized by the constituent group to reflect its unique
goals, aims, and roles. This understanding continues
to shape approaches to data collection for this field
today (e.g., the Carnegie Community Engagement
Classification application, described in Chapter 1).
27-08-2018 15:59:48

Much like the original publication, this new
edition relies heavily on examples and practices
employed at PSU. The original work, associated
instruments, and practices were developed, tested,
and revised in PSU classrooms, with faculty and insti-
tutional systems. Over the years PSU has continued
to use many of the assessment techniques that were
born out of this work. Other institutions and organi-
zations have also built on our work and contributed
to our learning, understanding and examples.
Focus on Service-Learning
The primary focus of our assessment efforts has been
on curricular-based service-learning (which today is
often called community-based learning, community-
engaged learning, and other terms). In each chapter,
we also provide illustrations of other applications
of this material, such as in other kinds of experien-
tial education, cocurricular activities, institutional
change processes, partnerships, or other kinds of fac-
ulty development initiatives. While we recognize that
there are many potential applications of this mate-
rial and encourage such use, nonetheless the primary
focus and therefore most of the illustrations relate to
service-learning. A reader can take these illustrations
and apply them as a helpful resource in other con-
texts as well.
This handbook is not intended to be the ultimate
guide to service-learning. For resource materials on
service-learning, the reader is referred to the many
resources available through Campus Compact’s
website.
Organization of the Handbook and
Framing of the 2018 Chapter 1
When this volume was originally produced, the unit
of analysis was primarily the individual, and thus the
focus was on the impact of an individual course, or
the involvement of a faculty member or community
partner organization in a specific activity, with some
attention to how these findings could be aggregated to
understand broader impact. We articulated four con-
stituencies (students, faculty, institution, and commu-
nity) and believe that the four-constituency approach
still works and much of the initial content is relevant.
The original framework of the handbook focused
on fundamental questions such as: What do I want to
know? What would I look for? How will I measure or
ASCV.indb 9
Preface  ix
observe this? From whom or where can I collect this
evidence? This approach has reportedly helped many
practitioners and leaders advance and inform their
approach to measurement and evaluation. The sam-
ple tools for each constituent group were designed to
address the basic and commonly understood char-
acteristics of good practices as well as the common
goals widely shared as desirable outcomes of effec-
tive service-learning and engagement. These basic
practices and goals are still at the core of the field’s
aims and values, though intervening years have pro-
duced new insights regarding purposes, objectives,
outcomes, and policies.
We have not undertaken a systematic lit-
erature review in preparing this edition, and this
update should not be read as a scholarly summary
of the state of the field. Rather, we draw on our col-
lective experiences at PSU (where three of us con-
tinue to work) and with multiple other institutions
and organizations and reflect on those experiences.
We cite some examples from other institutions that
we know and that have materials readily accessible
on websites, and we recognize that there are many
other institutions doing excellent work (that may be
accessed via their websites).
We begin with a new chapter, “Reflections
on the Progress of Measurement of Community
Engagement, 2001–2018.” This chapter starts with a
review of issues related to measurement of engage-
ment. Readers have asked for this foundational con-
tent to help understand the general context for using
this handbook. We then present updates on progress
in measurement for each of the four constituencies
framed in the original text. We have ordered the dis-
cussions of the four constituencies to start with the
institutional perspective—this is where the major
work is occurring today, and the primary ques-
tions often asked about the impact of engagement-
related activities are, “Engagement—to what end?”
and “How can we develop a more focused agenda of
engagement informed by integrated measures?” As a
result, we begin with a focus on understanding insti-
tutional mission and purpose; then we discuss the
community perspective and progress on gathering
the evidence of that work; then we address the devel-
opment and recognition of engaged faculty; and then
focus on developments and trends in measuring the
impact of engagement on students.
This 2018 reflection is followed by the origi-
nal handbook content. The content of the original
handbook is retained and is presented in sequen-
tial chapters. The first is an overview of assessment
27-08-2018 15:59:48
 x  Preface
philosophy and methods. While many resources
exist on assessment, we have included an overview of
assessment strategies in this edition of the handbook
as a resource for framing our approach to assessment.
In addition, this preface will ensure that users of this
handbook have ready access to basic information
about assessment.
The following chapters present each of the four
assessment constituencies in a separate chapter (stu-
dents, faculty, community, and institution). Each of
these chapters includes
• a brief review of the literature,
• discussion of issues in assessing impact on
that constituency,
• the assessment matrix,
• strategies for assessment of that particular
constituency (including advantages and limi-
tations of particular instruments), and
• examples of assessment instruments we have
used in various settings.
Each instrument is introduced by a discussion of
purpose, preparation, administration, and analysis,
specific to that instrument.
The final chapter focuses on using the methods
and analysis of data. Again, we offer best practices
and suggestions for use based on our collective expe-
riences. This chapter incorporates discussion on
strategies for making assessment work.
Conclusions
We have learned that systematic attention to
measurement and assessment is important for
improving outcomes as well as communicating
the value of service-learning to many audiences.
Developing a “culture of evidence” to describe and
document the impact of service-learning supports its
institutionalization, facilitates the ability of course-
based learning to be translated into scholarship, and
fosters trust and communication among the various
involved constituencies. Engagement in measurement
and assessment is a valued element of the service-
ASCV.indb 10
learning experience for each constituent group as it
articulates its unique perspective and learns from
and appreciates the perspectives of the other con-
stituent groups. Ongoing attention to measurement
and assessment warrants our investment of time, our
expenditure of resources, and our commitment.
There is tremendous diversity across the field
regarding expertise and capacity to design, imple-
ment, analyze, and interpret data on community
engagement. Whether one is a faculty member
with advanced research skills in a specific disci-
pline, a staff person working in a program or unit
supporting engagement, a coordinator responsible
for an AmeriCorps program or a volunteer center,
or an academic administrator overseeing for institu-
tional assessment, the design of research, evaluation,
and assessment of service-learning and community
engagement is a challenge. Why? The language is
contested, activity and program designs are diverse
within and across institutions, the intended out-
comes and goals are often fuzzy, and the impacts on
and expectations of different participants (students,
faculty, institutional leaders, community partners)
are inevitably different. For these and many other
reasons, Campus Compact recognized the need
for an updated handbook that would continue to
encourage attention to rigor, good practice, and
consistency to methods and approaches used to
gathering evidence of impact.
Over the past decade it has become clear that
the field was better at creating service-learning and
community engagement programs than it was at
assessing, evaluating or even describing them in any
systematic way. This leads us to where we are today—
a dynamic and exciting era where the focus of this
work is now on gathering quality descriptive and
analytical evidence about activities. Increasingly this
information is used to inform improvement strategies
and redesign curricula to enhance community-based
learning opportunities. Higher education institu-
tions are developing more focused agendas of work
with articulated outcomes, recognizing and reward-
ing rigorous community-engaged scholarship, and
developing systematic data collection methods that
provide actionable information.
Sherril Gelmon, Barbara Holland, Amy Spring,
Seanna Kerrigan, and Amy Driscoll
Portland, Oregon
November 2017
27-08-2018 15:59:48

This work has been supported over the years by a
number of institutions, funders, and partners. We are
grateful to the dozens of institutions, and individuals
at those institutions, who have participated in various
projects to test and improve this assessment model; they
are too many to name! The following list recognizes
the major supporters; any omissions from this list are
unintentional.
Institutions
• Portland State University
• California State University, Monterey Bay
• Northern Kentucky University
Funders
• The Corporation for National Service
• The Pew Charitable Trusts
• Bureau of Health Professions, Health
Resources and Services Administration,
U.S. Public Health Service
• Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary
Education, U.S. Department of Education
• W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• National Fund for Medical Education
• Northwest Health Foundation
• David and Lucille Packard Foundation
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
xi
ASCV.indb 11
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Partners
• Campus Compact
• Center for Academic Excellence, Portland
State University
• Center for the Health Professions, University
of California San Francisco
• CES4Health
• Community-Campus Partnerships for
Health
• Community Care Network Demonstration
Program, Hospital Research and Educational
Trust, American Hospital Association
• Council of Independent Colleges
• Health Professions Schools in Service to the
Nation
• Healthy Communities of the Columbia-
Willamette, Inc.
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement,
Interdisciplinary Professional Education
Collaborative
• Institute for Nonprofit Management, Portland
State University
• Many participating students, community
partners, faculty, and institutional
representatives
27-08-2018 15:59:48
ASCV.indb 12 27-08-2018 15:59:48
 Chapter One
R E F L E C T IO N S O N T H E
P R O G R E S S O F M E A SU R E M E N T
O F C OM M U N I T Y
E N G AG E M E N T, 2 0 0 1 – 2 0 1 8
Context for the 2018 Handbook
Revision
This updated chapter reflects our observations and
reflections on the evolution and current state of the
language, purposes, and perspectives on the field of
community engagement. Over 15 years, key develop-
ments in policy and culture have increased the stra-
tegic value of community-engaged activities as well
as the motivation to research, evaluate, and measure
the work. Today, almost every educational institu-
tion considers it an urgent priority to describe and
measure the purpose, quality, process, and impact
of their full array of community engagement prac-
tices and activities. Throughout this book, we offer
updates and examples that illustrate how attention
to assessment, measurement, and monitoring strat-
egies helps answer the enduring questions: How do
we know that this work makes a difference and meets
the intended goals? What constitutes best or prom-
ising practices? How do we capture impacts and
perspectives of those who are involved in the work?
Increasing Interest in Collecting Community
Engagement Data
Today, there is substantial attention paid to the need
to systematically and continuously gather descriptive
data about engagement activities of all types as well
as their impacts and outcomes. This agenda looks
ASCV.indb 1
at all forms of community engagement—engaged
learning, engaged research, engaged public service,
and outreach. The introduction of the President’s
Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll
after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Corporation for
National and Community Service, 2016) and the
Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Community Engage-
ment Classification in 2006 (NERCHE, 2016) were
two major opportunities for institutional recognition
that required every applicant to generate specific,
defensibly accurate data about their engagement
activities. In the 1990s and early 2000s, federal fund-
ing for engagement activities increasingly required
grant reports and specific evaluations, both of which
created greater need for ongoing and accurate data
collection. Descriptive and analytic data have also
been increasingly essential as institutions seek to
increase alumni and donor involvement, including
gifts and endowments for engagement scholarships,
equipment, transportation programs, staff positions,
academic chairs or fellows, and buildings meant to
support the campus engagement agenda.
The Honor Roll and the Carnegie application
revealed that the lack of attention to sustained
measurement and data collection was a substantial
gap in institutional planning and practice approaches.
Institutional leaders and engagement practitioners
were frustrated by the lack of systems for data col-
lection that would report the outcomes of this work.
The focus of engagement management was often on
27-08-2018 15:59:48
 2  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
growth, participation, resources, and political sup-
port but was rarely systematic and often quite ran-
dom. Individual faculty made choices about how the
idea of engagement might connect to their teaching
and research work, or if they saw it as public service.
If they took the plunge into engagement, they might
attend a workshop on curricular design and find
their own partner or seek help from a campus unit
meant to support community engagement activities.
Leaders of engagement become aware that random
work is very difficult to measure, and if measured,
any results are difficult to interpret or replicate.
Early impetus to reflect and measure came from
participation in various federal grant programs.
The largest and most influential programs were the
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Com-
munity Outreach Partnership Centers program and
Learn and Serve America (a program of the Corpo-
ration for National and Community Service). These
programs integrated required reporting, reflection
and data collection elements that demonstrated
the risk of putting one’s energy into organizing and
running programs without integrating attention to
descriptive and analytical data collection and evalu-
ation. Practitioners and leaders of the field began to
realize that enthusiasm for launching new program
activities could overwhelm the immediate need to
articulate specific goals and implement integrated
strategies for capturing inputs, outputs, and outcomes
throughout the funded program.
New Pathways for Dissemination
of Engagement Knowledge
Since this handbook was published in 2001, the level
and quality of scholarly research on engagement has
expanded. There are more refereed journals and con-
ferences for dissemination. Established journals such
as the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learn-
ing, Metropolitan Universities, and the Journal of Higher
Education Outreach and Community Engagement con-
tinue to be prominent venues for dissemination of
scholarship and practice reports related to community
engagement. In addition, new journals and confer-
ences have increased the choice of venues for publi-
cation of research and other evaluative studies (see
the discussion in the Faculty section of this chapter),
such as the International Association for Research on
­Service-Learning and Community Engagement and
its journal, the International Journal of Research on
­Service-Learning and Community Engagement. Jour-
nals and conferences emphasizing engagement schol-
arship, complemented by many disciplinary journals
ASCV.indb 2
and conferences, are creating a much broader knowl-
edge base from which others can learn. In addition,
individual faculty have taken on this scholarship and
spread it “locally” in their disciplines, as the overall
engagement field has grown.
There is a need to establish a more consistent
understanding of “what works” in terms of engage-
ment practices and for more consistent and shared
opportunities for review and recognition of impacts
and outcomes. Ultimately, all institutions should
have the capacity to measure their work for ongoing
improvement as well as benchmark progress against
role model institutions.
Gathering Evidence About
Community Engagement
Community engagement and related pedagogies are
gaining more strategic support and interest on many
campuses. The work requires us to develop effective,
routine, and ongoing data collection systems that will
create the conditions to capture evidence of effective
actions and strategies and connect individual actions
to larger community and institutional efforts. The
growing interest in focusing our engagement efforts
on a few broad public issues is not meant to restrict
independent faculty engagement but recognizes the
complexity of persistent challenges facing local and
global communities. Working internally and exter-
nally as partners, looking at complementary and
diverse aspects of a public issue, we will be more able
to measure impact and outcomes that lead to replica-
tion and progress toward change. We encourage users
of this handbook to focus on the intentionality of
alignment between institutional strengths and objec-
tives, and community issues (or needs) and oppor-
tunities (or assets). This strategic focus defines an
agenda of engagement that will facilitate the tracking
of outcomes and results for both the institution and
community. The original manuscript of this book
was mostly about focusing on the specific benefits to
each separate constituent group; now we understand
the need to focus more on alignment of goals that are
truly mutually beneficial for all but may have differ-
ent, yet complementary, goals and outcomes.
As engagement has grown and deepened, insti-
tutional leaders are not asking for evidence that com-
munity engagement is worthy of time and expense;
they are asking questions about how to identify mod-
els of partnership and collaboration that are likely
to produce positive results. Integrated into their
expectations is the need for a campus measurement
27-08-2018 15:59:48

