Contact: Angela Jeter, Director of Continuing Education and Service Learning

The Center for Democracy and Humanity at Mount Wachusett Community College in North Central Massachusetts envisions a world where the values of democracy are embodied in the daily lives of individuals and communities.

In the fall of 2002, MWCC President Daniel M. Asquino announced the “Decade of Civic Engagement,” a college-wide effort to foster increased civic responsibility among its students, faculty, staff and greater community.

The Center for Democracy and Humanity was recently established to oversee the many programs and services offered by the college as part of the Decade of Civic Engagement. The Center coordinates programs and activities to ensure optimum efficiency and collaboration. In addition to the college’s many outreach programs, college faculty are committed to infusing service learning into their curricula and academic endeavors.

To promote civic engagement within the college and its broader community, the Center for Democracy and Humanity employs four strategies:

• Student engagement
• Resident engagement
• Capacity building and
• Systemic change.

In the Classroom

With civic engagement and service learning in the classroom, students gain practical experience that sets them apart in a competitive job market, communities benefit and classroom learning is reinforced. Students also become more knowledgeable, self-confident, active and engaged citizens with effective critical thinking skills. this effort is guided by a team of faculty advisors.

The Center’s Academic Programs

Citizenship Academy – The Citizenship Academy introduces high school students to higher education, civic engagement and community service. While earning college credit, students learn the basics of thinking and writing with clarity as well as how to become engaged in their communities. The academy offers Composition, Economics, Political Science and Sociology courses–all with a civic engagement/service learning component. The academy’s unique curriculum allows students to focus on issues pertinent to their lives and communities.

Service Learning – Service Learning programs involve students in organized community service that addresses local needs, while developing their academic skills, sense of civic responsibility and commitment to the community. by developing reciprocal partnerships, the program strives to serve the community and enrich the students’ educational and civic engagement experiences. Over 1,200 MWCC students have participated in Service Learning experiences, performing more than 7,000 hours of service to the community. In the coming year, faculty mini-grants will be awarded for new and innovative integration of service learning within the curricula.

AmeriCorps Scholars – Through the AmeriCorps, a number of students are chosen each year for the Scholarships for Service program that engages students as part-time AmeriCorps members. The program is designed to both acknowledge and advance campus civic engagement efforts, placing students at the core. Students are required to complete 300 hours of service with a local non-profit organization during the school year as an intensive means of meeting critical needs in education, public safety, health and the environment.

In the Community

Center for Democracy and Humanity Community Development and Outreach Programs:

Community Builders and Project Volunteer – Community Builders is a partnership between the United Way of North Central Massachusetts and MWCC to educate, inform and inspire a greater community involvement through new and innovative strategies. Community Builders’ activities increase community action through volunteer promotion and recognition, and by providing tools, awareness and training to community organizations that depend on volunteers for their success.

Institute for Nonprofit Development – To build a more vibrant North Central Massachusetts, the Institute for Nonprofit Development supports organizations to strengthen their capacity to fulfill their missions and impact their communities. A membership-driven organization, the Institute provides training, technical assistance, resource libraries and coalition building services to nonprofits serving the region.

Molly Bish Institute for child Health and Safety – The mission of the Molly Bish Institute for Child Health and Safety is to ensure the health and safety of all children in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To meet this mission, the Institute provides hands-on, practical learning opportunities for parents, caregivers and children, and provides a clearinghouse of child health and safety information.

Twin Cities Latino Coalition – The Twin Cities Latino Coalition is a cross-sector collaborative effort involving local educational institutions, private business, public institutions and non-profits to achieve: increased Latino parental involvement, increased Latino K-16 student educational success and sustainable educatinoal systemic change through the implementation of a strategic plan. The Coalition actively works with Latino young people, parents and multicultural leaders to support parents and children’s independence, academic achievement and active civic engagement.

United Way Youth Venture – Youth Venture aims to change society’s views of youth by catalyzing a mass movement of young people who have the vision and drive to make a difference. Youth Venture emplowers young people ages 12-20 by providing them all the tools necessary to create “ventures” – civic-minded organizations, clubs or businesses to change schools and communities. Unique to North Central Massachusetts is Youth Venture’s partnership with ten schools, which work with educators, administrators and students to integrate Youth Venture into their curricula and achieve a graeter impact across the community.

