CAMPUS PROFILE

(MONTCLAIR, New Jersey)

Institution: Montclair State University

Key Leaders:

Bryan Murdock, is founding Director of the Center for Community Engagement at Montclair State University oversees the Bonner CELI.

Krystal Woolston is the Assistant Director of the Center for Community Engagement at Montclair State University where she directs the Bonner Leader Program and supports other community-engaged learning programs.

Todd Kelshaw is the Community Engaged Teaching and Learning Scholar in the Center for Community Engagement where he oversees faculty development efforts.

Dr. Caryn McTighe Musil is a Distinguished Fellow, at AAC&U having also served in senior level positions, including Senior Vice President and Acting President. Dr Musil serves as a consultant to the CELI.

Project Summary

The Civic Learning Demonstration Project: Pursuing Frameworks for Engaged Departments seeks to expand faculty involvement at the department level and the opportunities for its student majors. The project explores ways departments can use knowledge and skills from its major to create more just and flourishing communities, and  reciprocal, generative community partnerships. Our CELI builds on existing institutional structures, programs, partnerships, to enhance community-engaged activities (pertaining to pedagogical, scholarly, and co-curricular endeavors) in ways that advance civic learning on campus, build links to the Bonner Leader Program, and reflect the direction and standards of the larger community engagement movement. 

Goals and Activities

MSU’s Center for Community Engagement (CCE) is working closely with four selected “demonstration departments,” to guide new curricular and co-curricular initiatives toward programmatic transformation as “community engaged departments” [1]  Building upon more than two decades of scholarship and practice on the concept of engaged departments that often implemented community-engagement as an add-on, the Civic Learning Demonstration Project  conceptualizes additional frameworks whose commitments to equity, justice, and the public good derive from within the departmental disciplines themselves. This inside/out strategy promises to be a catalyst for more lasting institutional change, within and through departments, and to generate a wider range of community/campus partnership options. The overarching, long-term goal is to develop knowledge about fresh, effective practices for developing community-engaged departments, positioning departments to be more fully involved in broadscale work that will be required when MSU implements the new community-engaged course requirement.

The one-year goals for this project are:

1. During Fall 2020: Convene faculty representatives of four departments (spanning diverse disciplines) to learn together about concepts and practices of community-engaged departments that rely on the inside/out strategy and making more transparent the core disciplinary values of social responsibility and the public good. These faculty development opportunities are facilitated by Caryn McTighe Musil, Distinguished Fellow, Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). 

2. During Spring 2021: To support faculty as they a) articulate with departmental colleagues how their disciplinary lenses can drive questions about the public purposes of their areas of inquiry; b) develop and submit curricular proposals to MSU’s University Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (UUCC) for approval and formal incorporation in their respective academic programs; and c) establish new, sustainable relationships with community partner organizations.

3. During Summer 2021: To reflect upon the experience of working with academic departments as they institutionalize community-engaged values, curricula, and co-curricular programming in their first stage, anticipate what next-level work within the department should be, and derive insights about effective practices and pitfalls that may inform more broadscale work in the future.

Progress

To date, the Civic Learning Demonstration Project: Pursuing Frameworks for Engaged Departments has 20 faculty from four academic departments participating in this year’s CELI. Participating departments include: Math, Communications Studies, World Languages and Cultures, and Anthropology. In December, department faculty held an introductory meeting where they had an opportunity to meet each other, review the goals and activities of the project, and to articulate motivations and aspirations for their departments. During the Spring semester of 2021, department faculty have participated in four workshops led by Dr. Caryn McTighe Musil, who is an independent consultant on the project. Some of the workshop topics include: Creating Inside/Out Departments, Enacting Core Disciplinary Values Through Community Engagement, and Pedagogies That Foster Democratic Habits. Workshops also provided opportunities for discussions of topical assigned readings, program design, and for the articulation of goals and objectives, and development of departmental curricular action plans including the design of new courses.

