Date of Award
December 2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Institute on Family and Community Life
Committee Member
Martie P Thompson
Committee Member
Bonnie Holaday
Committee Member
Nghi Thai
Committee Member
Arelis Moore de Peralta
Abstract
Within the last decade, colleges and universities in the United States have embraced the “community engagement” model to fulfill their public missions and prepare their students for work within increasingly complex and diverse communities. The number of academic majors and minors in community engagement-related fields has multiplied across the country, yet there is little literature that examines their impact on students, and whether or not they are producing uniquely engaged citizens upon graduation. This quasi-experimental, quantitative study explores the effects of one such program on students at Central Connecticut State University. Graduates who have completed a minor in Community and Civic Engagement were compared with a second group of graduates with similar majors on the Civic-Minded Graduate (CMG) Scale; it was found that those who had completed the Community and Civic Engagement minor showed significantly higher levels of civic-mindedness on all four CMG subscales than graduates who did not complete the minor. Sex was found to be a significant factor on three of the four subscales. The results of this study promise to inform university curriculum design and allocation of resources in the area of community engagement, as well as to fill a gap in the literature regarding outcomes assessment for academic community engagement programs. Areas for future research include assessment of community impact, more precise evaluations of program components, and the inclusion of global learning as an outcome for community and civic engagement programs.
Recommended Citation
Minor, Laura L., "Educating for Civic-Mindedness: Examining Student Impacts of Academic Programs of Community and Civic Engagement in Higher Education" (2019). All Dissertations. 2508.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/2508