PLACING ENGAGEMENT: CRITICAL READINGS OF INTERACTION

BETWEEN REGIONAL COMMUNITIES AND

COMPREHENSIVE UNIVERSITIES

By

TAMI LEA MOORE

A dissertation/thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology

August, 2008

© Copyright by TAMI LEA MOORE, 2008 All Rights Reserved

© Copyright by TAMI LEA MOORE, 2008 All Rights Reserved

iii

To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of TAMI LEA MOORE find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

Co-Chair Co-Chair

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Early in my graduate career, in another degree program, a professor told

me that his doctoral degree taught him how much he did not know. At the time,

I thought he must have wasted a great deal of money on his education if that was

all he had to show for it. By the end of my degree program, I thought he was

quite a smart man. Today, as I move to the end of my doctoral degree, I know

that he spoke a singularly important truth. His story helps me see the

tremendous gifts that I have been given over the last four years by many, many

people who taught me and supported this work to its completion. I am grateful

for this opportunity to acknowledge their contributions and to thank them for

their support.

The community members and university representatives who participated

in this research have been my greatest teachers, showing me over and over that

Nadine Cruz is right about her assertion that only three percent of the

knowledge we need to address the world’s challenges comes out of academia.

Jim and Ruth May gave me a beautiful February view of the Clearwater River

and bald eagles at the Reflection Inn, where I wrote the early drafts of chapters 1

through 4. They took excellent care of a scholar at work, and gave of their time

to help me understand their experience of the amazing people who are their

neighbors in that beautiful “last wilderness.” Kathee Tifft helped me get started

in Lewiston, shuttled me to Grangeville, and introduced me to many committed

v

leaders of Cottonwood. Mary Schmidt let me draw on an old friendship to invite

myself to the Horizons Summit, where I met people and communities from

across the region; it was a wonderful way to get re-acquainted with the towns

and the people of a region I served several years ago as an AmeriCorps

volunteer.

In Oklahoma City, Amy Roff pointed me in the perfect direction very

early on, and it made all the difference in my interviews. More than one

participant extended our meeting time to keep answering questions about a

community they clearly love and of which they are very proud. I am honored to

have this chance to carry their story to a wider audience. Tim Reese helped me

see what this project, and my research agenda as a whole, is really all about. He

also taught me to be prepared for someone to reference what I write about

myself on a faculty webpage someday. Barry Lofton and Debbie Bendick helped

me look beyond and see important truths about a community’s story.

I am also grateful to the many people who provided me with

opportunities to learn about working with Native communities. Kay Kidder,

Director of Adult and Higher Education for the Nez Perce Tribe, spent several

hours tutoring me on the structure and functioning of the Nez Perce Tribal

Executive Council (NPTEC), and the tribal government itself. Her support for

this research project was genuine and I am grateful for the opportunities she

created for me to think purposefully about doing mutually beneficial research.

Julia Davis-Wheeler, chair of the Human Resources Subcommittee, and the other

vi

members of the committee, were extremely generous with their time in helping

me to understand the issues involved in doing research with Nez Perce tribal

people and I am grateful for the experience. Barbara Aston, Special Assistant to

the Provost/Tribal Liaison, and Interim Director of the Plateau Center for

American Indian Studies at Washington State University, also assisted at a

critical juncture in the process.

Thank you to my new colleagues at Oklahoma State University for giving

me the first public opportunity to talk about this dissertation during my research

presentation. Your thoughtful questions and feedback came at a most opportune

time in the writing. I look forward to continuing the conversations that began

during that interview, and to your support as the dissertation transforms into

shorter pieces for other venues.

I will bring to this new position the memories of wonderful mentors who

modeled collegiality and commitment to their students. Len Foster, Eric Anctil,

and Michael Pavel contributed to my education and to my professional

development as a scholar of higher education and I am better for all that I

learned from them in and out of the classroom. I have also been blessed by the

experience of learning with an incredibly talented faculty in WSU’s Cultural

Studies and Social Thought program. Pam Bettis, thank you especially for

bringing me into the program, and challenging me to make my work be of use.

To my colleagues in the Cultural Studies and Higher Education doctoral

programs: I am humbled by this opportunity to express what you have meant to

vii

me over our time together. I said words like “epistemology” and “hegemony”

out loud for the first time and you didn’t laugh. We challenged each other and I

became a better thinker in preparing for our discussions. I am a better person

for the example of your commitments, keen critique and intellectual community.

The Talking Pictures Project – Melissa Saul, Joan O’sa Oviawe, and Bob Offei

Manteaw – reflects the best things about this graduate experience. We came

together out of common interest, and built something wonderful together.

Beyond the experiences we created for pre-service teachers, I value what you

taught me about the joys and challenges of collaborative research teams and the

friendships that emerge from them. I look forward to finding new ways to work

with you all. Sanford Richmond, Xyan Neider, Debbie Dougan, David Warner,

Chris Wuthrich, Emily Janke, Angie Allen, Lisa Townson – who could ask for

better colleagues and friends from whom to learn and with whom to laugh and

scream and lament and relish and celebrate this endeavor called getting to the

Ph.D.

Several friends lent their special talents and knowledge in support of me

and this project: Michael Kyte on points about Idaho’s Highway 95; David

Huggins on the layers of soil sedimentation; Chris Booker through her special

relationship with the management of what feels like a huge dataset. Hayley

Chouinard deserves special thanks for her quiet confidence in my future as a

scholar and lunch and neoliberal economics and the important distinction

between economic development and economic impact. These all made

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importance differences in the final product. I talked to Maura every morning at

5:30a.m. throughout this dissertation, and to Nancy every weekend and in

between when the going got rough. They kept me out of my head and in clear

thinking about what is possible, where the joy can be found, and gratitude for

the process. They, and many other new friends, supported my sanity and it is

with their help that I am a better, healthier person now than I was when I started

this process. I understand the miracle of this and I am grateful for the gift of the

fellowship.

Bonnie Price gave me a window overlooking north Idaho timberland

where I could see trees that looked very much like the forests of Idaho’s Region 2

further south. At her house, I wrote the first of what would become the final two

chapters of this dissertation, surrounded by the woods I’ve come to love. Her

friendship is one of the best things to come out of my AmeriCorps service, and I

am grateful to still have her in my life.

After her retirement from a faculty position, Joan Heron served two and

half years in the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan, learned and then taught in

Russian, served two years as an AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteer, wrote two books,

found an amazing life partner, and continues her committed work to change the

world one small action at a time. Her very presence in my life through this

experience helped give me the perspective I needed to remember that, as another

friend says, “if this dissertation is the best thing you ever do, there is something

ix

wrong.” Most of all, Joan, thank you for reminding me that solitude is not

loneliness, and I have what I need to go on.

Amongst these friends and mentors, I owe special recognition to five

individuals who shaped my graduate program. Bernardo Gallegos took an

interest in this project and my scholarship early on, and continues to encourage

me. I am grateful to have learned so much from him in the short time of his stay

at Washington State. David Greenwood challenged me to think deeply, to make

theory a tool rather than a framework for plugging ideas, and to push myself

when the ideas and their articulation get hard. His work and his life as a scholar

are important examples and I know I am fortunate to have them so early in my

career. Jose Alamillo said yes to an invitation to serve on the committee of a very

enthusiastic, yet not quite focused enough first-year student. I am sometimes

amazed, and I count my blessings, that he did. There is so much work to be done

in theorizing engagement outside its organizational structures in higher

education, and Jose helps me fill the toolbox I will need to do this. Thank you for

that and your example as an engaged scholar and community activist.

Two amazing women co-chair my dissertation committee. Together,

we’ve had what for me is one of the great experiences of my life. I feel

challenged here to write about it in a way that adequately honors the experience.

I’m also keenly aware of the ordering of things in acknowledgements, where the

more important people are either right up front, or closer and closer to the end.

So, to represent the way I have experienced their contributions to this

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dissertation and to my life as a scholar, I go forward here in columns of text that

occur simultaneously on the page. The reader can look at it in whatever order or

skip around in the reading. That in fact is just like working with two amazing

mentors.

As I started toward my dissertation,

Dawn Shinew explained that she

would not tell me how to complete

this project. She would instead help

me learn what I needed to know.

This is the role that she has played in

my academic life since that night

after class four years ago when she

suggested how I might go about

pursuing a dual emphasis in higher

education and cultural studies. The

palpable support at each turn and

every slightly crazy idea made all

the difference in my doctoral

education. “It might be hard, but I

want to try it,” I said. Dawn has

helped me be brave and try the

challenging things. I am grateful.

“I can’t imagine not doing exactly

what you tell me to do,” I told Kelly

Ward that once, a little sheepishly. I

took this approach because I trusted

that she always had my best interest

at heart. She gave me my first

opportunities to do research and to

present it to others, and to try my

hand at teaching. I have learned

from this relationship things I didn’t

know I needed to know. It is no

exaggeration to say that I could not

have completed this dissertation

without what she has taught me

both personally and professionally.

More importantly, I feel confident

about my future as a faculty member

because of these same gifts.

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When I list the gifts I have been given in my life, I always start with my

family. My parents have been there for every public performance of my life,

from pre-school pageants to graduations. Mine were the parents who traveled

with the band to cold football games, and hot parades. They served in every

organization designed to support me and my classmates. This support extends

to this final degree. My father let me bring in my laptop and my research kit and

make his home ground zero for the Oklahoma City case study research. He

spent many evenings talking through what I was learning, helping me to

remember the Oklahoma way of thinking and doing that I’d grown up with. He

contributes to every piece of scholarship that I complete because he is the person

who taught me to give back to my community. My mother, in her recent illness,

helped me remember my priorities in life a crucial time in finishing this

dissertation. I am profoundly grateful for being able to share this degree with

her. She always wanted me to write a book . . . I have, Mom. Thank you for

believing that I could.

Finally, to my partner in life and in this endeavor, Cathy Green. You have

given me opportunities to follow my passion through all manner of low-paying

and stressful jobs, and then the supreme selfishness of graduate school. You’ve

run our household, and managed big chunks of our life together at the expense

of time for yourself. Most of all, you’ve stayed married to me through this

adventure and, miraculously, seem to want to stay that way. Thank you.

xii

PLACING ENGAGEMENT: CRITICAL READINGS OF INTERACTION

BETWEEN REGIONAL COMMUNITIES AND

COMPREHENSIVE UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

by Tami Lea Moore, Ph.D. Washington State University

August, 2008

Chair: Kelly A. Ward and Dawn M. Shinew

This dissertation explores organizational narratives of engagement

initiatives involving two comprehensive universities and the larger regional

communities they serve. The purpose of this study is to develop a holistic

description of engagement initiatives, reflecting data collected through

interviews, documents and other artifacts from representatives of community

and university, including residents, civic leaders, university faculty and

administrators, elected officials, community and non-profit organizations and

businesses.

Using case studies of the University of Central Oklahoma and Lewis-

Clark State College, this research explores the interaction of each institution with

the regional community it serves. Utilizing narrative analysis techniques and

portraiture methodology to explore the complexities of these relationships, I

identified four layers in the data. Portraits of the two regional institutions

explore each layer individually. Layer 1 is an overview of the community, the

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university), and the engagement initiatives, followed by the narrative of

engagement which frames the initiatives in Layer 2. The third layer places

engagement as product and reflection of cultural, historical and social events in a

particular place. Layer 4 juxtaposes these narratives with the theoretical

framework.

In uncovering these layers, the dissertation breaks new ground in the

scholarship related to community-university engagement, demonstrating the

importance of place in producing the terms of this interaction. The findings can

be read in two ways: for what they tell us about economic development as

engagement in comprehensive colleges and universities; and as an example of a

methodological approach which emphasizes the simultaneous existence of

multiple layers in narrative data. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of

community-university interaction shaped by place and by power as evidenced in

the two portrait/case studies, and offers recommendations to advance

community involvement in engagement initiatives, as well as the practice,

scholarship related to, and theorizing of community-university engagement. The

final chapter of the dissertation serves two purposes: first, it contributes to an

understanding of community-university interaction as shaped by place and by

power; and then, offers new perspectives on engagement based on a spatialized,

or place-based, reading of Bourdieu’s treatment of power functioning in social

fields that can advance theory, practice and scholarship in this area.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................ iv

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ xii

LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................... xviii

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION: PURPOSE AND CONTEXT.......................................1

Key Concepts: Engagement and Place................................................4 Research Design and Methodology .....................................................8

2. LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................12

Engagement .........................................................................................13 Higher Education and the New Economy.........................................19 Place......................................................................................................25

3. THE ROLE OF THEORY IN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY................31

Bourdieu: Socioanalysis .....................................................................34 Symbolic Power .............................................................................34 Reflexive Sociology ........................................................................42 Critical Geography: The Production of Space..................................45 Spatial Practice..............................................................................45 Representations of Space................................................................46 Representational Spaces.................................................................47 On Spatializing Bourdieu....................................................................48

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4. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY.......................................51

Sample ..................................................................................................51 Data Collection ....................................................................................56 Interviews......................................................................................57 Documents and Artifacts ...............................................................60 Research Journal ............................................................................61 Data Management ...............................................................................61 Analysis and Representation..............................................................63 Portraiture.....................................................................................65 Writing as Inquiry.........................................................................65 Criteria for Establishing Rigor in Alternative Representations .......71 Substantive Contribution ..............................................................74 Aesthetic Merit..............................................................................74 Reflexivity .....................................................................................75 Impact ...........................................................................................77 Expression of a Reality...................................................................77 Limitations ...........................................................................................79 Overview of Case Studies and Conclusion .......................................80

5. UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA............................................82

Layer 1: Overview of the Communities and Engagement Initiatives.............................................................................83 Overview of the Community..........................................................83 The Engagement Initiatives ...........................................................93

Layer 2: Themes in the Narrative of Engagement .........................108 Theme 1: Visibility......................................................................109 Theme 2: Leadership ...................................................................111 Layer 3: Placing Engagement in Cultural, Historical, and Social

Context ..............................................................................113 Economic Development................................................................114 Growth ........................................................................................122 Who Is Left Out of This Picture? .................................................126

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Layer 4: Juxtaposing Engagement and Theory ..............................132 The Production of Space...............................................................132 Symbolic Power ...........................................................................136

6. LEWIS-CLARK STATE COLLEGE .........................................................143

Layer 1: Overview of the Communities and Engagement Initiatives...........................................................................145 The Last Normal School in the United States ..............................151 The Engagement Initiatives .........................................................155 Layer 2: Themes in the Narrative of Engagement .........................173 Theme 1: College as an Amenity .................................................174 Theme 2: “Active Engagement”..................................................176 Layer 3: Placing Engagement in Cultural, Historical, and Social

Context ..............................................................................181 Frontier Ethos..............................................................................182 Nostalgia .....................................................................................182 “Economic Impact”......................................................................185 The Interplay of People, History, and Culture..............................187 Layer 4: Juxtaposing Engagement and Theory ..............................190 Symbolic Power ...........................................................................191 The Production of Space...............................................................197

7. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND SCHOLARSHIP, OR WHAT’S OVERLOOKED IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT...........203

Homogenizing Heterogeneity..........................................................206 Disrupting Homogeneity..................................................................211 Ideology .......................................................................................214 History ........................................................................................215 Participation and Exclusion.........................................................215 Implications and Recommendations................................................217 Communities Engaging with Regional Universities ....................217 Recommendations ...............................................................219 The Practice of Community-Engaged Scholarship........................220 Recommendations ...............................................................221

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Scholarship Related to Community-Engaged Scholarship ............223 Recommendations ...............................................................224 Theorizing ...................................................................................226 Recommendations ...............................................................227

Arriving at Mutual Benefit ...............................................................228

REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................233

APPENDICES ...........................................................................................................257

A. Nominated Initiative Interview Guide ...................................................258 B. Non-Advancing Initiative/Withdrawing Partner Interview Guide....260 C. Informational Interview Guide ...............................................................262

xviii

LIST OF FIGURES 1. Categories of Interaction Between Universities and the Larger Community..........6 2. Data Analysis Layers..............................................................................................67 3. Map of Oklahoma with Greater Oklahoma City Area Counties Outlined .............86 4. Interaction Between the Greater Oklahoma City Area and UCO ...........................95 5. Map of Idaho with Region 2 Counties Outlined ...................................................144 6. Interaction Between Region 2 Communities and LCSC.......................................156

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Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to the communities of

Edmond, Oklahoma

The greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area

Lewiston, Idaho

Lapwai, Idaho

Kooskia, Idaho

Kamiah, Idaho

Stites, Idaho

Grangeville, Idaho

Cottonwood, Idaho

and the people whose stories make up the narratives of engagement between

comprehensive universities and the regional institutions they serve.

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CHAPTER ONE

ENGAGEMENT IN REGIONAL COMMUNITIES: PURPOSE AND CONTEXT

The literature on university engagement is ripe with rhetoric exhorting

colleges and universities, as well as their faculty and students, to engage with the

community (Barber, 1992; Boyer, 1996; Boyte, 2004; Checkoway, 2001; Ehrlich,

2004; Kezar, Chambers, & Brukhardt, 2005; Lempert, 1996). Often missing from

the dialogue – across all types of interaction between universities and

communities -- is the community voice. As a result, higher education dominates

the conversation about engagement, posing a significant problem given the

definition of community-university engagement as “direct, two-way inter-action

. . . through the development, exchange, and application of knowledge,

information and expertise for mutual benefit” (American Association of State

Colleges and Universities, 2002, p. 7).

The absence of the community voice in the scholarship related to

engagement is not surprising, nor is it necessarily problematic in and of itself.

The academy values writing, and peer-reviewed publications; the community

does not value the same things as tangible outcomes of engagement. The

problem, per se, is the relative absence of community perspectives in the

discussion of community-university engagement. The current situation is

something like managers discussing and solving issues, where the solutions will

be lived out by others. The souls of the institutions – those people and values

2

which make the university and the community unique – are not communicating

in a way that brings all the necessary perspectives to the conversation. Without

community involvement from the earliest stages of a project, the “mutually

beneficial” nature of engagement is compromised. The scholarship related to

engagement has identified many benefits that entice universities and their

faculty to engage: opportunities for publications and successfully funded grants

(Fairweather, 1996; Rice & O’Meara, 2005), and in some instances, personal

passion (Moore & Ward, 2007; Neumann, 2006). Very little is known about

what communities consider beneficial. One response to this gap in the literature

might be an additional study focusing specifically on the community

perspective. While such an approach would provide insights into community

perspectives, it would still fail to ask critical questions about the interactions

between universities and communities and is, therefore, just as problematic as

the studies which focus too narrowly on faculty or campus experiences of

engagement. There is also not enough discussion in the literature about

initiatives that do not succeed, the obstacles to mutually beneficial engagement,

and how these obstacles are overcome. Exploring these issues adequately

requires giving equal attention to the experiences of all participants. Therefore,

this study explores several types of engagement initiatives from multiple

perspectives at the university and in the larger community.

This dissertation provides a more complete picture of the opportunities

and obstacles involved in community-university interaction in the context of

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comprehensive campuses with their origins in a compact to meet the

community’s needs for education through normal schools. Achieving mutuality

in interactions between the university and the larger community requires a

broader, more nuanced understanding of engagement. I contribute to this

literature by drawing on university and community perspectives on engagement

in one study. This approach points attention to the meaning and the practice of

engagement. Boyer (1996) called on higher education to harness its unique

resources to address society’s problems. Other scholars make similar arguments

(Walshok, 1995), calling on the university to acknowledge and act upon its civic

responsibility (Boyte, 2004; Ehrlich, 2000; Kezar, Chambers, & Burkhardt, 2005).

Civic responsibility is not ephemeral rhetoric in my work. Morphew and

Hartley (2006) demonstrate that many universities employ the terms service and

community as catch phrases in strategic communication, primarily with external

constituencies. This study frames engagement differently. Community-engaged

scholars and students and community members share the experience of

community-university partnerships in socially constructed, culturally and

environmentally situated places. “In service to the community” – common

phraseology in college and university mission statements – means different

things in different places. Moving beyond the rhetoric of engagement affords a

richer understanding of how engagement happens in a particular place.

4

Key Concepts: Engagement and Place

The underlying assumption of this research is straight forward:

engagement is inherently place-based. Both engagement and place are widely

bantered about, defined more or less precisely, and often murky. Going forward

in this dissertation requires specific discussion of each to operationalize the

terms, as well as the associated literature and theoretical constructs. Therefore, I

pause here to outline my thinking on these two key concepts.

Engagement, as it is conceptualized and employed in this study, matches

Fear, Rosaen, Bawden, and Foster-Fishman’s (2006) definition of critical

engagement: “opportunities to share . . . knowledge and learn with [all] those

who struggle for social justice; and to collaborate . . . respectfully and responsibly

for the purpose of improving life” (p. xiii). Fear et al. differentiate critical

engagement from instrumental engagement which focuses on completing tasks

and projects. Critical engagement is, above all else, a transformative experience

for all involved: “The primary value is the effect it has on participants, helping

them think intentionally and deeply about themselves, their work, and how they

approach their practice” (p. 257). While their work focuses on community-

engaged scholars, Fear et al. understand their discussion of critical engagement

to apply to all participants in the engagement initiatives, representing the

university as well as the larger community (F. Fear, personal communication,

March 15, 2006). It is in this sense that I employ their definition of critical

5

engagement as a transformative learning and community-building endeavor

including diverse members of a regional community.