strategy that uses an ongoing tracking and measur-
ing scheme that captures evidence for improvement
and informs other corollary projects.
The growing level of interest in tracking and
measurement is evidenced by the explosion of diverse
online systems now appearing on the Internet, each
claiming to be an effective repository for collecting
information about some combination of volunteer-
ing, service-learning, other forms of engagement,
and/or community partner information. Some of
these focus on collecting descriptive data, and some
offer capacity to seek or gather feedback or input from
various participant constituencies. This is a dynamic
space, and it is beyond the scope of this update to
review or describe them in any way at this stage. We
merely acknowledge these systems are numerous,
diverse, sometimes free and sometimes costly (see
the Institution section of this chapter for further dis-
cussion). Over time, the collective experience of the
field in using such online tools will determine those
that prove useful and relevant from those that do not.
The relevant point here is that the desire and motiva-
tion to capture both descriptive and analytical data
about this work is so energetic and urgent that it has
attracted the interest of many online entrepreneurs.
Since 2001, new energy and expertise to support
greater attention to research, evaluation, and assess-
ment activities also came from the emergence of new
organizations, networks, and dissemination venues.
To summarize some of the key activities:
• In 2001, Andrew Furco and Shelley Billig
convened the first Service-Learning Research
Conference at the University of California,
Berkeley. By 2006, the conference attendees
organized into a 501(c)3 organization called
the International Association for Research on
Service-Learning and Community Engage-
ment (IARSLCE) (Gelmon, 2010). Today the
annual conference attracts 300 to 400 schol-
ars, students, and practitioners from multiple
countries each year, and IARSLCE has become
a respected venue for refereed scholarship
of all forms of community engagement from
engagement leaders and academics around the
world, as well as an important venue for new
scholars (graduate students, junior faculty,
and faculty just beginning work in this area)
to present their research and receive feedback
from senior scholars (IARSLCE, 2016).
• The major initiatives of the Engagement
Scholarship Consortium (ESC, 2017) include
the annual Emerging Engagement Scholars
ASCV.indb 3
Reflections  3
workshop, the Outreach and Engagement
Practitioners Network, and the Academy of
Community Engagement Scholarship. ESC’s
annual conference grew out of an initial part-
nership among three land-grant universities
that launched the National Outreach Schol-
arship Conference in 2001 to share knowl-
edge about their community-based programs
(Bruns, 2010).
• Campus Compact (2016a) has contributed
significantly to quality practices in service-
learning and community engagement through
a variety of initiatives as well as regional/
national conferences that have inspired fac-
ulty, students, administrators, and senior
executives to value these teaching and part-
nership methods as key contributors to stu-
dent learning and development, to productive
connection of campus mission to local voices
and local goals, and to the advancement of
faculty skills as practitioners (McGovern &
Curley, 2010). It has been an influential voice
leading the effort to create both commitment
to and practical models for reviewing and
rewarding faculty involvement in commu-
nity-engaged scholarship and for intentional
planning of engagement work.
• Community-Campus Partnerships for Health
(CCPH) was established in 1996 (www.ccph
.info), building on the national demonstra-
tion project on service-learning in the health
professions called Health Professions Schools
in Service to the Nation (HPSISN, 1995–1998).
CCPH is one of the few community engage-
ment–related organizations that emphasizes
the role of community and the active involve-
ment of community partners and organiza-
tions, as well as academics, in all its efforts.
It holds its major conference every two years,
alternating with the Canadian-based CUExpo
conference. CCPH has been a major player in
advancing our understanding and application
of community-engaged scholarship, includ-
ing the development of CES4Health (2016a).
• Imagining America: Artists and Scholars
in Public Life (IA) was launched in 1999 as
a consortium of colleges and universities
that fostered a national network of campus-
community collaborators in humanities, arts,
and design. The organization developed an
analytical framework to identify and criti-
cally consider the range of emerging artistic
and scholarly endeavors and promoted public
27-08-2018 15:59:48
 4  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
scholarship as an important and legitimate
enterprise in higher education (IA, 2016).
In 2008, IA released its report Scholarship in
Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy
in the Engaged University (Ellison & Eatman,
2008). This publication has been widely used
by many IA institutions to shape their own
internal policies and practices.
• The Talloires Network emerged from a 2005
meeting of 29 presidents, rectors, and vice-
chancellors from 23 nations convened by
Tufts University and other partners. This led
to the creation of the Talloires Declaration
on the Civic Roles and Social Responsibili-
ties of Higher Education (Talloires Network,
2005). The Talloires Network now includes 10
national and regional networks, has 350 mem-
bers in 75 countries, and holds periodic con-
ferences in international locations (Talloires
Network, 2016).
The focus on more systematic and sustained sys-
tems for capturing engagement descriptions and data
is having a powerful effect on clarifying language and
goals within institutions and will continue to contribute
to greater consistency of the work overall. For example,
student learning through engagement with community
is increasingly integrated into the spectrum of cam-
pus modes of hands-on or experiential learning; one
example is SUNY Applied Learning (www.suny.edu/
applied-learning/). Yet there continues to be debate
about the language used in this field—community
engagement, civic engagement, service-learning, com-
munity-based learning, community-based research,
field placements, cooperative placements, and other
strategies that explicitly connect academic work to
public work with an aim for mutual benefit.
Planning a Measurement Strategy
The level of systematic effort or even of sustained
intent to track and measure engagement activities
varies widely today. Before focusing on specific con-
stituencies, it is useful to focus on the key components
of building a strong and useful measurement strategy.
Articulating Clear Purposes
for Data Collection
The fundamental challenge to any data collection
scheme is clarifying your ultimate purpose; in other
ASCV.indb 4
words, “What do we want to know?” and “How
will the information be used?” A clear purpose
guides the selection of the type or method of data
collection as well as the specific questions and data
fields that are essential, optional, and not relevant.
When asking others to respond and provide data,
we must describe both the value and utility of the
information and how the data will be analyzed, dis-
seminated, and used. Clarity of purpose informs
the design of instruments and methods, and helps
improve quality and quantity of responses.
A purpose common to many measurement
plans, especially if it is the first attempt to gather
information on community engagement, is to clarify
language and understanding of the work. What do
we mean by service-learning and community engage-
ment at our institution (or whatever language you
want to establish as the standard)? One of the great
barriers to instrument design and interpretation of
results is the persistent confusion of terms and lan-
guage used in this field. A goal of this handbook is
to inform instrument design that can reinforce con-
sistent understanding of terms and definitions. For
example, faculty can be asked if they use service-
learning in their teaching, but if the definition of
service-learning is not widely understood in a con-
sistent manner, consistency of responses cannot be
ensured. Asking faculty if they involve students in
activities outside the classroom through interaction
with people or issues relevant to the local jurisdiction
in order to meet a specific learning goal will gener-
ate responses that will have fidelity to this concep-
tion of community engagement. Probing further to
understand consistent use of service-learning prac-
tices, one can explain the difference in information
gathered from field trips, guest speakers, and so on,
and thus improve campus-wide consensus on the
concept. This is how data collection can help build
a campus-wide understanding of both language and
good practice components.
For all purposes, think about how measurement
will connect community engagement to one or more
important and specific institutional strategic goals.
Aim to measure in order to test the potential of the
activity to contribute to institutional objectives and
mission, not just to grow for its own sake. In this way,
we begin to move community engagement strategies
from the margin to the core by showing its relevance
to institutional aims.
For those we seek to influence or inform,
instrument designers must consider many specific
factors so that your instruments will actually collect
27-08-2018 15:59:48

data relevant to your purpose and audience. Before
crafting a data collection method, you need to
consider the following:
• Who is/are the person(s) we seek to influence
or inform?
• What action do we want them to take or what
attitude do we want them to adopt as a result?
• What evidence would be relevant to that
action or attitude?
• What type of evidence would be convincing to
the person(s)?
Other purposes that may be important for an
institution include, but are not limited to the following:
• Describing scope and scale of activity to
external groups by topic, issue, location, or
population
• Attracting internal or external funding
• Promoting quality practices
• Identifying areas for improvement
• Monitoring and growing participation/access
for students
• Promoting collaboration across projects
• Identifying areas of similar work and conven-
ing like-minded individuals
• Identifying resource or training needs
• Highlighting links between engagement and
teaching and learning
• Linking results to awards, recognition, inter-
nal funding
• Identifying barriers such as policies, transpor-
tation, and so on
• Preparing for accreditation, external recogni-
tion, other institutional reports
In planning an approach to tracking and
measuring, be clear about the purposes, including
thinking about the key audiences with whom data
will be shared, and consider what kind of action
or understanding they might gain from the infor-
mation. This will help to identify important data
elements and approaches to presenting the data.
Identifying Relevant Available Descriptive
and Analytic Data
Given the historic focus on growing activity more
than capturing information about the activity itself
or the results of the effort, it is important to under-
stand the distinction between tracking or monitor-
ing engagement activity and measuring, assessing, or
ASCV.indb 5
Reflections  5
evaluating results. Tracking or monitoring primarily
captures descriptive information, which can be very
useful and important. Measuring, assessing, or eval-
uating involves more detailed methods of objective
inquiry and analysis to look for data relating to spe-
cific questions, all as a way to determine the effect or
impact. Tracking is about “What’s happening?” and
measuring is about “What was the result?”
Tracking or monitoring refers to the process of
capturing a comprehensive portrait of the level and
variety of community-related activities across an
institution. The types or forms captured depend on
the overall goals and purposes but it is probably wise,
in the long run, to be as comprehensive as possible.
Whatever the range of activities, the first aim is
to capture descriptive information about these activi-
ties from those who are organizing them. The best
approach is to set this up in a database where those
who create records can update them on their own, thus
minimizing effort and ensuring accuracy. A common
approach is to create a template of fields that form
the record and reflect your overall goals for meas-
urement. In gathering descriptive information you
want to think about the basics of description: What
is going on? Think about what, when, where, why,
how, and who is involved. The aim is to capture the
project title; partner(s) identity; location; purpose/
goal; timing; method/strategy of the activity; issue(s)
of focus; population(s) involved; intended outcomes;
links (if any) to teaching, learning, or research; and
achieved outputs or outcomes, including asking for
any formal evaluations.
A good tracking system that contains a robust
array of community-connected activities can surface
many useful data points, such as the following:
• Scope, scale, and distribution of activity across
campus and community
• Campus understanding of different modes/
methods of work in community
• Number of students, faculty, and staff involved
in community-based activity
• Number of partnerships that can be sorted by
location, issue/topic, population, and so on
• Partner contact information for feedback
• Evidence of outputs/outcomes for academy
and community
As shown, a good database of activities can
include asking the record holder to share any data
they have generated through evaluations, feedback
strategies, or other research or analysis strategies
27-08-2018 15:59:48
 6  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
they have used in their community-based activity.
Many who lead service-learning and other forms of
community-based partnerships routinely collect
feedback from or formally evaluate the impacts
or outcomes of the activity as articulated by those
involved (students, community, others). Some may
have formal evaluation reports to share; others may
have conducted formal research and even published
findings. All of this means data that are useful and
typically of good quality. If you create a strong track-
ing system, you will be amazed at how much data
already exists.
For large service-learning programs, convene
leaders to discuss the potential for using common
assessment or data tools that will help capture con-
sistent and similar data from student participants.
As an example, California State University Mon-
terey Bay (CSUMB) has piloted the use of a signa-
ture assignment that provides authentic evidence of
student learning with respect to the learning out-
comes across a variety of courses that all use service-
learning. CSUMB hopes to expand this application
to all of its service-learning courses, each of which
has specific learning outcomes and uses a rubric to
assess student achievement. For projects that involve
complex issues or comparative interventions, for-
mal research or evaluation methods may need to be
implemented, in collaboration between the academic
leaders and partners.
The understanding of community perspec-
tive on project design, implementation, and views
of the cost/benefit of their effort and outcomes (if
any) is historically the weakest aspect of attempts
at data collection. A good strategy may be to con-
vene engaged faculty with relevant research skills
to develop integrated evaluation protocols for plan-
ning, operating, and reviewing each campus-com-
munity partnership. This approach brings rigor and
consistency to the process of hearing community
voice and input on process and results and will go
far to advance the quality and impact of the work
overall. Then, convene relevant faculty and staff
along with their community partners so they can
jointly discuss their interests and expectations in
data collection and evaluation efforts. What data do
they collect now, or wish they could collect going
forward? What methods work best for their culture
and needs? What timing is best for them? Higher
education institutions must learn to design measure-
ment schemes that incorporate community capacity,
values, and interests if the results are to be valuable
in both realms.
ASCV.indb 6
Higher education institutions should be cautious
in making broad claims about their effect on com-
munities (e.g., reducing poverty, improving school
outcomes, creating solutions for homelessness,
etc.). A good approach is to recognize that an inte-
grated and ongoing tracking and measuring scheme
will enhance the ability of the campus to accurately
state the results learned from specific projects and
to estimate their replicability in similar settings.
Even in carefully designed interventions, there are
many other factors influencing participants in other
aspects of their lives. We cannot control all factors,
so our claims should be evidence-based. Most of
the community issues our campuses focus on are
complex problems with many factors affecting any
attempt to create improved outcomes. In general,
we should only describe the apparent results of the
actual work we do with the people who were actively
involved, acknowledge there are other unknown
factors involved, and avoid generalization beyond
the specific project. There is no substitute for talk-
ing with communities about their perspective on
the processes, outcomes, and impacts of partnership
work. Their voice and their data should always be
evident in our strategies and publications or other
reports of results.
Recruiting Allies to Help Design and
Launch the Data Collection System
Colleges and universities are continually collect-
ing data for all kinds of reasons. Before creating a
new instrument that will be another survey or other
instrument people will be asked to complete, con-
sider who might be helpful to you and where there
might already be some useful data.
A good way to start is to meet with the institutional
research office staff. These people know what data are
already collected and how to access these data. There
are already many databases, reporting platforms, rou-
tine and ongoing surveys, and other institutional data
being collected. From these, you may be able to glean
useful data pertinent to your goals, and/or you may
be able to negotiate adding one or a few fields to exist-
ing tools and databases so that your information will
be collected through that mechanism.
Other offices also keep valuable data that may
relate to your engagement measurement goals. For
example, student affairs may keep extensive infor-
mation on volunteering or the Office of Research
may be able to search funded grant projects for key
words relating to community-based research or
other community partnerships.
27-08-2018 15:59:48

Each institution is different, so take time early in
your process to look for existing data in systems such
as annual faculty activity reports, annual institu-
tional reports, recent self-studies for campus or pro-
grammatic accreditation, program review reports,
course evaluations, climate surveys, employee sur-
veys, alumni surveys, other regular external reports,
or national surveys of students. There are nation-
ally validated research instruments that are avail-
able (some charge fees) and include questions about
student responses to service-learning experiences.
Drawing data from existing internal or external tools
or adding a few questions to existing processes may
help uncover good data, reduce the need for unique
analysis of data, and keep any unique data collection
strategy shorter and free of any duplicate questions.
Building Instruments
In the original narrative of this handbook, there was
guidance on how to decide what key data points will
be important for tracking and measuring engage-
ment and sample data collection tools with instruc-
tions on how to implement them, analyze them,
and share them. More tools have been developed in
recent years; many of these are referenced through-
out the text, and others may be identified through a
search of both published literature and websites.
Whether or not you are an expert researcher
or evaluator, it may be helpful to recruit some
experts from faculty, staff, and advanced students to
work with you. The conceptual matrix framework
described in the original narrative is a guide to iden-
tifying specific concepts (what we want to know)
and key indicators (what we look for to see if the
concept was present), as well as suggesting data col-
lection methods and sources. Matrices for each con-
stituent group are also included in the original text.
The articulation of concepts and indicators specific
to your needs informs your choice of methods and
identification of respondents. The discipline of this
process makes analysis of returned data more accu-
rate and efficient, because the fields and questions in
the instrument are linked back to the core concepts,
which ultimately reflect the purposes for gathering
data in the first place.
Consider the type of method(s) and instru­
ment(s) that will best get at the core concepts and
overall purposes you have in mind. See the dis-
cussion at the end of chapter 2 for tips on making
decisions about which instrument would be most
effective for your questions. Surveys are too often
selected because they seem easy to do. The reality
ASCV.indb 7
Reflections  7
is that surveys are good at getting at some types of
responses and not as good for others, in terms of
time, depth of information, and accuracy in a con-
text of diverse respondents. The examples will help
you see the differences. Whatever method or instru-
ment you choose, get input from a colleague who
has real expertise in that particular type of method
or instrument. Even if you are research-trained and
have experience creating instruments it is wise to let
another expert review it with a fresh perspective; this
will greatly strengthen the quality of the response
rate and data.
Planning for a Sustained Data Collection
and Analysis Process
As you progress in developing your plan, think about
a network of support and involvement to help you
meet your purposes and to keep the data collection
process moving forward. Identify a working team to
advise your efforts and help with communication
of the purposes across the institution. You may also
wish to work with a senior administrator who is sup-
portive of the engagement agenda and can offer posi-
tional leadership when needed to clear the way and
encourage robust participation. While every institu-
tion is different, you should think about whether or
not data collection is best housed in the community
engagement infrastructure or in another unit of the
university that has the capacity to support and sus-
tain the process in a way that brings greater credibil-
ity and political buy-in, so that the campus sees the
value of the information and there is motivation to
contribute and participate.
In the following sections, we address specific
challenges, opportunities, and strategies for data col-
lection from each of the primary audiences involved
in community engagement endeavors.
Institutional Impact
During the last 15 years, higher education in the
United States has experienced declining financial
support and growing criticism regarding cost and
effectiveness, especially in relation to student suc-
cess. Curriculum, funding and budgeting models,
and academic culture are all changing to adapt to
twenty-first-century expectations and opportuni-
ties. In this context, many academic institutions have
begun to explore dramatic changes meant to enhance
the student experience, reduce the expense of tui-
tion, and improve learning and graduation rates,
27-08-2018 15:59:49
 8  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
while also demonstrating institutional citizenship
through greater involvement in regional and global
issues, challenges, and opportunities. This has greatly
increased adoption of engaged methodologies in
the context of teaching, learning, and research, and
thus has necessitated significant changes in scholarly
practices, values, and faculty culture. To succeed in
leveraging community engagement strategies as a
pathway toward these goals, every institution needs
to consider an intentional plan and ongoing strat-
egy for monitoring engagement activities and plans
and for capturing relevant descriptive and analytical
data to inform both program improvement and out-
comes reporting.
Growth in institutional appreciation of commu-
nity engagement as an important strategy for achiev-
ing both campus and community goals has further
accelerated the need for this handbook. After years
of wrestling with the language, concepts, application,
and principles of engagement, community engage-
ment has now emerged as a key institutional com-
mitment that no campus can afford to overlook. Both
anecdotal cases and concrete evidence reveal engage-
ment’s potential for addressing key higher educa-
tion challenges such as recruitment and retention of
students, faculty, and staff; improved student com-
pletion rates; increased research activity including
more interdisciplinary forms of discovery; renewed
connections with governments; effective collabora-
tions with community nonprofit agencies; access to
new sources of revenue including connections to
donors who seek to use their resources to improve
community life and outcomes; and expectations of
higher education institutions as “anchors” in their
communities.
Strategic Commitment to Engagement
This recognition of the strategic value of engagement
to institutional improvement and progress has been
accompanied by a growing national commitment of
higher education toward addressing what many call
“the grand challenges” facing local and global com-
munities (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2016).
Higher education played a substantial role in the
mid-twentieth century in advancing national objec-
tives such as economic growth, the race to space, the
development of vaccines and medicines to increase
health and longevity, and exploration of multiple
kinds of technology and their applications. Many
higher education leaders believe that higher education
must step forward today and focus on the complex,
ASCV.indb 8
multidimensional aspects of economic growth, water,
food, climate change, immigration, conflict, and other
complex, large-scale public issues. These challenges
require internal collaboration among multiple disci-
plines and external partner­ships with government,
business, industry, health, schools, and the nonprofit
sector. Solutions for and progress on complex public
issues requires new approaches that combine aca-
demic knowledge and skills with the lived experi-
ences and ideas of other sectors.
The growing evidence regarding the impact
of engaged strategies on teaching, learning, and
research effectiveness is increasing the incentive
for every postsecondary institution to develop an
intentional agenda of engagement activity to help it
succeed. Though the literature still lacks megascale
research studies, existing work reveals a strong
association with important strategic goals common
to most campuses. These goals intertwine with the
growing external pressure on academic institu-
tions to increase student retention and completion
rates, to increase research activity on questions of
local or global urgency, to increase effectiveness
and efficiency, and to be an engine for development
(economic, cultural, social, human).
Thus, the focus of institutional attention to
community engagement has now turned to new,
more specific questions: To what end does higher
education engage with communities as a form of
teaching, learning, research, and service? What
is the alignment between our areas of intellectual
expertise and public goals and questions? How do
we identify, develop, support, and sustain productive
community–academic partnerships? What structures
need to be developed to govern partnerships, both
internally and externally?
These questions require an intentional and sys-
tematic approach to collection of reliable and relevant
data to inform progress and replicate results in the
context of established goals and aims. As engagement
transitions from work that was mostly individualized
to intentional campus/community agendas guided by
specific goals and structures, institutional leaders now
realize that they need ongoing data collection sys-
tems to provide regular information to monitor and
measure their engagement agenda and its impacts.
Leadership of engagement itself has become
a more common expectation of presidents and
provosts. A review of recent conference or strategic
agendas of higher education associations such as
Campus Compact, American Association of State
Colleges and Universities, Association of Public and
27-08-2018 15:59:49

