Embedding Civic Engagement in Undergraduate Research

Abstract

This paper initiates a discussion about the feasibility of using civic engagement projects to motivate students to learn research practices through immediate application in a community setting. Liberal arts colleges celebrate both civic engagement and undergraduate research as "high impact practices" on student learning. Our contribution to this discussion is to identify the challenges faculty face in creating academic year classes that contribute to such initiatives, and to delineate the trade-offs in adopting experiential-learning based courses. In this paper, we collect opinions from survey and in-depth interviews with 33 students in two St. Olaf college courses in the 2011-2012 academic year: Immigration & Citizenship and Analyzing Politics. To supplement our analysis, we also draw upon course evaluations completed by former students and community partners who participated in all three iterations of the first class, which was taught at St. Olaf College from 2008-2012. Broadly, the undergraduate research projects address immigration and citizenship in Rice County, Minnesota. Research projects involve a combination of individual and team efforts by students. End products from the research include policy reports, analysis of qualitative interviews about community priorities, and novel graphic narratives that re-map or “re-present” how civic engagement transpires in Rice County. Given course participants’ experiences, we examine the extent to which undergraduate research projects with a civic engagement component promote student learning about research design techniques through social observations and graphic narratives; understand the broader significance of their research efforts in communities; and uncover challenges in implementing social inquiry theories into practice. We link our discussion to both the broader context of liberal arts college priorities and the pedagogical literature.