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Reports, Journal & Newspaper Articles

Publicated resources that document the successes of service-learning and civic engagement efforts and programs of Kansas colleges and universities, and throughout the nation.

2007

Volunteering in America: 2007 State Trends and Rankings in Civic Life
Corporation for National and Community Service, April 16, 2006

This report is the second annual study by the Corporation for National and Community Service that gives a detailed breakdown of America’s volunteering demographics, habits, and patterns by state and region. The 2007 report also provides the agency’s first-ever ranking of levels of civic engagement by state through a new Civic Life Index. This report is a valuable tool to help states and organizations increase volunteering towards the national goal of 75 million volunteers by the year 2010. In conjunction with the report, the Corporation has created “Resources for Retention,” a free online toolkit with resources and effective practices for volunteer retention that is available at http://www.nationalservice.gov/resources.
For the full report, please click here.

The Estimated Dollar Value of Volunteer Time is $18.77 per Hour for 2006
Independent Sector, April 2, 2007

The estimate helps acknowledge the millions of individuals who dedicate their time, talents, and energy to making a difference. Charitable organizations can use this estimate to quantify the enormous value volunteers provide. The value of volunteer time is based on the average hourly earnings of all production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls (as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Independent Sector takes this figure and increases it by 12 percent to estimate for fringe benefits. Charitable organizations most frequently use the value of volunteer time for recognition events or communications to show the amount of community support an organization receives from its volunteers. For the full report, please click here.

Building Communities:
How Rural Community Colleges Develop their Communities and the People who Live in Them
Michael T. Miller and Courtney C. Tuttle
Community College Journal of Research and Practice, February 2007

Community colleges in rural environments provide a variety of services. There is a great deal of documentation supporting those services that are academic and economic. The noneconomic and nonacademic results of community college activities, however, have an undocumented yet significant impact on local communities. The current study focused on how the activities of rural community colleges impacted local community self-identity. Using three case studies in the rural mid-south, four primary themes were identified as outcomes of these rural colleges' actions: developing community inclusiveness, developing community pride, creating a value-added community lifestyle, and being the central defining component of the host community. For the full report, click here.

Duke Launches Civic Engagement Initiative
Duke University News, February 12, 2007

In one of the most ambitious efforts of its kind in U.S. higher education, Duke University will make civic engagement an integral part of its undergraduate experience beginning in 2008, university president Richard H. Brodhead announced Monday. Duke’s new program, DukeEngage, will provide full funding and faculty and administrative support to all undergraduates who want to stretch beyond the classroom by tackling societal issues at home and abroad, and, in turn, learning from those real-world experiences. For the full article, click here.

Volunteers use MLK Day to help: Students take time to serve community
Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 15, 2007

The day of service will be marked in Iowa City for the first time this year. Organized by the University of Iowa Civic Engagement Program, local volunteers will work at six sites around the area as part of UI's Human Rights Week. Mary Mathew Wilson, the UI program's coordinator, said many campuses across the country have added a day of service to their calendars. For the full article, click here.

'First in Nation' Project Announced
National Campus Compact News

A member college in New Hampshire and an Iowa member college will collaborate on a national project to encourage college students to participate in the 2008 presidential election. "First in the Nation" is intended to bridge the nation through an intercollegiate and interdisciplinary study of the 2008 presidential election, with a particular emphasis on early contests in key states. The program will help students, faculty and staff members at both institutions explore the presidential campaigns, the election process and the major issues being discussed by the candidates. For the full article, click here.

2006

Volunteer Growth in America: A Review of Trends Since 1974
CNCS Office of Research and Policy Development and IU School of Public & Environmental Affairs

The Corporation for National and Community Service has recently released this report on volunteer growth in America. According to the report, volunteering is at a 30-year high. The report provides a breakdown by age group, and gives detailed information on the volunteerism trends of teenagers, "Baby Boomers," and Older Adults. To learn more, click here.

Hurricane Relief and Management in Performance and Accountability Report
CNCS Performance and Accountability 2006 Report to Congress

An unprecedented volunteer response to Hurricane Katrina, the launch of new strategic goals to advance service in America, and management achievements including a seventh consecutive clean audit were the highlights of the fiscal year 2006 Performance and Accountability Report released by the Corporation for National and Community Service today.