Furco’s (1996) overview of engagement between universities and the larger

community reflects the variety of paths taken over the last century in pursuit of

civic missions. He identifies five types of experiential education activities:

volunteerism, community service, internships, field work, and, community

service learning. In this study, I move beyond Furco’s (1996) work to explore a

wider variety of activities that universities as a whole undertake, using Ward’s

(2003) discussion of the many meanings of service as a springboard. According

to this conceptualization, engagement happens in a two-pronged approach: at

the institutional level through formal initiatives on the part of the university or at

the faculty level through application of scholarly expertise to community issues.

Ward’s discussion of engagement also privileges the university’s perspective in

defining the purpose or intent of engagement. Building on this discussion, I see

four varieties of interaction between the university and the larger community:

community-targeted programming; community-based programming;

community-engaged scholarship; and civic, or community-oriented, education

(See Figure 1). Activities overlap categories in this construct; the distinguishing

factor between categories is intent of the leadership in a given initiative. I focus

on the impetus for engagement, differentiating among extending campus

resources or programs (community-targeted programs and civic/community-

oriented education), and

6

Community-targeted programming

Arts and cultural programming University Extension faculty-initiated activities

Faculty consulting Outreach and student recruitment

Recreation/continuing education programs

Community-based programs Community-engaged scholarship

Economic development initiatives Discipline-based, faculty-led scholarship University Extension-facilitated activities Participatory/action research (e.g., 4-H, Master Gardeners, fairs)

Civic/Community-focused education

(K-16) Community service learning Volunteering

Community service Fieldwork Internships

Figure 1. Categories of interaction between universities and the larger community.

7

community building activities that draw on the resources of all participants

(community-based programs and community-engaged scholarship). Fear et al

(2006) call critical engagement a transformative experience, and my model

suggests that transformation may initiate from many points of origin.

This study emphasizes the place-based nature of interactions between

universities and the larger community. By insisting on the spatial element of

engagement, or where it occurs, I deliberately connect this project to the

discipline of geography and its study of place (Cresswell, 2004). I evoke the

ontological notion of place as a particular location by focusing the dissertation on

cases, each comprised of a bounded system of a regional university and the

community/ies it serves (Creswell, 1998; Stake, 2005, 2006).

Place as an epistemological concept is equally important to this project. A

place for everything, and everything in its place: Cresswell (2004) points to this

truism as a marker of the idea that there is socio-geographic order to things and

to people in the world. The language used in discussions of engagement itself

reinforces a false dichotomy separating university and community. The common

binary of “town and gown” evokes a fatuous distinction. University employees

(gownies) are simultaneously residents of the community, making them

members of the university and of the municipal communities; many people not

employed by the college or university (townies) access campus facilities and

programs on a regular basis, rendering them members of the geographical

community represented by the city and also members of the amorphous

8

university community. Such blurry distinctions between town and gown make

firm parameters difficult to maintain. It is this sense of place as socio-geographic

order, a particular location of “community,” or “campus,” and a marker of one’s

location in the social order of things that informs this project.

Research Design and Methodology

Shifts in state and federal funding away from public goods and services

makes community-university partnerships increasingly attractive for universities

and for the communities they serve. As state and federal funding trends hold

steady or decrease, the need for a deeper understanding of these issues increases

(Weerts, 2007; Weerts & Ronca, 2006). Campus-community partnerships are not

likely to go away, yet there is still much to learn about building mutually

beneficial relationships through engagement initiatives. The purpose of this

study is to provide a holistic perspective of interactions between regional

universities and the communities they serve. By holistic, I mean a study that

includes the perspectives of university faculty and administrators, along with the

representatives of the larger community where the institutions are located. I ask

how engagement happens in a particular location, colleges and universities with

their roots in the normal school tradition and the surrounding region.

Different types of institutions take different approaches to pursuing a

mission statement that calls for wide-spread participation in transformative

initiatives. Holland (2005) encourages institutions to engage in ways that are

consistent with the mission and purpose of their institution. The literature

9

related to community-university engagement will benefit from a holistic study of

institutions with deep ties to the social and economic well-being of a particular

region, and where research, teaching and service are all part of the faculty role.

Ramaley (2000) echoes this argument, describing the comprehensive state

university as unique in its ability to address society’s “real problems” (p. 232),

which occur at “neighborhood, regional, and international levels” (p. 232). A

comprehensive state university is rooted in relationships across a geographic

region, and can draw on these networks in responding to community-based

issues.

By locating this project in a specific geographic and historically rooted

space, I am placing engagement (Helfenbein, 2006b), explicitly putting

interactions between institutions which began as normal schools and the regions

they serve into the narrative context of place. In doing so, I call upon the tools of

critical geography to inform the research design and methodology employed in

the study. Six questions guide the study:

1. How and why do people come to be involved in initiatives involving

regional colleges and universities and the larger community?

2. What do the initiatives look like?

3. How is “community” defined in these initiatives?

4. What role does place play in these initiatives?

5. What role does social change play in these initiatives?

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6. What is the culture of engagement in this context of regional colleges

and universities and the communities they serve?

I have identified two bounded systems, or cases, as the foci of the study. Using

the tools of narrative inquiry and portraiture, I gathered organizational

narratives of initiatives involving regional campuses and the larger community.

This dissertation is organized in seven chapters. This first chapter outlines

the purpose and sets the context for the study. Two key concepts ground the

discussion: types of engagement based on the work of Fear, Rosaen, Bawden,

and Foster-Fishman (2006) and Furco (1996); and the critical geographers’

concept of place. Ramaley’s (2000) comments about engagement at the regional

university provide the context for the dissertation, and the chapter concludes

with a statement of purpose and research questions for the study.

In chapter 2, I call upon three bodies of literature: engagement, academic

capitalism, and place. The theoretical perspective laid out in chapter 3 builds an

argument for a place-based reading of community-university engagement. I

draw on two theoretical concepts: Bourdieu’s (1979, 1989) symbolic power, and

Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) production of space. Together, they construct a

framework to examine particular elements of place and power as they interaction

to produce the terms of engagement in the context of comprehensive regional

universities. This theoretical framework provides a foundation for the

methodological discussion in chapter 4.

11

Chapters 5 and 6 are case studies, each chapter focused on one of two

regional institutions. Chapter 7 draws the two cases together to inform a

discussion of what this study contributes to the common understanding of three

issues: the practice of community-engaged scholarship, the scholarship related

to community-university engagement, and theorizing this work. The final three

chapters offer a layered discussion of the interaction between a regional college

or university and the larger community it serves. They also present a spatialized,

power-conscious reading of this engagement. By this I mean that the reading

focuses on the role power plays in constructing the spaces of engagement.

Place – as it is shaped by the interactions between people and their

geographic environment – contextualizes, and it is also a participant in this

project in that a key focus of the analysis is to separate out and interrogate the

physical, cultural and historical locations of the engagement. Another important

context for framing this study is to situate the work in specific scholarly

conversations. Before exploring the theory which undergirds this work, I

therefore turn in chapter 2 to a discussion of the larger bodies of literature

amongst which the dissertation is positioned, including engagement, academic

capitalism, and place as a social construct.

12

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Discussions of the civic responsibility of institutions of higher education

have been ubiquitous in the last 20 years. Interest in the interaction between

universities and community continues to be strong. Conference themes focus on

it. Scholarly journals regularly publish articles about it. Civic responsibility has

been emphasized as a key element of education, and higher education in

particular, for more than two decades; and now, there is a growing movement

focused on proactively training scholars in the doing of community-engaged

scholarship. An obvious question emerges: Why this interest in engagement

now?

Weerts and Ronca (2006) identify two reasons for increasing interest in

engagement: cyclical economic recessions and a changing political climate. The

combination of these two forces creates a fiscal crisis for communities and

universities. Declining government support for public services, including

education and community-based social services, makes partnerships between

universities and communities increasingly attractive. Many such initiatives have

been formed at institutions of all types (Elsner, 2000; Prince, 2000; Ramaley, 2000;

Scott, 2000; Walshok, 2000). These initiatives are by definition place-based,

given their focus on concrete relationships between geographically situated

entities. This dissertation, exploring engagement initiatives linking universities

13

and the larger community, is situated in this context. Therefore, I draw on three

bodies of literature to guide my research: engagement, the relationship between

higher education and the new economy, and place as a social construct.

Engagement

Although service learning initiatives and the scholarship of engagement

popularized the idea of the civically responsive university in the 1980s and 1990s,

the notion of connecting universities and communities is not new. In fact, the

earliest American institutions of higher education were established specifically to

serve the needs of the new nation (see Thelin, 2004; Ward, 2003). In fact, the

normal school movement, strongest between 1890 and 1920, specifically

emphasized the role of higher education to train teachers, primarily for rural

communities, and to serve the public good by strengthening the United States’

system of universal education (Petersen, 1993). What has changed over time is

the linking of academic research to the common good through intentional

engagement initiatives.

The philosophical roots of engagement lie in what Veysey (1965) refers to

as “utility;” the goals of this reform paradigm included practicality, usefulness,

and/or service as the fundamental purpose of the university system in the

United States. Behind the idea of utility as a goal is the assumption that real life –

equated with the workings of a democratic society – happened beyond

campuses, not on them. This same idea appears in current discussions about

“renewing the civic mission of higher education” (Checkoway, 2001; see also

14

Barber, 1992; Boyte, 2004; Ehrlich, 2000). Veysey defines the beliefs of academic

utilitarians as synonymous with two sets of ideas: democracy as a form of self-

government; and a belief in equal access to facilities, resources, and knowledge,

rather than a system of higher education restricted to the socio-economic elites.

In the 1880s, many reformers called loudly for higher education to become more

actively involved in solving problems of the day in business and labor. Furner

(1975) marks this same period as the beginning of the professionalization of the

social sciences in the United States. Amateur researchers worked beside

“professional” academics exploring the urban and industrial sociological

questions, aimed at improving living and working conditions in the industrial

era.

As a reform effort, utility competed with the emerging model for the

research university, with its focus on the creation of knowledge. After 1900,

however, utility and applied research became more closely associated with

university extension (McDowell, 2001), as higher education shifted to align with

the German research university model, emphasizing research, peer review,

disciplinarity and specialization (Rice, 2003; Veysey, 1965). Rice (2003) describes

higher education in the 20th century as dominated by the research model: “It is

this conception of scholarly work [as synonymous with research] that became

normative . . . in preparing the faculty . . . responsible for molding American

colleges and universities [in] the 20th century. This vision also became the

foundation for a constricted understanding of scholarly engagement” (p. 4). By

15

the 1980s, many within and outside higher education criticized these definitions

of faculty work and the purpose of the university focused so narrowly on

“knowledge for its own sake” (Rice, 2003, p. 3).

Within higher education, the response to this critique included the

emergence of community service, volunteerism and community service learning

initiatives (Stanton, Giles & Cruz, 1999; Ward, 2003). For example, participants

in Moore and Ward’s (2007) study of faculty who integrate research, service and

teaching regularly include service learning activities in their courses. A

biosystems and agricultural engineering faculty member asks students in her

freshmen-level courses to work with local school children to design school

playgrounds using basic engineering principles. Faculty in landscape

architecture, urban planning and architecture assign senior students as

consultants for communities working on the design of neighborhoods,

streetscapes, and new building projects. Education faculty involve their students

in after-school mentoring programs. One literacy educator works with an adult

literacy program and her students serve as tutors for adult ESL students. A

foreign languages faculty member asks students in his advanced Spanish courses

to practice their language skills by volunteering at a community-supported

homeless shelter serving immigrants and other non-English speaking residents.

Lynton & Elman (1987) entered the discussion of the links between higher

education and the “real world” (Veysey, 1965), taking up the issue of the

relationship between universities and the “new” knowledge-based economy.

16

Many authors have made arguments about the purpose of the university similar

to those heard 300 years earlier: The university plays a key role in producing

well-educated students equipped to meet the needs of the nation. In the 18th

century, the nation needed students prepared for their civic duty in the new

democracy. At the end of the 20th century, students needed skills and knowledge

to participate in the new economy. Lynton and Elman offer recommendations for

reshaping culture and administrative practice to support the new priorities of

higher education, taking up issues including organizing for effective outreach,

realigning instructional approaches to provide experiential learning

opportunities, and restructuring faculty reward systems to support outreach.

Their work has influenced institutions including Michigan State University and

Penn State in the writing of new guidelines for promotion and tenure which

recognize a broader definition of scholarship which include community-based

research. Boyer (1990) and Rice (1996) continued work on issues directly related

to faculty work and the redefinition of scholarship required to align public or

community-engaged scholarship with the priorities of higher education, which

continued to reflect the influence of the German research university.

Boyer’s (1990) redefinition of scholarship opened a pathway for moving

conversations about faculty work away from traditional notions of research,

teaching and service. He proposed instead four areas of scholarship: teaching,

integration, discovery and engagement. This model distinguishes between

scholarships requiring concrete, connected knowing (teaching, integration) and

17

abstract, analytic knowing (discovery, engagement); and between active practice

(teaching, engagement) and reflective observation (integration, discovery) (Rice,

2003). This broadened definition of scholarship, coupled with calls for

reconnecting with applied utilitarian scholarship, provided the impetus for many

more colleges and universities to undertake their own campus-level initiatives

and realign or restructure for more effective outreach and engagement by faculty

and students. This move has been referred to as “renewing the civic mission”

(Checkoway, 2001); taking “civic responsibility” more seriously (Ehrlich, et al.,

2000); meeting society’s needs for “knowledge without boundaries” (Walshok,

1995); establishing an “aristocracy of everyone” (Barber, 1992); “a battle for the

soul of the university” (Lempert, 1996); and “a time for boldness” (Zimpher,

Percy, & Brukardt, 2002).

A vibrant, national focus on the scholarship of engagement has emerged

in the literature since the publication of New Priorities for the University (Lynton &

Elman, 1987). Rich descriptions and extensive documentation of successful

engagement initiatives provide case studies as models for budding community-

based researchers and service learning instructors (e.g., Driscoll & Lynton, 1999;

Maurasse, 2001; Reardon, 1999, 2000; Strand, Marullo, Cutforth, Stoecker, &

Donohue, 2003; Zimpher, Percy, & Brukardt, 2002). For example, Reardon (1999,

2000, 2003, 2007) and his colleagues in urban planning and other disciplines at

the University of Illinois worked for more than ten years with the residents of

East St. Louis to rebuild the community. Hurley (2006) and another group of

18

scholars at the University of Missouri-Kansas City drew on their disciplinary

expertise as public historians, political scientists, and public health practitioners

to assist a Kansas City neighborhood in revitalization projects including an oral

history archive, historical walking tour of the community, and the development

of OSHA-compliant renovation guidelines for historic homes and other public

buildings.

Researchers and administrators address their peers with pieces justifying

engagement as scholarship (Driscoll & Sandmann, 2001). The National

Clearinghouse on the Scholarship of Engagement and individual scholars have

had much to say about the evaluation of engagement initiatives and the scholars

who direct these projects (O’Meara, 2002, 2005; Rice & O’Meara, 2005;

Sandmann, 2004). Another strand of this literature focuses on best practices for

engagement, describing various elements of successful partnerships (e.g.,

Beckman & Caponigro, 2005; Bringle & Hatcher, 2002; Daynes, Howell, &

Lindsay, 2003; Harkavy, 2005; Maurasse, 2001; Nye & Schramm, 1999; Reardon,

1999; Zimpher, Percy, & Brukardt, 2002). Others build on Lynton and Elman

(1987), Boyer, (1990, 1996), and Rice (1996) to describe the institutional conditions

required to support engagement (Bringle, Games, & Malloy, 1999; Bringle &

Hatcher, 2000; Dana & Emihovich, 2004; Furco, 2002; Mawbry, 1996; Ryan, 1998;

Singleton, Hirsch, & Burack, 1999; Votruba, 1996). There also exists a relatively

small body of scholarly activity documenting the community’s experience of

community-university partnerships and community service learning (see, for

19

example, Brisbin & Hunter, 2003; Bushouse, 2005; Eby, 1998; Mayfield & Lucas,

2000; Tryon et al., 2008).

Braskamp and Wergin (1998) describe this new era in this way:

Higher education is not a sanctuary anymore. It is losing its insularity,

having more claimants and partners now. The challenge is for higher

education to be a very active partner in shaping its social relationship

with society, being responsive while retaining its core purposes and

standards. (p. 89)

Institutions of higher education are responding to the critiques, as well as

changes in funding patterns, by engaging more purposefully with the larger

community. This trend toward increased engagement by more institutions is

not simply a reaction to public criticism. It is a considered response to several

elements, most particularly the change of the political climate. Recent work on

the commercialization of higher education, and the university’s role in the

globalized knowledge economy helps to contextualize further the current

moment in the engagement movement.

Higher Education and the New Economy

Community-university engagement and industry partnerships continue to

receive significant attention, 20 years after Lynton and Elman (1987) and others

began writing about the necessity and benefits of outreach and engagement.

Why does interest continue to run high? Weerts and Ronca (2006) explain the

situation from the perspective of higher education’s relationship with state

20

governments: state appropriations have declined 40 percent since 1978. The

decline results from two factors: the state of the economy, and politics.

Economic recessions in the early 1980s and again from 1990 to 1994, and between

2001 and 2005, leave states with less funding to allocate. The politics of “new

federalism,” or neoliberal economic policies (Pollin, 2003), also contribute to the

downward trend in funding for higher education. This change in federal policy

impacts communities as federal funding for social services declines drastically as

well. These funding trends have had profound effects on higher education,

particularly in the arena of engagement and “public-private” partnerships.

Many universities respond to decreased funding for higher education by

exploring new relationships with the business sector. In University, Inc.,

Washburn (2005) identifies funding patterns for higher education as the primary

explanation for this trend. Initially, federal funding changed the fundamental

character of university research, attracting academics to projects benefiting

national defense interests after World War II. This funding made larger research

agendas possible, and created a venue through which outside interests began to

have a say in questions researchers were asking and the dissemination of the

results from this research. As federal funding began to slow in the 1970s,

relationships with corporate America became more attractive. Washburn

describes the situation as “truly new, and dangerous,” pointing to the upward

trend in the degree to which market forces have penetrated into the heart of

21

academia itself, causing American universities to “look and behave more and

more like for-profit commercial enterprises” (p. 140).

Slaughter and Rhoads’ (2004) theory of academic capitalism does not

focus on external forces acting on the university as Washburn (2005) does.

Academic Capitalism and The New Economy (Slaughter & Rhoads, 2004) examines

the relationship between the university and the information economy. The

authors summarize the new economy briefly: synonymous with the neoliberal

state, the new economy focuses on empowerment of the individual as an

economic actor; “to that end, the resources freed up from social welfare are re-

allocated to production” (Slaughter & Rhoads, 2004, p. 20). The university

operates in a new way in this climate. Students are not consumers of higher

education in the neoliberal state; the university markets the products it produces,

including graduates, knowledge and patentable research or production

processes.

Academic capitalism requires a conceptual shift in thinking about the

purpose of higher education. This theory explicitly moves away from thinking

of knowledge as a public good to which all citizens have rights (Ward, 2003).

Academic capitalism, as Slaughter and Rhoads (2004) define it, is “the pursuit of

market and market-like activities to generate external revenue” (p. 11) for the

university in the tightened financial situation outlined by Washburn (2005) and

others (Weerts, 2007; Weerts & Ronca, 2006). Knowledge becomes a product to

be marketed and purchased. Profit-oriented activities have themselves become a

22

system for reorganization of higher education, exhibiting the profit-based

motives identified by academic capitalism. The university in this model behaves

as an entrepreneurial actor. Slaughter and Rhoads focus on the networks of

actors, including universities, states, non-profit and for-profit organizations, and

the federal government. The boundaries between and amongst these actors blur

in the new relationships, creating “interstitial organizations” ideally suited to

take advantage of opportunities for profitable ventures. The authors see colleges

and universities engaging in behavior traditionally associated with corporations,

without becoming corporations and losing the benefits of their status as not-for-

profit entities.

Slaughter and Rhoads’ (2004) discussion of knowledge regimes is useful

for understanding the regional university’s behavior in engagement initiatives.

They describe the ascendancy of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning

regime as “displacing, but not replacing, . . . the public good knowledge regime”

(Slaughter & Rhoads, 2004, p. 305). The authors make their argument by

pointing directly back to issues of economic and political policy raised earlier:

Academic capitalism . . . entails a redefinition of public space and of

appropriate activity in that space. The configuration of state resources

has changed, providing colleges and universities with fewer

unrestricted public revenues and encouraging them to seek out and

generate alternative sources of revenue. (Slaughter & Rhoads, 2004, p.

306)

23

This is one explanation for the behavior of institutions of higher education:

universities are emphasizing engagement as an avenue to access alternative

funding sources (Weerts, 2007).

The general decline in public support for education and social services

makes partnering between the university and the larger community increasingly

attractive for several reasons. One, federal funding linked to community-

university engagement, is (or has been) available through several federal

agencies, including the Corporation for National Service, National Science

Foundation, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Housing and

Urban Development, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(Bruns, Andersen, Williams, & Zuiches, 2007). These grants promise increased

revenue to universities and simultaneously make it possible for the community

to provide services that might otherwise be unavailable. Two, alumni and other

donors welcome opportunities to make major gifts to universities in support of

civic renewal initiatives (Weerts, 2007). Three, explicitly pursuing a civic mission

garners political support for universities. Weerts and Ronca (2006) demonstrate

the strong connection between a university’s observable commitment to public

service and outreach, and maintaining or increasing levels of state support. The

authors find that “gubernatorial and legislative influences are crucial indicators

of state support for higher education,” and suggest that universities consider

“updating . . . public service and outreach mission[s] in order to earn greater

political support” (Weerts & Ronca, 2006, p. 959).