What’s Next Speaker Series – Born out of a plan to bring several notable experts in the field of social change under a single theme, hundreds of residents have attended the What’s Next Speaker Series – public forums that introduce students, residents, community leaders and decision-makers in North Central Massachusetts to innovative thinkers and doers from around the country and world. The goal of the series is to show change is possible, spark creative problem-solving and inspire action.

Contact

Lea Ann Erickson
Assistant Vice President of Public Affairs
(978) 630-9322
l_erickson {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Amy Casavina Hall
Director of Civic Engagement and Outreach
(978) 630-9201
a_casavina {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Fagan Forhan
Coordinator, Center for Democracy and Humanity
(978) 630-9595
f_forhan {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Joanne Foster
Coordinator, Institute for Nonprofit Development
(978) 840-3221 x200
j_foster {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Andrea Hart
Program Assistant
978) 840-3221 x197
ahart {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Karin Olivera
Coordinator, Community Builders and Project Volunteer
(978) 840-3221 x201
k_olivera {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Sayra Pinto
Executive Director, Twin Cities Latino Coalition
(978) 840-3221
spinto {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

Rebecca Cyganiewicz
United Way Youth Venture AmeriCorps*VISTA
(978) 840-3221 x203
youthventure {at} mwcc.mass(.)edu

The Center for Democracy and Humanity’s offices are located at

110 Erdman Way
Leominster, MA 01453
Tel. (978) 840-3221 x197
Fax (978) 840-4398

a. Nursing/Physical Education project on obesity in partnership with Cold Spring Elementary School
b.Geology/Liberal Arts /SPEA/ project on the environment in partnership with the Central Indiana Water Resources Partnership
c.Engineering/Technology project to host student interns in partnership with nonprofit organizations (e.g., Timmy Foundation)

Website: http://csl.iupui.edu

Contact: Patti Hair, phair {at} iupui(.)edu, 317.278.2662

The center’s mission is to lead the University’s engagement efforts and service to the state of North Carolina and beyond by linking the expertise and energy of faculty, staff, and students to the needs of the people.

In all our work, the Carolina Center for Public Service seeks to build partnerships throughout the University and the state as we:

– Advance the quality and sustainability of efforts through effective practices
– Recognize and celebrate exemplary service
– Share information, strategies, and outcomes of UNC s service endeavors
– Facilitate community-based scholarship in addressing community issues

As the first public university, Carolina has a proud history of changing lives through educating scholars and leaders dedicated to forging a brighter future for our state, nation and the world. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is committed to expanding its tradition of engagement and responsiveness through the Carolina Center for Public Service.

The center provides a number of programs and services for students, faculty, staff, and the public, including: awards, service fellowships, trainings, and enrichment programs for students; grants and awards for student organizations; trainings, awards, and grants for faculty; an online searchable database of University engagement activities; a weekly listserv of service opportunities; an annual volunteer fair of community agencies; and an annual “”Bus Tour”" of the state for new faculty and administrators.

For more information, visit our webpage: www.unc.edu/cps/

Contact:
Lynn Blanchard, Director
Carolina Center for Public Service
(919)843-7568, ccps {at} unc(.)edu

In these ways, the Public Service Scholars Program adds depth to a student’s service experience. As these students work to improve the quality of life for people in our community and state, they help fulfill Carolina s promise of service, made by the nation s first public university over 200 years ago.

The program is open to all full-time UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduate students with at least four semesters remaining. Program requirements include:

– Attend Service Scholars Program Orientation
– Perform and document 300 hours of service
– Complete 2 service-learning classes
– Complete trainings/workshops in four skill areas
– Create and present a summative Service Portfolio
– Maintain a minimum overall GPA

Students fulfilling these requirements receive the following recognition:

– Notation of public service achievement on their official academic transcript (students with a minimum GPA of 2.5 receive “”special recognition in public service”"; students with a minimum GPA of 3.0 receive “”Public Service Scholar”"
– Listing in the commencement program
– Certificate of achievement and a letter from the Chancellor
– A special event honoring their accomplishments

For more information, visit our webpage: www.unc.edu/cps/scholars

Contact:
Lynn Blanchard, Director
Carolina Center for Public Service
(919)843-7568, ccps {at} unc(.)edu

Programs are designed based upon the following program goals:
To support the development of service learning classes.
To increase campus participation in community service
activities. To strengthen campus-community partnerships.
To advance the scholarship of service.
To promote civic engagement in higher education.