Land-grant Universities, National Association of
Independent Colleges and Universities, Council of
Independent Colleges, and others shows evidence
of attention to community engagement as a strategy
for achieving internal and external goals relating to
teaching, learning, and research that are enriched
by and contribute to public progress. Recent exam-
ples demonstrate that some colleges and universities
intentionally seek to select campus leaders who will
sustain and/or grow the institution’s commitment
to community engagement and partnerships. There
are also academic institutions that have made little
progress on community engagement. There is tre-
mendous diversity in higher education’s involvement
in engagement with communities.
Carnegie Community Engagement
Classification
Over the past 10 years the Carnegie Community
Engagement Classification has become the key
framework that guides increasingly more sophis-
ticated and intentional approaches to engage-
ment actions and requires that campuses describe,
measure, and evaluate engagement at all levels
across the campus. The expectation is that if a cam-
pus is an “engaged campus” then we would expect
the work to be supported, informed, governed,
and monitored regarding both process and results
(NERCHE, 2016). For that reason, the Carnegie
application intentionally requires campus-wide and
community partner participation in completing the
submitted materials. The application has become a
guide to structuring and planning engagement that
often creates a framework for deciding what a sys-
tem of data collection, measurement, and evaluation
should track and how such information will inform
future work and adaptations.
Since its initiation in 2006, the Carnegie Com-
munity Engagement Classification has been awarded
to 431 colleges and universities. The intent of the
classification is to encourage documentation of
institutional engagement with community in an
inquiry process that yields practical and useful data
(Driscoll, 2008). A critical component of the classi-
fication framework focuses on tracking and assess-
ing community engagement especially in terms of its
impact on students, faculty, community, and institu-
tion. With each round of institutional applications
(in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2015), the data and narratives
have revealed an ongoing need for improvement
and expansion in institutional capacity and practice
ASCV.indb 9
Reflections  9
related to data collection and evaluation (Driscoll,
2014). In the most recent round of Carnegie applica-
tions in 2015, even those that were successfully classi-
fied indicated little progress in systematic approaches
to data collection, but it is worth noting some areas
of improvement. For example, in 2006 approximately
12% of successful applicant institutions reported
specific institutional learning outcomes associated
with service-learning. In 2008 and in the applica-
tion rounds that followed, more than 80% of insti-
tutions provided examples of institutional learning
outcomes (Driscoll, 2014). However, those institu-
tions that provided examples of learning outcomes
fell short of expectations in terms of defining specific
civic learning outcomes.
As for other assessment practices, the earliest
applications for the Carnegie Community Engage-
ment Classification had few examples of track-
ing mechanisms to record data such as number of
students, number of hours of service, number and
kinds of community sites, kinds of engagement, and
number of faculty. In the most recent applications,
tracking practices have expanded and become more
sophisticated, especially with the use of technology
(Saltmarsh, Sandmann, & Hartley, personal com-
munication, 2015).
The assessment questions that continue to be
most challenging for applicants are those that probe
the actual impact of community engagement. Institu-
tions are asked to provide descriptions of assessment
practices and at least one example of a finding related
to impact on students, community, faculty, and
institution. Often, impact findings are not authentic
examples of impact, but rather statistics of growth
in the number of students or faculty. Assessment of
impact of community engagement on students is the
one area that has shown some modest progress and
is most prominent. In the 2015 applications, insti-
tutions described surveys, focus groups, and inter-
views as mechanisms to assess impact on students
and were able to describe some specific impact (Salt-
marsh, Sandmann, & Hartley, personal communica-
tion, 2015). These examples often relied on indirect
measures of impact on students; few direct measures
were found in the applications.
A current challenge for many institutions is to
make an informed choice regarding what data sys-
tems are needed to help them track and measure and
assess community engagement in all its dimensions.
The classification process has increased the demand
for ongoing and systematic data collection, and
many tools have been launched for such purposes;
27-08-2018 15:59:49
 10  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
these are of widely varying focus, philosophy, and
method. There is no doubt that ongoing systems are
ideal, and whatever is used should ensure both con-
tinuous maintenance of descriptive data as well as
the ability to analyze data for multiple planning and
reporting purposes. As institutions collect data, they
are able to publicly share results, such as on a dash-
board (Virginia Commonwealth University, 2017).
The key, again, is intentionality and alignment. Aca-
demic institutions should work with internal and
external partners to carefully select a system that
reflects their overall goals and agenda, but can also
be customized in the context of local purposes.
In summary, systematic approaches to the
measurement and tracking of community engage-
ment and its impact on students, faculty, community,
and institutions are growing, but remain a challenge,
especially for institutions that lack a strategic plan
that articulates community engagement’s internal
and external aims. The next phase of engagement’s
development will require colleges and universities to
intentionally integrate actions and goals with ongo-
ing data collection and evaluation, adopting sustain-
able monitoring and measurement practices that
yield quality data and informs improvement in insti-
tutional engagement with community.
What Do We Want to Know Today About
Institutional Impact?
There are many questions that may guide the explo-
ration and analysis of the institution’s role in engage-
ment. Key questions and considerations that one
might ask include the following:
• What are the institution’s motives for engage-
ment?
• What current and future strategic goals of the
institution are served by engagement strate-
gies and actions?
• What outcomes and benefits do we seek?
• What is the alignment of mission and exper-
tise with challenges and opportunities pre-
sented in the chosen region of focus (local
or beyond)?
• Who are our key partners and how might
those partnerships evolve over time?
• How is the work governed both internally and
externally?
• Where does engagement sit in the organiza-
tion chart?
ASCV.indb 10
• What are the measurable outcomes and results
we seek for our institutions and what are our
partners seeking to achieve?
• What works and what does not work to create
progress on a specific issue?
• What resources and infrastructure are
required?
As the body of evidence grows for engagement’s
positive contribution to contemporary challenges
facing society and higher education, we must work on
collecting better institutional data to create the basis
for larger multi-institutional research studies. Higher
education associations have contributed richly to the
wider appreciation of community engagement strate-
gies as important tools for implementing change and
improvement across higher education. This further
validates the importance of developing more inten-
tional institutional plans for engagement that incor-
porate clear goals and expectations for measurable
results for campus and community. In many ways,
the motivation and the responsibility for consistent
and ongoing monitoring, measurement, and assess-
ment of engagement is one of the most important
tasks before senior leaders across higher education.
The questions posed in this section on institutional
engagement measurement issues may offer a use-
ful guide for campus leadership dialogues in plan-
ning both for engagement action and for ongoing
measurement of engagement’s outcomes and impacts
for improvement and replication.
Examples of Resources for Assessing
Institution-Level Engagement Activity
Many instruments and systems are being or have
been created for monitoring and measuring engage-
ment. Before plunging into selection of data col-
lection tools, it is important to reflect on and plan
for your institution’s specific data goals and needs.
It is important to develop an accurate portrait of
activity in order to make decisions about meth-
ods of measurement and assessment or evaluation.
We describe here a few research-based tools that
can help explore the “state of ” engagement at your
institution.
A useful guide for institutional self-assessment
is the CCPH metric to describe capacity for commu-
nity engagement (Gelmon, Seifer, Kauper-Brown,
& Mikkelsen, 2005). This model builds on the ear-
lier work of Holland (1997). The self-assessment
guides institutional representatives to reflect on
27-08-2018 15:59:49

the institution’s capacity for engagement along six
dimensions, ranking each item of each dimension on
a four-point scale:
• Definition and vision of community engage-
ment
• Faculty support for and involvement in com-
munity engagement
• Student support for and involvement in com-
munity engagement
• Community support for and involvement in
community engagement
• Institutional leadership and support for com-
munity engagement
• Community-engaged scholarship
This metric can be used for institutional pur-
poses and also speaks specifically to the faculty role
in engagement. This metric has been used at sev-
eral institutions and in several multi-institutional
projects, and it has been shown to be helpful in
identifying strengths and opportunities for growth.
The “Indicators of Engagement” developed
by Campus Compact may also prove to be a use-
ful framework for institutions in developing their
plan for measurement of engagement (Hollander,
Saltmarsh, & Zlotkowski, 2001). The indicators
summarize successful practices in engagement and
categorize them as the following:
• Mission and purpose
• Academic and administrative leadership
• Disciplines, departments, and interdiscipli-
nary work
• Teaching and learning
• Faculty development
• Faculty roles and rewards
• Support structures and resources
• Internal budget and resource allocations
• Community voice
• External resource allocations
• Coordination of community-based activities
• Forums for fostering public dialogue
• Student voice
More detail about the operationalization of
the indicators may be found at Campus Compact
(2001).
Another resource that may be of value is the
work of the National Coordinating Centre for Pub-
lic Engagement in the United Kingdom (Hart,
Northmore, & Gerhardt, n.d.). This work articulates
ASCV.indb 11
Reflections  11
dimensions of public engagement in a framework
that includes the following dimensions:
• Public access to facilities
• Public access to knowledge
• Student engagement
• Faculty engagement
• Widening participation
• Encouraging economic regeneration and
enterprise in social engagement
• Institutional relationship and partnership
building
The framework is illustrated through application
in a case study at the University of Brighton. Read-
ers should note that “audit” as used in this document
equates to “program review” in U.S. higher education.
Community Impact and Partnerships
Since our original publication in 2001, research on
community impact and outcomes, and on commu-
nity partnerships, has increased. Public and private
grants for engagement have increasingly required
attention to data on community impact. The Carn-
egie Community Engagement Classification requires
evidence of regular collection of activity data and
feedback, including communication of results to
community partners and community leaders. The
growing interest in creating a more focused agenda of
work on community impact also puts a much greater
focus on setting goals and measuring progress with
community input and involvement.
The historic emphasis of research and evaluation
efforts has largely been on hearing the community
voice and obtaining community input on impact as a
way of ensuring that we are true to the spirit of com-
munity partner expectations regarding their roles
and intended outcomes. The focus of most data col-
lection regarding community partnerships was on
the characteristics and forms of partnerships framed
by an emphasis on benefits for the community and
respect for communities as cocreators of knowledge
and coeducators of our students. Ironically, part-
ners themselves have said that this intense focus on
partner perspectives may, at times, have minimized
attention to the benefits of community engagement
for the academic partner. Community-based work
may have been well structured to provide benefits
to the community, but not always explicitly linked
to specific student learning goals or other scholarly
27-08-2018 15:59:49
 12  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
outcomes. One of the largest studies of partner per-
spectives (Sandy & Holland, 2006) revealed that
experienced community partners often reported
they had little or no idea what the specific learning
goals were for service-learning students spending
time with their organization. This suggested that
more needs to be done to ensure that faculty are
engaging community partners as coeducators and
collaborators and that there are clear outcomes and
benefits for students, partners, and academics. This
is the basis of accurate and useful data collection that
can lead to identification of effective actions produc-
ing desired impacts.
Today the issues around community impact
and partnerships need to focus both on how a more
intentional agenda of engagement with commu-
nity is aligned with community goals and on the
reasons academic institutions create partnerships
with external entities. The campus must be clear
and intentional about identifying what they want to
know about those partnerships and their results for
both campus and partners and what they intend to
do with the evaluation findings. Campus data goals
may include demonstration of community impact
for public relations or funding purposes or docu-
mentation for grants, institutional plans, or accredi-
tation, among other goals. Together both campus
and community want to discover effective practices
and innovative strategies that lead to real progress in
communities, in keeping with community goals and
vision. A focus on measuring impacts and outcomes
of campus-community partnerships may lead to the
ultimate benefit: the discovery of effective strategies
that lead to community progress and that may be
replicated elsewhere. The findings of monitoring and
measuring of engaged partnerships should be of use
to both campus and community.
Definitions of Community
Developing an understanding of what community
means to students, faculty, community partners, and
the institution is essential. Despite many years of
higher education working with communities, many
faculty and students continue to have a wide range
of perceptions of “who” the community is (Gelmon,
Holland, Seifer, Shinnamon, & Conners, 1998). As
greater attention is given to measurement of impact
on community, it has become clear that partner-
ships and their goals must be defined and evaluated
in order to develop a logical and effective process of
working together across organizations and sectors.
ASCV.indb 12
Contemporary understandings of partner­ships
are grounded in foundational work that is 20 years
old and continues to be relevant. Community–
university partnerships are “organic, complex, and
interdependent systems” (Sigmon, 1996). Partner‑
ships are rarely static, and they evolve and change as
a result of changes in personnel, focus, resource avail-
ability, organizational infrastructure, political forces,
and/or environmental circumstances. Partnerships
are best viewed from a systems perspective, recog-
nizing that a change affecting any partner is likely to
have an impact on multiple aspects of the partnership
(Gelmon, 1997a).
CCPH is one of the international organizations
that emphasizes the role and practice of partnerships.
According to CCPH, partnerships work best with
quality processes: relationship focused; open, honest,
respectful, and ethical; trust building; acknowledg-
ing of history; and committed to mutual learning and
sharing credit. In order to assess such partnerships,
one needs to develop mechanisms that will honestly
and accurately measure or observe these key ele-
ments. Further, partnerships should be designed and
managed to ensure meaningful outcomes that are
tangible and relevant to communities and defined by
the communities, such as creating affordable hous-
ing, ensuring a clinic offers convenient hours for
access to health services, developing relevant after-
school programs, and revitalizing rural economies
(CCPH, 2017). Finally, CCPH recommends view-
ing partnerships through a lens of transformative
experiences, including
• personal transformation of students, includ-
ing self-reflection and heightened political
consciousness;
• institutional transformation, including chang-
ing policies and systems;
• community transformation, including com-
munity capacity building;
• transformation of science and knowledge,
including how knowledge is generated, used,
and valued and what constitutes “evidence”
and “ethical practice”; and
• political transformation, including social
justice.
Principles of Partnerships
Over the last 15 years we have learned more about
what needs to be examined, and our view of eval-
uating community partnerships has changed.
27-08-2018 15:59:49

Institutions still struggle with how to get the rel-
evant information about partnerships, but the field
now understands more about the factors that con-
tribute to effective partnerships and the dynamics
of operationalizing a partnership that is mutual,
respectful, and beneficial to all participants. Core
principles of partnerships have been articulated
by multiple authors; one of the most robust and
widely accepted sets of principles is the Principles
of Partnerships (CCPH Board of Directors, 2013).
The original 1998 principles were very new at the
time we published the original handbook and, as a
result, were only minimally addressed in our early
assessment methods.
As the Principles of Partnerships have been
applied and interpreted by multiple organizations,
CCPH has periodically reviewed and updated
the principles to ensure these guiding statements
help individuals and organizations to understand
what makes partnerships work, sustain authen-
ticity, and achieve the change they want to see in
their community (CCPH Board of Directors, 2013).
The following 2013 principles are not intended to
be prescriptive but rather to serve as the basis for
discussion about creating and implementing part-
nerships—and in fact offer a template for creat-
ing institution-specific monitoring and evaluation
methods:
1. The partnership forms to serve a specific pur-
pose and may take on new goals over time.
2. The partnership agrees upon mission, values,
goals, measurable outcomes, and processes
for accountability.
3. The relationship between partners in the
partnership is characterized by mutual trust,
respect, genuineness, and commitment.
4. The partnership builds upon identified
strengths and assets, but also works to address
needs and increase capacity of all partners.
5. The partnership balances power among part-
ners and enables resources among partners to
be shared.
6. Partners make clear and open communica-
tion an ongoing priority in the partnership
by striving to understand each other’s needs
and self-interests and developing a common
language.
7. Principles and processes for the partnership
are established with the input and agreement
of all partners, especially for decision-making
and conflict resolution.
ASCV.indb 13
Reflections  13
8. There is feedback among all stakeholders in
the partnership, with the goal of continu-
ously improving the partnership and its
outcomes.
9. Partners share the benefits of the partnership’s
accomplishments.
10. Partnerships can dissolve, and when they do,
partners need to plan a process for closure.
11. Partnerships consider the nature of the
environment within which they exist as a
principle of their design, evaluation, and
sustainability.
12. The partnership values multiple kinds of
knowledge and life experiences. (CCPH
Board of Directors, 2013)
Each principle offers a basis for studying part-
nerships, necessitating consideration of multiple
perspectives and potentially leading to multiple
methods of evaluation to develop a 360-degree per-
spective. This framework can be used as the basis for
an institution to design its own evaluation strategy;
these have been used within methods such as the
CCPH institutional self-assessment of capacity for
community engagement (Gelmon et al., 2005). The
partnership principles have also been adapted by
organizations as a guiding framework for selection
of their own strategic partnerships; an example can
be found at Campus Compact (2016b).
Perspectives on Partnerships
Understanding partnerships and their outcomes
requires consideration of multiple perspectives. Fac-
ulty, students, community partners, and other insti-
tutional participants all come to partnerships with
different concerns and expectations, thus demanding
an intentional evaluation strategy (Holland, 2001a).
From the higher education perspective, considera-
tions include the viewpoints of students, faculty, and
institutional leaders, which must be placed in the
context of curricular offerings, research and schol-
arly projects, institutional development, student
affairs, alumni relations, faculty development, inter-
national affairs, and donor relations, among others.
Community partners that collaborate with higher
education institutions will have different assets and
needs depending on their organizational focus—and
the community context and areas of focus may deter-
mine which higher education institution and what
areas of campus expertise are central to the partner-
ship. As described, for example, in Barbara Jacoby’s
27-08-2018 15:59:49
 14  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
book on service-learning partnerships, advancing
service-learning (and other forms of community
engagement activities), requires “creation and sus-
tainability of a wide range of authentic, democratic,
reciprocal partnerships” (Jacoby et al., 2003, p. xviii).
The institution has a responsibility to work with mul-
tiple organizations, and not limit its sharing of exper-
tise and cocreation of knowledge.
The lack of a cohesive agenda around partner-
ships and the randomness of an individual fac-
ulty approach to a community means the body of
community-engaged work for a single institution is
difficult to document, much less measure impact.
Partnerships are often chaotic for an institution—
there are many and they may be productive, but
they are not always easily identified, in particular
because there may be different views about what is or
is not community engagement or engaged partner-
ships. Many institutions strive to develop an accurate
portrait of all the partnerships between the campus
and external entities. While institutions do not want
to stifle faculty engagement with communities by
instituting too many rules and policies, this lack of
coordination makes it nearly impossible to develop
an accurate portrait of overall activity that could be
the basis for creating a systematic and sustainable
approach to measuring the impact of the institution’s
collective impact on (and with) its communities. The
evaluation of partnerships requires careful attention
to processes of working together: coordination, col-
laboration, and cooperation. Multiple perspectives
need to be invited into the evaluation in order to
truly understand the collaborative work (Mattesich,
Murray-Close, & Monsey, 2001; Gajda, 2004).
Since partnerships may take so many differ-
ent forms and may arise out of a diversity of inten-
tions, it has become increasingly important for each
institution to create a categorization of the kinds of
partnerships that are common between commu-
nity organizations and their college and university
partners. The characteristics of these types of part-
nerships begin to frame some of the anticipated
outcomes. Consideration of community impact and
outcomes of partnerships needs to be linked to insti-
tutional mission and motivations, strategic goals for
teaching and research, and the role of engagement
with external sectors through intentional partner-
ships. While principles of partnerships provide a
common framework to guide campus-community
relationships and interactions, the agenda of engaged
partnerships will vary according to the alignment
of academic strengths and strategic goals of the
ASCV.indb 14
institution with the opportunities and strategic goals
of its surrounding communities. Thus, the agenda of
community engagement will vary across institutions,
creating significantly different kinds of partnerships
and focusing on different goals. However, adher-
ence to the core principles of community-campus
partnerships means it is possible to have common,
nationwide or even international scale systems for
data collection regarding community engaged part-
nerships and their impacts and outcomes.
Most work on partnerships has articulated
a two-way partnership: The partnership enables
the university to realize its goals with respect to
­community-based teaching and learning and ena-
bles the community organization to access university
resources and expertise in support of its activities
and mission attainment (Gelmon, 2003). A three-
way perspective on partnerships was operational-
ized in the Community–Higher Education–Service
Partnerships (CHESP) in South Africa, an initiative
that was established to actively engage higher edu-
cation institutions in the South African democratic
transition beginning in the late 1990s (Lazarus,
2007). The partnership was viewed as the unit of
transformation and consisted of a three-way inter-
action among historically disadvantaged commu-
nities, higher education institutions, and service
providers including nonprofit organizations and
government agencies. The ways in which the three
partners collectively accomplished their goals
was the focus for the evaluation of partnerships in
CHESP (Gelmon, 2003). In contrast, the SOFAR
model identifies five key constituencies of stakehold-
ers: students, organizations, faculty, administrators,
and residents, resulting in 10 dyadic relationships,
each with two vectors of communication and influ-
ence (Bringle, Clayton, & Price, 2009).
A scan of higher education institutional websites
shows increased use of the language of engagement,
often as part of an institutional plan (see the dis-
cussion in the Institutional sections in this chapter
and in chapter 6). Thus an understanding of com-
munity and partner impact must take into account
the goals, governance, operating principles, and
actual activities of these partnerships. Partnerships
may be launched by the university, by a commu-
nity organization addressing a specific issue, or by
other institutions such as government or philan-
thropy. These latter groups may have more capacity
and influence to convene groups to address issues
that no one else is working on and create synergy
across multiple sectors of a community to foster
27-08-2018 15:59:49