24

Weerts and Ronca’s (2006) recommendation positions engagement as a

strategic funding mechanism, and this definition fits with Slaughter and Rhoads’

(2004) thinking about the new knowledge regime. Fear et al. (2006)

conceptualize engagement very differently, emphasizing “opportunities to share

knowledge and learn with [others],” and “collaboration,” all “for the purpose of

improving life” (p. xiii). Although I align this study with Fear et al’s thinking, I

acknowledge, following Cox (2000), that university and community

organizations make conscious decisions to participate in community-university

partnership efforts which are directly connected to serving their individual,

fundamental interests in a given situation, ranging from securing federal funding

for a university’s research agenda to solving a community’s urgent social

problems. In many instances, social service agencies lack support and funding

and have to look to colleges and universities to fill gaps. In fact, the success of

the partnership depends upon these diverse interests: “Only sufficient types and

levels of specific individual interests can create and sustain the partnership”

(Cox, 2000, p. 9-10). Fear et al. agree that institutions’ decisions are always

driven to some degree by self interest. The question, they explain, is not whose

interest is served by engagement initiatives, but how and in what ways self-

interest is expressed by all parties.

Thorough understanding of collaborative partnerships requires

examination of the place where they occur. This echoes the thinking of Harvey

(1993), a critical geographer: “What goes on in a place cannot be understood

25

outside the space relations that support that place any more than the space

relations can be understood independently of what goes on in particular places”

(p. 15). The negotiation of self interest between the university and the larger

community shapes all participants. To understand how and why this happens, I

turn to the field of critical human and cultural geography.

Place as Social Construct

Gruenewald (2003a, 2003b) proposes a critical pedagogy of place, linking

the tradition of place-based education (Kemmis, 1990; Orr, 1992; Sobel, 2004) to

critical pedagogy (Freire, 1973/1998; Giroux, 1983; McLaren, 1989). His work

operates as a framework for education theory, research, policy and practice

“which foregrounds a narrative of local and regional politics that is attuned to the

particularities of where people actually live” (p. 3). This framework of place

invites scholars to think more clearly about the regional college or university as

best suited for responding to the problems that are increasingly regional

(Ramaley, 2000). Basso (1996) explains that “wisdom sits in places.” This phrase

has multiple meanings in the context of community engaged scholarship. It

points to the salience of geographical, physical locations; it connotes the

contributions of all people to the experience of a place; it recognizes the local

community as a powerful knowledge resource. These theoretical constructs

connect most closely to community service learning and the university’s

responsibility to educate citizens (Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, & Stephens, 2003).

26

This dissertation considers place not as a pedagogical tool or policy item,

but as the social, physical, and phenomenological location (Basso, 1996) of

transformative experiences of engagement between regional campuses and the

communities they serve. Invoking place as a key concept links the study to place

as an epistemological construct (Cresswell, 2004), and the related work of critical

geographers Harvey (1993), Keith and Pile (1993c), Lefebvre (1974/1991), and

Massey (1995).

Drawing from Marxism, feminism, and poststructuralism, critical

geography examines the impact of socio-economic and political forces on the

meaning that is assigned to physical places, and the materiality of a given

geographic locale (Cresswell, 2004). Harvey (1993) focuses the field by saying

this: “The only interesting question that can be asked is: By what social

process(es) is place constructed?” (p. 6). “Nature,” Lefebvre (1974/1991) says,

“does not [produce]: . . . it creates” (p. 70); in other words, place is not

intentionally staged by social actors. He continues: “Humanity, which is to say

social practice, creates” (Lefebvre, 1974/1991, p. 71). Experience, perception and

imagination engage in a dialectical interplay that is the foundation of place.

Analysis of these social construction processes calls for attention to specific

elements of place identified by Lefebvre: presence or absence, spatial scale,

appropriation of the space, relations of domination, and the production of place.

These elements act as a framework across which race, class and gender work.

27

How a place is used, or experienced, cannot be understood in isolation from

these spatial relations which constitute the space itself (Harvey, 1993).

Place as a social construct famously evokes two questions for Harvey

(1993): “why and by what means do social beings invest places . . . with social

power? How and for what purposes is the power then deployed and used across

a highly differentiated system of interlinked places?” (p. 21). In other words, he

says, “place construction is politically powerful” (p. 23), and “representations of

place have material consequences” (p. 22). Harvey’s central idea is the

importance of the way in which people invest themselves in places and find

empowerment through that investment. This work points to “university” and

“community” as distinct constructs, and raises questions about what social

power is invested in them and how that power is used. I present this holistic

study of initiatives linking the former normal schools and the larger community

as a vehicle for increasing mutuality among partners in keeping with the

definition of engagement as collaborative (Fear et al., 2006) and mutually

beneficial (AASCU, 2002). Cresswell (2004) points out that to say that place is

socially constructed implicitly opens the door for place to be changed through

conscious action. Identifying how power is used in the construction of

spatialities is the first move toward restructuring relationships among regional

universities and the larger community, moving toward greater mutuality.

The negotiations between the university and the larger community reflect

the politics of place (Keith & Pile, 1993a) in defining concepts of community,

28

issues of self interest, and positionality within engagement initiatives. Massey’s

(1995) work on the spatial divisions of labor is particularly helpful in thinking

about relationships between various sectors of the larger community in these

initiatives. In her study of changing economic geographies in England, she

distinguishes between the geographical distribution of jobs, and the spatial

organization of relations of production, or power. The issue, as she explains it,

is not simply comparing the number or type of jobs in each region. Instead,

Massey’s focus is on the power associated with the particular kinds of jobs

located in a given region. In England in the 1980s, technology sector jobs

congregated in the southeast; the northern cities continued to depend heavily on

manufacturing in an information/service economy. These trends resulted in a

power imbalance between the two regions. Similarly, one way to understand the

interaction between the university and the larger community is to look at

distribution of power among particular social or economic locations.

Keith and Pile (1993a; 1993b) also connect these discussions of human and

economic geography to the politics of individual identity using two concepts:

spatialities, and specific geographies. Spatialities, or incidences of the politics of

place at play, “draw on a relationship between the real, the imaginary, and the

symbolic that is not beyond truth and falsity, but is different from it” (Keith &

Pile, 1993a, p. 9). Clark (1970/2007) identified the power of the symbolic and the

real in the institutional sagas of distinctive liberal arts colleges. Institutional

narratives of engagement shape and maintain meaning on campuses and in the

29

larger communities they serve. This meaning making, an incidence of Keith and

Pile’s concept of spatiality, brings together the real of individual and institutional

actions with the imaginary or perceived realities of these actions by the actors

and also with the symbolic nature of the rhetoric of higher education’s civic

responsibility.

Engagement initiatives themselves constitute specific geographies, which

Keith and Pile (1993b) define as “people organized in different ways at different

times in different places” (p. 14). In this dissertation, I accessed the

organizational narratives of university and larger community relationships.

Slaughter and Rhoads (2004) call such entrepreneurial partnerships “interstitial

organizations” (p. 23). Narratives of initiatives such as these are themselves

constructed in another “condition of between,” as one faculty member involved

in community-engaged initiatives described her positionality at the margins of

community and university (L. Paxson, personal communication, July 3, 2006).

These narratives are, as Keith and Pile point out, constructed in the interstices of

reality, imagination, and symbolism; critical human and cultural geography

provide concepts and tools for pulling apart the individual threads, and for

putting them back together in a new way that allows a richer, more holistic

understanding of spatialities of engagement initiatives in regional communities.

Keith and Pile see spatiality and historicity as inextricably linked. What is

real or true now is so because of the particular configuration of place, space and

time, making identity inseparable from the conditions of existence. I draw on

30

Bourdieu’s (1983) use of field theory, particularly concepts including field,

habitus, and capital, as a framework for making sense of the interactions of

universities with the larger community, as well as relationships between and

among university faculty, administrators, and community members.

31

CHAPTER THREE

THE ROLE OF THEORY IN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Two bodies of theory shape this dissertation, critical geography and

Bourdieu’s work on field, habitus and the forms of capital. In this chapter, I offer

an overview of the role of theory in qualitative research generally, a discussion of

the theoretical framework of this dissertation, and some final comments on the

specific contributions of this theory to the collection, analysis, and discussion of

data as a transition into chapter 4, where I discuss the methodology in greater

detail.

Theory is “a way of looking at the world and deciding what things are

important and, hence, what data to collect” (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993, p. 116).

Theories can be used to predict future events and behavior, to explain what

happened in the past, or to describe or interpret recent or on-going activity.

LeCompte and Preissle (1993) explain that theory used to explain one particular

event or occurrence cannot be generalized to different types of events. It can,

they continue, be used in comparing more than one case of a particular type “to

alert researchers to themes or events which might be common to similar

phenomena under different circumstances” (p. 116).

Theoretical perspectives are organized around guiding questions or

assumptions (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993) which in turn shape every aspect of

research design, providing answers to a series of questions: What aspects of this

32

situation interest me? What concepts do I want to explore specifically? How do I

view the participants in this study? What counts as data reflecting their personal

experiences? How will I gather that data? How will I analyze it? How will I

evaluate the finished work? This chapter “makes explicit,” as LeCompte and

Preissle (1993) suggest, “the impact of theory in every stage of the study, from

formulation of the initial problem and selection of the population through data

collection and analysis to interpretation” (p. 151-152).

This study is grounded in critical theory’s focus on interrogating power in

social structures and practices. Tierney and Rhoads (1993) identify five

fundamental premises of the critical perspective on research:

1. Research efforts need to be tied to analyses that investigate the

structures in which the study exists;

2. Knowledge is not neutral. It is contested and political;

3. Difference and conflict, rather than similarity and consensus, are

used as organizing concepts;

4. Research is praxis-oriented; and

5. All researchers/authors are intimately tied to their theoretical

perspectives. We are all positioned subjects. (p. 327)

I draw most heavily on four of these, analysis of the structures framing the topic

and the study, the contested nature of knowledge, research as praxis, and

embracing my status as a positioned subject. I have set this study purposefully

in response to the structures of the current literature on community university

33

engagement, and I take this opportunity to question the power dynamics that

shape, or homogenize, that discourse. In this way the critical perspective also

informs the final chapter’s discussion of the implications of this study for the

practice of, scholarly conversation about, and theorizing of community

university engagement. In the case of this study, I draw specifically from the

work of critical geographers who focus not on knowledge but on the contested,

socially constructed nature of spaces. I position this study as community-based

research taking a praxis orientation through the final discussion of the

implications of these findings for practice in this scholarly field. I also

purposefully foreground my positionality/lived experiences in these sites and

the assumptions and experiences I bring to the research.

To demonstrate the importance of place to this dissertation, I employed

Harvey’s (1993) reminder that place and what happens there are inseparable, and

have meaning only, or best, when considered in conjunction with each other.

Harvey’s point makes clear that to answer the research questions posed in

chapter 1 require explication of the places, or the regional communities,

themselves, and how people behave in those spaces. Accordingly, beyond its

influence on the design and methodology, a principle function of the theoretical

framework laid out in this chapter is to make sense of the interaction between

community and university described in chapters 5 and 6. Specifically,

Bourdieu’s “socioanalysis of symbolic power” (Swartz, 1997, p. 6) provides a

frame for discussing the interaction of the actors of engagement within the

34

individual fields of the two sites considered here. Critical geography, drawing

primarily from the work of Lebfevre (1974/1991), brings into focus the impact of

the communities on these interactions.

Bourdieu: Socioanalysis

Bourdieu’s work explores/explains the persistence of hierarchical social

relations. Power, he argues, shapes all social relationships. This fundamental

assumption focuses his work on the development and application of “a science,

applicable to all types of societies, of the social and cultural reproduction of

power relations among individuals and groups” (Swartz, 1997, p. 7). Swartz uses

the term socioanalysis to label this science which, as psychoanalysis is to an

individual’s unconscious, Bourdieu’s new science is to society’s collective

unconscious (Bourdieu, 1979/1984). Bourdieu’s theory contributes to this

dissertation in looking closely at the actual practices and at organizational sagas

of engagement between comprehensive colleges and universities and the

regional communities they serve. In this section, I lay out two ideas developed

through Bourdieu’s oeuvre: the functioning of symbolic power in social systems

as a frame for analysis, and his reflexive sociology as a methodological approach.

Symbolic power

Bourdieu’s (1989) reading of the social world regards structuralism and

constructivism as necessary but insufficient constructs for explaining social

relationships when taken individually. Instead, he argues, such analysis requires

an understanding of objective structures and of subjective representations, and

35

the interaction of the two. He does, however, acknowledge one constant: power,

which shapes all social relations (Bourdieu, 1979, 1979/1984, 1989). The point of

his socioanalytical project is to “discover [power] in places where it is least visile,

where it is most completely misrecognized” (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 163). In this

misrecognized state, symbolic power is most clear: It is what Bourdieu (1979)

calls “that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of

those who do not want to know that they are subject to it, or even that they

themselves exercise it” (p. 164).

Symbolic power is the power to construct reality. Ideologies, which

represent reality in a particular way, serve to elevate a given group using

rhetoric which makes an argument that the dominant group’s best interests are

indeed every group’s best interest. Ultimately the political function of symbolic

power is “to ensure that one class dominates another” (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 167).

Each class or group is then drawn into a struggle to ensure that their definition of

the social world is dominant.

Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) define the location of this struggle as the

field, a network of objective relations between social positions. A field acts as a

constraint, determining the behavior of individuals according to their objective

position within the field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; McRobbie, 2005). “Social

groups are organized within these fields,” McRobbie explains, and they “seek a

place and gain recognition as they compete for a higher position within a field”

(p. 130). Subgroups ascend the social ranks of a field through the amassing of

36

capital, or power (Bourdieu, 1986), within the field. This point introduces two

additional constructs which are significant for this discussion: habitus and

capital.

Habitus

Bourdieu’s (1972/1977) Outline of a theory of practice, an early articulation

of these ideas, includes the first discussions of habitus, defined initially as “a

socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating structures” (p. 76). The

conditions of any given field are influenced by the internal practices, or habitus,

of individuals, as well as convergences with other fields (Webb, Schirato, &

Danaher, 2002). The norms and practices of a field carry objective meaning,

operating something like social structures which guide thought and behavior.

Habitus transcends individual agency (Bourdieu, 1972/1977). At the most

fundamental level of comprehensibility, habitus is that which is not spoken or

consciously communicated, but which is nonetheless known at a visceral, yet

unconscious, level by each member of the group. As McRobbie (2005) explains:

“It comprises actions which to an outsider might appear utterly calculated and

reasonable, but which are carried out in an automatic ‘unthought’ way” (p. 133-

134). For Bourdieu, “the homogeneity of habitus is what – within the limits of

the group of agents possessing the schemes (of production and interpretation)

implied in their production – causes practices and works to be immediately

intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted” (Bourdieu, 1972/1977,

p. 80). Habitus is akin to somewhat flexible strategies for negotiating a particular

37

encounter, not rules which are firmly observed in all situations (Bourdieu,

1985/1990).

Habitus naturalizes itself; as a result, the rules and values established

within a cultural field come to be seen as the natural order, how things are done:

“The habitus as the feel for the game is the social game embodied and turned

into second nature” (Bourdieu, 1985/1990, p. 63). This naturalizing effect results

from several specific aspects of habitus outlined by Webb et al. (2002). First,

knowledge is actively constructed through habitus, rather than passively

received. Second, individuals are predisposed to attitudes, values, and behaviors

by previous experiences. Habitus can be most easily observed “when a set of

dispositions meet a particular problem” (Webb et al., 2002, p. 40) because habitus

is constituted in moments of practice.

Power Manifest as Capital

Webb et al. (2002), interpreting Bourdieu’s work, describe the field as

being “constituted . . . out of the conflict which is involved when groups or

individuals attempt to determine what constitutes capital within that field, and

how that capital is to be distributed” (p. 22). Harker, Mahar, and Wilkes (1990)

explain Bourdieu’s thinking on capital this way, drawing from Bourdieu’s

(1972/1977) discussion of the logic of capital as a shaping force in a field:

For Bourdieu, capital acts as a social relation within a system of

exchange, and the term is extended “to all the goods, material and

symbolic, without distinction that present themselves as rare and

38

worthy of being sought after in a particular social formation.” (Harker

et al., 1990, p. 13; citing Bourdieu, 1972/1977, p. 178)

In essence, capital equates to power in Bourdieu’s (1986) thinking; they “amount

to the same thing” (p. 241):

The structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of

capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of

the social, i.e., the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that

world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the

chances of success for practices. (p. 242)

Capital presents itself in one of three forms, determined by the field within

which it functions. Economic capital can be “immediately and directly”

converted to money, and institutionalized as property rights. Social capital

reflects connections to a network which conveys benefits to its membership

simply through association. Cultural capital is institutionalized in the form of

educational qualifications, convertible to economic capital as qualifications for

employment or other social advancement.

In essence, cultural capital is synonymous with education, yet Bourdieu

(1986) and his interpreters (Harker et al., 1990; Webb et al, 2002) emphasize that

this may be accumulated through either formal (through a diploma or other

graduation credential) or informal (“the university of life” [Webb et al., 2002, p.

110]) schooling. The definition or valuation of cultural capital is unique to each

field, and defined by members of that group with those who have acquired the

39

most capital having the greatest influence in defining what counts as capital in

that setting (Webb et al., 2002). Bourdieu (1986) elaborates further: “Any given

cultural competence (e.g., being able to read in a world of illiterates) derives a

scarcity value from its position in the distribution of cultural capital and yields

profits of distinction for its owner” (p. 245). Put plainly, Bourdieu’s ideas work

like this: If a driver is stranded on a remote highway with a broken-down car,

the person with skills to fix the engine has greater cultural capital than someone

with a university degree but no skill as an automobile mechanic. Cultural

capital, like other forms of capital, is socially defined within the context of the

field where it operates.

Social capital is not guaranteed to those with connections to the

prestigious family, professional or political network. These relationships require

constant maintenance through repeated exchange of gifts. Bourdieu (1986) refers

to this cycle as consecration, the symbolic constitution of the social institution

effected by the endless reproduction of the institution in the exchange of praise,

greeting, acknowledgement, and other gifts physical or metaphorical. Social

capital institutionalized through this ritual gives to the individual more capital,

more power or influence, than he brings to the group by himself.

The transformation of capital

Social capital cannot be reduced to cultural or economic capital, but it also

cannot be separated from it (Bourdieu, 1986). The acts and dispositions and

experiences which convey cultural capital on an individual both support the

40

acquisition of social capital through the connections made in the process, and

help to maintain social capital through the required institution rights.

These two concepts are interconnected; for instance, a student attending

Harvard University will have many educational experiences which amount to

(and amass) cultural capital. At the same time, the student is also establishing

and maintaining the “durable network of more or less institutionalized

relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” that Bourdieu (1986)

describes as social capital (p. 249). Through these relationships, the Harvard

alumnus accesses “the collectivity-owned capital, a credential which entitles

them to credit” (p. 250) as a graduate of Harvard and as a member of the

network of all Harvard alumni.

Bourdieu (1986) also describes social capital as having a multiplier effect:

An individual’s social capital increases with “the size of the network of

connections he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital

(economic, cultural or symbolic) possess in his own right by each of those to

whom he is connected” (p. 249). In other words, the Harvard alum’s social

capital is the sum of all the social capital of each person in the alumni network,

and arguably of each person in all those people’s networks. Therefore, the

prestige of Harvard connects the graduate to the prestige of the Ivy League, to

the prestige of the families whose children attend those institutions, and to the

prominence (or social capital) of the employers of all those graduates. Where

these social connections, or social capital, result in lucrative employment for our

41

Harvard alumnus for example, Bourdieu would point to the transformation of

social capital and cultural capital into economic capital.

Engagement as social capital

Flora (1998), a rural sociologist, reviewed the literature on social capital

(Bourdieu, 1986) in the context of community development initiatives in rural

communities. He determined that social capital does make a difference for well

being in communities. Woolcock (1998, cited in Flora, 1998) demonstrates the

relevance of social capital at the community level. Community in the context of

these findings refers to community of interest, and Flora notes that there may be

multiple communities of interest within a community of place. For example, the

university can be treated as one of the many communities of interest within the

larger community of place. For social capital to be a useful concept in the

discussion of communities of place, Flora uses Woolcock’s work to call for two

dimensions of capital: integration, evidenced by intra-community ties; and

linkages, marked in extra-community networks. One way that universities and

the larger community achieve integration and linkages is “through the

development, exchange, and application of knowledge, information and

expertise for mutual benefit” (AASCU, 2002, p. 7). Here theory can work as an

interpretive tool, clarifying the meaning of particular constructs. From this

perspective, Flora and Woolcock clarify that social capital can be built through

engagement. This dissertation also explored the role of cultural capital in

building engagement initiatives.

42

Because capital is both socially inscribed and a principle that regulates

society, the key to Bourdieu’s discussion of power as capital is to understand that

the different forms of capital can be transformed into one another, and how this

happens. This knowledge is, Bourdieu (1986) argues, required to “account for

the structure and function of the social world” (p. 242). It is this conception of

capital as a structuring force in the social world, and in interaction between

people that suggests the relevance of this concept to the study of university

engagement. Slaughter and Rhoads (2004) have identified a growing tendency

on the part of universities to behavior as entrepreneurial actors in the knowledge

economy. This is the equivalent of moving to amass economic capital.

The transformation of one form of capital into another points to the need

to understand the workings of social and cultural capital in community

university engagement as higher education moves to position itself more

favorably in the economic landscape of a particular state or region. How this

happens depends on the structure of the field within which the relations occur

(McRobbie, 2005). Bourdieu also offers thoughts on methodology which

informed the design of this research to facilitate the exploration of symbolic

power in the social relationships of community-university engagement.

