Coming to Critical Engagement

Book excerpt: Engagement is the label increasingly embraced by higher education to describe activities associated with serving the public interest. What had been viewed previously as service to, extension of, and outreach from is now engagement with as faculty members, students, and staff collaborate with partners in community affairs. This book describes how members of a faculty learning community have come to understand engagement as both intellectual endeavor and scholarly practice at the interface between academy and citizenry. Coming to Critical Engagement argues that the academy has a moral imperative to participate deliberately and consistently in democratic and systemic discourse with the public.