communication and problem-solving. Evaluating
a partnership program such as Partners Investing
in Nursing’s Future (PIN) built on the PSU model
of partnership assessment, creating a robust evalu-
ation and monitoring system that helped to docu-
ment community development partnerships across
multiple sectors in multiple communities across
the United States (Norman, Gelmon, & Ryan, 2014;
Ladden, Hassmiller, Maher, & Reinhardt, 2014).
Evaluating multiple partnerships across different
communities and contexts can pose measurement
challenges. The creation of a conceptual framework
as described in the original handbook can help to
bridge these differences. Core concepts can relate to
areas such as partnership development and manage-
ment, creation of sustainable solutions to the initial
issue identified, value of program participation, and
perceptions of the evolving roles and contributions
of the various partners. The CCPH partnership prin-
ciples, previously cited, can inform design of such an
evaluation, helping to focus on issues important to
the partners. The findings from the PIN evaluation
relevant to partnership development, management,
and sustainability identified key insights related
to use of an effective collaboration model; involve-
ment of a neutral convener; attention to the phases
of development of the partnerships; creation of a
defined structure and operating principles; focus on
priority issues; attention to sustainability; and cred-
ibility and visibility (Norman et al., 2014). Strategies
for partnership evaluation need to focus on the spe-
cific context of the partnership and its goals, from
which one can explore how the partnership contrib-
utes to the outcomes and impact.
An Institutional Example of Partnership
Structures
Some institutions are trying to systematically track
their partnerships to document an understanding of
the range of activities and relationships, to identify
Figure 1.1. PSU Engagement and Partnership Spectrum.
PSU ENGAGEMENT AND PARTNERSHIP SPECTRUM
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
Community-Based Cocurricular
Teaching & Learning Student Engagement
COURSE-BASED SERVICE-BASED
ASCV.indb 15
Reflections  15
patterns of interaction, and to provide support of
various kinds. An example is the Engagement and
Partnership Spectrum created at PSU in 2012 (Flynn,
2015). The spectrum (Figure 1.1) has allowed the uni-
versity to categorize and define its partnership activi-
ties and to track activities according to partnership
types and diverse sectors and audiences in the com-
munity. This spectrum is a relevant tool for what PSU
was trying to accomplish (Portland State University,
2017b); it may or may not be adaptable in other insti-
tutional contexts.
PSU is an urban-serving university that
celebrates its motto “Let Knowledge Serve the City”
by animating student and faculty experiences with
engagement opportunities that bring the campus
community into applied teaching, learning, and
research settings in partnership with community
organizations. Engagement work ranges from small-
scale projects with short-term objectives to larger
projects carried out over several years and involving
students and faculty from multiple courses, schools,
and colleges. The diversity of community-university
partnerships reinforces the need to develop an under-
standing for the nuances associated with developing
authentic relationships between communities and
institutions of higher learning.
At PSU, partnerships often focus on student
learning and are supported by an individual faculty
member. Evaluation of community impact is deter-
mined by the community partner and faculty mem-
ber involved in the partnership. Assessment measures
often focus on number of attendees, number of hours
served, and accomplishments at the partner site on
a specific activity. Student employment and profes-
sional application illustrate the professional compe-
tency of students developed through the partnership,
possibly through practicum requirements for profes-
sional programs or internship placements. Assess-
ment of these individual student experiences often
requires students to demonstrate learning through a
portfolio, presentation, or reflective paper.
RESEARCH &
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
SPONSORED PROJECTS
Student Employment Regional Business
State & Local
& &
Research and Service
Professional Application Civic Partners
WORK-BASED CONTRACTUAL INSTITUTION-WIDE
27-08-2018 15:59:49
 16  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
Community level measurement typically is done
by tracking the number of professional placements
a partner hosts from year to year. State and local
research and service partnerships include funded
and unfunded research and professional training
agreements that respond to a local or regional con-
cern. Memoranda of understanding and/or funded
contracts with defined deliverables often guide these
partnerships and facilitate tracking of these partner-
ships. Finally, regional business and civic partners
reflect strategic institutional partnerships with a
defined governing structure that includes representa-
tives from the university and the community partner.
PSU created a Partnership Council to fulfill PSU’s
goal of “Civic Leadership Through Partnerships.” The
council is made up of faculty and administrative staff
from schools/colleges, staff from student services,
and representatives of the alumni association. The
council is a means to organize and mobilize inter-
nal campus practices and systems to strengthen and
sustain the community engagement activities. Often,
community engagement advisory groups are cre-
ated in the perhaps misguided belief that they will
be the bridge between the institutions and the mul-
tiple community partners, but it is rare that they can
articulate the wider community perspective (Feld,
2002). PSU has opted to engage community partner
voice and power-sharing systems at the project level
rather than the institutional level to create a govern-
ing body with a collective voice for the advancement
of partnerships and engagement at PSU.
Partnerships Using Innovative Approaches
An important opportunity to improve capacity to
gather quality data about partnerships and community
impacts and outcomes is now emerging across higher
education in three forms: collective impact, geograph-
ically defined partnerships, and shared spaces.
As noted in the Institutional section of this chap-
ter and in chapter 6, many institutions are developing
a focused agenda of engagement. While individual
partnerships and projects certainly continue, some
institutions are identifying one or more broad themes
where the intent is to work with community partners
to develop specific, complementary projects. Such an
approach considers the multiple aspects of a com-
munity issue, the current conditions and opportuni-
ties, and draws on multidisciplinary expertise across
the institution and community. By developing a
focused plan, benchmarks or goals can be designed
that will frame evaluation of strategies, impacts and
ASCV.indb 16
outcomes. For example, the Strive Together initia-
tive, now operating in many U.S. cities, brings higher
education, schools, community organizations, and
others together to support school readiness for all
children (Strive Together, 2017). This example uses
the principles of collective impact theory (Kania &
Kramer, 2011), which are of growing interest as a way
to organize partnerships intent on producing suc-
cessful results. This model is predicated on the the-
ory that large-scale social change efforts demand a
cross-sectoral response. A more intentional focus on
an agenda of engagement creates the opportunity to
concentrate efforts in ways that may lead to or accel-
erate desired results.
PSU's Sustainable Neighborhood Initiative (SNI)
uses a structured approach to neighborhood part-
nerships in geographically defined neighborhoods
throughout the city. PSU staff work with a coalition
of community partners to identify a set of inde-
pendent and interconnected community projects
that are linked to students and faculty. The evalua-
tion of SNI partnerships is focused on community
partner project outputs and outcomes (Beaudoin &
Sherman, 2016). An evaluation approach that is
focused on outputs that are of primary interest to
community partners may focus on outputs that have
limited value within the academy and its traditional
reward structures. This works against the mutually
beneficial goals inherent in community-engaged
scholarship. Shaping measurement concepts to guide
what both the community partner and the educa-
tional institution want to know about the impact of
the partnership becomes essential.
Another strategy for advancing partnership rela-
tionships and their intended results is the idea of
shared spaces. In this model, the institution and com-
munity work together to create a vision for a physical
facility that will be a hub of collaboration and inter-
action. The HUD Community Outreach Partnership
Centers (COPC) grant program in the 1990s encour-
aged higher education institutions to be present in
their partner neighborhoods. By being present and
sharing the same space every day, partnerships could
deepen and become stronger and more effective. The
COPC grant program required campus and commu-
nity collaboration in planning activities of the grant,
and associated measures that would be tracked. Case
studies can be found at the HUD website (US HUD
Community Outreach Partnership Centers, 2017).
The University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO)
opened the Barbara Weitz Community Engage-
ment Center in 2014. It is a purpose-designed and
27-08-2018 15:59:49

-built facility for community engagement that offers
a public meeting space, dedicated parking for the
community, a wide variety of community meeting
rooms, and an abundance of community-generated
art. It houses several UNO units relating to commu-
nity engagement and nearly 30 community partner
organizations. Guided by a cocreated set of values
and operating principles, this facility is succeeding
in its goal to make the entire campus more accessi-
ble and welcoming to the community and to deepen
partnerships through daily interactions (University
of Nebraska Omaha, 2017).
Another model of shared space is the concept of
a “community storefront.” For example, the Univer-
sity of Technology Sydney Shopfront (UTS Shopfront,
in Australia) was founded in 1996 as a small, cross-­
disciplinary initiative to strengthen university and
community collaboration. Since then it has delivered
more than 900 community projects and supports many
community-engaged research partnerships (Univer-
sity of Technology Sydney, 2017). One of the measures
of success of UTS Shopfront is the number of partner-
ships; the website states that this has been achieved “by
cooperation with all stakeholders, partnerships with
community organisations, efficient resource manage-
ment, and working for joint outcomes.”
Other institutions have created similar facilities
that foster community and campus dialogue and
partnerships. The University Research and Outreach
Center (UROC) at the University of Minnesota was
founded in 2006 as a convening place for the Univer-
sity Northside Partnership (University of Minnesota,
2016). The UROC building provides university fac-
ulty and staff with office space in north Minneapo-
lis for collaborative outreach and research programs
reflecting community-identified priorities in the
areas of education and training, family and commu-
nity health, and economic development.
Using Data Systems to Monitor and Track
Partnership Activity
Many other campuses around the country have
developed electronic tracking systems that capture
the nuances and impacts of their community part-
nerships. Unique data tracking systems that are
developed by existing or uniquely local software
design firms often do not effectively interface with
established campus data systems. These boutique
systems have typically failed because of the lack of
technical support and the inability of campuses to
update and increase usability as newer technological
ASCV.indb 17
Reflections  17
systems become available. In recent years, multiple
commercial and nonprofit software firms have begun
to develop partnership and engagement tracking sys-
tems for use by campuses. These electronic systems
can be an important method of tracking, document-
ing, and evaluating community partner activities.
Locally designed systems require institutions to
bear the full costs of software development, refine-
ment, and maintenance and may not support larger
efforts to benchmark or conduct research across
institutions. The University of North Carolina at
Greensboro (UNCG) created its own tracking system
through its Institute for Community and Economic
Engagement (ICEE) (University of North Caro-
lina Greensboro, 2017). ICEE launched a systematic
analysis of community engagement activities within
each school, college, and unit, and decided to create
its own database for partnership tracking (E. Janke,
personal communication, 2016). Staff developed a
custom, online, publicly viewable, relational database
that allowed each faculty and staff member to enter
descriptive records of all their engagement activities
including information about partnerships, activi-
ties, goals, and outcomes. The database connected
to the university’s student and employee data track-
ing and user authentication systems. After less than
a year using the online system, UNCG licensed the
system to a private software vendor to address ongo-
ing internal costs related to updates, modifications,
and security, as well as the desire to expand collec-
tion and reporting functionality and facilitate usage
by other institutions for benchmarking and research.
Indiana University–Purdue University Indian-
apolis (IUPUI) has a history of assessment that has
evolved over time and resulted in greater attention
to tracking of partnerships as part of understand-
ing a larger narrative about community engagement.
IUPUI started by counting service-learning courses,
including the number of students, hours, faculty, and
partners. Counting courses ultimately led to ques-
tions about faculty work and the process of devel-
oping and sustaining partnerships; ultimately, a
“home-grown” system was created to capture infor-
mation about courses to further explore process.
Recently, IUPUI reexamined how faculty, students,
and staff engaged with the community (e.g., courses,
projects, research, economic development, technical
training/assistance), and was faced with the challenge
of information in multiple places and the inability to
tell a comprehensive story of engagement. It has now
focused on gathering information that helps to dem-
onstrate how community engagement is a strategy
27-08-2018 15:59:50
 18  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
through which it achieves institutional mission and
goals (K. Norris, personal communication, 2016).
Inspired by the work done by IUPUI and UNCG,
PSU identified the need for improved tracking and
documentation of partnership activities. It has opted
to document and evaluate a cross-section of part-
nerships across the campus in each of the partner-
ship categories defined in the Partnership Spectrum
(Portland State University, 2017b; see also Figure
1.1). It decided to adopt the use of an electronic sys-
tem for partnership documentation and evaluation.
Public-facing data will become available in the future.
Whatever the perspective or motivation for gath-
ering data, each institution’s primary challenge is to
gather comprehensive information of a c­onsistent
nature and to ensure it is always current. These
data management systems help institutions to track
important engagement activities that include ser-
vice-learning courses, cocurricular service projects,
community research activities, and other commu-
nity-engaged events that are done in partnership with
a community organization. Including all engagement
activities within a single system allows the commu-
nity and the institution to better understand the vari-
ety of engagement occurring and creates a means to
expand partnerships between faculty and community
partners involved in similar activities. Maintenance
and sustainability of such a system likely requires
providing dedicated infrastructure (staff time) to dis-
tribute instruments, gather/analyze results, and cre-
ate meaningful use of the data findings.
An Internet search will reveal many differ-
ent data collection systems and products that pro-
pose to help collect data on one or more aspects of
volunteering, service-learning, events, partnerships,
and other related activities that may be relevant to
community engagement. Some are free and rela-
tively simple, and others are complex enough to cre-
ate detailed and sophisticated sets of data. Some are
specialized, and others are quite broad. There are a
wide variety of tools with very different features. Selec-
tion of one of these online systems or tools for moni-
toring and/or measuring objectives requires time to
evaluate any system of interest. Suggested steps for
evaluation of these systems include the following:
• Talk with leaders in your institution and part-
ner networks to explore their goals and inter-
ests in data collection.
• Consider what questions they have, in what
ways the data would be used, what goals
would be informed, what budget is avail-
able, who would manage the system and the
ASCV.indb 18
communications with audiences, who will
enter data, who will analyze data, and so on.
• Use this analysis of needs, goals, and assets to
assess different tools or systems to determine
the best match for local context and budget.
• If a particular system seems of interest, ask
for references at institutions currently using
the product and talk with them about how it
works and how they use it.
It is beyond the scope of this handbook to make
any recommendation regarding any one software
approach or method. No one system is going to work
for everyone; each institution needs to do its own
research and find the software or system that will
work best for its needs.
What Do We Want to Know About
Community Impact and Partnerships?
In order to understand the impact of community
partnerships, consider those factors or conditions
that are to be transformed, strengthened, and accom-
plished as a result of the partnership. Key questions
and considerations that one might ask include the
following:
• What is the focus of the partnership? How
does that frame the type of measurement that
is important to understanding impact or out-
comes?
• What difference does the partnership make?
To whom?
• What are the key strategies or interventions?
• Who/what is the community and what base-
line knowledge exists?
• What is relevant to study in terms of leader-
ship, communication, and resources?
• What expertise may be needed to move for-
ward?
• What data are being collected already? What
additional data are needed? How will the data
inform continuous improvement of the part-
nership?
• Are the assessment interests different for
community partners than they are for the
educational institution? Are strategies being
employed to make sure both perspectives are
addressed?
• Does a university presence in engaged work
in a specific neighborhood result in greater
employment and involvement in that com-
munity?
27-08-2018 15:59:50
 Reflections  19

Resources • Workforce Partnership Guidance Tool.