The report recounts how more than 2 million participants serving directly through the Corporation’s AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America programs provided more than 216 million hours of service and achieved demonstrable results in meeting a wide range of other critical community needs in education, disaster relief and preparedness, youth mentoring, elder care, and other human needs. For the full report, click here.

The report describes the unprecedented mobilization of national service resources in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Working in cooperation with state service commissions, FEMA, the Red Cross, and other national, state, and faith-based and community disaster relief organizations, more than 35,000 national service participants contributed more than 1.6 million hours to the relief and recovery effort in fiscal year 2006, doing everything from mass care and shelter operations to debris removal and home construction.

New Times Demand New Scholarship: Research Universities and Civic Engagement
Campus Compact and TU Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship & Public Service

A new network of research universities formed to promote civic engagement has issued this landmark report, which includes a rationale for engaged scholarship as well as recommendations for what research universities can do to advance civic engagement at their institutions and across higher education. Campus Compact is serving in a coordinating role for this new network.

The report grew out of a 2005 conference that was co-convened by Campus Compact and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. It has been endorsed by all who attended and a broad cross-section of other higher education leaders. For the full report, click here.

Volunteering Grows in Popularity Among College Students, Study Says
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 27, 2006

Today's college students are volunteering in greater numbers than those of just a few years ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps. The agency's researchers found that 3.3 million college students, or 30 percent of all students ages 16 to 24 at American colleges, had donated their time to various causes in 2005, compared with 2.7 million, or 28 percent of all students, in 2002.
For the full article, click here. (PAID SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED FOR FULL VIEW)

Generation Y Gets Involved
USA Today, October 23, 2006

Alex Wells switched shampoos over animal testing. She won't buy clothes produced by child labor. She yells at those who don't recycle. She spent a month in India this summer teaching English to preschoolers. Last year in high school, she helped organize a protest over genocide in the Sudan that raised $13,000 for Darfur relief. Wells, 18, of Los Gatos, Calif., may be pretty typical of her generation. A growing body of academic and market research suggests millennials - who are in their mid-20s and younger - are civic-minded and socially conscious as individuals, consumers and employees. This generation, also known as Generation Y and Echo Boomers, has been pressed for its vote, sought for its purchasing power and watched closely by sociologists and historians for insight into the way its members will shape the future. For the full article, click here.

Once the 'Me' Generation, Now the 'We'
Marietta Times, October 19, 2006

For Marietta College sophomore, Gwen Chamberlain, volunteering is as much a part of college life as a pop quiz, cold pizza or freezing her toes at a football game. "It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside,"
Chamberlain, 19, of Shreve, Ohio, said of community volunteering. "Just because we're in college doesn't mean we should not take the time. It's so easy for us to go out and make a difference."
For the full article, click here.

College Volunteerism Up Sharply, Study Finds
Associated Press, October 17, 2006

Some call them more interested in partying hard than helping out. But a new study shows college students volunteer at a rate that's grown sharply in the past few years. The number of college students volunteering grew more than 20 percent, from 2.7 million to 3.3 million, between 2002 and 2005, according to a study being released Monday by the Corporation for National & Community Service, a federal agency. For the full article, click here.

Student Volunteerism is Up
Inside Higher Ed, October 17, 2006

More than 3.3 million college students engaged in volunteer activities in 2005, up 20 percent from 2002, according to a report released Monday by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
About 30 percent of students about whom data could be obtained engaged in some volunteer activity, up from 27 percent three years prior, the report found. Both the percentage of students volunteering, and the rate of growth in volunteer ,activities exceed those for the population as a whole. The data in the report are based on surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau. For the full article, click here.

A Feather in Service-Learning Cap
Monterey County Herald, October 17, 2006

To earn their diplomas from CSU-Monterey Bay, some students dish out soup at homeless shelters, some tutor preschoolers and others teach nutrition classes to low-income women. Community service is a graduation requirement at CSUMB, where students contribute thousands of volunteer hours every year to local organizations. In recognition of the unique service-learning program, CSUMB received a Presidential Award on Monday, as part of the first President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. CSUMB was one of only three universities to get the highest honor.
For the full article, click here.