In Fall 2000, the Dean of the Faculties and the Vice Chancellor for Planning and Institutional Improvement appointed a Civic Engagement Task Force to (a) examine methods to document civic engagement activities, (b) evaluate the quality of civic engagement activities, and (c) envision a civic engagement agenda for the campus and its surrounding communities.

One of the earliest challenges of the Task Force was to define civic engagement as “”active collaboration that builds on the resources, skills, expertise, and knowledge of the campus and community to improve the quality of life in communities in a manner that is consistent with the campus mission”" (IUPUI Civic Engagement Task Force, 2001). Civic engagement includes teaching, research, and service in and with the community.

Civic engagement, as a scholarly activity, is the work of all schools and departments. Academic units are expected to report on civic engagement activities in annual reports that are part of institutional planning and budgeting. The Center for Service and Learning has key responsibilities to be a catalyst for civic engagement, to collaborate on the assessment of civic engagement, and to work with faculty to document civic engagement as scholarly work, but civic engagement is promoted as being the responsibility of all academic units.

Staff from the IUPUI Office of Informational Management and Institutional Research designed a web-based Institutional Portfolio (http://www.iport.iupui.edu). The CETF consulted with this group to create a Civic Engagement Inventory (http://www.iport.iupui.edu/civic/) as a means for representing civic engagement activities to internal and external audiences. Faculty and staff across campus were asked to enter activities into the interactive database and are asked to update information on a continuing basis.

The Civic Engagement Inventory organizes civic engagement activities along a number of key dimensions: academic unit, types of civic engagement activities, social issues, keywords, community partners, and geographic location. Campus-community activities can be searched by issues, or searched by community agency. The database allows the community access to campus resources associated with civic engagement activities.

The Institutional Portfolio includes Performance Indicators to benchmark and document campus progress towards measurable goals for a) enhancing capacity for civic engagement, b) enhancing civic activities, partnerships, and patient and client services, and c) intensifying commitment and accountability to Indianapolis, central Indiana, and the state. Performance indicators have been an integral part of campus accountability practices and provide a systematic way to gather information that can chart progress toward institutional goals.

www.nccu.edu/Academics/

Leading Decatur’s Promise

Providing caring adults, safe places, structured activities and marketable skills to more than 600 youth through the College Americorps Program and the America Reads Initiative

Completing basic health screenings for more than 300 Head Start students by College nursing and allied health students

Volunteering by college leadership organizations with at least half of their active members involved in volunteer service project, primarily serving younger youth

In a healthy partnership, each participant brings a distinctive contribution to the service, so that the two working together are able to do more than either could do alone; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The partnership that has formed between Gateway Community College and local air conditioning businesses in Phoenix, Arizona, serves as a good example.

In Phoenix, heat can cause health problems, especially for homebound elderly residents. Evaporative coolers do the job of cooling things down in most low-cost houses. However, when these coolers break, the fifty dollar repair bill is beyond the means of many low-income residents.

Enter: the partnership.

Gateway Community College offers HVAC (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning) certification among its associate degrees. Students training to get certification usually don t get experience working with evaporative cooling systems. They could get hands-on experience with these systems by providing repair services to residents whose air conditioning systems, and health, could be saved in the process. The college, however, has neither the material resources nor the transportation systems to provide these services. Local air conditioning businesses are inclined to develop strong relations with their customers, and help those in need. They have the materials and transportation needed to repair systems for paying customers. However, providing this service free of charge would be too time-consuming and costly, without the organizational services and support of the college students.

Six years ago, Professor Clyde Perry at Gateway put this set of needs and resources together: the need of elderly metro-Phoenix residents for functional air conditioners; the need of HVAC students at Gateway for hands-on experience working with evaporative cooling systems; and the resources of the college and the local businesses. Together, they formed the Evaporative Cooler Services Project, a day of service in March when air-conditioning technicians and students match up to provide services for residents throughout the area.

