Chapter 4: Transforming Institutional Capacity for Community-Based Learning: Leveraging Engaged Department Initiatives Into a Campus-Wide Community of Practice

Some leading scholars within the field of community engagement argue that Engaged Department Initiatives (EDIs) are valuable starting points for shifting from expert-driven, “one-off” community-based projects to collaborative and sustainable engagement opportunities that span programs of study. While such initiatives have been meant to foster long-term, collaborative, scaffolded service-learning, results thus far are mixed. Building upon these findings, this chapter documents an innovative cohort-based EDI that is emerging at a large public liberal arts university in the Midwest. Designed to recognize, resource, and reward development of community-engaged curricula, this EDI is leveraging departmental cultural changes, burgeoning faculty expertise, and systemic action research practices to catalyze change at the institutional level. Initial qualitative and quantitative results are promising, indicating that maintaining varied levels of support that also act as mechanisms of accountability may be particularly effective practices for generating and sustaining the capacity for community-based learning across the university.