Reflexive sociology

Rather than thinking of the work of Bourdieu as theoretical, some position

him as a methodologist: “What Bourdieu offers is . . . a way of . . . asking

questions” (Harker et al., 1990, p. 195). Trained as an anthropologist, Bourdieu

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ultimately moved his thinking toward sociology. This shift reflects a deep

exploration of relationships between culture and social reproduction, and the

inherent “separation” between academic activity (or research) and the lived

experienced; “in other words, what we have is a conception of sociology which

recognizes that it is itself constituted of cultural practices within a social field. It

is a sociology in part intent not on finding out ‘what is’, but in questioning ‘what

is thought to be’” (Harker et al., 1990, p. 195-6). Bourdieu discusses this

approach as observing the effect of the observer on the observation (Bourdieu,

1972/1977; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992).

Webb, et al. (2002) explain Bourdieu’s sociology as a critique of discourses

and practices more than an investigation of how society is organized. From this

standpoint, sociology “allows researchers to objectify themselves and their social

worlds in order to break with everyday notions about how the world works; and

. . . to understand the extent to which social organizations are built on arbitrary

divisions that serve particular interests” (p. 66). Following this reading, the

theoretical perspective developed in Bourdieu’s work served two functions in

this dissertation. First, his reflexive sociology informs the doing of this research.

Bourdieu’s approach to sociology fits Kvale’s (1996) thinking about the

interaction between researcher and participant: “An interview is literally an inter

view, an interchange of views between two persons conversing about a theme of

mutual interest” (p. 14). Kvale uses “inter view” to connote knowledge

constructed between two people during their conversation, and existing at the

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same time as the formal interview. It is this definition of interview as co-

constructed knowledge that I draw on as a way to think intentionally about

methodology.

Bourdieu’s concept of the field, and his discussion of habitus and capital

as shaping the field, informed the treatment of individual campuses in this

dissertation. A full treatment of the role of the specific campus and community

in the study of engagement requires looking beyond human behavior and the

context of that behavior. Bourdieu’s field treats location of action as social space

in the present. Discussing his work with pre-service teachers enrolled in a

North Carolina history course for teachers, Helfenbein (2006b) describes a

phenomenon whereby his students come to see themselves as subjects within the

context of historical events, rather than objective observers of history. This idea

provides a generative corollary to Bourdieu’s (1979/1984) discussion of practice

as determined by habitus, capital, and field. Later, Bourdieu (1980/1990) further

developed his thinking on practice, explaining that socioanalysis of habitus in a

particular field requires an understanding of both current and past conditions.

Historical, cultural, and socio-economic trends are important in this project

because Bourdieu makes precisely that point in his discussion of habitus as self-

regenerating. I read this argument to mean that the current state of the field or

interaction among the agents cannot be understood only by examining current

events in their current context.

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Critical Geography: The Production of Space

Identifying the power structures which shape community university

interaction, and questioning the effect of these structures on the interaction,

requires attention to the social, cultural, historical and economic contexts of the

place where engagement occurs. Space becomes place through discursive,

interpretive, lived and imagined practices; accordingly, learning about the past is

an important part of understanding place in the present. A study of history

helps to uncover the forces and actions that constructed the community as it is

today.

Echoing Bourdieu’s position on the role of history, LeFebvre (1974/1991)

explains the production of space by agents acting within the space in this way:

“Production process and product present themselves as two inseparable aspects,

not as two separable ideas” (p. 37). Recognizing specific actions on the part of

social actors which have the effect of shaping space is very difficult. Instead, the

analysis of space, Lefebvre argues, supplies clues to the production of space, or

place, but no more. These clues lie in the history, which is inscribed upon the

place. He offers three concepts useful in constructing the history of space in a

particular location: spatial practice, representations of space, and

representational space.

Spatial practice

In a city, particular spaces have widely recognized names which reflect

the use of that space: street corner, marketplace, recreation facility. These are

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what Lefebvre (1974/1991) calls “terms of everyday discourse [which] serve to

distinguish . . . particular spaces. . . . They correspond to a specific use of that

space, and hence to a spatial practice that they express and constitute” (p. 16). A

given space is, for example, a marketplace because it has been marked out as

such by city planners, and also because residents shop there.

These labels generated by spatial practice come together to constitute

what might be considered “a system of space” (Lefebvre, 1974/1991, p. 16) which

can be decoded or read. The role of theory in Lefebvre’s work is, as he puts it,

“to elucidate . . . [the] rise, [the] role, and [the] demise” of these spatial codes

(Lefebvre, 1974/1991, p. 17). Lefebvre’s work traces this rise and demise cycle of

spatial codes as linked to the history of material production, pointing to the

evolutionary nature of the production of space. Keith and Pile (1993a) suggest

that looking at the history of space only for its evolution overlooks what

Lefebvre’s work suggests about the “malleability of the symbolic role of

landscape” (p. 25). It is this reading of the spatial codes, and related concepts,

that I draw on in this research.

Representations of space

Lefebvre (1974/1991) uses the term “conceptualized space” to refer to his

concept of representations of space. These are verbal signs and well-developed

systems of ideas that explain why a space is arranged as it is. Offering pre-

established and clearly defined descriptions or definitions, representations

explain meaning and reflect the impact of the organizational schema. For

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instance, Lefebvre explains, representations of space in the Middle Ages reflected

ideas from Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Christianity, blended together into a narrative

or a spatial system marked by a fixed, finite sphere, inhabited by God the Father

and others from the Christian stories, living above or below the surface of the

earth, in heaven or in hell.

Representations of space play a significant role in the production of space,

They tell us how something is conceived by pointing to guiding images and

prevailing thinking on tradition or myth reflecting ontological and

epistemological constructs of importance in a particular culture.

Representational space, a corollary concept, is directly experienced, and reflected

in lived experience.

Representational space

In this medieval spatial system, the village church and the graveyard

provided focal points for the community, their importance secured by the

guiding images reflected in representations of space. These are what Lefebvre

(1974/1991) refers to as “representational spaces: space as directly lived through

its associated images and symbols” (p. 39). This is more than physical space; it is

space as shaped by ideology. Lefebvre explains, representational space

“overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” (1991, p. 39).

Representations of space and representational space interact with spatial

practices in a trialectical relationship, but they do not constitute a coherent

whole. In other words, producing a reading of a particular place using each of

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these three concepts does not explain the history of that space. It does, however,

offer some clues to how the space is perceived, how it is conceived of by its

inhabitants and by its neighbors, and the nature of the lived experiences of

residents.

At this level of lived experience vis à vis conceived or perceived space, a

history of a particular space of engagement is useful to the analysis of the

localized interaction between community and university. Using the language of

critical geography, we see that how space is used, how it is organized and how it

is experienced are overlapping, sometimes contradictory pieces of the

organizational saga of engagement at regional institutions. I critique the larger

body of literature as largely ignoring the community perspective in reporting on

community-university engagement. I draw on Lefebvre here to contribute two

analytical frames to this exploration into the community voice. One, given

Basso’s (1996) argument that the wisdom and experiences of the elders shape

places, I gave history and the history of places an important role in making sense

of and in presenting the data collected in this dissertation. Two, the trialectic,

while not a coherent whole, does offer a helpful rubric for reading the spaces

explored in this study. This reinforces Bourdieu’s emphasis on the behavior of

individuals in a particular field.

On Spatializing Bourdieu

The theoretical framework developed in this dissertation draws on the

work of Pierre Bourdieu, and extends these ideas to offer a spatialized reading of

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Bourdieu’s sociology by applying his concepts to a particular place with specific

attention to the production of those spaces following Lefebvre. Brubaker (1985)

summarizes Bourdieu’s metatheory in this way: “Social life is materially

grounded and conditioned, but material conditions affect behavior in large part

through the mediation of individuals, dispositions, and experiences. Social life

exists only in and through the symbolically mediated experience and action of

individuals” (p. 750). Bourdieu conceives the socioanalytical project as requiring

an investigation of “both the structure of the relevant field and the class habitus

of the agents involved” (Swartz, 1997, p. 141). I set field as analogous to place in

this theoretical framework. This reflected Bourdieu’s reading of social

interaction as materially grounded, and invited a spatializing, using theoretical

and methodological tools provided by critical geography.

Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) notion of the production of space as shaped by

individual practice and ideologies introduces specific concepts which assist in a

close reading of the “symbolically mediated experiences and actions formed

under definite material conditions of existence” (Brubaker, 1985, p. 750). The

“social facts existing prior to and independently of” these activities are taken in

this dissertation to be analogous to the events and spaces which Harvey (1993)

describes as inseparable. Brubaker’s (1985) reading of Bourdieu points to this

conclusion: “Only a theory based on a conceptualization of the relation between

material and symbolic properties, between external, constraining social facts and

experiencing, apprehending, acting individuals, can be adequate for the human

50

sciences” (p. 750). Similarly, only a theory which facilitates close reading of both

people and place will adequately explain the social facts (or historical, social, and

cultural context) shaping the behavior of community and university in

engagement initiatives. It is this approach of spatializing power as a force

shaping social interaction and physical space that I drew on in the development

of the research design intended to facilitate an interrogation of the role of place in

the interaction between comprehensive universities and the communities they

serve.

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CHAPTER FOUR

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

This dissertation explores organizational narratives of engagement

initiatives involving regional colleges and universities and the larger community

they serve. In the research, I examined a multi-case study of bounded systems

(Creswell, 1998): two particular institutions and the communities of which they

are a part where engagement initiatives link the regional campus and the larger

community. The purpose of this study is to develop a holistic description of

engagement initiatives; to do so, I constructed narratives of the interaction

between campus and larger community through the stories of the individual

participants in these initiatives. Data was collected to represent multiple

perspectives which comprise the organization: interviews with residents, civic

leaders, university faculty and administrators, elected officials, community and

non-profit organizations, and businesses; and documents and other artifacts

(Creswell, 1998; Stake, 2005, 2006; Yin, 2003).

Sample

Engagement is inherently place-based. The interaction between the

university and the broader community exists in linkages within a particular

region, situated in a specific location. Studying the regional college or university

narrowed the focus of this dissertation to institutions that are by definition

embedded in particular places. Stake (2006) highlights another methodological

52

consideration: “One of the most important tasks for the . . . researcher is to show

how the program or phenomenon appears in different contexts” (p. 27).

To allow examination in different contexts, the dissertation focused on

two regional institutions: Idaho’s Lewis-Clark State College (LCSC) and the

University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). Located in Lewiston, Idaho, Lewis-

Clark State College has been ranked as one of the top three public colleges in the

West in the Comprehensive-Bachelor’s Degree categories by U.S. News and World

Report six times between 2000 and 2007. The college has an enrollment of more

than 3200, and offers bachelors’ degrees in 33 academic and 23 professional

technical programs; and two-year degrees, advanced technical certificates and

certification programs in more than 60 professional technical programs. LCSC

serves the two-year college function in north central Idaho, offering professional

technical programs for nearly 1000 students each year. The college was

established in 1893 as the Lewiston State Normal School and, after several other

name changes, became Lewis-Clark State College in 1971, giving up its

distinction as the last “normal school” in the United States. The Territorial

Normal School, the first institution of higher education to hold classes in

Oklahoma Territory, welcomed the first class of students meeting in a local

church in Edmond in November 1890. Located in the most affluent suburb of

Oklahoma City, the institution now known as the University of Central

Oklahoma has a student body of over 16,000 pursuing bachelors and, since 1954,

53

masters’ degrees in more than 30 fields of study. The sites are introduced in

greater depth in chapters 5 and 6.

Both institutions are “case[s] of some typicality . . . [offering] opportunity

to learn” (Stake, 2005, p. 451), in that they are regional campuses with their

historical origins in the normal school movement, both founded in the early

1890s to train teachers for a growing population in a new state. They both reflect

the normal school tradition in their very strong connections and commitment to

their region. It is important, therefore, to understand something of the history of

the normal school as the predecessor of today’s comprehensive/regional

institutions as a grounding for this study. Normal schools, with curricula

focused on what Petersen (1993) calls “the norms and standards of teaching” (p.

3), emerged in the early 1820s to train teachers for public schools (Flowers, 2006;

Harper, 1939/1970; Herbst, 1980; Loughlin & Burke, 2007; Petersen, 1993). Many

institutions which began as normal schools still exist, continuing their traditional

emphasis on outreach and continuing education opportunities for the

surrounding community (Harper, 1939/1970). Two hundred years after the

founding of the first normal schools, comprehensive/regional colleges and

universities which began as teacher-training institutes play a specific and very

important role in the regions where they are located both in training teachers for

rural schools and as partners in community development initiatives (R.

Tompkins, personal communication, January 24, 2008; see also Petersen, 1993;

Loughlin & Burke, 2007).

54

The institutions included in this study, and individual participants, were

identified through multiple sampling methods. Given the particular emphasis of

this dissertation on the engagement as inherently place based, UCO and LCSC,

were appropriate choices as sites for the dissertation research. A regional college

and university with its roots in the normal school tradition is a particularly

appropriate context to explore a new model for characterizing community-

university interaction because they are, by nature, embedded in their places

(AASCU, 2002; Ramaley, 2000).

Using convenience sampling (Patton, 1990), I identified institutions to

which I had ready access. Stake (2005) explains that, sometimes, “choos[ing] that

case from which we feel we can learn the most . . . may mean taking the one most

accessible, . . . the one we can spend the most time with” (p. 451). I also chose

sites with which I was familiar to some extent. I was born in a hospital

approximately 20 miles from the University of Central Oklahoma, and I lived in

the area for 12 years, as a child. I returned later to Oklahoma to attend another

university. I do not know UCO well, but I think of that region as my home. I

have spent 10 years as an adult living in the region served by Lewis-Clark State

College. I have worked in this region as a professional, interacting with the

institution and its staff in community development activities. Still, I have not

spent 30 winters in north central Idaho, so my understanding of these

communities will always be incomplete by the standards of life-long residents.

55

Within each case, I employed purposeful sampling methods to identify

individual participants (Stake, 2006). In identifying participants for interviews at

each site, I used Foster’s (1991) community nomination process to identify

engagement initiatives, for study with in each of the two cases. Community

nomination, a sampling method Foster developed for collecting life histories

from African American public school teachers, allowed me to gain an “insider’s

view” (Jones, 1991, p. 239) of engagement initiatives involving comprehensive

universities. I solicited nominations from the regional campuses and the

communities served by the two institutions to identify engagement initiatives for

deeper exploration. Like Ladson-Billings (1994), I used Foster’s (1991)

methodology to “judge people, places, and things within their own settings” (p.

147). In doing so, I relied on community members to nominate the initiatives

which they considered, as Stake (2006) requires, the most relevant to the topic,

providing the greatest diversity of views on interactions involving the university

and the larger community, and the best opportunities to learn about the

complexities subsumed under the umbrella term of engagement.

Keith and Pile’s (1993a, b) concept of spatialities informed this project as

an impetus toward exploring the restructuring of relationships between former

normal schools and the larger community as a way to move toward greater

mutuality in these relationships. I conducted purposeful sampling using the

snowball technique to identify participants able to speak to any or all of the

following: (self-defined) successful partnerships (including the challenges they

56

encountered), initiatives which did not move forward, partners/participants

who withdrew from the partnership, and challenges experienced in

collaborations between the university and the larger community. Following

Bourdieu, I was interested in the discourses and practices of engagement

initiatives linking regional campuses and communities. Therefore, in addition to

interviewing participants from nominated programs, I also used snowball

sampling methods to identify individuals who could speak to challenges in

engagement. I sought perspectives on addressing these challenges, as well as on

failed initiatives resulting from unresolved obstacles. This accomplished

Creswell’s (1998) goal of showing different perspectives on the topic or

phenomenon of interest. I continued gathering names from key informants and

other community members until I reached the point of saturation (Creswell,

1998), which occurred in this study when I began hearing the same names as

possible participants.

Data Collection

Specific engagement initiatives serve as entry points for studying the

interaction of university and the larger community; however, I see these

initiatives as made up of individual participants. The story of the initiative is

actually a composite of the many stories of the people who work on those

projects. Therefore, I used narrative inquiry methods associated with

organizational studies (Boje, 2001; Czarniawska, 2004, 2007) to collect the stories.

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The data collection included interviews, documents and artifacts, and a research

journal kept during this project.

Interviews

Organizations “develop particular personalities that holistically express

what they value most deeply” (Clark, 1970/2007, p. vii). I use the term

organizational saga in the dissertation in reference to narratives that describe each

of the engagement initiatives in this study. The unit of analysis was the case, or

regional college or university and the community it serves; because I could not

interview the university or the community per se, I gathered stories from

individual communities members who constitute the organizations of the

community and the regional college or university (Clark, 1970/2007). Therefore,

a key strategy in the data collection for this project was semi-structured

interviews with multiple members of the larger community who had direct

experience with engagement initiatives.

Prior to site visits, I conducted informational interviews with staff

members in LCSC’s Community Programs Department (including the Service

Learning program). I also contacted the Center for Volunteering and Service

Learning, and the American Democracy Project at the University of Central

Oklahoma. To identify additional participants, I approached key informants

(Spradley, 1979) in University of Idaho/Nez Perce County Extension and the

Oklahoma Community Institute, as well as municipal and community/economic

development agencies in each region, requesting their assistance in identifying

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members of the larger community who could provide important insight or

experiences in engagement with the two institutions/sites.

Within the two cases, I interviewed senior administrators on campus, and

municipal leaders, city employees, and elected officials. I also spoke with faculty

members engaged in service learning and other community engagement

initiatives. I met with members of the business community in each region,

speaking both with employees and members of the chambers of commerce and

other economic development organizations. I talked to representatives of social

service agencies. In both regional communities I identified community

professionals who worked regionally as well as locally in their home community

and asked them to comment on issues facing the region as a whole in addition to

their experiences in their own community or neighborhood. I drew on the

expertise of university extension educators in both areas. I also sought out

community partners to gain a particular understanding of the university’s

interaction with the community in formal partnerships. I intentionally made

contact with and interviewed people representing diverse ethnic and socio-

economic experiences of the regions. I completed a total of 54 interviews across

the two sites.

I recorded interviews with 25 people about the interaction between the

University of Central Oklahoma and the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan

area, and with 29 people involved in initiatives linking Lewis-Clark State College

with the communities of north central Idaho. Interviews with participants

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directly involved in engagement initiatives were transcribed verbatim; I

prepared written summaries of the interviews with community members which

provided background information about the campus or the community, with

some portions of the interview transcribed verbatim. Transcripts and interview

summaries were provided to participants for review and comment. Very few

participants responded to this request for memberchecking. Those who did

made very few changes in the transcripts or summaries. All corrections or

additions were made directly to the transcript or summary and became part of

the permanent record of the interview.

Semi-structured interviews with participants ranged from 40 to 180

minutes. Every participant answered two questions which solicited definitions

of community and stories to help me understand better the place where they live

and work. In addition, several questions focused on gathering stories about the

engagement initiatives themselves (see Appendices for interview guides). I

asked for a story/stories of an initiative involving people from many sectors of

the community, including the college or university. Follow-up questions probed

for more information about how the initiative(s) started, who was or was not

involved and why, what worked well, what should go differently next time, why

the participant shared that particular story. Together with questions about the

participant’s vision for the community and what would be required to achieve

that vision, these questions gathered data helpful in answering the research

questions which guide this study. The data described initiatives, identified the

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partners, clarified the motivation of individual participants, highlighted

definitions of community and the culture of engagement in a particular

geographic location, and provided a glimpse in the role of place in community-

university engagement at regional colleges and comprehensive universities.

Documents and Artifacts

Case studies draw on multiple sources of data (Creswell, 1998), thereby

allowing the researcher to identify “both what is common and what is particular

about the case” (Stake, 2005, p. 447). In addition to interviews, Yin (2003)

recommends gathering documentation of activities of interest, archival records,

and physical artifacts. This dissertation is informed by the following

documents/artifacts from each case:

1. materials developed by community partner organizations

reflecting/documenting engagement;

2. publications from Chamber of Commerce, local/regional economic

development council, and/or city visitor center; and

3. other materials depicting the culture of the campus and the larger

community.

These data provided information about the nature and functioning of the case, as

well as its historical, physical, economic, political and aesthetic context (Stake,

2005). I drew examples of activities, chronologies of events, information about

community and campus attitudes and experiences of engagement from these

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documents and artifacts, thereby providing thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) of

both cases.

Research Journal

I kept a journal during this project, including field notes and research

memos. The journal also provided space for reflecting on my personal

experiences and memories of both communities, sorting through what I brought

to my observations and conversations in the way of assumptions and

expectations. The journal became a tool for sorting out my perspective as a

researcher and bringing clarity to the distinctions between my experience and

that of the community members. Field notes and research memos

complemented the personal narrative of my journal as another source of

information about the two cases.

Data Management

The interview transcripts, interview summaries, documents and other

artifacts were stored in notebooks and document files. Documents and artifacts

provided by participants as examples of their work or initiatives with which they

are familiar have been filed in notebooks along with the transcript of that

participant. Other artifacts, such as Chamber of Commerce, local/regional

economic development council, and/or city visitor center publications, were

separated by case and stored in document files. A bound journal held field

notes, personal reflections, and research memoranda prepared during the course

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of the research. The journal has been stored along with other artifacts collected

during the project in document files.