The project is now a staple in metro-Phoenix. Thirty-two HVAC students at Gateway participate in the specialized training that precedes the day of intense service. These 32 students are paired off with professional technicians. Using trucks and equipment donated by local businesses, each pair services up to four evaporative coolers in a single day, in homes of elderly residents who have requested the service.

Companies are able to build their customer relations through the program, and students receive essential practice in a skill they would not otherwise learn. Both have the opportunity to do so in an effort to better the community.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

The Office for the Community Agenda based at the Maricopa Community Colleges District puts a whole new twist on these models. Part community collaborator, part education reformer, part campus innovator the Office for the Community Agenda offers a distinctive example of campus support for community engagement.

The Office for the Community Agenda was founded in the spring of 1996 to directly advise Maricopa Chancellor Paul Elsner. Central to its founding mission was the support and initiation of community collaborations at the various community colleges overseen by Maricopa. Unlike most centers, however, the Office for the Community Agenda doesn t focus on maintaining programs. Instead, it works to generate new ideas and develop new collaborations which, once off the ground, can be sustained by other offices in the Maricopa District.

The office is regularly initiating studies and discussions with community groups to explore potential partnerships for the Maricopa campuses. In one case, through discussions with the mayor and city council of Phoenix and the Arizona Film Institute, the office initiated the construction of a multimedia/video production center. In another case, a study center was formed through a consortium of the Maricopa Community Colleges, the city of Phoenix, and the city s Fire Fighters Association to examine ways that Phoenix neighborhoods can be made or remain livable and viable. Another effort generated by the office focuses on ways to address the needs of Native American tribes in the Phoenix area.

A second aspect of the office s work is as education reformer. The office treats community engagement as an integral part of larger changes in education. Much of its initial work has focused on providing better educational service to urban and minority populations of youth and adults. This includes change both on and off campus. Off campus, the college has begun work with the community on projects such as an NFL Youth Education Training Center and the development of a proposed Urban Survival Program, both to be made available for all elementary and middle schools in Maricopa County. On campus, its work includes the creation of learning centers, and exploration of ideas like a College Without Cost, which uses volunteers and existing structures to deliver higher education at little or no cost.

The third role of the Office for the Community Agenda is as campus innovator. All of the work and ideas generated by the office are framed by its resolve to take a proactive and forward-thinking approach to education and community engagement. The Office for the Community Agenda bills itself, above all, as a medium for innovation to prepare to face and incorporate the paradigm shifts of the 21st century, planning change rather than accepting it, experimenting rather than waiting. Within this office, change on campus and in the community come together around an innovative attitude towards education.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: Office for the Community Agenda http://www.dist.maricopa.edu/comm/

Website: http://gse.berkeley.edu/research/slc/

California State University, Monterey Bay was founded in 1995 to address two complementary sets of needs. The California School System, anticipating an influx of new students in the coming decades, needed a new university to educate them. The Monterey Bay community needed a new support system for the community, which was facing the massive loss of jobs after the closing of a nearby military base. The new university, founded on the old site of the military base, seeks to simultaneously meet the educational and community needs of Monterey Bay.

As expressed in its founding vision statement, the university is framed by substantive commitment to a multilingual, multicultural, intellectual community distinguished by partnerships with existing institutions, both public and private, and by cooperative agreements which enable students, faculty, and staff to cross institutional boundaries for innovative instruction, broadly defined scholarly creative activity, and coordinated community service.

The structure and format of the university flow from this mission. The curriculum focuses heavily on multilingual, multicultural education and technological instruction for both undergraduates and professionals. Service-learning and community engagement are thoroughly incorporated into study. Every service-learning course is developed with input from community members and team-taught by interdisciplinary groups of faculty members and representatives of community organizations.

All students are required to take a course on community participation, the stated purpose of which is to generate enthusiasm for service and prepare students for a lifetime of community participation. All students also take at least one service-learning course specific to their major.

Majors, too, are structured around the unique vision of the university. Traditional departments are replaced with interdisciplinary, theme-based specialty clusters that are formed around community issues rather than academic concepts. Thus, a student might major in Learning Systems or Earth Systems, Science, and Policy. Students complete their study by demonstrating their ability to participate in diverse communities, a demonstration that includes producing a description detailing the assets and needs of a local neighborhood. On an inter-institutional level, cooperative agreements enable students and faculty to work closely with other local institutions and community organizations, both public and private.