CELI 2020 Deepening the Commitment: Advancing Civic and Community Engagement at Montclair State University.

Institutional Change Project

In addition to this project, Montclair State continues to implement its 2020 CELI project titled:  Deepening the Commitment: Advancing Civic and Community Engagement at Montclair State University. On March 26, 2021, the Center for Community Engagement held the first meeting of  proposed Community Engagement Council with 17 representatives of academic and co-curricular units and community partners that have particular stake in community-engaged work that spans pedagogical, scholarly, and applied modes. The basic purposes of the Council are to bring people (as representatives/liaisons of their units) together to (a) generate and share information; (b) integrate substantive resources; (c) problem-solve/innovate; (d) provide guidance/support for community-engaged course instructors;  (e) generate and manage partnership networks, and to breakdown silos that prevent collaboration on community engagement efforts across campus.

The first meeting was an information and feedback session intended to outline the intentions and motivations behind the Council’s  formation, identify future members, and generate feedback and recommendations. Over the spring and summer, the CCE will survey participants to identify challenges to implementation of and the resources needed to implement community engagement in their units and garner additional fee back for recommendations on the roles and responsibilities of the Council. The first meeting of the Council is slated for the fall semester of AY 2022.

Despite the COVID delay, the Council project opened up access to the President’s office that heretofore was unavailable to Center staff. The meetings provided opportunities to develop a relationship with the Director of Governmental Relations and opened a channel of communication where she was able to learn more about the Center and it’s various programs, projects, and initiatives. In late fall 2020, the Center Director and Governmental Relations Director began to collaborate on a community development project in Paterson, NJ to renovate Hinchliffe Stadium, one of only two extant Negro League stadiums in the US. In addition to the construction of affordable housing, retail shops, and sports bar, the project includes the development of a Negro League museum as part of the stadium’s renovation. The project has the potential to become a robust place-based initiative offering rich community-based teaching, learning, and community-based research opportunities focused on historic preservation, contemporary issues of social and racial justice, local and US history, sports history, etc.

This year a number of CELI faculty have participated in the Hinchliffe museum project and aligned their courses to partner with project developers. Thus far, three community engaged courses have focused on urban redevelopment and history surrounding Hinchcliffe.

Course Design

Drs. Monica Taylor and Emily Klein have been able to develop both curriculum and instruction that integrate Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practices into their two undergraduate courses: EDFD 264: Gender and Education and GSWS 102: Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. These courses rely on an understanding of injustice, systemic oppression, heteronormativity, patriarchal sexism, and homophobia and a commitment to becoming an activist/advocate and fighting against injustice. Methods like TO offer embodied ways for young people to imagine a different world.

In preparation for developing TO curriculum and instruction, Drs. Taylor and Klein hosted Julian Boal as a resident faculty at MSU in February 2020 for one week in collaboration with the theater department. By working alongside Julian for four intensive days with teachers and students, they were able to apprentice as TO facilitators (or jokers) and develop the skills necessary to implement TO in the classroom. They also began to think about how they could use Forum Theatre as a potential culminating experience for their students. According to Klein and Taylor “the use of TO in our classes helps our students to develop compassion and commit to exploring ways that they can be everyday activists in their communities both on campus and off.

Linking CELI to the Bonner Leader Program

Dr. Jennifer Bragger, Psychology Department,  has also revised the curriculum of LEAD 400 the cumulative capstone that Bonner Leaders take to complete the minor in Leadership Development and Civic Engagement. Students in this class now all are required to engage as a coachee (coached by a graduate student in the M.A. or Ph.D. program in Industrial/Organizational Psychology) in an Assessment, Challenge, Support Leadership Development model. Coaches assess Bonner leaders (and other LDCE minors), learn about their leadership experiences and aspirations, provide feedback from assessments with consideration of the relationship of scores and feedback the coachees’ leadership level, history and aspirations. Bonner Leaders are then provided with an comprehensive leadership development plan individualized for this BL developmental level and career aspirations.