National Fund for Workforce Solutions
Various models of understanding community
(http://nfwsolutions.org/sites/nfwsolutions
impact and partnerships have been articulated, and
.org/files/publications/NFWS_workforce_
the reader is encouraged to select one—or develop
guidance_tool_111110.pdf)
new methods—by carefully considering local con-
• Collaboration Factors Inventory. Wilder
text, goals, and vision, and then articulating the
Research, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation
evaluation plan in this context. Existing tools may
(http://www.wilder.org/Wilder-Research/
be used for understanding what works about the
Publications/Studies/Collaboration%20
collaboration (i.e., the process) or for understand-
Factors%20Inventory/Collaboration%20
ing the impact of the collaboration (outputs and
Factors%20Inventory.pdf).
outcomes).
Readers may wish to consider the work of Taylor-
Powell, Rossing, and Geran (1998) that emphasizes
the phases of a collaboration: the first phase, “form Faculty
and focus,” emphasizes getting started; the second
The most substantial change in faculty-focused
phase, “organize and act,” is about the process; and
resources regarding community engagement over
the third phase, “achieve and transform,” is about
the past 15 years has been in developing, demonstrat-
results. Woodland and Hutton (2012) describe a stra-
ing, and assessing the depth and rigor of engaged
tegic alliance formative assessment rubric, which
scholarship. In the past, community engagement as
articulates four levels of integration of the alliance
a form of scholarship was not always considered in
or partnership, and for each outlines purpose, strate-
promotion and tenure processes and was often seen
gies and tasks, leadership and decision-making, and
as service. Individual faculty adopted engagement
interpersonal communication. Himmelman (2004)
methods if they were of interest to their academic
presents an alternative approach for understanding
work and interests; few institutions had coherent
and evaluating coalition strategies for collaboration,
agendas of partnerships or a detailed strategic plan
articulating characteristics of level of integration,
or vision for engagement’s purposes (though many
networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collabo-
aspired to do so). Today, engagement is more widely
rating. Each of these may offer a useful starting point
accepted as a scholarly methodology and a strat-
for considering how to approach partnership evalu-
egy for teaching and research (Holland, 2016; Furco
ation. Some specific examples of surveys of part-
& Holland, 2013). As institutions have embraced
nerships are presented in a guide on partnerships
engagement through explicit criteria in personnel
authored by the Commonwealth Corporation (2013).
review processes, faculty now are reviewed for the
A number of resources are available that include
quality of their community engagement activities—
organizational frameworks and evaluation tools that
in teaching and learning, and in research and
might be useful in developing a partnership assess-
scholarship.
ment. Among these are the following:

• The Partnership Toolbox. World Wildlife Fed- Changing Faculty Demographics

eration WWF-UK (http://www.wwf.org.uk/
wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=3211)
• The Partnerships Analysis Tool for Part-
ners in Health Promotion. Victorian Health
Promotion Foundation, Victoria, Australia
(https://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/media-
and-resources/publications/the-partnerships-
analysis-tool)
• Collaborative Partnerships Evaluation Tool.
South Australian Community Health
Research Unit (http://som.flinders.edu.au/
FUSA/SACHRU/Toolkit/PDF/3.pdf )
• Measuring Partnerships for Impact (http://
measurepartnershipsforimpact.strikingly
.com/)
and Culture
Some of the increased attention to community-
engaged scholarship is being fueled by the large-scale
transformation of the faculty workforce. For the first
time in several decades, many colleges and univer-
sities are experiencing growing numbers of faculty
retirements and/or enrollment growth that are cre-
ating the opportunity to hire significant numbers
of new faculty who largely represent Generations X
and Y. Many of these faculty may have experienced
service-learning in school or college or, reflecting the
values of their generation, they often demonstrate a
strong motivation to apply their education toward
amelioration of challenges and threats to local and

ASCV.indb 19 27-08-2018 15:59:50

 20  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
global communities (O’Meara, Eatman, & Peterson,
2015; Trower, 2010). These new-generation faculty
are highly collaborative, see teaching and research as
connected activities, and value a transparent review
process and interdisciplinary work, among other
new and more diverse academic values (Trower,
2006, 2012).
Faculty culture is changing to be more accepting
of engaged scholarship across a wide array of disci-
plines. This acceptance is a positive force in terms of
renewal or expansion of research interests, increased
attention to interdisciplinary collaboration, and a
broadened view of the scope and methods of faculty
work that are embodied and rewarded in tenure and
promotion policies. Today, there is great diversity
across higher education regarding recognition and
valuation of community engagement integrated into
scholarly work. However, in some institutions faculty
are still often rewarded more for publishing a paper
in a traditional academic journal or receiving grant
funding than for contributing to innovations that
lead to meaningful societal change (Gelmon, Jordan,
& Seifer, 2013a).
Academic culture does not change quickly. In
2001, the dominant feature of academic culture across
all types of colleges and universities was a focus on
individual performance based on a review of indi-
vidual faculty work. This review would be conducted
in a context of specific, separate activities relating
to the individual’s contributions and achievements
relating to teaching, research, and service. This cul-
ture of individualistic work, segregated into three
“buckets” of activity, was formed in the mid-
twentieth century when higher education as a sec-
tor was growing rapidly, research was expanding
dramatically as a primary activity, and thousands
of new faculty were entering the workforce. Look-
ing to create a system that would hopefully be both
equitable and efficient, academic policies related
to career progress and review of performance were
organized around a process controlled mostly at the
department and college level with a focus on indi-
vidual performance within each of the three separate
domains of academic work: teaching, research, and
service (Orton & Weick, 1990).
This culture of individualism affected all types of
institutions and persists today. The dominance of this
approach was extensive and was sustained by a com-
petitive, peer-reviewed approach to academic jour-
nals and federal grant funding. Solo work and solo
papers were revered. Even some institutions with
teaching-intensive missions tended to reward faculty
ASCV.indb 20
primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed research
publications and/or research grants. This singular
model persisted, in part, because membership in
the faculty workforce has been remarkably stable for
nearly 40 years. As economic strain has deepened in
higher education, the percentage of tenure-track fac-
ulty has declined and the intensity of focus on getting
a tenure-track position and achieving tenure is still
a major career objective for many faculty (Furco &
Holland, 2013).
However, the culture of individualism is now
fading in the face of new priorities and strategies. In
large part, these changes have several broad purposes,
including development of a new financial model for
higher education, a balanced relationship between
teaching and research, and a renewed view of the
relevance of higher education to public problem-
solving. Change is being fueled by a number of
forces. For example, major federal funders (National
Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health,
etc.) now favor research grants that involve teams of
multidisciplinary and multisector perspectives to
examine multidimensional and complex questions
and issues. The need to improve student learning,
progress, and graduation rates requires transforma-
tion of curriculum and greater diversity of learning
methods and pathways, including large increases in
opportunities for experiential learning, including
multiple forms of community-based learning.
Community-Engaged Scholarship
Community-engaged scholarship (CES) is thriving
in this environment because it is a method that natu-
rally involves multisectoral and multidisciplinary
lenses through internal and external partnerships
and contributes to effective teaching, learning, and
research. Some institutions now identify the value
they place on CES in position announcements. Qual-
ity engagement practices are increasingly less random
and more strategic in their contribution to campus
strategic goals as well as community progress.
As previously mentioned, as a result of a more
strategic view of engagement, an approach that is
of growing interest today is a focus on a small set of
“grand challenges” (Bill & Melinda Gates Founda-
tion, 2016). A broad focus on a few local and global
challenges helps faculty learn to work together, break
down academic silos, and recognize the many dif-
ferent disciplinary lenses that must be involved to
discover solutions and strategies for complex issues.
This also helps to avoid sequencing activities around
27-08-2018 15:59:50

the dominant influence of the academic calendar
or schedules for grants and publications and gives
greater attention to the actual flow of work and dis-
covery in partnership with community. This type of
focused agenda inherently requires attention to the
inclusion of engaged methodologies and often leads
to increased funding opportunities and research pro-
ductivity, while also generating measurable commu-
nity benefits. This emerging practice holds promise
for articulating a clear framework for each institu-
tion to identify specific internal and external out-
comes and benchmarks (with community input).
Such an approach would greatly expand the ability
of any campus to accurately measure and analyze
its impacts and outcomes on participants from each
constituency involved.
Creating greater clarity in the definition of
community engagement has helped facilitate an
understanding of it as a method of teaching, learning,
and research—a form of scholarly work (Holland,
2008). The concept of CES combines the principles
of community engagement with accepted standards
of scholarship. CES is a method that involves com-
munity members and academic scholars working
together in a collaborative and mutually beneficial
partnership to explore questions of mutual interest
(Commission on Community-Engaged Scholarship
in the Health Professions, 2005). Mutually beneficial
means that the outputs of CES will be varied and use-
ful to both the community and the advancement of
knowledge and education (Gelmon, Holland, Seifer,
Shinnamon, & Connors, 1998). Thus high-quality
CES work will result in both traditional and non-
traditional representations of the work when a fac-
ulty member goes through performance review. The
challenge is that many faculty serving on promotion
and tenure review panels are not practitioners of
community-engaged teaching and research methods.
Therefore, institutions seeking to recognize CES as a
scholarly method have begun to change both their
policy frameworks and their approach to profes-
sional development for promotion andtenure com-
mittee members so as to ensure their ability to review
CES.
In CES the typical concerns of peer review,
focused on rigorous methods, participant risks and
benefits, and the significance of findings for the field,
are complemented by equivalent concerns for the
quality of the engagement process, community-level
ethical considerations, and benefit to the commu-
nity (Jordan, Wong, & Jungnickel, 2009). Commu-
nity engagement in and of itself is not necessarily
ASCV.indb 21
Reflections  21
scholarship; the work must use a scholarly approach,
be grounded in work that has come before, and docu-
ment the work through products that can be dissemi-
nated and subjected to critique (i.e., peer review, but
potentially by a range of peers from a variety of con-
texts) (Jordan, Seifer, Sandmann, & Gelmon, 2009).
National Initiatives Shaping Faculty
Engagement and Culture
The legitimacy of engaged teaching and scholar-
ship has gained additional recognition and credibil-
ity through national initiatives that began to define
excellence in faculty engagement. These research
projects and national professional networks have
provided faculty with external benchmarks for their
engagement activities. Three examples of large initia-
tives that have focused attention related to engage-
ment specifically are CCPH activities in support of
community-engaged scholarship, the work of IA, and
the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification.
CCPH convened the W. K. Kellogg ­Foundation-
funded Commission on Community-Engaged
Scholarship in the Health Professions in 2003 to
provide national leadership for change. The Com-
mission issued a landmark report, Linking Schol-
arship and Communities, that called upon health
professional schools and their national associations
to align their faculty review, promotion and tenure
systems with CES and offered practical strategies
for change (Commission on Community-Engaged
Scholarship in the Health Professions, 2005). CCPH
subsequently launched the Community-Engaged
Scholarship for Health Collaborative in 2006, sup-
ported by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsec-
ondary Education (FIPSE). The collaborative had an
explicit focus on aligning the schools’ review, promo-
tion, and tenure policies and practices with the rec-
ognition and reward of CES (Seifer, Wong, Gelmon,
& Lederer, 2009).
Another FIPSE-funded project, Faculty for the
Engaged Campus, enabled CCPH to develop, test,
and launch CES4Health in 2009, an online portal
for the peer review and dissemination of nontra-
ditional products of community-engaged scholar-
ship (Jordan et al., 2009). Today, CES4Health has
peer-reviewed and published over 80 nontraditional
products of scholarship, providing a venue for fac-
ulty to “get credit” for their CES and to disseminate
valuable products of scholarship that may have more
relevance for the communities of interest than tradi-
tional academic journals (CES4Health, 2016a).
27-08-2018 15:59:50
 22  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
IA has developed scholarly communities called
Collaboratories to leverage IA’s intellectual and
creative capital by drawing on the expertise of a
diverse group of investigators from the consortium.
The primary goal of the Collaboratories has been
to incubate and nurture scholarly work through
exploration of shared interests. One of IA’s areas of
study has been the Publicly Engaged Scholars Study,
which explores the graduate school experiences and
career aspirations and decisions of students and
early career faculty and staff (Imagining America,
n.d.).
The recognition of engagement as a form of
scholarship has also been enhanced by the Carnegie
Community Engagement Classification, discussed
in detail in the Institution section of this handbook.
The desire to obtain the classification has created a
strategic incentive for institutions to recognize the
strategic value of engaged teaching, learning, and
research in improving institutional performance
as well as the need to revise policies and prac-
tices around faculty involvement in engagement
to ensure effective review and rewards for quality
work. The Classification application requires institu-
tions to describe their policies and practices regard-
ing rewards for engaged faculty. Such changes also
acknowledge the growing diversity of the new gen-
eration of faculty, who are introducing new method-
ologies of teaching and research, including, but not
limited to, engaged scholarship (O’Meara, Eatman,
& Peterson, 2015).
Venues for Peer Review and Dissemination
Faculty value the opportunity to publish and dis-
seminate their scholarly work. Venues for dissemi-
nation of community-engaged scholarship through
refereed journals have increased greatly since 2001.
A search for journals focused specifically on civic
and/or community engagement identified 38 dif-
ferent journals (L. Sandmann, personal commu-
nication, 2016). The search also identified another
63 disciplinary- or topic-specific scholarly journals
and 12 higher education-oriented journals and news
outlets that publish papers and stories about engage-
ment. These publications include U.S. and interna-
tional journals.
New scholarly conferences have also devel-
oped as venues for peer review and dissemination.
IARSLCE, described in the introductory section,
has become not only an annual venue for presenting
ASCV.indb 22
community engagement scholarship but also a
prominent opportunity for graduate students to
meet and network with senior faculty as well as other
developing scholars and jointly develop knowledge.
Similarly, the Engagement Scholarship Consortium,
Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universi-
ties, various Campus Compact affiliates, and disci-
plinary associations have created opportunities for
dissemination of CES.
Nontraditional venues for the peer review and
dissemination of scholarly products have also grown
in numbers, illustrated by three examples. The
evaluation process for peer review and publication
in CES4Health (2016b) uses a modification of the
Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff (1997) criteria for
scholarship. The peer review process used mimics
the traditional journal review process but is more
rigorous, including reviewer training, detailed
quantitative and qualitative analyses, short review
time, and editor-generated letters of recognition to
enhance the value of the resource. CES4Health seeks
for authors to demonstrate and document authen-
tic collaborations, sharing credit with community
partners; the use of a scholarly approach to ground
community-engaged work in scholarship that has
come before; the utility of the product to others;
quality and rigor in the context of the work con-
ducted; and the real or potential impact of the work.
Multimedia Education Resource for Learning
and Online Teaching (MERLOT) is a program of
the California State University System partnering
with education institutions, professional socie-
ties, and industry (MERLOT, 2016). It is a curated
collection of free and open online teaching, learn-
ing, and faculty development services contributed
and used by an international education commu-
nity. As MERLOT has evolved since 1998, its lead-
ers have developed evaluation standards and peer
review processes for online teaching-learning
material. Materials are submitted, evaluated, and
results are reported; MERLOT members can also
comment on materials leading to crowd-sourced
reviews.
MedEd Portal (2016) is another example of a
nontraditional peer review mechanism, a program
of the Association of American Medical Colleges in
partnership with the American Dental Education
Association and the American Psychological Asso-
ciation. It was established to promote educational
scholarship and collaboration by facilitating the open
exchange of peer-reviewed health education teaching
27-08-2018 15:59:50