Further, the data collected in this study has been treated in a specific way

to address several issues inherent in engagement between campuses and

communities. The critical geography concept of place as socially constructed is a

key element in the analysis of the data. Accordingly, the institutions and their

locations have been intentionally identified. By doing so, I have made it possible

to treat place as an important participant in this study. However, this decision

highlighted a new challenge. I became concerned that presenting this level of

detail in the dissertation would compromise the confidentiality of the data

because the communities are sufficiently distinct as to be somewhat easily

recognizable. This level of detail about the communities and the institutions

would have made individual participants more easily identifiable in the

dissertation. Given the unlikelihood of being able to maintain strict and absolute

confidentiality for all participants, I believed that any risk associated with

participation in this study can be more effectively mitigated by offering no

assurance of anonymity. This allowed participants to determine the degree of

detail they wish to share in their comments.

The specific nature of community and evidence of the power that shapes

these communities are best discussed through forthright identification of the

towns and cities served by the two institutions included in this study. This

decision came from a direct question: if the relationships between community

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and university are truly reciprocal, would confidentiality still matter? Yes,

confidentiality does still matter. It matters because regardless of the degree of

reciprocity in the relationship between universities and communities,

participants cannot ignore the relative power of resources they bring to these

relationships which itself can be a shaping force. Power also works as part of

group dynamics, affecting the relationships between and among community

partners and university administrators and researchers in the spaces constructed

through engagement.

Analysis and Representation

Stoler (2006) suggests that “blurred genres invite better questions” (p. 9).

In this study, I drew on narrative methodologies, writing as inquiry, and

portraiture to analyze and represent the stories gathered through interviews,

documents, and artifacts. Blurring these methodologies evoked a deeper

understanding of the interaction of university and community partners in

regional communities served by an institution of higher education, focusing on

the cases of two regional institutions.

Data was collected in this project using tools of narrative inquiry within a

bounded system, or case, as outlined above. Where other researchers use writing

as a functional tool for articulating findings, or describing contexts, I used the

process of putting words onto paper for those things and also as a way to work

through ideas, to understand the data as it first appeared in verbatim transcripts

or documents and artifacts, but also as it could be understood when handled

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differently and filleted into these multiple layers. I drew on Furco’s (1996) work

to develop a model identifying multiple categories and points of origin for

engagement. In the analysis of the narrative data and documents, I focused on

creating what Czarniawska (2007) refers to as “emplotted” narrative. This term

reflects her reading of historiographers and narratologists (Todorov, 1978/1990;

White, 1987) differentiating between narrative and story. She finds these

discussions useful, and they inform her definition of narrative as “a set of events

or actions put chronologically together; the story is emplotted – that is, a logical

(in a wide sense of logic) connection is introduced” (p. 387). For Czarniawska

and the historiographers, chronology introduced the connections. In this study,

the placing of engagement (Helfenbein, 2006a) brings out the connections made

by cultural, historical and social context to provides the holistic understanding of

the interaction between the university and the larger community that I called for

in the first chapter, introducing this dissertation. What we understand about

engagement, and the stories people tell about their experiences of engagement

differ, as Shinew and Jones (2005) say, “based on where and who we are, as well

as the moment in which the image is captured” (p. 59-60). The analysis required

a big picture view of the data. I therefore employed methods of analysis and

representation which specifically allow for keeping the data in tact: portraiture,

and writing as inquiry.

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Portraiture

Writing as inquiry, operating as a method of analysis, does not specify

particular frames for representing the data. I employed portraiture methodology

for this purpose, to impose intentionally a desired outcome of the analysis built

on the strengths of writing as thinking, and producing knowledge differently

(Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005). Portraiture methodology (Lightfoot & Hoffman-

Davis, 1997) aligns with the narrative tradition employed in this study, and

provided a structured path for writing as inquiry.

Lightfoot (1983) first described portraiture as having “elements of puzzle

building and quilt making” (p. 16). Data gathered through interviews,

observations, and document analysis provided fibers for weaving institutional

portraits. Multiple voices are heard in the completed portrait: of each regional

community, certainly, but also the varied sounds of the portraitist’s voice: as

witness, as interpreter, as researcher preoccupied by assumptions brought into

the research, as autobiographer recording the overlapping of one’s own history

with that of the case, in dialogue with the many individual participants telling

the collective story of the case (Lightfoot & Hoffman-Davis, 1997).

Writing as Inquiry

Drawing on St. Pierre’s reflections of her study of Southern Sunday school

teachers, I called on writing as a method of data analysis, “using writing to

think” (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005, p. 970). Shinew (2001; Shinew & Jones,

2005) articulates this approach as a postmodern constant comparative method of

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analysis. The postmodern comparative approach juxtaposes the intact data with

theoretical literature, thereby revealing layers in the narratives. Rogers’ (2007)

interpretive poetics acknowledges the existence of multiple layers in a narrative.

She employs her method in the analysis of individuals’ psychological narratives;

I extended her work, modeling a conception of the organization as an individual

entity with its own story, to identify four layers in the data (see Figure 2).

The process of analyzing the data collected for this research happened in

three stages, unfolding in a non-linear fashion. I first worked with the data in a

fairly traditional approach, reading, marking themes, topics and common

experiences as they appeared and re-appeared from one transcript or document

or research memo to the next. I analyzed these using Shinew’s (2001; Shinew &

Jones, 2005) postmodern constant comparative method to juxtapose my

reflections against the interviews and other data. All of these tools moved the

analysis along through writing as a process of inquiry, characterized by the

going back and forth between these notes and my experiences and the transcripts

that mark portraiture as a method of representation. In this process, thought

patterns and themes emerged in the data which contributed to the portraits of

each case and to a deeper understanding on my part of the methodological and

personal experience of conducting narrative research about community-

university engagement.

I searched among this data for the most widely reported perspectives. I

also noted the tales that stood counter to the more prominent stories. Once I had

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Figure 2. Data Analysis Layers.

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what seemed a fairly clear picture of the case, I began to write the portrait. I set

out to do this in a straight-forward manner, chronologically, with more pages

dedicated to the things most people mentioned. I prepared what I thought might

be a set of findings in portrait form to be re-read in a subsequent chapter through

the lenses of critical geography and symbolic power. Arriving at this milestone

of findings to report, the linear path I thought I had embarked on curved sharply.

A coherent, cause and effect, narrative proved very difficult to produce.

Participants told storied with off-hand references – sometimes overt, most times

not – to things off to the side of the action or in the past. I got lost often, when

the story line stopped suddenly, careening off to the past or last week or some

colleague who held the explanation for this action or decision.

I found myself again by writing through the confusion. In the instance of

analyzing the data gathered from interviews and documents, I wrote in order to

make sense of the connections between what I perceived to be the main story

line, and the departures into history and personal anecdote. Usually, telling the

story required a flow of words something like this: “This event/partnership/

initiative is explained by this commitment/mission/personal objective, all of

which is best understood in the context of that moment in history/decision/

previous event/element of physical or phenomenological place where the event

occurred.”

As I wrote through the partnership commitments, and history of the

various engagement initiatives, I saw that in fact the storyline itself was not

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linear. Instead it worked like a Faulkner novel, in simultaneously occurring

layers. Where I stopped to explain or contextualize, another layer of the story

revealed itself. Seeing the layers more clearly, I wrote a second draft, in which I

carefully separated out description from explanation from context. I asked

myself specific questions to differentiate the layers from one another as I wrote

(see Figure 2, p. 67). Fighting a temptation to attach emotions and value

judgments to the stories as they emerged, I ultimately turned to theory in a third

draft, using the framework outlined in chapter 3 as a lens to offer possible

readings of this striated narrative in order to make sense of the lived experiences

outlined here. What emerged from this analytical process is a portrait of each

case presented in four layers. The identification and discussion of these layers of

data generated in the postmodern constant comparison method matches an

image of pieces of slate effaced from a large boulder with a chisel and hammer.

Another apt image is one of soil layers formed through different processes.

Descriptions of these “soil horizons” as they are called by soil scientists, focus on

the boundaries between horizons:

Two properties are characterized: boundary "distinctness" and

boundary "topography.” Distinctness describes if boundary is abrupt,

clear, gradual or diffuse—each of these associated with how thick the

transition is between one layer and the next. The topography of the

boundary is either smooth (nearly a plane), wavy (pockets with greater

width than depth), irregular (pockets with depth greater than width)

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or broken (discontinuous topography). (D. Huggins, personal

communication, May 9, 2008).

The boundaries between each of the first three layers could aptly be described as

gradual and wavy. The deeper layers, however, have very different

characteristics.

The first layer is descriptive, capturing the who, what, where, and how of

the engagement initiatives, producing a straightforward, current, organizational

saga of engagement between each institution and the regional community it

serves. This layer describes the community and the university, as well as

identifying the immediate needs and opportunities for both. The second layer

reflects a specific narrative of engagement which weaves together the various

interactions between campus and community. In this deeper layer, participants

express their vision for the future, offering an explanation for why engagement is

occurring as it is in the present. By juxtaposing the constructed knowledge of

engagement initiatives with Bourdieu’s methodological imperative to uncover

the discourse and practices of engagement in a particular context (Webb, et al.,

2002), what is revealed are explanations and descriptions being offered to frame

the interaction between regional institutions and the larger communities they

serve. The third layer accomplishes a placing (Helfenbein, 2006b) of engagement

in cultural, historical, and social context. Drawing from the basic tenets of critical

geography (Cresswell, 2004; Harvey, 1993), the discussion of this layer identified

power structures and other forces shaping the communities and their interaction

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with the regional institutions. The fourth layer returns to Shinew’s (2005) use of

postmodern constant comparative methods to lay whole storylines against

theoretical literature. Critical geography concepts and Bourdieu’s work on

symbolic power provide specific frames not to evaluate the stories recounted in

this dissertation, but instead to offer a possible explanation or way of

understanding why the situation has unfolded as it has in that particular place.

The deepest two layers, placing engagement and juxtaposing the

organizational saga against the theoretical framework, are separate but slice into

one another at opportune points. In the language of the soil scientist, the

boundaries between these two layers in particular are diffuse and broken.

Therefore, each portrait offers a complete discussion of four discrete layers that

clearly points to and explores the places where the horizons between layers are

less clear.

Criteria for Establishing Rigor in Alternative Representation

Any narrative is an instance of the many possible relationships between

the narrator’s active construction of self and the social, cultural, and historical

circumstances that enable and constrain that narrative. Chase (2005) continues

on this point: “From this perspective, any narrative is significant because it

embodies – and gives us insight into – what is possible and intelligible within a

specific social context” (p. 667). Narrative researchers challenge positivist

notions of validity and generalizability because of these multiple contingencies

that influence construction and interpretation. Guba (1981, cited in Wolcott,

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2004) has suggested a focus on “credibility” in qualitative research, rather than

the positivist notion of validity. Richardson (1994) also offers a different way to

think about the representation of qualitative data, through crystallization rather

than validation. I also use Richardson’s (2001) later work on alternative

evaluation criteria to construct this study which is both credible and

purposefully particular to the cases.

Positioning the organizational narrative as a sum of the participants’

stories draws on Richardson’s (1994) validity construct, crystallization.

Crystallization, rather than validation, allows for refracting light on or through

the data, each facet highlighting a different perspective, bumping and crossing

within the data and together deepening our sense of what it is possible to know.

“What we see,” she reminds us, “depends on our angle of repose” (p. 963), and

crystallization engenders and makes fertile use of varying and different

perspectives such as those likely to emerge from the various types of data to be

collected here. It is this image of the crystal that I have called on in this study:

illuminating multiple experiences and understandings of engagement, as well as

the multiple layers of the narratives teased apart above. As Eisner (1997) points

out, the use of alternative forms of representation both “streamlines our

research,” and it “sensitize[s] us to the possible” (p. 7).

Describing ethnographic research as “humanly situated, always filtered

through human eyes and human perceptions, bearing both the limitations and

strengths of human feelings, activity, beliefs, and understanding” (p. 250-1),

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Richardson (2001) outlines “high and difficult standards” for the evaluation of

this work: substantive contribution, aesthetic merit, reflexivity, impact, and

expression of a reality. These criteria fit this dissertation, which is not technically

an ethnography, for two reasons. First, the researcher in this project was the

instrument in much the same way that the ethnographer is in an ethnography

(Clifford & Marcus, 1986; LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). This reflected Kvale’s

(1996) notion of interview as “inter view,” co-constructed knowledge reflecting

the contributions of both the participant and the researcher, which describes the

approach to interviewing employed in this study. Second, this dissertation was

crafted using writing as inquiry, an alternative approach to representation which

is not well addressed using traditional notions of validity and reliability.

Taking up each of Richardson’s (2001) five criteria individually, the

following discusses the measures I have taken to strengthen the credibility of this

work. I introduce each criterion by offering the questions Richardson asks as a

reviewer of alternative ethnographies, and continue by framing these questions

as they have guided the research design in this study, and conclude with a

statement about specific activities designed to produce credible scholarship.

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Substantive Contribution

Does this piece contribute to our understanding of social life? Does the writer demonstrate a deeply grounded (if embedded) human world understanding and perspective? How has this perspective informed the construction of the text? (Richardson, 2001, p. 251).

Making a substantive contribution to scholarship is generally understood

as establishing the gap in the literature, and situating the study accordingly. This

first of Richardson’s criterion is more about how the study “contributes to the

understanding of social life,” and “demonstrate[s] a deeply grounded . . .

understanding” (Richardson, 2001, p. 251). The literature is part of that, as is

what I bring by drawing on my lived experience in designing the study and

analyzing the data. I took the approach that Lightfoot and Hoffman-Davis (1997)

describe as a moving back and forth between gathering data—stories, memories,

facts, impressions, intentions, the fibers of these portraits—and the analysis, and

the writing of the images. I wrote the portraits in chapters 5 and 6 by weaving

the fibers of the data through a loom of my personal experiences and memory.

Following this approach, what the methodologists call the portraitist’s voice as

preoccupation emerged first as I brought my assumptions, prior experiences, and

general knowledge of the context into the framework of the inter views (Kvale,

1996) with participants (Lightfoot & Hoffman-Davis, 1997).

Aesthetic Merit

Does the use of creative analytical practices open up the text, invite interpretative responses? Is the text artistically shaped, satisfying, complex, and nor boring? (Richardson, 2001, p. 251)

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Richardson (2001) evaluates the aesthetic merit of alternative forms of

representation by asking first whether or not the piece “succeeds aesthetically”

(p. 251). The answer to that question may ultimately lie in the experience of the

reader, and it is inherently subjective. She does, however, offer additional

encouragement to push for creative analysis with an eye to producing “complex”

and “satisfying” narratives (Richardson, 2001, 251). In the portraits, I worked to

present one version of the story of these places. I drew on the “tools [I] . . . know

how to use” (Eisner, 1997, p. 7), specifically writing and the gathering and telling

of stories. Richardson (2001) calls for pieces that “open up the text” and “invite

interpretive responses” (p. 251), meeting Eisner’s (1997) promise of alternative

forms of representations to stimulate “our capacity to wonder” (p. 8). By

presenting the data in layers, I both invited the interpretation of others and

offered my own interpretation of the data in the deeper layers, and through the

synthesis of the findings presented in chapter 7.

Reflexivity

How has the author’s subjectivity been both a producer and a product of this text? Is there adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view? Do authors hold themselves accountable to the standards of knowing and telling of the people they have studied? (Richardson, 2001, p. 251)

Strong writing, for Richardson (2001), reflects the researcher’s

considerable attention to subjectivity, ethics, accountability to the participants’

standards of knowing and telling. Self-awareness and self-exposure in the

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writing support these standards, and assist the reader in making judgments

about these issues. My biographical information was interspersed in this

dissertation at crucial points to illustrate the connections between my prior life

and this research. By foregrounding these facts, I achieved greater credibility in

this project in two ways. First, by sharing images of my life in both these places,

I have provided the reader with guides for understanding my subjectivity as the

producer of the text. This level of self-exposure did, as Richardson suggests,

demonstrate self-awareness, and offer self exposure adequate for the reader to

make judgments about my point of view.

I adopted a member-checking process to ensure accountability to the

standards of knowing and telling of the people I interviewed. I involved

individuals who are natives of the areas studied here as readers of the portraits

and asked that they provide feedback on the accuracy with which I captured the

place they knew as their homes. I added details and changed depictions in the

portraits to reflect more clearly their sense of the place as well as my experience

of the locations as a researcher. I also shared the portraits with individual

participants who are quoted directly or described by name, asking that they

confirm my understanding of their words and experience. The portraits were

also edited to reflect this feedback. This approach to member-checking also

addressed ethical issues involved in research where the location is intentionally

identified. Risk associated with participation in this study were mitigated by

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offering no assurance of confidentiality, thereby allowing participants to

determine the degree of detail they wished to share in their comments.

Impact

Does this affect me emotionally? Intellectually? Does it generate new questions? Move me to write? Move me to try new research practices? Move me to action? (Richardson, 2001, p. 251)

Richardson (2001) evaluates impact in two ways, considering both

emotion and intellect. The dissertation took up the issue of the impact of the

work in two specific ways. First, impact is intertwined with aesthetic merit and

reflexivity. The representation of the data as portraits provokes response from

the reader, what was asked to think differently about how they come to know,

and through what mode of writing. Second, the final chapter raised questions

about how theory has been applied to the scholarship of engagement, explored

the implications of this study, and closes with specific suggestions for future

studies exploring new empirical data and/or employing new theoretical lenses

which themselves suggest new approaches to future research.

Expression of a Reality

Does this text embody a fleshed out, embodied sense of lived-experience? Does it seem “true” – a credible account of a cultural, social, individual, or communal sense of the “real”? (Richardson, 2001, p. 251)

Two other issues raised by Richardson (2001) are relevant here: credibility

of the account, and reflection of the participant(s)’s reality. Expressing a reality

also calls for reflexivity, as in this earlier question: “Do authors hold themselves

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accountable to the standards of knowing and telling of the people they have

studied?” (Richardson, 2001, p. 251). This work differed from other scholarship

in the area of engagement in that it overtly includes both the researcher’s

personal narratives of place and engagement with those of the participants.

These descriptions of place and personal life provided the fleshed out, embodied

sense of lived experience required by this criterion. The descriptions were “real”

in their reflection of participant narratives.

Although I have discussed the five citerion individually, Richardson’s

schema operate as an integrated framework. A research design indicating strong

measures for reflexivity will easily meet the expectations for expression of a

reality. A dissertation of aesthetic impact more likely has impact in the field,

which simultaneously satisfies the expectation of substantive contribution to the

field/scholarship. Accordingly, these criterion are discussed here as a pieces of a

framework which establishes rigor for alternative representations, rather than a

checklist for evaluation.

In developing portraits of the two cases in this study, I am offering new

ways to understand the interaction between university and community. These

new understandings in turn invite additional questions; put a different way, as

new forms of data representation stimulates creativity in the research process,

both for the researcher, and for the new work’s audience (Eisner, 1997). The peril

in taking up an alternative approach to data representation is moving too far

toward novelty for its own sake, “substituting . . . cleverness for substance”

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(Eisner, 1997, p. 9). Richarson’s (2001) framework points to the rigorous

approach to scholarship necessary to strike this fine balance between novel,

evocative, productive in its ambiguity and what Eisner calls “referential

precision” (p. 9) and strong, valid, conclusions.

Limitations

Even a credible study which meets Richardson’s (2001) expectations

outlined in the previous discussion cannot present the whole story of its subject.

I therefore caution the reader about limitations inherent in this study related to

participants, data collection and generalizability of the findings. Although the

research design explicitly included methods for gathering data regarding failed

initiatives, I was unable to locate anyone who would speak to these issues. Most

often, when I asked about ideas which did not come to fruition, participants

responded by explaining that they had not been not in a position to hear about

discarded or undeveloped projects. I did gather names at both institutions of

people previously involved in current projects. I attempted to contact these

people on both campuses yet remained unsuccessful in speaking with them.

There is, therefore, limited discussion in this study about failed initiatives, and

the discussion of barriers to engagement is skewed by the over-representation of

university administrators who consider the current initiatives successful with

limited challenges. Because of the focus on administrative structures and

interaction by the institution as a whole, students were not included in the

participant group. For this reason, this study has limited relevance to

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discussions of community service learning. Finally, the fundamental premise of

this dissertation is the notion that engagement is inherently place-based.

Accordingly, the specific details of the cases presented in this work cannot be

generalized to apply to other comprehensive or regional institutions.

Overview of Case Studies and Conclusion

The remaining chapters of this dissertation present case studies of the

University of Central Oklahoma and Lewis-Clark State College, exploring the

interaction of two comprehensive institutions. Using the narrative analysis

techniques and portraiture methodology outlined in this chapter to explore the

complexities of these relationships, I identified four layers (Rogers, 2007; Shinew,

2001; Shinew & Jones, 2005) in the organizational sagas (Clark, 1970/2007). In

the portraits of these two regional institutions, I structure the discussion of

community- university interactions by exploring the each layer individually:

first, an overview of the community (including the college or university), and the

engagement initiatives; next, the narrative of engagement weaving the initiatives

together; then, placing engagement in a emplotted narrative (Czarniawska, 2007)

with connections between the descriptions and the framing narratives created by

placing (Helfenbein, 2006b) engagement as product and reflection of cultural,

historical and social events in a particular geographical, physical, socially

constructed space; and finally juxtaposing these narratives with the theoretical

framework. The final chapter of the dissertation serves two purposes: first, it

contributes to an understanding of community-university interaction as shaped

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by place and by power; and then, offers new perspectives on engagement based

on a spatialized reading of Bourdieu’s treatment of power functioning in social

fields that can advance theory, practice and scholarship in this area.

