Greetings Wisconsin Campus Compact Members!

The school year is in full swing, and I hope everyone’s year has been off to a great start.  Here at WiCC, we have been planning our regional meetings, helping campuses put together civic action plans, putting together our legislative strategy, submitting a VISTA application, trying to broker new partnerships, and attending conferences so we can keep up with the field’s evolution.  First, a special congratulations to 12 WiCC members who were recognized through the 2015 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll! For more about this award, see here.

After having just traveled to the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement (IARSLCE) conference, I learned about a few new efforts and publications that were new to me.  I’d like to share them with you:

• University of Minnesota and the University of Georgia have been involved in a major effort to create a tool that would vet the quality of service-learning classes by developing “essential elements” of high-quality service-learning. Learn more about these elements here: http://tinyurl.com/slqat
• Notre Dame’s Study of Moral Purpose: This is a longitudinal study (one of the first of its kind) to look at what exactly helps facilitate a college student’s sense of moral purpose and prosocial behavior and how these attitudes last into adulthood. One take-away was that volunteering and service-learning during college predict prosocial orientation and adult outcomes.  http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/content/development-moral-purpose-longitudinal-study-college-experience-and-beyond
• University of Minnesota did a 14-month long “Issue Area Network Program” that attempted to bring together faculty and staff from across disciplines to work on common issue areas. http://engagement.umn.edu/our-impact/issue-area-networks I wanted to raise this because many campuses have been struggling with how to organize people on campus who are working on impact areas.  This might be a framework for you to consider.

WiCC has also been working with its Board of Directors to piece together a legislative and advocacy strategy.  We are pulling together a group of people from the Wisconsin Technical College System, the UW System, and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (WAICU) to help set our priorities in coordination with one another so we can be aligned in our messages to public officials.  This is an exciting step forward in WiCC’s development as an organization that can advocate on behalf of all higher education institutions in Wisconsin about the important community-engaged work we’re all doing.  To that end, we have also brought on board an intern to compile a messaging strategy about how higher education is addressing a variety of public issues—from K-12 education to health to environmental sustainability.  Stay tuned! Our intern Morgan Livingston may be contacting you for more information!

A few final reminders:

• Do you want to write about your community-engaged work? Want to network with journal editors? Attend our Pen to Paper Retreat on October 20-21. Randy Stoecker from UW-Madison will be there representing the Michigan Journal for Community Service and Learning (among others!).
• Please do attend our Regional Meetings this fall! Don’t be shy…bring along some colleagues to experience what makes this such a special network.
• Has your president or chancellor signed the Civic Action Statement? Great! Now your campus needs to put together a Civic Action Plan! If you need help to guide your campus through this process, please let me know. I’m happy to visit your campus and help in any way possible.
• SAVE THE DATE for the WiCC CIVIC ENGAGEMENT INSTITUTE in Green Bay (hosted by Northeast Wisconsin Technical College)! It will be on April 6 (Awards Dinner) and April 7 (Conference). Keynote speakers include Nadinne Cruz (Leading Thinker and Do-er in Service-Learning Field) and Steve Dubb (Anchor Institution Dashboard project).

In Service,

Gavin Luter