Students Eager to Give Time
Salt Lake Tribune, October 17, 2006

Jordan Barker wandered into the University of Utah's Bennion Community Service Center last August, and he has been there nearly every day since. The biology junior works at the campus center organizing students to volunteer at the Road Home homeless shelter three times a week to play with children while their parents attend meetings. Though Barker was a Boy Scout growing up and volunteers as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the U. offered his first school-based opportunity to volunteer. For the full article, click here.

College Students Volunteer More
Daily Oklahoman, October 17, 2006

Hannah Medrano has scraped cement from a mountain of bricks and slept overnight in a cardboard box -- all to help her favorite charity, Habitat for Humanity. Medrano, 19, has volunteered for the group since enrolling last year at East Central University in Ada. But she's not unusual in her civic involvement. A report issued Monday said 43 percent of Oklahoma college students are volunteers, the third-highest rate in the nation. Medrano, a Lindsay native, said her peers want to make a difference in the world. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, today's college students are among the most active volunteers in decades, leading researchers to suggest the emergence of a new "civic generation." For the full article, click here.

In Search of Evidence - Measuring Community Engagement and Higher Education
Eidos, October 2006

Recent discussions about the inclusion of the community engagement agenda as part of the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes and calls for Third Stream funding have highlighted the need for some measures of university-community engagement. Such measures of engagement should offer tangible evidence of the role that universities play in the educational, social and economic wellbeing of local communities and the nation more broadly. For the full report, click here.

Higher Education, Community Service, and Local Development
Victor A. Arredondo and Mario Fernández de la Garza
Conference on Community Engagement in Higher Education, September 3, 2006

This and other conference papers and additional readings from the September 2006 conference in Capetown, South Africa, "Community Engagement in Higher Education" hosted by The Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education and The Community-Higher Education-Service Partnerships initiative of JET Education Services are available online.

Reclaiming the American Dream
Bridgespan Group

This new report from the Bridgespan Group suggests that most students in the United States are eager to enter college, but few are prepared to earn degrees. Commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the report recommends that American high schools encourage excellence by offering more challenging classes and making rigorous, college-ready academics the norm in every school. To view a copy of the report, click here.

How Campuses Can Create Engaged Citizens: The Student Way
Stephanie Raill, Macalester College, and Elizabeth Hollander, Campus Compact
Journal of College and Character, January 2006

Student leaders in Campus Compact's Raise Your Voice campaign mobilized more than 270,000 students on 500 campuses to take part in service, advocacy, and other forms of civic engagement. This article distills their experience into valuable lessons on how to create a culture of engagement on campus, including unifying fragmented efforts, engaging detached students, expanding diversity, and relating coursework to community engagement. For the full article, click here.

Global Citizenship: Extending Students' Knowledge and Action to the Global Context
Jenny J. Lee, University of Arizona
Journal of College and Character, January 2006

The college context offers many valuable opportunities for students to become more globally aware. This article describes what may be lacking in U.S. colleges and universities as well as suggests how international activities can contribute towards global awareness. For the full article, click here.

New Scholars, New Scholarship: Political Understanding and Engagement
- An Interview with Anne Colby
Debora Liddell, University of Iowa
Journal of College and Character, January 2006

Debora Liddell recently interviewed Anne Colby, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who co-directs the Political Engagement Project and the Preparation for the Professions Program. For the full article, click here.

Earlier Days

Student Volunteering Is Worth Billions of Dollars a Year, Report Says
Elizabeth F. Farrell
Campus Compact

College students are more civically engaged than they were five years ago, and the time they spent volunteering last year was worth $4.45-billion to the communities they served, according to a survey report released last week by Campus Compact, a nonprofit group that advocates for student involvement in public service. For the full report, click here.

Kansas Campus Compact

Educating Citizens. Building Communities.

Reports, Journal & Newspaper Articles

2007

2006

Earlier Days

2007

2006

Earlier Days