Penn State Intercom......July
12, 2001
9 attain public scholarship
associate grants
Throughout the United
States, more undergraduates than ever before are engaged in volunteer
community service, but their attitudes toward civic engagement have reached
record lows. A growing group of faculty hopes to change student attitudes
and stimulate learning by turning to models of "public scholarship."
"Public scholarship is not just service where you volunteer in a soup kitchen or spend time at a nursing home; it is really the act of bringing scholarship to bear to support the community," explained Jeremy Cohen, associate vice provost of Undergraduate Education. Cohen is the director of the University's Public Scholarship Associates.
Beginning this summer, a new partnership between Outreach and Cooperative Extension and the Office of Undergraduate Education is providing support to faculty who want to incorporate public scholarship into their undergraduate courses. Out of 50 candidates, five faculty members have been awarded Course Development and Enhancement Grants to design learning activities that link academic content and objectives with community problem solving. Together, the 2001 award recipients will incorporate public scholarship into courses that reach nearly 500 students per semester.
The five grant recipients are Stephen R. Couch, professor of sociology; Nancy Kurtz, internship coordinator and instructor in human development and family studies; Peter E. Linehan, assistant professor of forestry at Penn State Mont Alto; Rebecca Moore Peterson, instructor of biology; and Shannon Sullivan, assistant professor of philosophy and women's studies.
In addition to these grants, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching provided funding for another four public scholarship faculty whose proposals met the criteria for the Fund for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (FELT). FELT grants were awarded to Samuel Dennis, instructor of landscape architecture; Kevin Galbraith, assistant professor of health and human development at Penn State Altoona; Christine Gorby, assistant professor of architecture, working with Michael Rios, assistant professor of architecture and director of the Hamer Center for Community Design Assistance; and Nancy Love, associate professor of political science and speech communication.
All nine faculty will join the Public Scholarship Associates in moving forward with a University-wide agenda for public scholarship.