and assessment resources. It is a free, open-access
publication service disseminating scholarly works
that are considered stand-alone or complete teaching
or learning modules that have been classroom tested
and are ready for implementation by users at their
own institutions. Each submission is peer reviewed
using a standardized review instrument grounded in
the tenets of educational scholarship.
Each of these examples provides an illustration
of how peer review mechanisms are evolving and
thus providing more vehicles for the review and
dissemination of products of community-engaged
scholarship. As emphasized in the Carnegie Classi-
fication application and in these examples, profes-
sional development for faculty reviewers, department
chairs, and deans is necessary in order to equip them
with skills and rubrics to evaluate and value the CES
submissions of their faculty colleagues (Gelmon,
Jordan, & Seifer, 2013b).
What Do We Want to Know
Today About Faculty?
There are a number of questions that may be asked
about faculty and community engagement. Some
new questions, beyond those we asked in the original
handbook, include the following:
• How are junior faculty seeking to change aca-
demic culture and strategies for dissemina-
tion?
• Do engaged partnerships involve faculty from
multiple disciplines; why or why not?
• In what ways have departments or institutions
sought input and feedback from community
partners in faculty review processes? How
useful and effective are these methods?
• Do faculty seek to publish their engaged work
in different venues than the other scholarly
work they do; why or why not?
• Has teaching in ways that involve both faculty
and students working in collaboration with
community partners changed teaching styles?
• Do engaged faculty become involved in other
types of interdisciplinary scholarship in addi-
tion to engaged work?
• Is involvement in engagement affecting fac-
ulty career paths (time to promotion, overall
productivity, longevity in one place, or mobil-
ity across academic institutions or other sec-
tors, etc.)?
ASCV.indb 23
Reflections  23
Resources
For many faculty, the key to documenting and
disseminating the evidence of their community-
engaged teaching and scholarship will be finding
the “best fit” strategy for their personal situation to
demonstrate the value of their work. In some cases,
this will occur in the manner by which individuals
describe and format their work in a portfolio for
professional personnel review: using new technolo-
gies and software, creating digital portfolios via a
website, and structuring information to respond to
criteria that may be campus-based in tenure and
promotion policies or integrated into external peer
review mechanisms. Faculty may be unaware of
resources that exist on their own campus, so it is
imperative that these resources (for teaching and
learning, faculty scholarship, coordination of part-
nerships, or other support) be visible and available
to faculty.
Some of the resources that may be of use to fac-
ulty include the following:
• CES toolkit on Community-Engaged Schol-
arship: http://communityengagedscholarship
.info
• Online Database of Faculty Mentors & Portfo-
lio Reviewers: http://facultydatabase.info
• Research University Community Engage-
ment Network: http://compact.org/
initiatives/trucen/research-university-
engaged-scholarship-toolkit/
• UNCG, two volumes on Excellence in
­Community Engagement and
Community-Engaged Scholarship:
https://­communityengagement.uncg.edu/
publications-reports/
Students
When the first edition of this handbook was pub-
lished in 2001, research highlighting the need for
educational and curricular reforms in higher educa-
tion was growing and would soon lead to important
new visions and frameworks for student learning.
A focus on learning outcomes and curricular inno-
vations increased the attention given to service-
learning as a pedagogy. The Association of American
Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) was on the verge
of publishing Greater Expectations: A New Vision
27-08-2018 15:59:50
 24  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
of Learning as a Nation Goes to College (Ramaley &
Leakes, 2002). This publication was born out of a
national discussion about the need to transform edu-
cation so that graduates were better prepared to live
and work productively in the twenty-first century.
Many of the recommendations focused on the need
for educational programs that are engaging, practi-
cal, integrative, and analytical. By 2002, some insti-
tutions, such as PSU, had already transformed many
of their educational programs to reflect the recom-
mendations outlined in Greater Expectations, but
with its publication more colleges and universities
began looking for ways to bring student engagement,
applied, and integrative learning into their programs
(Schneider, 2002).
After the 2008 economic recession, the higher
education sector came under greater scrutiny regard-
ing the costs, value, and efficiency of undergradu-
ate education. Online learning grew rapidly, and
external forces pushed for faster and shorter degree
programs. Part of the higher education response to
these and related pressures was to increase learning
effectiveness by improving student access to diverse
forms of experiential learning as a form of learning
that is central to the educational experience. This
increased institutional commitment to community-
based learning models and the assessment of learn-
ing outcomes for students. As a result, there has been
a growing tendency to use the term community-based
learning as opposed to service-learning, because in
some institutions service-learning is seen as spe-
cifically focused on civic and social responsibility
(Welch & Saltmarsh, 2013). Regardless of the name,
these forms of learning are also increasingly blended
with undergraduate research, internships, practice,
clinical studies, and global learning experiences as
reflected in their inclusion in High-Impact Practices
(Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2011).
Service-Learning as a High-Impact Practice
In 2008, an annotated bibliography of the large body
of research on the impact of service-learning on stu-
dent retention (Simonet, 2008) further cemented
national understanding of this teaching and learn-
ing strategy as a high-impact practice (HIP) (Kuh et
al., 2011). By 2010, AAC&U was strongly advocating
the use of 10 HIPs (Kuh & O’Donnell, 2013), includ-
ing first-year seminars, common intellectual expe-
riences, learning communities, writing-intensive
courses, collaborative assignments, service-learning,
undergraduate research, global learning, internships,
ASCV.indb 24
and capstone courses. Inclusion of engaging and
active pedagogies clearly signaled service-­learning as
a HIP, further elevated the importance of the peda-
gogy, and increased adoption of its usage within
domestic and international higher education institu-
tions. AAC&U documented the outcomes of service-
learning including citing academic achievement,
civic engagement, and personal growth as three
organizing categories of impact.
An example of the application of HIPs is found
at Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU devel-
oped a systematic institutional assessment model to
investigate the impact of high-impact educational
practices on undergraduate student success (Pelco &
Baab, 2016). This HIP Assessment Model aligns with
VCU’s strategic and quality enhancement plans as
well as with theory and best practice in higher educa-
tion assessment (Astin, 1993). The model uses insti-
tutional data (derived from the Banner system) and
program data (i.e., surveys and direct assessments)
to answer assessment questions in three categories
that are linked to institutional objectives for student
learning. Category 1 investigates the degree to which
diverse and underrepresented diverse students par-
ticipate in HIPs (VCU’s Inclusive Excellence Objec-
tive). Category 2 researches whether participating in
VCU HIPs increases students’ retention and gradu-
ation rates (VCU’s Degree Completion Objective).
Category 3 explores the relationship between VCU
HIPs participation and student learning and devel-
opment (VCU’s Quality of Learning Objective).
In 2015, AAC&U celebrated its 100th anniver-
sary with the publication of a bold vision for higher
education called The LEAP Challenge: Education
for a World of Unscripted Problems (AAC&U, 2015).
AAC&U made the case for a post-secondary educa-
tion that “prepares students to understand and man-
age complexity, diversity, and change” (p. 1). The most
important aspect of this educational proposition
was that “students apply knowledge in a real world
­setting” (p. 1). This vision includes explicit language
that all students would encounter this application of
knowledge, not simply those in selected programs
or those who chose to seek out experiential oppor-
tunities in college. AAC&U challenged institutions
of higher education to create “Signature Work”
opportunities for all students. These are culminat-
ing learning experiences that enable the student to
pursue a problem that they consider is relevant in
the world. AAC&U makes a compelling case for the
importance of service-learning to build students’
capacity to “find solutions to intractable problems”
27-08-2018 15:59:50

(AAC&U, 2015, p. 2). AAC&U is committed to pro-
moting “Signature Work in Action” by disseminating
multiple models to assist colleges and universities in
achieving this form of education and by furthering
the implementation of service-learning in higher
education.
Increased Understanding of Impact on
Students
Service-learning and other forms of experiential
education began to flourish within institutions as
an increasing number of educational practition-
ers and researchers began to understand the power
of grounding academic learning in experience. The
field began to explore how this form of experiential
learning had the power to develop civic learning,
personal development, and intercultural competence
among students. Growth in understanding of how
the pedagogy can facilitate a diverse set of learning
outcomes inspired the growth of increased scholarly
exploration. In a review of the literature from 2008 to
2017, dozens of published studies were identified that
examined the impact of service-learning on student
learning outcomes and the elements that need to be
in place to facilitate student learning. These studies
begin to capture the power of the pedagogy and the
many ways it can affect student learning. They helped
to inform how service-learning experiences affected
students perceptions of themselves regarding com-
petencies and outcomes such as citizenship, diversity,
academic and professional development, career ori-
entation, and degree completion (Bamber & Hankin,
2011; Hahn & Hatcher, 2014; Hatcher, Bringle, &
Hahn, 2016; Keen & Hall, 2009; Levesque-Bristol,
Knapp, & Fisher, 2011; McKay & Estrella, 2008; Yorio
& Ye, 2012).
Laursen, Thiry, and Liston (2012) explored
the impact of service-learning on the professional
development of students. They report that service-
learning participants experienced considerable
gains in teaching skills, which they view as valu-
able both for educators and for other professions
requiring scientific communications (Laursen et
al., 2012). The students’ personal and emotional
gains—­confidence as science teachers, pride and
pleasure in their work—reflect a growing sense of
identity as teaching professionals. Together, these
gains addressed both cognitive and affective ele-
ments of socialization through mechanisms includ-
ing formal training, experiential learning, and
observation of other professionals (Laursen et al.
ASCV.indb 25
Reflections  25
2012). The service-learning project and the associ-
ated learning outcomes are relevant to those who
have the teaching and scientific skills to practice in
this ­community-based setting.
Service-learning has increasingly been used as
a pedagogy to develop civic engagement learning
outcomes. At IUPUI, there has been considerable
attention paid to developing an understanding of the
civic-minded graduate (Hatcher, 2008; Steinberg,
Hatcher & Bringle, 2008). This concept refers to a
student who has “completed a course of study and
has the capacity and desire to work with others to
achieve the common good” (Center for Service and
Learning, 2017). The Civic-Minded Graduate (CMG)
model integrates the dimensions of identity, educa-
tional experiences and civic experiences, and draws
upon the domains of knowledge, skills, dispositions
and behavioral intentions. Methods for measuring
the CMG construct include a quantitative self-report
measure, a qualitative measure, and a protocol and
rubric for face-to-face interviews (Center for Service
Learning, 2017).
PSU’s community-based senior capstones are
framed by a focus on interdisciplinary service-
learning and assessment as a continuous improve-
ment strategy. Many of these courses identify
specific content-related learning outcomes as well
as a focus on personal development, intercultural
competence, and civic learning outcomes. Fuller-
ton, Reitenauer, and Kerrigan (2015) capture the
power of these courses to facilitate these learning
outcomes. The research team interviewed 20 ran-
domly selected alumni who took a community-
based senior capstone course where they worked
in an intensive way with people with disabilities.
Eighteen of the 20 interviewees identified the cap-
stone as among their most significant learning
experiences in their college education. Further-
more, 50% reported enhanced interpersonal and
communication skills, 70% described a deeper
appreciation for diversity related to disability, 60%
described gaining a new perspective that human
variation is typical rather than atypical, and 35%
described a newfound maturity and gratitude lead-
ing to a desire to serve. Many respondents found the
course to be a profound engagement with their own
fear and discomfort around difference, and the ways
that engagement opened them up as human beings
and allowed them to develop capacities they did not
know they had.
Research on Service-Learning: Conceptual Frame-
works and Assessment (Clayton, Bringle, & Hatcher,
27-08-2018 15:59:50
 26  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
2012) made a substantial contribution to the field
by providing a review of past research in the field as
well as a set of assessment methods and instruments.
This publication offers assessment methods that
reflect the varied learning outcomes and purposes
of the service-learning experience. Historically, the
field had focused on articulating the different ways
student learning would be assessed depending on
if the course was seeking to develop civic learning,
diversity competencies, and/or professional skills.
The assessment methods were primarily focused
on application of course concepts and those that
focused more intently on developing students’ civic
learning skills and competencies. As a field, we now
understand that service-learning has the power to
affect student learning on a number of fronts and thus
our assessment methods need to be shaped in ways
that are responsive to the variety of learning goals.
Expansion of Online Service-Learning
Courses
In the past five years there has been growth in online
course and program offerings. The expansion of online
course and degree options are in response to market
demands allowing college courses to be more acces-
sible to nontraditional students. Online community-
based learning is an educational practice that is emerg-
ing as a growing area of interest.
Student learning and the conditions that facili-
tate the achievement of intended learning outcomes
commonly associated with service-learning courses
are necessarily different for online courses. The peda-
gogical practices employed in online courses differ
from those used in face-to-face courses, yet the learn-
ing outcomes are often similar. Learning outcomes
for these courses include improved ability to solve
problems in the community, intercultural commu-
nication, navigating difference and power dynamics,
and understanding the political and social dynamics
that ground the community work. The course evalua-
tion is used to evaluate the course as well as serving as
one of the methods to assess student learning. Course
evaluations used for online service-learning courses
include the same questions included in the face-to-face
service-learning courses. Student course evaluation
data for online courses and face-to-face courses often
show similar results across these modes of delivery.
It is much more difficult for faculty teach-
ing online courses to get high return rates for end-
of-course evaluations from students. Berk (2012)
documents that course evaluation response rates
ASCV.indb 26
are consistently 50% or lower whereas face-to-face
administration of evaluations garners 90% response
rates. This is a challenge for online courses in general
but is of particular concern in online service-learning
courses, given the newness of this educational deliv-
ery platform in community-based courses. Dedicat-
ing staff time to make personal contact through a
phone interview can be an effective way to increase
student response rates. Assessing the educational
practices used by faculty and learning experiences of
students in these courses helps inform the continu-
ous improvement of these and newly created online
community-based courses.
Increased Emphasis on Assessment of
Student Learning
In the past 15 years there has been a growing empha-
sis on accountability and consequently growth in stu-
dent learning assessment. The primary purpose of the
2001 publication was to share what we had learned
about the assessment methods we had developed and
tested in the early days of large-scale service-learning
implementation at PSU. As pointed out by Driscoll
and Wood (2007), outcomes-based assessment across
higher education is nearly 30 years old.
Use of student work samples and rubrics to
assess learning has grown rapidly. AAC&U has
stated that: “In the current climate it is not enough
for an institution to assess its students . . . Colleges
and universities also must provide useful knowledge
to the public . . . about the quality of student learn-
ing” (Council for Higher Education Accreditation
[CHEA], 2006). AAC&U took on a leadership role in
highlighting a need for revised accountability meas-
ures for liberal education (Schneider, 2004). In 2007,
it took a substantial step in contributing to the body
of tools that helped campuses assess liberal education
student learning. The Valid Assessment of Learning in
Undergraduate Education (VALUE) initiative resulted
in the development of a set of rubrics meant to assess
learning achievement by examining student work
samples (Rhodes, 2008). The 16 VALUE rubrics serve
as samples for campus development of individualized
student assessment rubrics.
A number of additional national associations,
including the Business Higher Education Forum,
the National Center for Public Policy and Higher
Education, the Council for Aid to Education, and
the Council for Higher Education Accreditation
also highlighted the need to increase higher edu-
cation accountability practices (McPherson &
27-08-2018 15:59:50

Shulenburger, 2006). In their own ways, these asso-
ciations have contributed to developing tools and
practices that are helping document institutional
effectiveness and student success. For example, the
Business Higher Education Forum has urged that
there be a new “accountability consensus” for stu-
dent learning in higher education. This organization
states, “We are most concerned with the national
capacity to measure and publicly account for gen-
eral knowledge and skill levels” (Hoagland, 2006).
The leadership within these associations engaged in
the hard work to develop accountability language.
All of this high level policy work makes itself visible
in accreditation practices and increasingly so in how
campuses document student learning and institu-
tional performance.
The important work of these various associations
has led to substantial expansion, increasing sophisti-
cation, and greater consistency of methods used to
assess student learning achievement. The national
call to increase accountability and assessment gen-
erally resulted in the growth of assessment schol-
arship, which in turn informed the growth of new
and effective approaches to assessment of service-
learning impacts on students. In higher education’s
current environment, with the expansion of service-
learning and other forms of experiential education
and the increased testing and understanding of stu-
dent learning assessment, institutions are better pre-
pared to consider the impact of service-learning on
students and have identified some new methods of
assessment that go beyond the methods explored in
the first edition of this publication.
New Strategies for Assessing Impact on
Students: Examples From PSU
Newer strategies for assessing student learning in the
context of service-learning include a focus on course
design as a method to frame assessment; small group
instructional diagnosis; work sample assessment;
critical incident methodology; assessment of online
community-based courses; and summative assess-
ments. The examples provided here have been effec-
tive at PSU and may be applicable in other settings.
Course Design as a Method to Frame Assessment
Since 1995 PSU has rigorously assessed its
community-based capstone course experience. As
a required course within the general education pro-
gram, the capstone engages over 4,300 students per
year in the community. It was clearly incumbent
ASCV.indb 27
Reflections  27
upon the institution to thoroughly assess the out-
comes achieved through these courses and engage
in continuous improvement. A best practice that
has emerged at PSU is the use of a holistic assess-
ment approach that is extensively tested and applied
to over 230 community-based learning courses per
year. These methods are most consistently utilized
in capstone courses but applicable to any service-
learning or community-based course at any level of
the curriculum. The approach has the following six
distinctive elements:
1. Faculty develop clear course learning out-
comes framed in the course proposal pro-
cess before the course begins. The articulated
learning outcomes as identified by the
instructor become the foundation of further
assessment efforts.
2. Faculty submit clear learning outcomes in
the course proposal and provide examples
of how the learning outcomes as well as the
institution-wide general education outcomes
will be addressed in readings, assignments,
in-class discussions, and reflection activities
throughout the course.
3. The instructor agrees to have the students
in the course participate in a small-group
­qualitative assessment that takes place dur-
ing the third or fourth week of the term. This
formative assessment practice occurs in all
courses being offered for the first time and
20% of courses being offered on a regular
basis. More information about this method
of assessment can be found in the following
description of “Group Instructional Feedback
Technique” (GIFT) (p. 28).
4. End-of-term course surveys/course evalua-
tions are administered, collected, analyzed,
and the aggregate student data for the course
is delivered back to the faculty for their review.
5. Student Work Samples are collected from 20%
of all courses each year to assess how students
are engaging with, and fulfilling, the general
education learning outcomes. Those work
samples are analyzed with rubrics developed
by the faculty.
6. Multiple opportunities each year are pro-
vided for faculty to talk about their teaching
and assessment in various settings including
one-on-one faculty consultations, informal
faculty brownbag discussions, and formal
workshops/retreats.
27-08-2018 15:59:50
 28  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
Each of these assessment elements will be
described in further detail.
Tools to Develop Goals, Objectives, and Course Proposals
PSU works extensively with faculty to collect assess-
ment and use the assessment with faculty for course
improvement and program assessment. This pro-
cess begins with clarifying goals, purposes, teaching
and assessment methods, and partnering processes.
The use of the course proposal is an initial element
to gaining clarity on these fronts. Although PSU-
specific, having a look at the Capstone Proposal
can help those using a course proposal as a tool for
assessment. Other institutions that wish to consider
this approach may wish to modify the Proposal to
reflect their institutional identifiers (see Portland
State University, n.d.).
GIFT
GIFT, also referred to as Small Group Instruc-
tional Diagnosis (SGID), is a formative mid-
quarter qualitative feedback process introduced by
Angelo and Cross (1993). This feedback process,
which asks students to evaluate course design, has
become an educational best practice to evaluate
courses at the midpoint of the term as a means to
provide data to faculty for midcourse modifica-
tions in order to enhance student learning and out-
comes.
PSU has utilized this midquarter evaluation pro-
tocol for more than 15 years with significant success
by having a skilled facilitator come into community-
based learning courses and specifically ask the stu-
dents (typically in groups) the following:
• What aspects of this course are helping you
to better understand the course content? To
better prepare you for your community work?
• What could be changed to improve this
course?
• What specific suggestions do you have to
bring about these changes?
• In what ways does this course enhance your
understanding of our general education goals
(Communication, Social Responsibility,
Critical Thinking, and Diversity of Human
Experience)?
Most of the open-ended questions used to facili-
tate these conversations are ones that have transfer-
ability to any community-based course. The fourth
question in this protocol was targeted specifically to
ASCV.indb 28
address the general education learning outcomes at
PSU and should be modified by other institutions to
address relevant learning outcomes.
After the feedback session the facilitator docu-
ments the students’ feedback, provides it to the fac-
ulty member, and then meets with the faculty to
discuss tangible actions for improving the course.
The primary focus of the evaluation is on improve-
ment of individual courses. Programs can also
aggregate the data by looking at the feedback for a
collection of courses. PSU annually aggregates the
data from about 25 capstone SGIDs to identify pro-
gram strengths and challenges, and to inform faculty
development.
Kerrigan and Jhaj (2007) detail how this meth-
odology was used at PSU and provide specific exam-
ples of the types of student feedback collected. The
advantage to this evaluation approach is that it pro-
vides faculty with accurate data regarding students’
experiences in the classroom and gives faculty tan-
gible suggestions for improving the course. This has
become a best practice of formative evaluation since
faculty and students discuss how to improve the
course well before issuing the end of the term course
survey and the assignment of students’ final grades.
End-of-Term Course Surveys/Course Evaluations
As at many campuses, end-of-term student surveys
used by PSU are similar to the student surveys pro-
vided in the 2001 publication of this book. To view
data collected by PSU capstone surveys, see Portland
State University (2017a).
Work Sample Assessment
Each year the PSU Capstone Program uses a work
sample assessment approach to assess how individ-
ual students report growth along one of the General
Education goals (communication, critical think-
ing, social responsibility, or appreciation for human
diversity). This assessment method can be used at any
institution that wishes to do program level assess-
ment by accessing student work samples. Identify-
ing the programmatic goals and creating a relevant
rubric are the essential ingredients to making this
method transferable to other institutional settings.
At PSU, 18 to 20 of the 60 distinct capstone
courses are involved in this process annually. The
faculty teaching one of the selected courses attends
a premeeting with the other faculty teaching courses
that were selected to be part of the Work Sample
Assessment process for that year. The group dis-
cusses the learning goal being assessed that year and
27-08-2018 15:59:50