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CHAPTER FIVE

THE GREATER OKLAHOMA CITY METRO AREA

AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA

On April 22, 1889, would-be settlers lined up at land offices across Indian

Territory waiting to stake out their claim to unassigned lands. At the end of the

day, 10,000 residents lived in the new community of Oklahoma City,

approximately 50 miles south of the territorial capital in Guthrie. Just over 18

months later, the territorial legislature established a normal school in Edmond,

located between Oklahoma City and Guthrie. The community and institution of

higher education grew up together, becoming today the University of Central

Oklahoma, a metropolitan university of 16,000 students located in Edmond, a

city of more than 70,000 residents.

This chapter looks at the interaction of this regional institution, and the

community that it has served for more than 117 years. Using narrative analysis

techniques to explore the complexities of this relationship, I identified four layers

(Rogers, 2007; Shinew, 2001; Shinew & Jones, 2005). In this portrait of the Greater

Oklahoma City metropolitan area and the University of Central Oklahoma, I

structure the discussion of community- university interactions by exploring each

layer individually: first, an overview of the community and the engagement

initiatives; next, identifying themes in the narrative weaving the initiatives

together; then, placing engagement in a contextualized portrait which places

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engagement as product and reflection of cultural, historical and social events;

and finally juxtaposing these narratives with the theoretical framework

developed in chapter 3.

Layer 1: Overview of the Community and the Engagement Initiatives

The prevailing definition of community at the University of Central

Oklahoma and in the greater Oklahoma City area operates as a series of

concentric circles: UCO students, “the UCO family,” Edmond, Oklahoma City,

the state of Oklahoma. Descriptions of each of these concentric circles together

with discussions of the various engagement initiatives and other programs

which link the circles to one another constitute the first, most superficial, layer of

the data. Moving from the largest circle inward, this overview pulls primarily

from the dominant social narrative to provide a big picture image of the state, the

metropolitan area, of Edmond, and finally the campus and its student body.

Overview of the Community

Oklahoma celebrated 100 years of statehood during my visit to Edmond.

On November 16, 2007, more than 50,000 people gathered in Guthrie to witness

re-enactments of a reading of Theodore Roosevelt’s proclamation of statehood

and the marriage of Mr. Oklahoma Territory and Miss Indian Territory.

Descendents of many original participants, dressed in period clothing, took part

in the festivities. The events began with a sundown ceremony on Thursday

evening, including drumming by a group of Native Americans. On Friday,

Statehood Day, Sid Miller led tours emphasizing the history of Black

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Oklahomans. At the same time, in a Paseo-district Oklahoma City art gallery,

Native artists mounted an exhibition exploring the pain and personal heartache

of the colonization, relocation and attempts at cultural genocide among Native

peoples in the Indian Territory throughout the 19th century.

The Jubilee was an amazing event to witness. Simulcast on Oklahoma

public television, I watched the show at home with my father. We saw a parade

of stars, all born in Oklahoma: Garth Brooks; actor-director Ron Howard via pre-

taped message delivered by his father, a real Oklahoma cowboy; Kix Brooks of

country music duo Brooks and Dunn; alternative rock legends the Flaming Lips;

former Oklahoma governors David Boren and George Nigh; Leona Mitchell of

the Metropolitan Opera. Not a flag-waving patriot of any sort, the evening

swept me up into a cloud of heart-swelling pride stronger than I had felt since

my Oklahoma State Cowboys beat OU 11-0 in 1995 after more than 20 years of

defeat in the annual Bedlam football match-ups.

Shirley Jones, an adopted daughter, reprised her role as the bright-eyed

Laurie in Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma,” singing about the surrey with

the fringe on top and a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn, as the lyric

goes, is indeed “as high as an elephant’s eye” and as a proxy for the state’s

growth, economic prosperity and emergence as a destination for new business

and other entrepreneurs, “it looks like it’s climbin’ right up to the sky.” I look

back on my time in Oklahoma City in November 2007 with a mix of nostalgia,

fond memories of the way things still are, and wonder at the way many things

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are changing. Two possible interpretations of the current period in Oklahoma

history present themselves: the state as a whole is doing quite well, bringing the

state capital along with it into a bright new era; or, the vibrant atmosphere is

Oklahoma City coming into its own and bringing the state along with it.

Regardless of the explanation, the 21st century renaissance of Oklahoma

City brings growth and expansion to a 10-county area (see Figure 3). After

twenty years of recession following the oil booms of the 1970s, many in the

Greater Oklahoma City area are focused on economic growth as the mechanism

for rebuilding their community. The stories I heard during my visit to Oklahoma

suggest that this approach has been successful. Today, residents talk of a

booming economy, impressive growth and the transformation of a 30-block

warehouse district east of downtown into Bricktown, an entertainment

destination home to, among other things, country music megastar and Oklahoma

City native Toby Keith’s steakhouse, and the new Bricktown ballpark where

statues of Oklahomans Mickey Mantle and Johnny Bench welcome fans to watch

the Oklahoma City RedHawks play baseball as the Triple-A farm team in the

Texas Rangers’ organization.

Oklahoma City suffered for many years from what one participant called

“turnpike envy,” a reference to the Turner Turnpike, or I-44, connecting the

state’s two largest cities. My childhood memories of the place reflect this image.

The City was, in my head associated with farming, ranching, dust, and cattle.

Once, my mother went on a date to The Cattlemen’s Café, in the Oklahoma City

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Figure 3. Map of Oklahoma1 with Greater Oklahoma City area counties outlined

(including Kingfisher, Logan, Payne, Lincoln, Pottawatomie, Cleveland,

McClain, Grady, Canadian, and Oklahoma Counties).

1 Source: U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). Census 2000. Retrieved May 29, 2008, from http://ftp2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/stco_outline/cen2k_pgsz/stco_OK.pdf

87

Stockyards, and I relished the image of her time at the best restaurant in the city.

These pictures of Oklahoma City contrast to Tulsa, planned by early oil tycoons

with inspiration from the cities of the eastern United States. The city is still home

to a ballet, an opera company, a symphony, and the Gilcrease Museum, housing

the largest collection of art and artifacts of the American West in the world. The

subtle differences between Tulsa and Oklahoma City are something one grows

up with, a taken-for-granted distinction that settles into the psyche without clear

awareness of the origin of such ideas. Someone who grew up in Tulsa described

it to me as “the Kansas City of Oklahoma;” he used words including “wealthy,

high end,” “sort of cosmopolitan,” “international flair.” It was, 30 years ago

when he was growing up, “more Houston than Dallas. Old money as opposed

to new.”

Certainly, though, some things have changed since I left Oklahoma in

1996. Oil and natural gas is still the major industry in Oklahoma, and more

international companies are locating in Oklahoma City. One quiet force in the

Oklahoma economy is Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts

superstore, whose founder and CEO David Green “just tied Oprah on the list of

most wealthy Americans,” as one community member told me proudly. When

people talk about growth and the future of Oklahoma City, one name and one

corporation come up most frequently: Aubrey McClendon, and his company,

Chesapeake Energy, the largest independent producer of natural gas in the

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United States. To get a sense about the buzz around Chesapeake Energy and

Aubrey McClendon specifically, think about Bill Gates and Microsoft.

This impressive rejuvenation reflects business growth, and the success of

Oklahoma City-based companies yet. Fully explaining the new era in Oklahoma

City requires an examination of a major city initiative of the 1990s. Debt-free

construction of pedestrian walking trails, parks, bridges, a new stadium for the

city’s minor league baseball team, the 20,000-seat Ford Center, and the

Chesapeake Boathouse have been made possible by private investments and

public funding through the 1993 passage of a temporary one-percent sales tax

earmarked for Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS). The revenue from this sales

tax totaled $309 million over six years (Greater Oklahoma City Parternship,

2007). UCO officials point to the MAPS projects as the turning point in

Oklahoma City’s transformation into what urban planners would call a “second-

tier city” along the lines of Indianapolis and Albuquerque. Local leaders

referred to the transformations as Oklahoma City’s emergence as a “major league

city” with regulation-size arenas for basketball, hockey and professional rodeo

(Lackmeyer & Money, 2006). One participant described the people of Oklahoma

City as “looking for something.” In 2006, Forbes magazine ranked the city “one

of the Top 10 places to have employment,” he told me. The city deserves this

recognition, he thought, and suggested that it was probably based on

the huge development that’s going on there. . . . . [Y]ou throw

anything down there and we support it. The Hornets came in. . . . The

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whole season was sold out in two weeks. People don’t even know

who the Hornets are. I don’t even know if I like turquoise and purple.

I had a shirt. We just . . .we’re looking for something. Oklahoma is so

strong at this point. I think it’s important for them to have something

to sink their teeth into.

Like this person’s enthusiastic portrait of his home, the picture of Oklahoma

painted by economic development and municipal officials today shows dynamic

growth, and exciting opportunities in a strong economy capitalizing on the

educated workforce and central location of Oklahoma City at the intersection of

three major interstate highways.

Social service agency administrators tell a much different story about

these growth trends. The economy is booming, and simultaneously “we’re

number one in all of the wrong things to be number one in” (e.g., teen pregnancy

rates; distribution of methamphetamines, etc.). I asked several people in different

segments of the community to help me identify the two or three most pressing

issues facing Oklahoma communities. The key issue, they agree, is education.

For professionals in the social service sector, education refers to the quality and

level of education, and also to individuals “needing educational help” to

complete high school. Education to the economic development professional

refers specifically to workforce training, as in materials touting Oklahoma City’s

“educated workforce” as a key asset for businesses interested in locating in the

region. Considering both perspectives, the situation seems to be this: business

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thrives where individuals are well-educated, reinforcing an image of the Greater

OKC area as an attractive place to locate or expand business. When/where

educational attainment is low, other problems emerge as well: generational

use/abuse/trafficking of illegal drugs, teen pregnancy, and generational poverty

connecting to what one person described to me as “not knowing how to manage

finances.”

Edmond: “Uppity and Proud of It”

Like most large urban area, greater Oklahoma City consists of a slowly re-

emerging central city which died out in the 1950s while the first of a ring of

suburbs (Fishman, 1987), and subsequent rings of more remote bedroom

communities, the exurbs, are indistinguishable from rural farming towns.

Edmond, one of Oklahoma City’s original suburbs, was a community of

approximately 30,000 people, many of them living on family farms staked out

during the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. Almost fifty years later, the town has

more than doubled in size, with a population over 75,000 in 2007. The city’s

population has grown at a rate of approximately three percent per year over the

last decade (EEDA, 2008).

“What’s Edmond known for?” I asked each person I talked to. Most

mentioned the affluent standard of living. Edmond residents have an average

household income of more than $84,000, roughly 50% higher than the average for

the Oklahoma City area, and just over 29% higher than the national average

(based on figures available in EEDA, 2008). Some mentioned the community’s

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affluence rather sheepishly, leaving me with the impression that some were a

little embarrassed by, or at least aware of, the unexamined privileges afforded by

this status. Others made no mention of it, speaking instead of the quality of life,

or the amenities available to Edmond residents. I learned to recognize “quality

of life” as a synonym for affluent, or at least for the things that affluence both

affords and demands. There was no hesitation, though, on anyone’s part, to talk

about the excellence of the Edmond Public Schools, a district with a high school

graduation rate of 98.6%, 21 National Merit Scholars in the class of 2008, the

highest Academic Performance Index score in the state, and 8 schools honored as

a Blue Ribbon School by the United States Department of Education since 1982

(EEDA, 2008).

Two key elements contributed to the economic and civic success of the

community. First, around 1960, an interstate highway connecting Dallas to

Minneapolis was built through the city. In the early 1970s, a section of U.S.

Highway 77 became the Broadway Extension, a 4-lane divided highway

connecting Edmond to downtown Oklahoma City. Both of these thoroughfares

facilitate an easy commute between the luxury of Edmond living and the

commercial districts of the greater Oklahoma City area.

The ease of the commute became increasingly attractive as desegregation

came to the Oklahoma City school district. A UCO administrator relayed what

he called a “bigoted” joke to explain the importance of this decision to the

population growth of the suburb. Luther Bohannon, United States District Court

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judge and author of a federal court integration decree in 1972, should be – many

say – named patron saint of Edmond because of the tremendous impact busing

and integrated schools had on the growth of Edmond in the early to mid-1970s.

Community members who support this growth trend are enthusiastic

about growth in population and in the size of the business community.

Increased sales through more residents and more businesses are important for

generating sales tax revenue, a critical source of funding for city infrastructure in

a state where all property tax revenue is earmarked for school districts. Sales

taxes also fund the amenities which draw many people to Edmond: four annual

festivals including free events for the community, public art, performing arts

venues and events, low crime rates and a visibly well-staffed police department,

well-maintained neighborhoods. Current Edmond residents explain their

community’s attraction to relocating families as a result of its prevailing air of

success. “Uppity and proud of it,” one of the former mayors says. He’d like it to

become the new city motto. Another city official explained to me that

Edmondites have a driving passion for excellence. More often, though, people

talked to me about traffic or about zoning laws. The underlying issue in most of

the community’s arguments is growth. Talking about traffic or zoning is

actually just another way of expressing fears about the amount or the rate of the

population increase.

In this fight over expansion, proponents of growth are referred to as

“asphalt lovers” by members of the Edmond Neighborhood Alliance, whose

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members are referred to by pro-growth factions as “tree huggers.” ENA is an

umbrella organization bringing together most of the more than 128

neighborhood associations in Edmond. Their opponents complain that “they

don’t want anything to change. They want to slam the door and . . . .not let

anybody else in and not let any developments in.”

Oklahoma City may be best described as recreating itself. Suburbs like

Edmond and neighboring Deer Creek have always carried a reputation as

affluent, successful, attractive. These descriptors are beginning to apply equally

well to the metro area as a whole. The transformation is not complete, however,

and there are many opportunities for higher education to play a key role in

moving toward the more prosperous future.

The Engagement Initiatives

The University of Central Oklahoma, which has undergone seven name

changes in less than 100 years, is actively repositioning itself as a new kind of

institution, a metropolitan university. The Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan

Universities defines these institutions as those sharing a commitment to “striving

for national excellence while contributing to the economic development, social

health, and cultural vitality of the urban or metropolitan centers served”

(Holland, n.d.).

Taking on this new label, the university is purposefully repositioning itself

as different from Oklahoma’s five other regional universities. This makes sense,

they told me. UCO has an enrollment of more than 16,000 students from across

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the state, every state in the nation, and several countries outside the United

States. Northeastern State University (NSU), the next largest campus, has an

enrollment of 9400, located in Tahlequah, a small town of 16,000 residents. NSU

serves a region which is primarily rural, where UCO serves the largest

metropolitan area and the state capital. More importantly, UCO is pro-actively

focused on opportunities to connect its knowledge and human resources with

the needs of Oklahoma City.

UCO and the regional metropolitan community it serves interact in a

variety of different ways. Figure 4 uses the model presented in chapter 1 as a

frame for listing the various initiatives and events mentioned during the formal

interviews, and in other documents reflecting community engagement at the

University of Central Oklahoma. This list should not be considered a complete

recounting of all activities past and present which link the university with the

larger regional community that it serves. Rather, these are the things that

participants specifically mentioned in their narratives as what the interview

guide referred to as “particularly successful initiatives that are linking the

university with the larger community.” The list includes four categories:

community-targeted programming, designed and implemented for the

community with significant involvement by UCO ; community-based

programming, more typically implemented in a joint effort between the

university and community organizations and taking place in the community;

community-engaged scholarship, which is academic discipline-based and

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Community-targeted programming Arts and cultural programming Faculty consulting Outreach and student recruitment

Recreation/continuing education programs

Shakespeare in the Park

Presidents’ Club Christmas Party Community festivals: Liberty Fest, Jazz Fest, WinterGlow

BlazeSports, Endeavor Games Broadway Tonight

Forensic Science Institute, and continuing education courses for first responders Jazz Lab concerts, concert venue

Community-based programs Community-engaged scholarship Economic development initiatives Discipline-based, faculty-led scholarship Community-led events held in university facilities Participatory/action research

Sister Cities program (partnership with Paralympics/Coaching disabled athletes Edmond Chamber of Commerce) Arcadia Lake Field Lab (Biology) Development of Oklahoma City arts district UCO History book project OSBI Forensic Science Center Windpower research in Okahoma Panhandle Chamber of Commerce (located on university Property) Small Business Development Center Bi-monthly leadership team meetings – UCO/Edmond Development of USOC training sites in greater OKC area UCO facilities as community event venues

Civic/Community-focused education* (K-16) Community service learning Volunteering Community Service

Fieldwork Internships Civic Education

Reading Buddies (CS, SL)

Math Buddies (CS, SL) Corporate Internships: Dell, Chesapeake, Greater Grads (I)

Symposium on Global Competencies (F, I, CE) Leaders in Residence/Lessons in Leadership curriculum

Broncho Difference/The Big Event (V, CS) 9/11 Firefighters Dinner (V, CS)

Roadside Clean-ups (V) Student Teacher placement (F)

American Democracy Project (SL, CS, V) Oklahoma Film Institute/Film District restoration project (SL)

Accounting students prepare taxes (SL) Theatre as community education about municipal ordinance (SL)

Leadership and Civic Engagement course (SL) Student organization service projects (CS)

Petroleum Studies major developed in response to corporate request (F, I) Oral history of Price Tower (SL)

Poverty Awareness Week (CS, CE)

Figure 4. Interaction between the Greater Oklahoma City area and the University of Central Oklahoma. *See discussion of Furco (1996) model for definitions, see Chapter 1

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faculty-led; and civic/community-focused education involving students in

service learning, internships and volunteer activities.

Community-Targeted Programming

Regional institutions with their roots in the normal school tradition draw

on a historical valuing of outreach to local communities and schools in

developing community-targeted program efforts (Flowers, 2006; Harper,

1939/1970). Most often these initiatives take the form of arts and cultural

programming and recreational or continuing education programming. At the

University of Central Oklahoma, faculty consulting and outreach and student

recruitment initiatives also connect the institution to the community it serves.

Arts and cultural programming. Arts and cultural programming are a

traditional form of community-targeted programming, bringing entertainment

and educational experiences to the university and the larger community. The

University of Central Oklahoma interacts with the local Edmond community

through festivals and holiday celebrations on campus, which President Roger

Webb likes to describe as “the community’s backyard.” Edmond hosts an arts

festival in May, Liberty Fest on the 4th of July, and Dickens Weekend, the annual

Christmas season celebration which links with the university’s WinterGlow

event in late November. I spoke with one community member deeply involved

with community festivals who explained that all these events require the

cooperation of three entities: the city government, the university and the

business community. He described these events in language that evoked for me

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a sense of the place where he lived: “it’s really a coming together of entities here

that keep it from being such a bedroom community.” These festivals also define

the lived experience of this community, contributing to the sense of this place as

affluent, cultured, privileged to have free community events offered regularly as

a matter of course for those who live in and visit the community.

The fall Jazz Festival, centered around the Jazz Lab, is another of these

signature events, and I also heard much about it as a particularly good example

of community-university collaboration in that this UCO facility houses part of

the university’s music program:

The Jazz Lab’s a combination of [a community member’s family]

donating the land, that being the private enterprise arm. The city

owned a certain part of that that rolled in. . . . And then you have the

university which has the Jazz Lab that uses it as a teaching facility

during the day and a Jazz Lab at night. Those three came together just

beautifully and it looks like one seamless [entity].

Many listed the Jazz Lab, along with the annual cultural events, as important

amenities for the community in attracting visitors and recruiting businesses.

Faculty consulting. Community organizations more frequently mentioned

faculty consulting activities than did campus administrators. A faculty member

in the Business College has worked with the Oklahoma Community Institute to

assist communities with community benchmarking activities. The program

helps civic leaders identify towns with similar demographics in other states to

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serve as models for planned strategic growth in Oklahoma towns. The UCO

faculty member drafts the list of possible towns, and also works with community

members in doing research to explore the demographic and economic

development trends experienced both by the Oklahoma communities and

communities in other states.

Outreach and student recruitment. Outreach programming at Central dates

to the first training institute offered in the summer of 1895 for instructors at

schools in Oklahoma Territory (Loughlin & Burke, 2007). For the next 110 years,

outreach and student recruitment have been more or less overtly linked in

programming initiatives. Today, many people talk about outreach activities as

having many benefits to the college, including connections to future students.

Recreation and continuing education. The most frequently mentioned

initiatives linking the University of Central Oklahoma with the community it

serves fell in the category of recreation and continuing education. Every person

I spoke to at UCO and in Edmond mentioned the emerging partnership between

the university and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations (OSBI). The

vision behind this partnership includes community-based initiatives discussed

below, as well as the new Forensic Science Institute currently under construction.

UCO also hosts annual events for disabled athletes, including the Endeavor

Games and BlazeSports competitions. Both of these initiatives reach beyond the

city of Edmond and involve participants from across the state, and in some

instances, from neighboring states and beyond.

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To be located on Edmond’s Second Street between the Edmond Chamber

of Commerce and UCO’s George Nigh Student Center, the Forensic Sciences

Institute’s physical presence will be a 25,000 square foot facility including a 165-

seat auditorium, three 50-seat classrooms, and laboratory space opening in early

2009. Dr. Dwight Adams, director of the institute, is the former director of the

Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Crime Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. He is

a member of the FBI’s research team that developed the DNA techniques first

used in 1988, and a graduate of the Central State College. President Webb

recruited Adams to UCO, and Adams has subsequently recruited a team of

former FBI and OSBI scientists who are experts in computer forensics, explosives,

forensic entomology, and behavioral profiling.