From its structure to its curriculum to its community collaborations, CSU, Monterey Bay is an institution formed around a driving mission. Taken together, this set of values provides a vision of higher education defined by community engagement.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://service.monterey.edu

SDSU Service Learning home: http://servicelearning.sdsu.edu/
E-mail: servicelearning {at} sdsu(.)edu

Each quarter, Santa Clara s Eastside Project enrolls roughly 500 students who take courses that integrate academic analysis and reflective experience with underserved people in our local area. The Eastside Project has, for example, the following characteristics:

As a guiding principle, it seeks to create a learning environment that integrates rigorous inquiry, creative imagination, reflective engagement with society and commitment to fashioning a more humane and just world.

It is a faculty initiative, rooted in the curriculum. Students enroll in regular departmental offerings with a service-learning component from disciplines across the university, including anthropology, psychology, accounting, philosophy and religious studies.

The pedagogy is academic, exploring the on-going dialectic between theory and practice, which leads to a continuous reformulation of both. The process also elicits a variety of perspectives on problems and issues. Students put in eight hours a week engaged in the community; this experience informs classroom study including discussion, writing and presentations. Note that the “”project”" is grounded in the academic enterprise, not merely in community service or volunteerism.

It aims at establishing a mutually beneficial partnership between the university and the community. The effectiveness of the Project depends on having credible members of both the university and the community guiding its development and on-going activities. The learning is not a one way street. As equal partners, the community and the university listen and learn from each other — a partnership that ultimately anchors the concern for justice firmly within the university s curriculum and scholarly activity.

The specific aim of the Project is for students, animated by compassion, to move beyond philanthropy and social activism to the discipline of rigorous inquiry that can provide a solid intellectual foundation for the reshaping of the social order so that it serves the common good of all members of society. The rationale for this aim comes from the fact that the very institution (University) which explicitly commits itself to exploring, distilling, articulating and enhancing universal human experience is prevented from doing so because not all human experience can pass over into the consciousness of the university. Often neglected are the poor, the powerless, the voiceless in society. This is a problem for any university, but doubly so for a university that claims to stand in the Catholic Jesuit tradition.

In a book entitled Successful Service-Learning Programs: New Models of Excellence in Higher Education, Eugene Rice of AAHE described it this way:

“”In the moving story of the Eastside Project at Santa Clara University, we see how community service in the university s own neighborhood led to the cultivation of a global perspective, where all involved became increasingly aware of the rich diversity, the painful struggles of immigration, and the widening gap between the privileged and the poor. The editor, Edward Zlotkowski, went on to say, ‘what makes this program [Eastside Project] especially significant is the way in which it has been constructed to capture the very essence of its institution s guiding philosophy.’ Furthermore, what the Eastside Project refers to as a preferential option for the poor directly links its activities to a form of Catholic social activism that could, if similarly adopted elsewhere, redefine the meaning of Catholic higher education.”"

Contact person: Catherine Wolff, Director, Arrupe Center (formerly the Eastside Project), cwolff {at} scu(.)edu

Arrupe Center web site: http://www.scu.edu/arrupe/

The new director has lived up to our expectations. Almost immediately after her appointment she applied for and received a Campus Compact grant, and an outside grant that will provide a strong support base for the CSP activities over 5 years.

During the past year and a half, the CSP Director has put on three workshops that have trained thirty faculty on how to integrate community service learning into their classes. For the first workshop, Campus Compact monies allowed us to bring in an expert to the campus to advise the faculty on the myriad of possibilities in community service-learning. Since the first workshop, CSUB has relied on its own faculty to facilitate the workshops. Campus Compact and outside grant money also provided small internal grants to assist faculty in revising their courses. The CSP Office has provided the oversight and coordination for each of the faculty involved. This effort has significantly expanded our community service capabilities. Twenty courses have already been revised to include a community service learning option. Another 10-15 will soon follow. Participating faculty have come from many disciplines, including Psychology and Sociology, disciplines that one would expect to be interested, but also from Chemistry, Art, and Mathematics. We expect to bring 10 to 15 faculty into this process each year.