asks them to identify the assignment they anticipate
submitting at the end of the term.
At the end of the term, faculty submit written
work from five students in their course, the asso-
ciated assignment instructions, the syllabi for the
course, and any contextual course information. Each
student submission is a written response to an assign-
ment related to one General Education goal. There is
an existing rubric for each of the four General Edu-
cation goals. At the end of each academic year the
18 to 20 faculty who collected work samples meet and
are trained to use a rubric relevant to the goal being
assessed in that particular year. This process is used
to determine if the course met the expectations of the
program, were exemplary, or were inadequate. Fac-
ulty meet and discuss the results and deepen their
own understanding of the various ways that each
learning goal can be enhanced in their course.
The assessment is helpful in supplement-
ing the data provided through course surveys and
course evaluations. For example, it is common for
over 80% of capstone students to report that they
enhanced their communication skills and criti-
cal thinking skills in this community-based course,
but the quantitative data does not explain how they
enhanced these skills and in what specific ways
they furthered these skills. Student-written essays
and reflections do indeed detail for researchers how
students enhanced these skills and provide specific
examples of how these broad skills were fostered.
Critical Incident Methodology
In the 2001 edition of this publication, the Criti-
cal Incident Methodology was one of several meth-
ods used to understand how service-learning and
civic engagement affects institutional practices.
It has since been demonstrated that this method
has utility in helping to assess student learning
and has become a practice used at PSU for pro-
gram assessment purposes. In addition to the
comprehensive assessment approach employed
in c­ommunity-based capstones, PSU also has
employed a modified “critical incident approach
to outcomes assessment” (Bycio & Allen, 2004) in
specific studies conducted to investigate the impact
of community-based experiences on students after
completion of the course. Bycio and Allen (2004)
claimed that student questionnaires provide a
large amount of student feedback to institutions
regarding individual questions related to a course
or program, but they fail to accurately assess the
relevance, importance, or significance of the
ASCV.indb 29
Reflections  29
educational event from the students’ perspective.
This critique resonated with researchers at PSU
who could see from the data that students were
consistently reporting that they furthered their
learning on the General Education goals in their
community-based capstone, but those data gave no
information to the institution regarding students’
perception of the value of the growth in these areas.
Researchers realized that students had experienced
critical educational incidents, which are lived expe-
riences “that reflect especially good or bad perfor-
mance” (Bycio & Allen, 2004, p. 86) by an educator
or an educational event in their college years.
Researchers conducted an alumni phone sur-
vey that asked graduates to name their three most
significant learning experiences in college and to
describe factors that made these events significant.
The goal was to ask these open-ended questions
with no reference to community-based learning or
capstones and simply let the graduates define what
life experiences in college were most significant
to them. The results showed that the community-
based capstone course was the single most-reported
significant learning experience reported by PSU
graduates (Fullerton et al., 2015). It gave research-
ers a new piece of information. The community-
based capstones were achieving individual learning
outcomes on survey questions, and, from a larger
perspective, graduates found these courses to be
the most significant learning experiences in their
college education. This assessment process also
informed researchers what factors students detailed
as contributing to their perceived significance: the
highly relational aspect of the courses (high peer-
to-peer interaction and high faculty-to-student
interaction), engaging with persons from diverse
backgrounds, working in teams, and applying
learning in the field/community.
This approach can be used at any institution and
can simply entail the addition of a limited number of
truly open-ended questions that allow community-
based learning participants the opportunity to name
which educational events in higher education had
the most significant impact on their lives.
What Do We Want to Know Today About
Impact on Students?
There are many questions that may be asked about
students and community engagement. Some new
questions, beyond those we asked in the original
handbook, include the following:
27-08-2018 15:59:51
 30  Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
• What is the impact of engagement strategies
on student learning, retention, progress and
completion?
• What are the best approaches to the placement
of students in communities similar to those of
their own background and life experiences?
What are the challenges of these strategies?
• Does engagement of students from margin-
alized populations help to raise awareness of
key issues experienced by these populations
among all students?
• How do students from different backgrounds
and life experiences conceive of community?
How does this affect their learning experi-
ences?
• Where community engagement activities
are voluntary, what are the characteristics of
students who volunteer for these activities
(as compared to when the experiences are
required)?
• What kinds of experiences are most effective
for freshmen as compared to seniors as com-
pared to graduate students?
• What do we need to know about students’
cultural backgrounds that influences their
understanding of community engaged
experiences?
• Does a university presence in engaged work
in a specific neighborhood or from under-
represented populations result in greater
enrollment from that community?
• Do community engagement experiences
have a differential effect on students who are
first generation or from underrepresented
populations?
Student learning assessment has enjoyed robust
growth in the past dozen years. There has been a
ASCV.indb 30
nuanced understanding of the variety of purposes
for why a faculty member opts to use service-
learning pedagogy in their courses. Faculty may
seek to offer students an opportunity to apply and
test course concepts. Sometimes service-learning
is used as a way to help students develop and prac-
tice civic engagement identities and skills. There are
times when service-learning is used as a means to
explore diversity and social justice goals. This vari-
ety of purposes shapes the assessment methods.
PSU has continued to use many of the assessment
tools from the 2001 edition of this handbook, yet
the expanded understanding of service-learning
and the national and international growth of assess-
ment methods over the past 15 years has inspired the
use of additional methods. Readers are encouraged
to explore resources from a variety of campuses and
organizations in order to find and adapt those best
suited to their purposes.
Concluding Comments
As stated at the beginning of this narrative, we have
prepared an update and reflection from our collective
experiences over the past 15 years on the evolution
of measuring, assessing, evaluating, and monitor-
ing the impact of community engagement strate-
gies. This work is dynamic, and thus any handbook
such as this is out of date as soon as it is published,
because new methods, strategies, and research
results are routinely being generated. We encour-
age users to continue to be creative and develop new
methods and share these widely through confer-
ences, publications, and nontraditional venues for
dissemination in order to continue to advance our
work and expand our knowledge and application in
practice.
27-08-2018 15:59:51
 Chapter Two
A S SE S SM E N T P R I N C I P L E S A N D
S T R AT E G I E S
An Overview
Institutions committed to civic engagement and
service-learning must be able to demonstrate the
impact of these initiatives to ensure quality for student
and community participants, to justify resource invest-
ments, and to inform the improvement and expansion
of such programs. Understanding and articulating
“impact” requires knowledge and expertise in the
design and application of assessment methods.
This handbook provides basic information on
practical methods and tools for assessment planning,
design, and implementation. The material can be
used for a campus-wide service-learning initiative,
for individual courses, or for other activities related
to civic engagement and community involvement.
Since, throughout the text, the primary focus is on
developing a comprehensive assessment strategy on
the institutional or programmatic level, the word
program occurs often. Nevertheless, as has just been
noted, these materials can also be adapted for indi-
vidual faculty use in freestanding courses.
Context for Assessment
Increasingly, higher education is experiencing a shift
away from a traditional emphasis on teaching to a
new emphasis on learning. Barr and Tagg (1995) have
described this as a movement from seeing colleges
as institutions whose function is to provide instruc-
tion to seeing them as institutions designed to pro-
duce learning. If one thinks of the core concepts that
Note. The text for this chapter is adapted from Sherril B. Gelmon, “How Do We Know That Our Work Makes a
Difference?” Metropolitan Universities, 11, 2 (Fall 2000), pp. 28–39. Permission granted by the editor.
31
ASCV.indb 31
attend teaching and learning—for example, knowl-
edge, focus, the curriculum, instruction, design
strategies, student roles, and organizational change—
a framework such as Figure 2.1 can be used to illus-
trate the transition from the “old” to the “new.” Note
that service-learning and other forms of community-
based education all demonstrate characteristics of
the new—emphasizing the application of knowledge,
a team and community focus for learning, collective
instruction and collective curriculum definition, an
integrated sequencing of courses, and active student
learning. These concerns are all important to keep
in mind as one begins to consider how one can best
assess the impact of such programs.
The language of “civic engagement” and commu-
nity participation is increasingly evident in discus-
sions of trends in higher education. Ehrlich (2000)
describes civic engagement as “working to make a
difference in the civic life of our communities” (p. vi).
Such an enterprise changes the function of the insti-
tution, creates new challenges for faculty roles, offers
opportunities for new collaborations with community
partners, and affects not only what students learn but
also what should be taught. These changes inevitably
lead to questions such as “What impact is engagement
having on the institution and its component parts?”
To answer questions like this one, carefully con-
structed assessments must be created—assessments
that ask clear questions, collect appropriate data, and
analyze and report results in meaningful ways.
27-08-2018 15:59:51
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 5. Away then with all desponding thoughts. To undertake
vigorously, and rely confidently on the divine assistance, is more
than half the conquest: Let us arise and be doing, and the Lord will
be with us ¹. It is true, religion in the souls of men is the immediate
work of God, and all our natural endeavours can neither produce it
alone, nor merit those supernatural aids by which it must be wrought.
The Holy Ghost must come upon us, and the power of the Highest
overshadow us, before that holy thing can be begotten, and Christ
formed in us. But yet we must not expect that this work should be
done without any endeavours of our own; we must not lie loitering in
the ditch, and wait till omnipotence pull us thence; no, no, we must
bestir ourselves, and actuate these powers which we have already
received. We must put forth ourselves to our utmost capacities, and
then our labour shall not be vain in the Lord ². All the art and industry
of man cannot form the smallest herb, or make a stalk of corn to
grow in the field. It is the energy of nature, and the influences of
heaven, which produce this effect. It is God who causeth the grass to
grow, and herb for the service of man ³; and yet nobody will say that
the labours of the husbandman are useless or unnecessary. So
likewise the human soul is immediately created by God; it is he who
both formeth and enliveneth the child, and yet he hath appointed the
marriage-bed as the ordinary means for the propagation of mankind:
and so, though there must intervene a stroke of omnipotence to
effect this mighty change in our souls; yet ought we to do what we
can, that we may be more ready to receive the seeds of grace and
the dew of heaven. It is true, God hath been found of some who
sought him not; he hath cast himself in their way who were quite out
of his; he hath laid hold upon them, and stopt their course on a
sudden; for so was St. Paul converted in his journey to Damascus.
But certainly this is not God’s ordinary method of dealing with men:
though he hath not tied himself to means, yet he hath tied us to the
use of them; and we have never more reason to expect the divine
assistance, than when we are doing our utmost endeavours. It shall
therefore be my next work to shew what course we may take for
attaining that blessed temper I have described.
 ¹ 1 Chronicles xxii. 16. ² 1 Corinthians xv. 58.

³ Psalms civ. 14.

We must shun all manner of sin.

6. Now if we desire to have our souls moulded to this holy frame,

and have Christ formed in our hearts, we must carefully avoid all
sinful practices. There can be no treaty of peace, till we lay down
these weapons of rebellion wherewith we fight against heaven; nor
can we expect to have our distempers cured, if we be daily feeding
on poison. Every wilful sin gives a mortal wound to the soul, and puts
it at a greater distance from God. And we can never hope to have
our hearts purified from corrupt affections, till our hands are cleansed
from vicious actions.

We must know what things are sinful.

 7. And, first, Let us inform ourselves well what those sins are
from which we ought to abstain. And here we must not take our
measures from the maxims of the world, or the practices of those
whom in charity, we account good men. Most people have very light
apprehensions of these things, and are not sensible of any fault,
unless it be gross. And those who are more serious, many times
allow themselves too great latitude. Alas! how much pride, and
vanity, and passion; how much weakness and folly doth every day
show itself in their converse and behaviour! It may be they are
humbled for it, and striving against it, but the progress is so small,
and their failings so many, that we had need to chuse an exacter
pattern. Every one of us must answer for himself, and the practice of
others will never warrant and secure us. It is the highest folly to
regulate our actions by any other standard, than that by which they
must be judged. If ever therefore we would cleanse our way, it must
be by taking heed thereto according to the word of God ¹. And that
word which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of
the joints and marrow ², will certainly discover many things to be
sinful, which pass for very innocent in the eyes of the world. Let us
therefore imitate the psalmist, who saith, Concerning the works of
men, by the words of thy lips, I have kept myself from the path of the
destroyer ³. Let us acquaint ourselves well with the holy laws of our
religion: let us consider the discourses of our blessed Saviour,
(especially that divine sermon on the mount) and the writings of his
holy apostles; where an unbiassed mind may clearly discern those
bounds by which our actions ought to be confined: and then let us
never look upon any sin as light and inconsiderable, but be fully
persuaded, that the smallest is infinitely heinous in the sight of God,
and prejudicial to the souls of men: and that if we had the right sense
of things, we should be as deeply affected with the least
irregularities, as now we are with the greatest crimes.
 ¹ Psalms cxix. 9. ² Hebrews iv. 12.

³ Psalms xvii. 4.

We must resist temptations.

8. Among those things which we discover to be sinful, there will

be some to which, through our nature, or long custom, we are so
wedded, that it will be like cutting of the right-hand, or pulling out the
right-eye, to abandon them. But must we therefore sit down and wait
till all difficulties be over, and every temptation be gone? This were to
imitate the fool in the poet, who stood the whole day at the river-side,
till all the water should run by. We must not indulge our inclinations,
as we do little children, till they grow weary of the thing they are
unwilling to let go. We must not continue our sinful practices, in
hopes that the divine grace will one day over-power us.
 9. If the heinous nature of sin cannot affect us, at least we may
be frighted by its dreadful consequences. That selfish principle which
pusheth us forward to sinful pleasures, may make us loath to buy
them at the rate of everlasting misery. Let us therefore accustom
ourselves to consider seriously what a fearful thing it must be to
offend that infinite Being, on whom we depend every moment; who
needs but withdraw his mercies to make us miserable, or his
assistance to make us nothing. Let us remember the shortness and
uncertainty of our lives, and that after we have taken a few turns
more in the world, and conversed a little longer amongst men, we
must all go down to the dark and silent grave, and carry nothing
along with us but anguish and regret for all our sinful enjoyments.
What horror must then seize the guilty soul, to find itself naked and
all alone before the impartial judge of the world, to render an exact
account, not only of its more considerable transactions, but of every
word that the tongue hath uttered, and the most secret thought that
ever passed through the mind? Let us represent to ourselves the
terrors of that dreadful day, when the foundations of the earth shall
be shaken, the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat ¹. The present frame of nature
shall be dissolved, and our eyes shall behold the blessed Jesus,
(who came once into the world in all humility to visit us, to purchase
pardon for us, and beseech us to accept of it) now appearing in the
majesty of his glory, and descending from heaven in flaming fire, to
take vengeance on those that have despised his mercy. Then all the
hidden things of darkness shall be brought to light, and the counsels
of the heart made manifest ². Then those secret impurities and subtle
frauds whereof the world did never suspect us, shall be exposed and
laid open to public view; and many thousand actions which we never
dreamed to be sinful, shall be charged home upon our consciences,
with such evident convictions of guilt, that we shall neither be able to
deny, or excuse them. Then shall all the angels in heaven, and all
the saints that ever lived on the earth, approve that dreadful
sentence which shall be passed on wicked men; and those who
loved and esteemed them when in the world, shall look upon them
with indignation and abhorrence.
 ¹ 2 Peter iii. 10. ² 1 Corinthians iv. 5.