The Institute has two functions that meet needs of both the community

and UCO students. An official involved in developing this center described it

this way: It is “an institute whose primary responsibility is providing continuing

education to professionals. Police officers, first responders, forensic scientists,

attorynery, anyone dealing with evidence from any aspect.” In its first year, the

center offered 18 different training events for groups of 20 to 150 students from

Oklahoma and 9 surrounding states. Institute personnel have also hosted

training events in China, South Africa, Brazil, and Islamabad, Pakistan during

this time. The center’s secondary function is to enhance the UCO’s academic

program in Forensic Science. All the center staff, except Adams, hold dual

appointments in academic departments; Adams and his colleagues also regularly

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teach UCO courses, and invite their students to participate in the Institute’s

training courses on a space-available and topic-appropriate basis.

The UCO Wellness Center’s Disabled Sports and Events Division also

offers a community-targeted program, the Endeavor Games. In its ninth year in

2008, this event features competition in nine events, including wheelchair

basketball, powerlifting, table tennis, track and field, archery and shooting, and

swimming. Since 2002, Edmond has been recognized as a member of

BlazeSports, formerly known as the United States Disabled Athletes’ Foundation,

and hosts local competitions in track and field, golf and swimming each year in

UCO facilities. The Endeavor Games came to Edmond in 1999, and local officials

initially worked with the university to schedule space for the competitions. In

2004, the Wellness Center became more formally involved with the

establishment of the Disabled Sports and Events Division. Through their

involvement in this program, Wellness Center staff have developed expertise in

coaching disabled athletes and now offer coaching clinics regularly.

The University of Center Oklahoma became a United States Olympic

Committee official training site for Paralympic athletes in 2005, hosting the U.S.

men’s and women’s sit volleyball teams. As the USOC prepares for the 2008

Beijing Olympics, UCO will also host camps and competitions involving

women’s sit teams from the United States, China, and The Netherlands, as well

as qualifying rounds in archery, and a rowing training camp. DSAE’s website

recently announced efforts by the university, in cooperation with the City of

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Oklahoma, to achieve designation as an Olympic training site as well as venues

including boathouses along the Oklahoma River near Bricktown, and a new

multipurpose gymnasium, will be offered as practice facilities and competition

sites.

Community-Based Programs

At the University of Central Oklahoma, senior administrators have been

actively engaged in several fairly traditional initiatives to grow the economy of

Edmond and the metropolitan area. UCO officials are also working with

Oklahoma City civic and municipal leaders on the development of an urban arts

district, which will likely include a physical UCO presence and make a major

contribution to urban revitalization plans. The most visible community-based

initiative underway is the partnership to locate the new Oklahoma State Bureau

of Investigation Forensic Science Center directly across the street from the UCO

campus.

This new facility replaces OSBI’s small, cramped laboratory space in

Oklahoma City with what local media called “one of the country’s premier crime

fighting facilities.” The new facility opened in March, 2008, and the state

criminal justice community celebrated the grand opening on May 1, 2008.

Officials describe the new facility as “a full service crime laboratory,” including

facilities for ballistics, controlled substances, forensic biology, latent prints,

toxicology, trace evidence, DNA analysis and the state’s database of DNA

evidence.

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The OSBI Forensic Science Center represents what many in Edmond told

me was the most exciting new development the city has ever seen. The new

facility came about through a state-local-university partnership initiated by the

University of Central Oklahoma, more than six years ago in discussion with

OSBI officials. The city and the university both provided land for the building

site and other support for the infrastructure needs. The partnership has resulted

in a project which simultaneously creates economic opportunities for the city,

meets the state’s criminal investigative needs, and provides unprecedented

access for UCO students and academic programs. Janet Yowell of the Edmond

Economic Development Authority estimates the initial economic impact of this

project on the community at $44 million (Baldwin, 2008). The OSBI is gaining a

state of the art facility which bring all central lab personnel and functions under

one roof, as well as provide space for training and other programming to be

developed in conjunction with the University of Central Oklahoma’s Forensic

Science Institute. The new building represents a very promising economic

development initiative. Planning is underway to establish a niche market in and

around forensic science in Edmond, capitalizing on the increased presence both

of commercial needs for products to support the labs and also hotels, restaurants

and entertainment venues to appeal to visitors in town for seminars, or other

business with either facility.

The success of this new endeavor reflects long-standing and very positive

ties between UCO and the city of Edmond, and investments of time growing

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relationships with state officials. This suggests that the literature in this area has

overlooked the importance of proactive efforts on the part of university officials

to develop and strengthen relationships with civic leaders. A recent

commentary piece by Virginia Commonwealth University president Eugene P.

Trani (2008) in the Chronicle of Higher Education emphasizes this point: “The

connections between universities and our communities are essential to our core

functions [as a university] and are increasingly vital to our continuing success as

well as the long-term prosperity of the nation’s cities, regions, and states” (p.

36a). VCU nurtures these essential connections through various partnerships

and relationship-building initiatives that extend university resources into the

Richmond community. UCO is engaged in similar activities in the greater

Oklahoma City area.

In my conversations with institutional leaders at the University of Central

Oklahoma, I heard about bi-monthly meetings occurring between city officials

and UCO’s senior administrators which are moving toward the intentional

relationship building Trani (2008) heralds. Edmond’s city manager started these

meetings when he arrived on the job three years ago. Both he and the university

leaders are quite excited about these meetings as a start of better communication

between the two entities. I also see them as the kind of pro-active relationship

building efforts that Trani encourages to support a civic engagement mission.

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Civic/Community-Focused Education

Furco’s (1996) continuum identifies the several categories I include under

the heading of civic/community-focused education: community service

learning, volunteering, community service, field work and internships (see

Figure 1).

Internships. Within the month before my visit to Edmond, the University

of Central Oklahoma held a high profile signing ceremony to commemorate an

agreement with Dell to provide internships for UCO students in the company’s

Oklahoma City facility. Several members of the business community mentioned

to me other internship programs such as the Oklahoma City Chamber of

Commerce’s Greater Grads program and a similar initiative placing students

with local Edmond businesses. UCO officials have recently worked closely with

Chesapeake Oil in the development of an academic program in Petroleum

Studies which will include internships with area oil, natural gas, and alternative

energy firms for students interested in the business management aspects of the

petroleum industry.

Fieldwork. Following the tradition of its roots as a normal school, the

University of Central Oklahoma still has a very strong program in teacher

education. UCO’s pre-service teachers are required to complete a student

teaching experience at the end of their coursework. No participants offered any

other examples of fieldwork experiences on campus. One instructor did speak

specifically about student teaching as an example of the challenges that

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community organizations may face in working with universities and their

students:

I’ll just use one example that I know is always an issue . . . it always

used to be [that the] schools badly needed student teachers and now I

think the question is -- given the environment in which most public

schools are operating today -- is it more work for them to have student

teachers than its worth to them?

The faculty member continued, raising several salient questions that mirror

discussions currently going on in the scholarly literature (Bushouse, 2005; Eby,

1998; Tryon et al., forthcoming; Worrall, 2007) about community service learning

and other curricular engagement activities: “ultimately, [is] providing

internships for our students more work than it’s worth for the organization? Do

they get any value for their time and commitment? And do they perceive that as

having any value?” Slowly, UCO administrators are beginning to gather this

information. The Volunteer and Service Learning Center (VSLC) at UCO

convened the first meeting of its Advisory Committee earlier this winter,

bringing together a group that includes community partners and is charged with

providing feedback, ideas and direction for the center’s operations.

Volunteering and community service. VSLC administrators describe UCO

students, faculty, and staff as generally very active in community service and

volunteerism. For example, President’s Leadership Council members engage in

service to the community for a proscribed number of hours each week during the

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academic year. Members of the Leaders of Tomorrow organization regularly

work together on community service projects, including a packing session for the

Oklahoma City-based charity Feed the Children. Teacher education students

volunteer as Reading Buddies and Math Buddies working with local elementary

school students. UCO students serve a spaghetti dinner at Edmond fire stations

every year on September 11 to show their appreciation for their local firefighters.

The Volunteer and Service Learning Center logs volunteering and community

services hours for UCO students at events such as Party for the Planet, an annual

event hosted by the Oklahoma City Zoo, and The Big Event, a multi-site day of

service engaging hundreds of UCO students with non-profit agencies and other

community organizations around the metro area.

At the University of Central Oklahoma, the vast majority of the projects I

heard about which involved students with their community could be categorized

as volunteerism by individual students or, more often, groups of students

participating in community service activities. UCO is one of the thirteen original

participants in the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’

American Democracy Project (ADP). Through this initiative, UCO students

engage in a variety of curricular and co-curricular activities that foster civic

participation and service. Students may also elect to enroll in an ADP-affiliated

course, Leadership and Civic Engagement, which does involve community-

targeted and community-based activities.

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Community service learning. Civic engagement and the precursors of

service-learning have long been part of the academic landscape at UCO. More

than 30 years ago, Carl Reherman, a political science professor involved his

student in public affairs research in Edmond, some of which resulted in the

construction of Lake Arcadia on the eastern edge of the city. I heard about

Business Communications students who wrote an environmental sustainability

statement for the university in 2006. Science faculty are developing plans for

service learning projects focused on alternative energy and community issues

related to wind farms in the Oklahoma panhandle. Today, initiatives associated

with the American Democracy Project are mentioned frequently, because of the

prominence of this program and UCO’s status as a founding member of the

AASCU initiative. Despite this, community service learning does not seem to be

a prominent part of the culture. Faculty may be involved in individual efforts,

but they are not well known at the level of campus-wide information sharing.

The relatively low profile of faculty including service learning in their

courses presented an interesting situation at UCO. Faculty and administrators

repeatedly described the institution to me as a place where charity and

community service, “giving back,” are important values in the culture. The

recent decision to pursue Carnegie Foundation classification as a community

engaged institution provides what leaders of this initiative described as a

benchmarking process which was a “logical outgrowth of the American

Democracy Project.” During my site visit in November, a leadership team of

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faculty and student affairs professionals distributed questionnaires to

administrative and student affairs units to begin gathering data about

engagement initiatives at all levels of the university.

This benchmarking process and the striving for recognition are ironically

reflective of the story of engagement between the University of Central

Oklahoma and the greater Oklahoma City metro area. The overview of the

community presented in this layer reveals a comprehensive university and the

regional community it serves which are striving to become some place new. For

both, new means better, bigger, more prosperous, more visible. UCO is an

institution proactively building relationships and developing initiatives which

can play an important role in this transformation. These goals become clear in

the next layer of the data, which explores the discourse framing engagement in

the context of the greater Oklahoma metropolitan area.

Layer 2: Themes in the Narrative of Engagement

Stepping back from the descriptions of community, institution, and the

initiatives that link them, the next layer emerges. This second layer of the data

reads across the engagement initiatives, offering a narrative which outlines goals

of the various projects. In doing so, it reveals the discourse framing interaction

between a particular college or university and the regional community it serves.

In the narrative of engagement which weaves together all the initiatives linking

UCO with the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area, two themes emerge:

visibility and leadership.

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Theme 1: Visibility

The University of Central Oklahoma is a key player in the Edmond

community, and has been since the founding of Territorial Normal School in

1890. The institution is becoming more important in Oklahoma City as a whole;

still, UCO is sometimes overshadowed by the state’s research institutions also

located within the 10-county greater Oklahoma City area. One UCO faculty

member lamented the situation:

If you go to Washington, D.C., and visit the Oklahoma delegation

you’ll see a lot of OU [University of Oklahoma] and OSU [Oklahoma

State University] stuff there, perhaps TU [the University of Tulsa]. But

it would be nice that we [University of Central Oklahoma] too would

have a football helmet there, or a book in . . . the little [reception] area.

Just so that we have a visible presence.

Many Edmond residents and others associated with UCO also have some kind of

affiliation with the research universities, and they prioritize that relationship.

Perhaps they are alumni, or equally likely they are fans of the athletics programs

at one or the other institution. This faculty member described it this way: “A lot

of people, they may work here or attend the university as students, and they’ll

wear their OU or OSU shirts to class.” She is not alone in feeling a sense that this

needs to change. I asked why this prioritizing of OU or OSU happened, and she

explained it this way: “because those are the flagship institutions, and it’s the

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mentality that we are one of the regionals. And it connects to [the president’s]

notion that . . . we are going to transition into a metropolitan university.”

I heard many people speak about the process of redefining UCO as a

metropolitan university. Frequently they linked community engagement

activities and other interactions between the university and the larger

community to this effort to distinguish UCO as a new kind of institution in the

state. At the university, faculty and administrators are clear that they are

creating “a new category. . . . I don’t believe that anyone wants UCO to be in the

category of OU and OSU and offer all of the [courses and degrees] . . . I think that

we are positioned to be different.”

The move to claim status as a metropolitan university reflects the desire to

become more visible in Oklahoma City, both to the community and to state

legislators and the higher education funding process in Oklahoma. By

differentiating themselves from the research universities as well as the other five

regional institutions, UCO also hopes to position themselves more strongly to

make an argument for parity of funding. The situation as it is currently

perceived is that UCO is somehow being punished for its success. I heard this

argument several times from participants both on campus and in the community.

The explanation works like this: The institution’s 16,000-plus students receive

lower funding allocations from the state legislature than does the next largest

regional campus. UCO leaders are re-positioning the institution to serve a

unique purpose in the 10-county region. Naming itself a metropolitan

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university, UCO is effectively messaging its new role in efforts to build the

creative class that can be the foundation of a vibrant future for the region. UCO’s

status as a metropolitan university both produces and is produced by its

involvement in a leadership role in the greater Oklahoma City metro area. The

generative nature of this label also plays on leadership, the second theme of

community university engagement at UCO.

Theme 2: Leadership

Morphew and Hartley (2006) argue that college mission statements are

marketing tools, communicating to external audiences about what is important

to a particular institution. Marketing professionals in higher education use the

university’s website as a key venue for delivering these messages. Reviewing the

UCO website, as well as program brochures, and news media pieces, I observed

that the guiding concept at the University of Central Oklahoma is leadership. I

confided in one participant that “I sometimes find it difficult to find information

on the UCO website, but it is never difficult to find information about leadership

at UCO.” She was “glad to know that’s a prominent [theme],” explaining that it

reflected the president’s personal commitment to leadership:

It’s his mantra. . . .He just thinks that’s the difference between having a

college education and getting a job. . . Being a leader wherever you go.

In your actions. Character, civility and community are the things that

he preaches for that leadership. . . It’s more than just working in a

workplace. It’s being a leader.

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Webb and many others in the campus community work at being leaders in the

greater Oklahoma City area, and in the state. Many people involved in

leadership programming at UCO reference Greenleaf’s (1973) work on servant

leadership as particularly influential. One participant wrote his master’s thesis

on these ideas; he summarizes Greenleaf’s thesis this way: “Those who serve

and those who are served become wiser, freer, more autonomous and more

likely to serve others themselves, or at least not be further deprived.”

I see two distinct manifestations of these ideas operating at the level of the

individual UCO community member, and in the rhetoric and activities of the

institution as a whole. The servant leader concept explains the prevalence of

volunteerism and community service activities on the part of individual students

and staff members described in the first layer of the portrait. At an institutional

level, servant leadership informs UCO’s efforts to take an active role in the

community economic development of Oklahoma City as it attains second-tier

city status.

At first glance, these seem to be two separate themes, one emphasizing

civic responsibility and the other focused on economic development. Steve

Kreidler, the Executive Vice President, specifically linked the two together when

he talked about UCO finding its specific role in the greater OKC metropolitan

area. Thinking about the two research institutions, he described the University

of Oklahoma as the state’s flagship institution with a corner on the bioscience

and technology fields across the state, and particularly in Oklahoma City, with a

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large medical school and biotech campus near the state capitol complex.

Oklahoma State’s role in the larger picture is being determined as they transition

to the leadership of a new president. In the mean time, UCO is purposefully

positioning itself to be a leader in building the creative capacity of Oklahoma

City.

The themes outlined in this layer work together to reinforce the impetus

of growth and development evident in the first layer. By emphasizing leadership

and positioning itself as a metropolitan university, the University of Central

Oklahoma takes on a new role and simultaneously claims greater visibility. The

language used by university administrators to describe the relationship between

UCO and Oklahoma city evoked images of symbiosis. As UCO becomes more

prominent, this reflects positively on the city. The rising status of the greater

Oklahoma City metropolitan area among United States cities lends increased

prestige to the university as it repositions itself as a metropolitan university. In

this regard, I experienced UCO faculty and staff as remarkably “on message,” as

the public relations professionals might say. These twin impulses for greater

visibility and leadership roles respond to historical cultural and socio-economic

conditions in the state. The third layer presents a discussion of these to

contextualize the interaction between community and university.

Layer 3: Placing Engagement in Cultural, Historical, and Social Context

Critical geography emphasizes the contested nature of space, and the role

of power in shaping place. Understanding how power works requires specific

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examination of history, culture, and social relationships. The third layer of the

data delves into this rich context, presenting the deep trends through which a

place can be better understood. In the case of the greater Oklahoma City

metropolitan area and the University of Central Oklahoma, decades of economic

development efforts and ubiquitous discussion of growth provide context

necessary to place engagement.

Economic development

In the introduction to a new history of the university, current UCO

president Roger Webb sends a message of partnership for growth and

development: “The university and the City of Edmond have a long history of

confronting challenges and opportunities together” (p. ix). This history began

with city leaders lobbying for the establishment of the normal school in their

community shortly after its founding.

Loughlin and Burke (2007) report that “commercial rather than altruistic

motives drove Edmond’s political leaders to maneuver for the location of the

normal school” (p. 1). These early supporters predicted correctly: “The Normal

School meant prosperity for the people of Edmond, an agricultural town of some

200 people” (Dixon, 2007, p. 7). This desired effect was particularly important at

a time when the town’s economic fortunes depended heavily on national

economic trends, dipping as a result of national events in the 1890s. Many,

intending the normal school as a buffer against the Panic of 1893, remained

frustrated in the early years. Although their dreams for economic prosperity

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spurred by the new institution were realized more slowly than they hoped, the

school did eventually bring both new residents and businesses to town.

Early in the community’s history, “Edmond’s sense of place was largely

connected to the normal school” (Loughlin & Burke, 2007, p. 23). In the 1920s,

the Interurban Trolley system established Edmond as an important destination

stop on the lines running between downtown Oklahoma City and Central State

Normal School to the north and the University of Oklahoma in Norman, an equal

distance to the south (Loughlin & Burke, 2007). Similarly, a desire to facilitate

easy commutes for students coming from the city up to Central State University

factored into the re-routing of Interstate 35 in the 1960s and the development of

the Broadway Extension (a portion of U.S. Highway 77) in the 1970s.

As interstate highways made travel to and from suburbia more

convenient, downtown Oklahoma City’s business district slowly died, following

a trend evident in many major urban areas (Fishman, 1987; Lackmeyer & Money,

2006; Welge, 2007). Ease of transportation also drew new residents to suburban

areas such as Edmond where white collar workers lived, attracted by a better

quality of life and easy commutes. The resulting population increases created a

serious need for infrastructure expansion both in the city and on campus.

The University of Central Oklahoma, known as Central State College at

the time, underwent similar changes due to tremendous growth. Between 1950

and 1970, the student body grew rapidly. The 478.4% growth rate of the 1950s

slowed only slightly between 1960 and 1970 as the population grew from 4300 to

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10,600 students in 10 years (Loughlin & Burke, 2007; Mirll, 2007). This rapid

growth provided the backdrop for the presidency of Garland Godfrey (1960-

1975), who is remembered as one of the finest presidents of the institution in its

117-year history. Much of Godfrey’s reputation is based on his ability to steward

UCO through this time of tumultuous growth, when his ambitious expansion

and building programs still could not keep up with the growth rate.

What historians describe as the single most important event of the 1960s

solidified a trend in place since the founding of the normal school in 1890: “The

deep connection between the college and the community and its focus on the

economic well being of both” (Webb, 2007, p. x). The two entities worked

together in 1965 to secure funding though federal urban renewal programs to

address needs on campus and in the community created by the rapid growth.

These projects fundamentally changed the landscape of the campus and of

Edmond, as the college purchased and then demolished more than 400 houses,

allowing the campus to build classrooms, residence halls, and a student union,

and to provide adequate parking for its commuter students. Municipal leaders

planned city infrastructure projects including a new city hall, schools, updated

infrastructure for city-provided sewer and water systems, and improved streets.

Alvin Alcorn, UCO’s first comptroller, played an important role in this growth,

representing the university as a founding member of the Edmond Economic

Development Authority, and an active participant in Edmond’s chamber of

commerce (Loughlin & Burke, 2007).

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Beyond the physical changes achieved through federal funding, urban

renewal also marks the beginning of trends still evident in the community and

on campus. From the founding of the Territorial Normal School in 1891,

Edmond has viewed higher education as a boon for their community. The 1960s

municipal projects, achieved in partnership with the college, are simply another

example of the mutually beneficial relationship the two entities enjoy.

UCO continues to be an important part of the Edmond community as it

strives to claim its place in the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

Although Edmond has transformed into much more than a university

community, city and campus officials acknowledge the university’s status as an

amenity. On a very basic level, community residents describe the impact of the

university on the community as “bringing a credibility to the community . . .

anytime you have a university involved in any activity, it lends credibility to it.

[UCO is] a very credible, well-respected university.” The four annual festivals

on Edmond’s social calendar, together with the many continuing education,

social and cultural events held in UCO facilities mark the university as a source

of both entertainment and education for residents of Edmond and, to some

extent, the greater Oklahoma City metro area.