The CSP Office has also been busy developing potential placements in the area. The Director and the part-time staff have been at the center of this broad-based activity. The placements being secured fit into several categories. Some are paid cooperative education placements at nearby corporations; others are internships directly related to particular majors; finally there are placements that fall broadly under human service and community service-learning. While there is still much to be accomplished, the time is now in sight when enough placements will be available to support a university-wide requirement.

This two-year effort has heightened our community services capability across the institution and much progress has been made. However, much remains to be done. We are confident that community service-learning is here to stay at CSUB, thanks to the efforts of key faculty and staff who have pushed hard during the initial phase these past two years.

Website: http://www.csub.edu/CSP/

Community service, service learning, and community-based learning are longstanding traditions in the mission and purpose of Cal Poly and are regular elements of the educational environment provided our students, both curricular and co-curricular. One aspect of developing an Engaged University model at this campus will be to catalog and document the scope and impact of Cal Poly s engagement activities.

In addition, earlier this academic year, Provost Zingg also initiated the formation of a task force on Institutional Accountability and Learning Assessment, which has as one aspect of its charge defining our goal as a teaching/learning community. Also, the theme of Cal Poly s accreditation self-study for WASC is “”Cal Poly as a Center of Learning.”" This self-study has been hailed by WASC as one of the most innovative, candid, and successful in the history of the Association.

Community service program web site: http://www.calpoly.edu/~slad/csl/

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Contact person: Rose Washington, Special Project Director, External Relations, ccr {at} usc(.)edu

USC Neighborhood Outreach web page: http://www.usc.edu/dept/CCR/nbrhd0.htm

From

Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://www.sandiego.edu/csl/

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

What is your nation of residence? Why are you crossing the border? How frequently do you cross in a month? For what purposes do you cross the border?

The research that the students compiled dispelled a number of common misconceptions about border crossings here, at the most traversed transnational border in the world. Contrary to popular belief, nine out of ten crossings were not by tourists or smugglers, but by commuters who were going back and forth as part of their daily routine.

Faced with this new information, community leaders on both sides of the border suddenly realized that the economies and lives of their two cities were intertwined. Policy makers came together to discuss how they could make border crossing easier for these every day commuters. By the time discussion was through, their efforts had been profiled by papers from The San Diego Tribune to The New York Times, and the United States Congress had passed a bill authorizing expansion of the border to make crossing easier.

This small study with large implications provides important insight into democracy. Democracy, ideally, is a system where people come together to engage in civil discourse a process of participating in informed discussion of how their community looks today, and how they envision it looking tomorrow. Unfortunately, community members often don t have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about their community, and there are typically few places in a town or city where people can come together for such discussion.

The San Diego Dialogue, an initiative of the University of California that was the springboard for this cross-border research project, seeks to rectify both of these situations. The Dialogue is the name given to a center based at the university founded to provide the information, public education, and forum for effective civil discourse in the San Diego-Tijuana region.

The Dialogue is led by a group of one hundred regional leaders of industry, government, the media, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico and the United States. The group identifies issues of regional significance in three issue areas: regional integration; equity, diversity, and urban development; and globalization. For any particular issue, the progress of promoting civil discourse follows five steps. First, a plenary session is held providing public education and introducing the issue. Second, working groups are formed that include community members interested in the issue. Third, faculty and research fellows from the university provide applied research on the topic to give the working groups information they need to make informed decisions. The fourth key step in the development of civil discourse is the holding of community forums. The Dialogue regularly convenes workshops, roundtables, and community discussions that focus on research findings and regional issues. The group also sponsors a regular forum for discussion of cross-border policy issues that attracts participation from nearly 500 business, government, and academic leaders; and a regular breakfast forum series in which 200-300 business executives and public officials discuss economic issues and trends.

Once discussion of an issue is complete, the last step in the process is the publication of results. These may be published as separate articles available to the community, or as part of the San Diego Dialogue Report, the group s monthly newsletter.

By the time proceedings are published, community members have become involved in the process of sharing ideas that makes democratic communities come to life. Starting with a sociology class that got people talking all over the nation, the University of California, San Diego, has developed a project that has gotten people talking in a much more important venue: their own communities.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

For more information: http://www.sddialogue.org/