Bonner Pathways Project

Overview  •  Background  •  Campus Profiles • Available Resources

OVERVIEW AND VISION

The Pathways Project, part of the Bonner Community Engaged Learning Initiative, engages a diverse, multifunctional team of campus and community stakeholders in strategic efforts to make community-engaged learning deep, pervasive, integrated and sustained at their institution. These institutions are invested in making community-engaged learning deep, pervasive, and integrated across curriculum and co-curricular life. They are working to intentionally develop scaffolded curricular and co-curricular pathways that engage students, faculty, and staff. Through coursework, internships, public scholarship, and other forms of engagement, students become reflective scholars and practitioners, working in partnership with organizations, government, policy makers, and communities to address pressing issues.

Unfortunately, many college students today graduate ill equipped – at work or in civic life – to successfully engage in contributing to the well-being of their neighbors, communities, and democracy. This finding was highlighted in A Crucible Moment (2012), a report generated by the U.S. Department of Education and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Fewer than ten percent of students have deep, developmental experiences or have cultivated the values, knowledge, and skills to work on today’s complex problems. The exception, our research has shown, are graduates from cohort-based programs like the Bonner Scholars and Leaders Program (or others that center engagement and social justice). Students who learn by doing refine their commitments to civic engagement, community building, diversity, global perspective, social justice, spiritual exploration, and wellness. These students are supported to successfully graduate from college as change agents, prepared for leadership in an increasingly polarized and complex world. 

Imagine if many more of the nation’s undergraduates were engaged substantively, during college, in their communities. Students could tutor and mentor youth, create economic opportunities, conserve energy, protect the environment, address the climate crisis, build civic infrastructure, address health and other disparities, research problems and help generate solutions, and build communities through projects applying their learning. The ultimate goal of the Pathways Project, shared by the teams, is to support at least 20% of students to be involved in multiyear pathways that involve community partnerships and projects, culminating in a capstone-level experience. Through this, students acquire and practice the knowledge and skills of democratic community engagement, working in partnership with communities to address issues, build community capacity, advocate for change, and influence policies. The Pathways Project focuses on this aspiration, driven by scholarship and evidence.

In fact, fostering engagement across the curriculum may be one of the most successful strategies for improving undergraduate education. Indeed, a vast body of scholarship has emerged that points clearly to the powerful impacts of engaged and experiential learning  experiences. For instance, through the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) Initiative, research affirmed that high-impact practices such as learning communities, service-learning, project-based learning, mentored undergraduate research, and capstones are linked with propelling greater levels of student learning, critical thinking, persistence, and completion (Brownell & Swaner 2010; Finley, 2012; Finley & McNair, 2013; Kuh 2008). To be effective, high-impact practices must involve significant effort and help students build substantive relationships, engage across differences, access rich feedback, apply what they are learning in new situations, and provide opportunities to reflect on the people they are becoming (Kinzie, Weight, & Hoy, 2015). For students of color and other historically underrepresented students, they also provide opportunities two other essential features: making a difference for others and agency and accomplishment (Kinzie et al., 2021). Community-engaged learning pathways typically involve each of those dimensions.

Connection TO COMMUNITY IMPACT

Deep experiences in community-engaged learning often prepare students to successfully work, collaborate, and live in communities with individuals who are different from themselves. Experiences that center social justice, furthermore, teach students to actively care about the wellbeing, opportunities, and quality of life for all within those communities, by being involved in civic life and politics (Hoy, Shah, and Barclay, 2020; Hurtado, 2007; Mitchell & Chavous, 2021). Within institutions, and across higher education, community engagement must be linked with efforts that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Indeed, to build a fully engaged campus, an institution must also support the full and equal participation of all of its members, including faculty, staff, and students (Sturm et al., 2011).

Finally, such pathways are also great preparation for successful careers and work life across sectors. One of the largest scale studies conducted by Gallup Inc. and Purdue University with more than 30,000 college graduates in the United States highlighted the most influential college experiences for post-graduate success in the workplace and at home and what is happening in college. The study found just six factors–three support and three experiential–are most strongly tied to post graduate well-being and workplace engagement. They include: (1) having at least one professor who cared about them and (2) made them excited about learning, (3) having a mentor, (4) working on a project that took a semester or more to complete, (5) having an internship or job that allowed them to apply learning, and (6) being extremely active in extracurricular activities. (Gallup, Inc., 2014). Unfortunately, the study found a gap in these practices, revealing that only three percent of more than 30,000 college graduates surveyed reported that they had all six experiences. Here again, students who complete integrative pathways, such as those offered through the Bonner Program or academic degrees tied with civic purposes, will likely systematically be engaged in several practices. Studies of employers have found that what they most want from graduates are skills like collaboration, teamwork, critical thinking, and willingness to learn that are linked with community engagement experiences (Hart Research Associates, 2013). 

The Pathways Project builds on more than thirty years of collective experience in engaging students, staff, and faculty in meeting the public purpose of higher education through developmental, sustained partnerships and projects. It leverages the lessons not only from the Bonner Foundation and Network but from a broader array of institutions and consortia that have built, implemented, evaluated, and refined effective models for higher education. This work aligns with our mission and goals of fostering the development and leadership of diverse students; contributing to community impact; and promoting a campus-wide culture and practice of service. Our national learning community is poised and positioned to offer lessons for replication across higher education, showcasing how colleges can intentionally engage students in learning by doing while contributing to opportunity, vitality, equity, and justice in our communities and democracy.

BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

Building the model for the Bonner Program involved creating a significant, intense, and developmental four-year scaffolding. While the core of off-campus community engagement is often seen by others as "co-curricular," the heart of the model has always been integrative learning. 