10. ’Tis true, this is a melancholy subject; there is horror in the

consideration of it: but sure it must be infinitely more dreadful to
endure it; and such thoughts as these may be useful to fright us from
the courses that would lead us thither. How fond soever we may be
of sinful pleasures, we shall startle when pressed with that question,
Who can dwell with everlasting burnings ¹.

¹ Isaiah xxxiii. 14.

We must keep a constant watch over ourselves.

 11. But it will not suffice to consider those things once and again,
nor to form some resolutions of abandoning our sins, unless we
maintain a constant guard, and be constantly watching against them.
Sometimes the mind is awakened, and we resolve to reform: but
alas! it presently falleth asleep, and we lose that prospect which we
had, and then temptations take the advantage; they solicit us
continually, and frequently engage our consent before we are aware.
It is the folly and ruin of most people to live at adventure, seldom
considering what they are about to say or do. If we would have our
resolutions take effect, we must take heed unto our ways, set a
watch before the door of our lips, and examine the motions that arise
in our heart, whence they come, and whither they go; whether it be
pride or passion, or any corrupt humour, that prompteth us to any
design, and whether God will be pleased with it? And if we have no
time for long reasonings, let us at least turn our eyes towards God,
and place ourselves in his presence, to ask his leave and
approbation for what we do. Let us consider ourselves under the all-
seeing eye of that divine majesty, as in the midst of an infinite globe
of light; which compasseth us about both behind and before, and
pierceth to the inmost corners of our soul. The sense of the divine
presence is a ready means, both to discover what is unlawful, and to
restrain us from it. There are some things a person could make a
shift to defend, and yet he dares not look God in the face, and
adventure upon them. If we look unto him we shall be lightned; if we
set him always before us, he will guide us by his eye, and instruct us
in the way wherein we ought to walk.

We must often examine our actions.

 12. This care and watchfulness over our actions, must be
seconded by frequent and serious reflections upon them; not only
that we may obtain the divine mercy; but that we may strengthen our
resolutions, and learn to decline or resist temptations. It is an advice
worthy of a Christian, though it first dropped from a Heathen pen,
that before we betake ourselves to rest, we renew and examine all
the passages of the day, that we may redress what we find to have
been amiss, and make the shipwrecks of one day be as marks to
direct our course in another. But, withal, we must not forget to
implore the divine assistance, especially against those sins that most
easily beset us: and though our hearts are not yet moulded into that
spiritual frame, yet methinks such considerations as have been
proposed may stir us up to some seriousness, and make our prayers
against it as earnest, at least, as they are wont to be against other
calamities; and I doubt not but God, who heareth the cry of the
ravens, will have some regard even to such petitions as proceed
from those natural passions which himself hath implanted in us.

It is fit to restrain ourselves in many lawful things.

 13. Thus we are to make the first essay for recovering the divine
life, by restraining the natural inclinations, that they break not out into
sinful practices. But Christian prudence will teach us to abstain from
gratifications that are not simply unlawful; and that not only that we
may secure our innocence, which would be in continual hazard, if we
should strain our liberty to the utmost point; but also that we may
teach our appetites to obey, as prudent parents deal with their
children, who cross their wills in many little things, to make them
manageable in more considerable instances. He who would mortify
the pride and vanity of his spirit, should stop his ears to the most
deserved praises, and sometimes forbear his just vindication, from
the censures and aspersions of others. He who would check a
revengeful humour, would do well to deny himself the satisfaction of
representing to others the injuries he hath sustained. And if we
would so take heed to our ways, that we sin not with our tongue, we
must accustom ourselves to solitude and silence. Thus we may
make our appetites more moderate in their cravings, by accustoming
them to frequent refusals; but it is not enough to have them under
violence and restraint.

We must strive to put ourselves out of love with the world.

 14. Our next essay must be to possess our minds with a deep
persuasion of the vanity and emptiness of worldly enjoyments. This
is an ordinary theme, but alas! how few understand and believe what
they say? These notions float in our brains, and come sliding off our
tongues, but we have no deep impression of them on our spirits. We
feel not the truth which we pretend to believe. We can tell that all the
glory and splendor, all the pleasures of the world, are vanity and
nothing; and yet these nothings take up all our thoughts, and
engross all our affections. Perhaps sometimes we resolve to be no
longer deluded with them; but these thoughts seldom outlive the next
temptation. And after we have been frustrated a thousand times, we
must continually be repeating the experiment. The least difference of
circumstances is enough to make us expect that satisfaction in one
thing, which we missed in another. But had we once a real contempt
of worldly things, this were a considerable advancement in our way.
The soul of man is of a vigorous and active nature, and hath in it an
unextinguishable thirst, an immaterial kind of fire, always catching at
some object or other, in conjunction wherewith it thinks to be happy:
and were it once rent from the world, it would search after some
higher object, to satisfy its importunate cravings. The love of the
world and the love of God, are like the scales of a balance, as the
one falleth the other doth rise. It therefore nearly concerns us to be
convinced of the emptiness and vanity of creature enjoyments. Let
us seriously consider what our reason and faith, our own experience,
and the observation of others suggest. Amidst all our pursuits and
designs, let us stop and ask ourselves, for what end is this? At what
do I aim? Can the gross pleasures of sense, or a heap of white or
yellow earth, or the esteem of silly creatures like myself, satisfy an
immortal soul? Have I not tried these things already? Will they have
a higher relish, and yield me more contentment to-morrow than
yesterday, or the next year than they did the last? There may be
some little difference between that which I am now pursuing, and
that which I enjoyed before: but sure my former enjoyments did shew
as pleasant, and promise as fair before I attained them. Like the
rainbow, they ♦ looked very glorious at a distance, but when I
approached, I found nothing but emptiness and vapour. O what a
poor thing would the life of man be, if it were capable of no higher
enjoyments!

♦ “look” replaced with “looked” per Errata

We must do those outward actions that are commanded.

15. When our inclinations towards worldly things are in some

measure subdued, we must proceed conscientiously to perform
those duties which religion ♦ requires. If we cannot get our inward
dispositions presently changed, let us study at least to regulate our
outward deportment: if our hearts be not yet inflamed with divine
love, let us however ♠own our allegiance to that infinite Majesty, by
attending his service, and listening to his word; by speaking
reverently of his name; and praising his goodness, and exhorting
others to serve and obey him. If we want that charity, and those
bowels of compassion which we ought to have towards our
neighbours, yet must we not omit any occasion of doing them good.
If our hearts be haughty and proud, we must nevertheless study a
modest and humble deportment. These external performances are of
little value in themselves, yet may they help us forward to better
things. It is always good to be doing what we can, for then God is
wont to assist our feeble endeavours. Nor need we fear the
imputation of hypocrisy, though our actions thus somewhat out-run
our affections, seeing they still proceed from a sense of our duty, and
our design is not to appear better than we are, but that we may really
become so.

♦ “require” replaced with “requires” per Errata

♠ “owe” replaced with “own” per Errata

We must endeavour to form internal acts of devotion,

charity, &c.
 16. Moreover, let us be often lifting up our hearts to God; and if
we do not say that we love him above all things, let us at least
acknowledge that it is our duty, and would be our happiness so to
do. Let us lament the dishonour done him by sinful men, and
applaud the praises that are given him by that glorious company
above. Let us yield ourselves up to him a thousand times, to be
governed by his laws, and disposed of at his pleasure: and though
our stubborn heart start back, yet let us tell him we are convinced
that his will is always just and good; and therefore desire him to do
with us whatsoever he pleaseth, whether we will or not.

Thus should we exercise ourselves unto godliness: and when we

are employing the powers that we have, the Spirit of God is wont to
strike in, and elevate these acts of our soul beyond the pitch of
nature, and give them a divine impression.

Consideration a great instrument of religion.

 17. I shall mention but two other helps; and the first is, deep and
serious consideration. *The assent which is ordinarily given to divine
truths, is very faint and languid. Men are unwilling to quarrel with the
religion of their country; but are seldom at the pains to consider what
they profess to believe; and thence it is, that they have so little
influence on their practice. Those spiritless and paralytic thoughts
(as one rightly terms them) are not able to move the will, and direct
the hand. We must therefore labour for a full persuasion of divine
truths, a sense and feeling of spiritual things. Let us urge forward our
spirits, and make them approach the invisible world, and fix our mind
upon immaterial things, till we clearly perceive that these are no
dreams; nay, that all things are dreams and shadows besides them.
When we look about us, and behold the beauty and magnificence of
this goodly frame, the order and harmony of the whole creation, let
our thoughts from thence take their flight toward that omnipotent
wisdom and goodness which did at first produce, and doth still
uphold the same. When we reflect upon ourselves, let us consider
that we are not a mere piece of organized matter, a curious and well
contrived engine; that there is more in us than flesh, and blood, and
bones, even a divine spark, capable to know, and love, and enjoy
our Maker. And though it be now exceedingly clogged with its dull
and lumpish companion; yet ere long it shall be delivered, and can
subsist without the body, as well as that can do without the cloaths,
which we throw off at our pleasure. Let us often withdraw our
thoughts from this earth, this scene of misery, and folly, and sin, and
raise them towards that glorious world; whose innocent and blessed
inhabitants solace themselves eternally in the divine presence, and
know no other passion, but an unmixed joy, and an unbounded love:
and then consider how the blessed Son of God came down to this
lower world to live among us, and die for us, that he might bring us to
a portion of the same felicity; and think how he hath overcome the
sharpness of death, and opened the kingdom of heaven to all
believers, and is now set down on the right-hand of the Majesty on
high ¹; and yet is not the less mindful of us, but receiveth our prayers,
and presenteth them unto his Father, and is daily visiting his church
with the influences of his Spirit, as the sun reacheth us with his
beams.
 ¹ Hebrews i. 3.

We should consider the excellency of the divine nature.

18. Let me further suggest some particular subjects of meditation.

And first, if we would love God, let us consider the excellency of his
nature, and his love and kindness towards us. It is little we know of
the divine perfections; and yet that little may fill our souls with
admiration and love. If it be the understanding that directs the
affections, certainly the excellencies of the divine nature (the traces
whereof we cannot but discover in every thing we behold) should not
fail to engage our hearts. Shall we not be infinitely more transported
with that almighty wisdom and goodness, which fills the universe,
and displays itself in all the parts of the creation, which establisheth
the frame of nature, and turneth the mighty wheels of providence,
and keepeth the world from disorder and ruin, than with the faint rays
of the same perfections which we meet with in our fellow creatures?
Shall we doat on the scattered pieces of a rude and imperfect
picture, and never be affected with the original beauty? This were an
unaccountable stupidity and blindness. Whatever we find lovely in a
friend, or in a saint, ought not to engross, but to elevate our affection:
we should conclude with ourselves, that if there be so much
sweetness in a drop, there must be infinitely more in the fountain. If
there be so much splendor in a ray, what must the sun be in its
glory?
 19. Nor can we pretend the remoteness of the object, as if God
were at too great a distance for our converse or love: he is not far
from every one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our
being. ¹ We cannot open our eyes, but we must behold some
footsteps of his glory; and we cannot turn them toward him, but we
shall be sure to find his intent upon us, waiting as it were to catch a
look, ready to entertain the most intimate communion with us. Let us
therefore endeavour to raise our minds to the clearest conceptions of
the divine nature. Let us consider all that his works declare, or his
word discovers of him unto us; and let us especially contemplate that
visible representation of him which was made in our own nature by
his Son, who was the brightness of his glory, and the express image
of his person, ² and who appeared in the world to discover at once
what God is, and what we ought to be. Let us represent him unto our
minds as we find him described in the gospel, and there we shall
behold the perfections of the divine nature, tho’ covered with the veil
of human infirmities. And while we contemplate a Being, infinite in
power, in wisdom, and goodness, the author and fountain of all
perfections, let us pray that our eyes may affect our heart, ³ and while
we are musing the fire may burn. ⁴

¹ Acts xvii. 27. ² Hebrews i. 3.

³ Lamentations iii. 51. ⁴ Psalms xxxix. 3.

We should meditate on his goodness and love.

 20. Hereunto add the consideration of God’s favour and goodwill
towards us. Now as the word of God is full of the expressions of his
love towards man, so all his works loudly proclaim it. He gave us our
being, and by preserving us in it, doth renew the donation every
moment. He hath placed us in a rich and well-furnished world, and
liberally provided for all our necessities. He raineth down blessings
from heaven upon us, and causeth the earth to bring forth our
provision. He giveth us our food and raiment; and while we are
spending the productions of one year, he is preparing for us against
another. He sweetneth our lives with innumerable comforts, and
gratifieth every faculty with suitable objects. The eye of his
providence is always upon us, and he watcheth for our safety when
we are fast asleep, neither minding him nor ourselves. But lest we
should think these testimonies of his kindness less considerable,
because they are the easy issues of his omnipotent power, and do
not put him to any trouble or pain, he hath taken a more wonderful
method to endear himself to us. He hath testified his affection to us,
by suffering as well as by doing; and because he could not suffer in
his own nature, he assumed ours. The eternal Son of God cloathed
himself with the infirmities of our flesh, and left the company of those
blessed spirits, who knew well how to love and adore him, that he
might dwell among men, and wrestle with the obstinacy of that
rebellious race to reduce them to their allegiance, and to offer
himself up as a sacrifice for them. I remember one of the poets hath
an ingenious fancy to express the passion wherewith he found
himself overcome after a long resistance, That the God of love had
shot all his golden arrows at him, but could never pierce his heart, till
at length he put himself into the bow, and darted himself straight into
his breast. Methinks this doth someway adumbrate God’s method of
dealing with men: he had long contended with a stubborn world, and
thrown down many a blessing upon them; and when all his other
gifts could not prevail, he at last made a gift of himself. The account
which we have of our Saviour’s life in the gospel doth all along
present us with the story of his love. All the pains that he took, and
the troubles that he endured, were the wonderful effects, and
uncontroulable evidences of it. But, O that last, that dismal scene! Is
it possible to remember it, and question his kindness, or deny him
ours? Here, here it is we should fix our most serious thoughts, that
Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith; that we being rooted and
grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is
the breadth and length, and depth and height; and to know the love
of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the
fulness of God! ¹

¹ Ephesians iii. 17, 18, 19.

21. We ought also frequently to reflect on those particular tokens

of love, which God hath bestowed on ourselves; how long he hath
borne with our follies and sins, and waited to be gracious unto us;
wrestling, as it were, with the stubbornness of our hearts, and
essaying every method to reclaim us. We should keep a register in
our minds of all the eminent blessings and deliverances we have met
with; some whereof have been so conveyed, that we might clearly
perceive they were not the issues of chance, but the gracious effects
of the divine favour, and the signal returns of our prayers.

As a help to charity, we must remember that all men are

nearly related to God.
 22. If we would love all men, let us consider the relation wherein
they stand to God, and the impresses of his image, which are
stamped upon them. They are not only his creatures, the
workmanship of his hands, but such of whom he taketh special care,
and for whom he hath a very tender regard; having laid the designs
of their happiness before the foundations of the world; and being
willing to live and converse with them to all eternity. The meanest
and most contemptible person whom we behold, is the offspring of
heaven, one of the children of the Most High; and, however unworthy
he may behave himself of that relation to God, so long as God hath
not disowned himself by a final sentence, he will have us
acknowledge him as one of his; and, as such, embrace him with a
cordial affection. What a concern are we wont to have for those that
any ways belong to the person whom we love? How gladly do we lay
hold on every opportunity to gratify the child or servant of a friend?
And sure our love towards God would as naturally spring forth in
charity towards men, did we mind the interest that he is pleased to
take in them; and consider that every soul is dearer to him than the
material world; and that he did not account the blood of his Son too
great a price for their redemption.

That they carry his image upon them.

 23. Again, as all men stand in a near relation to God, so they
have still so much of his image stamped on them, as may excite us
to love them. In some this image is more conspicuous, and we can
discern the lovely tracts of wisdom and goodness. And though, in
others, it be miserably sullied and defaced, yet it is not altogether
erased. Some lineaments still remain: all men are endowed with
rational and immortal souls, with understandings and wills capable of
the most excellent things. And if they be at present disordered and
put out of tune by wickedness and folly, this may indeed move our
compassion, but ought not to extinguish our love. When we see a
person of a rugged humour and perverse disposition, full of malice
and dissimulation, very foolish, and very proud, it is hard to fall in
love with an object that presents itself unto us, under an idea so little
grateful and lovely. But when we consider these evil qualities as the
diseases of a soul, which in itself is capable of all that wisdom and
goodness, wherewith the best of saints have ever been adorned, this
will turn our aversion into pity, and make us behold him with such
resentments, as we have when we look on a beautiful body that is
mangled with wounds, or disfigured by some loathsome disease.
And however we hate the vices we shall not cease to love the man.

Prayer another instrument of religion; the advantages of

mental prayer.
 24. There remains yet another help; and that is, fervent prayer.
Holiness is the gift of God; indeed the greatest gift he doth bestow,
or we are capable to receive, and he hath promised his Holy Spirit to
those that ask it of him. In prayer we make the nearest approaches
to God, and lie open to the influences of heaven: then it is that the
sun of righteousness doth visit us with his directest rays, and
dissipateth our darkness, and imprinteth his image on our souls. I
cannot now insist on the advantages of this exercise, or the
dispositions wherewith it ought to be performed; I shall only tell you,
that as there is one sort of prayer, wherein we make use of the voice,
which is necessary in public; and may sometimes have its advantage
in private; and another wherein, though we utter no sound, yet we
conceive the expressions, and form the words in our mind; so there
is a third kind of prayer, wherein the soul takes a higher flight, and
having collected all its forces, by long and serious meditation, it
darteth itself (if I may so speak) towards God, in sighs and groans,
and thoughts too big for expression.

This mental prayer is one of the most powerful instruments of the

divine life; and it may be the apostle hath a peculiar respect unto it,
when he saith, that the Spirit helpeth our infirmities, making
intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.

The use of the holy sacrament.