Working Paper No. 22
The Institution as a Citizen: How Colleges and Universities
 Can Enhance their Civic Role

Nancy Thomas

Abstract

 This paper is premised on the assumption that civic responsibility is the contemporary version of higher education's historical outreach mission. With that as an understanding, it considers how best colleges and universities can fulfill this commitment of service to external communities, broadly defined to include local, national, and international concerns. The paper offers typologies of ways that institutions structure academic outreach, responsive curricula, land-grant and extension school programs, faculty professional service, coordinating student volunteerism and encouraging public access to campus for athletic or cultural events. Institutions interested in enhancing their civic role can take from this paper strategies for enhancing an institution's civic life.  They can use this paper as a yardstick for their own practice.

Winter 1999

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