The Foundation has cultivated connections with faculty and curriculum in a number of ways, supported by a series of Learn & Serve grants starting in 1997 that provided seed money to campuses to flesh out the curriculum and model, to catalyzing a network of community-based research scholars and projects, to building the architecture for minors and certificates that could run parallel to the four year model.

The Bonner Foundation also worked with schools in our network to infuse Minors, Certificates, and Concentrations tied to civic engagement across institutions. 

Beginning in 2010, the Foundation renewed this attention to curriculum change through its Bonner High-Impact Initiative, which sought to foster connections between high-impact practices – like first year experience programs, internships, service-learning coursework, undergraduate research projects, and capstones – and community engagement. In practice, much of the work focused on scaffolding coursework and experience, creating integrative pathways. 

When the Association of American Colleges and Universities announced its newest Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) challenge in 2015, calling for colleges and universities to integrate “Signature Work” into the experiences of all undergraduate students, we were ready to take this on.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND LESSONS FOR CHANGE

In the past few years, 16 campuses in the network were part of a cohort learning community that convenes at annual meetings, during webinars, and via conference calls to discuss and support their advancements on Community-Engaged Signature Work. Within just about 18 months, about half of those campuses were able to integrate the capstone into the experience of Bonner juniors and/or seniors, and the other half have that in the works. This momentum led to the decision to make a Bonner Capstone part of all students experience, over the next four years. Through interviews and dialogue with the staff and faculty who are the change leaders, we identified several prominent approaches or models for related institutional change:

1) Co-Curricular and Faculty Advising Connection

Some institutions are building a capstone component or project into the Bonner Junior and/or Senior Year by strengthening the guidelines for the Senior Presentation of Learning to support a more integrative project. This also can pave the way for a faculty connection and the integration of a reflective assignment and e-portfolio (possibly tied to learning outcomes and assessment). This provides some time for Bonner administrators to gauge and plan for a variety of curriculum connections, both with majors and by creating associated minors.

2) Developing an Integrative Requirement

Some institutions are building a structured experience, senior seminar, and/or course into the Bonner Program so that students are guided through the creation and implementation of a significant capstone project. In these cases, students are often guided through a seminar structure (which may or may not have credit) through the process of their capstone component. Some seminars, like the one at Siena College which is led by Ruth Kassel in the Office of Academic Community Engagement, guide students in the research process, such as identifying the right questions, writing, doing a literature review, and so on. Students are guided to identify a faculty mentor in their major and link it to credit there as well.

3) Coupling with Existing Requirements

Some institutions are building linkages between the Bonner Program and existing campus-wide academic structures that require or engage students in a capstone project, like General Education Senior Theses/Comps or Honors projects. For instance, Allegheny College added a civic learning graduation requirement and already had a comp. Through advising, students are invited to explore how to connect these projects and requirements, which will then involve faculty across many disciplines.

4) Hybrid Model

Some institutions are bridging the capstone work of Bonners with a menu or individualized or particular available structures such as Minors, Concentrations, Interdisciplinary Pathways, undergraduate research fellowships or courses, etc.). For instance, this might include a Minor in Poverty Studies or a Certificate in Leadership, both available on a given campus. This model works well when the campus is working on a number of academic or integrative pathways.

Regardless, the integration process is tackling components like:

• Involving students as colleagues

• Engaging partners in identifying research and project requests

• Engaging faculty as mentors and advisors

• Developing models for team projects

• Bridging the work of staff and faculty (Student and Academic Affairs) on campuses

For the Bonner Network, our integration of comprehensive tracking of students' work across their four years (using Bonner Web-based Reporting) and routine written evaluations and conversations with community partners means that we can also quantify this work, on a campus and national level, producing reports about the types of projects completed and the qualitative impact of such projects.

As the Bonner Foundation and network moves forward with these efforts, we hope to share best practices and lessons learned within the network and with the field. 

INSTITUTIONS AND “EMERGING MODELS”

Since 2021, seven institutions have been part of the Pathways Project, working actively to integrate and scale community engagement across the institution. They include:

• Averett University

• College of Saint Benedict + Saint John’s University

• Maryville College

• Montclair State University

• Oberlin College

• Siena College

• Widener University

Due to the partnership between the Bonner Foundation and Bringing Theory to Practice, these institutions have also been recognized as “Emerging Models” in BT2P’s Paradigm Project.

AVAILABLE  RESOURCES

We have found innovators across higher education, in our network and beyond, that let us know what is possible. Campuses like Worcester Polytechnic Institute are engaging students in real-world projects with a focus on engineering but often with a civic bent. Within our network, Earlham's EPIC pathways, Emory & Henry's Project Ampersand, and Guilford's aspirations to integrate civically focused problem-based learning inspire our commitment to move in this direction. Programs like Siena College and Stetson University, which have already implemented Bonner Capstones for more than four years, have also showed there is a way to make this happen.

On the Bonner Network Wiki, you can find resources on Community-Engaged Capstones and Community-Engaged Academic Pathways (such as certificates, minors, and majors) including:

• An 8-Part Bonner Capstone Curriculum, which provides a simple structure to build the expectation into the cohort experience over four years, with easy activities that prepare students to help identify community defined projects that they can take on

• A suggested structure for a faculty learning circle or reading group to build campus literacy and investment in the concept, as well as promote the change process

• Recommended articles and scholarship for the learning circle or campus education

• The Fall 2016 Issue of AAC&U's Diversity & Democracy publication, which the Bonner Foundation did in partnership with AAC&U to promote the initiative. Included is a framework that continues to shape the development of pathways across institutions.