Beyond the singular contribution to the Edmond business community of a

new forensic science niche market, the university has consciously positioned

itself as a economic development engine in the Greater Oklahoma City area.

Taking a more active role in the regional economy reflects the influence of this

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history, and it is further advanced by current decisions. In 2001, President Webb

hired Steve Kreidler as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Kreidler’s background includes seven years as director of the Edmond Economic

Development Authority, extensive experience in venture capital endeavors, deep

involvement in civic organizations and leadership positions, and a stint as

director of a Boys and Girls Club early in his career. By hiring Kreidler as vice

president, Webb seems to be replicating the strategy which proved key for the

1960s expansion of UCO under President Godfrey and comptroller Alvin Alcorn,

a founding member of the Edmond Economic Development Authority, and

active member of the Edmond Chamber of Commerce. In the 1980s, Alcorn

worked with the Edmond Chamber of Commerce to relocate the Chamber to a

university-owned property on 2nd Street, only several hundreds yards away from

the UCO student center. The Edmond Economic Development Authority now

also occupies that building. Several people pointed out this location to me as an

indicator of university’s continued strong commitment to the economic well-

being of the community.

Today, UCO administrators have broadened their thinking about

community, looking now to the greater Oklahoma City area and developing an

identity as a metropolitan university. For example, Kreidler’s efforts to establish

Oklahoma City as an official United States Olympic Committee-sanctioned

training site fits into the cultivation of Oklahoma City as a “major-league city”

(Lackmeyer & Money, 2006). Clearly influenced by recent scholarship in urban

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development, Kreidler talked to me about UCO’s opportunities to contribute to

building a creative class in Oklahoma City. Following Florida (2004, 2005), the

idea here is to attract and make welcome those trendsetters and innovative

thinkers who can drive the development of a thriving cultural and business

community. Frank (2004), commenting on this trend, remarks on it as

commercialization of the counter-culture by “a school of urban theorists [who]

thrives by instructing municipal authorities on the finer points of luring artists,

hipsters, gays, and rock bands to their cities on the ground that where these

groups go, corporate offices will follow” (p. 133).

“Oklahoma Rising”

Keith and Pile (1993b) address specific geographies, “people organized in

different ways at different times in different places” (p. 14). These different

organizations are mapped by a territorialized sense of place or community

identity. The greater Oklahoma City area is experiencing an economic boom

unprecedented since the oil boom times of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The

city is growing in population. Oklahoma City-based energy company giants

Chesapeake Energy, Devon and SandRidge are successfully leading the state into

exploration of alternative energy sources to replace oil. These self interests align

with “identity” as Keith and Pile (1993b) use the term in their theoretical

mapping of place and the politics of identity. There is what Keith and Pile would

call a “territorialized sense of place and community identity” at work here which

subsumes the local identity of Edmond or the University of Central Oklahoma

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into the larger community identity of the Greater Oklahoma City metropolitan

area.

Keith and Pile (1993b) discuss London’s Docklands community where,

during the early 1990s, real estate developers sought to remake the area into a

new urban paradise. The response from local residents provides an example of

specific geographies and the functioning of this territorialized sense of space.

During this period,

The notion of Docklands became a symbol around which people

mobilized; a way in which residents identified their neighbourhood;

and an administrative and economic zone; an imagined geography and

a spatialized political economy – a way of seeing and a way of life.

(Keith & Pile, 1993b, p. 14)

The realities of the economic resurgence of 21st century Oklahoma City, together

with the metaphoric sense of “Oklahoma Rising” as Vince Gill’s Centennial

Celebration anthem termed the phenomenon, have combined in Oklahoma City

to become Oklahoma City’s symbol around which people are mobilizing. This

push for growth, and continued prosperity represents a new way of seeing for

the region.

The University of Central Oklahoma actively positions itself to take a key

role in realizing this new way of life. Senior administrators put UCO forward as

a leader in efforts to build the creative class which will lead Oklahoma City to its

new status as a second-tier city, no long considered what one community

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member described as “the little brother of Dallas or Kansas City.” Florida’s

(2004, 2005) creativity thesis posits a broad relationship between culture,

creativity and economic growth. This argument essentially expands on the

notion that human capital fuels economic growth. Florida suggests that it is not

sufficient simply to have an educated workforce, in other words abundant

human capital. A significant portion of the workforce must be employed in

creative occupations. The basic idea behind his thesis is this: technology, talent

and tolerance as the three requisite elements for economic growth. The inherent

challenge here is the fact that “technology and talent are highly mobile factors,

flowing into and out of places. Which brings us to the question: What accounts

for the ability of some places to secure a greater quantity or quality of these

flows?” (Florida, 2005, p. 7). A corollary question would be what is the role of

the university in shoring up the ability of a community to secure a greater

quantity or quality of creative capital?

Florida (2005) answers his own question this way: Creativity theory

suggests that communities marked by openness, diversity and tolerance enjoy

greater success in attracting technology and talent. These questions have also

engaged UCO leaders. During my visit, Steve Kreidler spoke at some length

about the university’s interest in supporting Oklahoma City’s efforts to build its

creative class, specifically mentioning Florida’s (2005) work as a touchstone

informing his thinking about the role of the university in the continued growth

of the metropolitan area. I asked Kreidler how he thinks about the relationship

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between community development and economic development. They are one in

the same in his thinking. Following Florida’s (2004) ideas about the critical role

of building an open, diverse community valuing creating and individual

expression from all members of the community, Kreidler described his vision for

UCO’s role in Oklahoma City as creating a niche focused on the visual and

performing arts by drawing on UCO’s traditional strength in these academic

areas, and its successful programming initiatives to provide cultural events on its

campus.

Oklahoma City’s efforts to attract new businesses have been successful. In

the first eight months of 2007, the Greater Oklahoma City Partnership reported

2895 new jobs created in the region (Greater Oklahoma City Partnership, 2007).

The picture of Oklahoma City painted by local media reflects growth and

prosperity, new businesses, increased visibility, rising opportunities. The

impression I had during my time in the region agreed with these messages.

Everyone I spoke with listed population growth as a significant issue for their

community and for the region, making the issue an important contextualizing

factor in placing engagement between the University of Central Oklahoma and

the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

Growth

Much of the population growth in central Oklahoma results from the

arrival of Dell Computers, and the growth of Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy,

and SandRige. Large corporations such as Dell Computers have located new

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plants in the metropolitan area, bringing management level employees who

choose to live in Edmond and other suburban areas. Outlying communities

have in fact grown much faster than Oklahoma City itself in recent years.

Edmond, for example, has registered population increases of three percent per

year for the past 10 years. Towns like Harrah, Choctaw, Piedmont and

Newcastle, further away from Oklahoma City, have grown from population

counts in the hundreds, to the thousands in this same period.

This growth presented significant challenges to the smaller communities.

Piedmont, for example, has become a very different town than the place I knew

growing up. In the 1970s, when I lived in Oklahoma City, Piedmont was a town

of 1000 or so. Today, nearly 5000 people live there, and city officials worry about

the city’s ability to support infrastructure needs for a population this large. Deer

Creek, an unincorporated area to the west of Edmond, northwest of Oklahoma

city, experienced similar changes. I met a woman who has lived in Deer Creek

for more than 10 years. She described the changes in population this way: “We

were out there before it went boom. . . [M]y son has [attended] three different

brand new elementary schools and we never moved.”

I heard about these trends from several people, and I questioned them

about source of the growth. “Are new residents people moving into the region

from somewhere else?”, I asked. Participants answered my question with a firm

“no.” Rather, shifts in population around the metropolitan area resulted from

“young families” moving out of “the inner city” to have access to “good

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schools.” One woman who works closely with communities around the state to

plan for or respond to community growth explained that people were attracted

by three things: availability of homes ”where their next door neighbor isn’t on

top of them”, and proximity to Oklahoma City “where their commute might be

less than an hour. 45 minutes or so tops,” and “good schools.”

I listened closely to stories about individual decisions to move to a

particular community in search of a particular educational experience. I also

looked deeper into Edmondites’ statements pointing to their excellent schools as

the major attraction for new residents. These frequent references to quality of

schools raises a question: “Good schools” as compared to what? The reference

point seems to be the Oklahoma City school system, characterized by high

student enrollment numbers, old and decrepit facilities, and more racial, ethnic

and socio-economic diversity. I asked one participant who commented on this

situation to describe the Oklahoma City schools. This was clearly a difficult

question, and she stammered bit in her response:

They’re . . . I mean . . . what would I say . . . I mean they’re . . . what’s

the best way to say it properly? [uncomfortable laughter] Um, they’re

definitely not . . . you know they’re probably one of the poorest and

the least . . . get the least education [compared with other districts in

the state]. Probably barely making it. I’ve been in some of the

elementary schools and it’s just rough. They have kids in there that

don’t speak English. I mean, how do you teach them?

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She continued, depicting Oklahoma City schools as having particularly high

percentages of students qualifying for free and reduced-cost lunches. She

definitely would not, she said, want her own children in these schools, and

therefore her family moved to suburb known for its “good schools,” which are

smaller, have a lower teacher to student ratio, and less ethnic and racial diversity.

The discourse about seeking quality education has seemingly become a proxy for

talking about race and socio-economic status across the metropolitan area.

The high-performing school rhetoric is conflated on race as a remnant of

the 1970s legal decisions bringing busing to Oklahoma City schools. I first heard

about busing when I asked an Edmond resident about the relationship between

good schools and growth in her community. Which came first, I asked: the

population growth, the affluence, or the good schools? I subsequently heard the

same explanation from others: the population growth spurred by new residents

with enough personal wealth or resources to afford a higher standard of living

came into a reasonably good school district, and made it better through

dedicated involvement. Economic developers and other long time residents

explained to me that people in Oklahoma City who wished to keep their children

out of integrated schools and could afford to move did. It is this “white flight”

that contributed to the strong growth trends in Edmond in the 1970s. Similar

impulses seem to be driving new families into the outlying communities today.

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Who Is Left Out of This Picture?

The dominant story of the greater Oklahoma City area laid out in the third

layer of the data reflects civic renewal, and vigorous community economic

development. Oklahoma City is not all to different from many metropolitan

areas in the United States also experiencing rebirth. Gotham (2001), in his critical

reflection on community development in Kansas City, Missouri, links early 21st

century revitalization efforts to identifying “new framework to guide economic

growth and remedy the problems of uneven development” (p. 308) left over from

urban renewal projects of the 1950s. This dissertation provides insight into the

recent experience of Oklahoma City, a metropolis one of the participants referred

to as formerly “the little brother of Kansas City.” Oklahoma City’s MAPS

projects, and the prevalent discussion of “building the creative class” are parts of

the city’s new framework for growth.

Before continuing with a discussion of Oklahoma City, I pause here to

offer Gotham’s (2001) summary of Kansas City’s urban renewal history:

The two decades after World War II represented the beginnings of a

long-term demise of the downtown as the economic nucleus of the city

and the gradual eclipse of the central city by the suburbs. Today, its

suburbs are no longer extensions of the central city but are

autonomous and self-sufficient political entities that provide many of

the educational and employment resources, shopping facilities,

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professional service, and entertainment amenities that once drew

residents into downtown. (p. 288)

A former assistant city manager interviewed by Gotham recalled how “urban

renewal became the synonym for ‘black removal’ and it broke the back of the

black stable neighborhood” (2001, p. 304). Welge (2007) documents the same

transformation of Oklahoma City’s Deep Deuce neighborhood near northeast

Second Street, where the few businesses owned by neighborhood residents

disappeared with the building of the Centennial Expressway in the late 1980s.

This pattern of displacement also happened in Edmond on a smaller scale

during the mid-1960s. Loughlin and Burke’s (2007) history of UCO includes an

example of Edmond’s growth and development happening at the expense of

lower income residents. In 2007, city officials described the university as “a

community unto themselves,” which the city of Edmond has “allowed . . to

basically develop independent of our rules.” This exemption has been a

considerable benefit to the university: “The beauty of it is,” one civic leader

explained to me,

for universities, they can really do whatever they want. They’ve got

their own set of [rules]. . . they don’t play that card, I don’t think, very

often. But they truly do. . . . On their property, they can pretty much

do what they want.

In 1965, UCO administrators moved forward with what they wanted to do in the

way of expanding their campus. City voters approved the urban renewal

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program by only 47 votes (Loughlin & Burke, 2007), and many residents

remained quite unhappy about the university’s actions. Godfrey and Alcorn

moved forward anyway, exerting the college’s Fifth Amendment eminent

domain rights while trying to satisfy homeowners with an additional ten percent

added to the purchase amounts on homes acquired in Central’s expansion (Mirll,

2007).

The college’s stronger ability to provide for the growing student body

came in a bittersweet bargain for its former neighbors:

The asphalt that we walk on today was once a community of modest

homes with hardwood floors and mature fruit trees in manicured

yards. As we tell the story of [UCO]’s growth and celebrate it, we

must also pause and reflect on those who left the security and

familiarity of home for the greater purpose of higher education.

(Loughlin & Burke, 2007, p. 110)

Like those who lost their homes in northeast Oklahoma City and central Edmond

in the 1950s and 1960s, many people are being left out of the story of Oklahoma

City’s prosperous present and future, and the dynamic growth of the

metropolitan area.

This glowing image raised a question for me: Who is left out of this

picture? In an effort to draw people back into the portrait of a thriving

metropolitan area, I asked one person to help me understand the economic boom

I’d heard so much about as benefiting everyone in the city. “It’s bringing more

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money into Oklahoma City,” she explained, “more for the . . .upper class, . . .[f]or

some of the businesses.” She questioned whether or not the boom is affecting

people like her, “us, just the middle class or lower, you know. I mean we don’t

see much benefits from stuff like that.” This sounds a great deal like what

happened in Missouri in the 1950s. While Kansas City won awards and national

attention for their urban renewal efforts, entire neighborhoods were displaced

and “business owners were forced to move to make way for parking lots and

redevelopment for larger, nationally-based businesses” (Gotham, 2001, p. 305).

Boston, Washington D.C., Detroit, Baltimore and many other metropolitan areas

around the United States experienced this same story, and they also struggled

over the next three decades with varying degrees of success to level out the

legacy of “uneven development” Gotham (2001) describes (Camp, 1978; Jacobs,

2007; Kaiser, 1980; Neuffer, 1992; Silverman, 2006; Wynter, 1982).

Mayfield, Hellwig, and Banks (1999) describe successful initiatives linking

the University of Illinois at Chicago and Loyola University to Chicago

neighborhoods in partnerships addressing urban problems left over from the

1950s. I did not learn about any similar initiatives between UCO and Oklahoma

City neighborhoods, or the local Edmond community, beyond economic

development and charity projects.

The story of Oklahoma’s economic growth covers up a lot about the

experience of people living in poverty, many of whom in the metropolitan area

are people of color and immigrants. In fact, race and class get conflated

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frequently in conversations about growth and prosperity in Oklahoma, just as

they do in discussions of “good schools” and acceptable commute times from

outlying communities. I had a very difficult time learning from community

members about the experiences of poor communities and communities of color

in Oklahoma City, primarily because of the short lenth of my visit, and the

segregated nature of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area (Money & Lackmeyer,

2006; Welge, 2007). I had many conversations with participants who I

experienced as racially, educationally, and socio-economically very similar to my

white, well-educated, middle-class origins. I visited social service organizations,

where I met administrators seemingly just like me. Participant demographics in

this dissertation reflect the limitations of a snowball sampling technique in a

community so homogeneous in terms of race and class. My relatively short visit

to Edmond also limited my ability to meet many people with experiences

different than the dominant story line. I cannot offer much more in the way of

details about the economic diversity in Edmond or the greater Oklahoma City

metropolitan area as a result.

Gotham’s (2001) story of Kansas City, and the work of contemporary

journalists (Camp, 1978; Jacobs, 2007; Kaiser, 1980; Neuffer, 1992; Silverman,

2006; Wynter, 1982) support my sense that many are left out of the bright future.

The stories of these communities, and the role that UCO is, or could be, playing

in those stories is an important piece of the narrative of engagement between the

University of Central Oklahoma and the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan

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area. This calls for further research to explore the experiences of those whose

stories differ from the hegemonic ballads of “Oklahoma Rising.”

In this third layer of the data on the Greater Oklahoma City area and the

University of Central Oklahoma, placing engagement in cultural, historical and

social context reinforces the story of a community on the rise, and points out the

places where this story conceals different experiences of the new metropolitan

area emerging from the growth. Thirty years ago, Central State University was a

small, often over-looked college many referred to as “Broncho High,” located in

one of the most desirable zip codes in the metropolitan area, a community settled

by white flight. Today, Edmond is still a very affluent area; however, the two zip

codes with the highest per capita income in the state are within the city limits of

Oklahoma City proper. Downtown Oklahoma City, blighted by white flight in

the 1960s and 1970s, is experiencing a resurgence through creative funding and

proactive bond initiatives. City leaders and municipal planners work to move

Oklahoma City into national prominence on the shoulders of a thriving energy

industry. Economic development and marginalization seem, however, to have

always gone hand in hand in Oklahoma, confirming the link Harvey (1993)

makes been place and what happens there. In Layer 4, I draw on Bourdieu’s

theories of symbolic power and LeFebvre’s discussions of the production and

malleable nature of space (Keith & Pile, 1993b) to accomplish two things:

providing a new lexicon to read the past and its present manifestation, and

demonstrating the importance of these more nuanced readings of engagement.

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Layer 4: Juxtaposing Engagement and Theory

The literature related to the scholarship of engagement is in general

under-theorized. Where theory is used, scholars often draw from organizational

theory and the business literature, as suggested by Slaughter and Rhoads’ (2004)

emphasis on the university as a corporate entity. The critical social theory

framing this dissertation focuses on the intertwined forces of place and power as

they shape interaction between comprehensive universities and the regional

communities they serve. This fourth layer of the data allows a deeper

understanding of this process by drawing upon discussions of the production of

space and symbolic power to suggest new ways to make meaning of the

experience of engagement between the University of Central Oklahoma and the

greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

The Production of Space

Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) work traces the history of the production of space,

complementing Marxist economists’ scholarship on material production.

Scholars using Lefebvre typically focus on the historical dimension of this work,

examining the changes in a particular space over time. I take a different

approach at the suggestion of Keith and Pile (1993b), who emphasize the value of

Lefebvre’s ideas to demonstrate the malleability of space. Taking up

fundamental concepts from Lefebvre – spatial practices, representations of space,

and representational space – the following discussion explores the production of

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space in the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area, including the

contributions of the community-university engagement to shaping this space.

A big picture view of Oklahoma City shows an urban area with deep roots

in the agricultural and natural resource-based economy of the state. The city has

been a major population center in Oklahoma for 120 years, and the state capital

for nearly that long. Tulsa, the other major metropolitan area in Oklahoma, for a

long time enjoyed greater prominence in the region than did Oklahoma City

based on cultural elitism of the oil-rich families who came west and imbued their

new home with the élan of the great cities of the eastern United States. Spatial

practices of Oklahomans reinforced this representation of Tulsa as “wealthy,”

“cosmopolitan,” with an “international flair,” as one of the participants in this

study described the city. Residents traveled away from Oklahoma City to enjoy

ballet, great museums, the arts. In every trip they imbued more meaning in the

representational spaces of museums and performing arts centers and repeated

the spatial practice of going elsewhere which reifies the representation of The

City as somehow less wealthy, cosmopolitan, desirable.

A similar simplistic narrative of good versus bad neighborhoods

continues in the representation of space within Oklahoma City. Residents

described the suburbs to me as affluent, attractive, the location of “good

schools;” they implied or said directly that Oklahoma City is a place to be left,

not a good place to raise a family, plighted with poor schools and substandard

facilities. The constant stream of young families and relocating middle managers

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who move to Edmond or Deer Creek or Piedmont daily reinforce these

representations of good and bad in their 45-minute or less commutes from the

place where they choose to live into the areas of the city where seem to spend the

day waiting to leave again.

This particular trialectic of perceived, conceived and lived experiences

marked the production of space in the central Oklahoma region for the first

century of its history. The story I heard during my visit to the area in 2007

described changing realities as initiatives like the Metro Area Projects (MAPS)

rebuild and resignify downtown Oklahoma City. Bricktown’s restaurants and

ball park, the the Ford Center, the Oklahoma River – all are representational

spaces which signify the ideology of prosperity being brought into Oklahoma

City by civic leaders.

This new representation of space and reclaiming of the downtown

functions as a “script of simplicity and sameness” (Huber & Whelan, 2001, p.

221) which masks the experience of those marginalized by the very ideologies

shaping the space of Oklahoma City. Huber and Whelan (2001) interrogate the

sentimentalized space of schools, questioning the tendency of stories to fall back

on long-accepted scripts about the harmonious workings of school communities.

They pose a question to disrupt the sentimental: “What might otherwise be on

. . . landscapes if the stories of communities shaping these social spaces were

more open . . . fluid . . . embracing of diversity, contradiction, and complexity”

(p. 221). Just as accepted stories hide complexity in the lives of school

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administrators, the dominant narrative which spins economic development and

growth in a positive light looks different when opened up to include the

experiences of ethnically and socio-economically diverse neighborhoods in

Oklahoma City and its suburbs.

The story of the MAPS project is interesting from this perspective. One

senior administrator at UCO described voter support of the MAPS projects, and

the associated growth and development like this: After many years of feeling

“less than,”

there came a point at which collectively, . . .Oklahoma Citians said,

‘You know, we’re really good people and we live around really good

people and we really like our life here. Let’s tax ourselves. 350 million

bucks. And we’re going to do some things that aren’t roads, and

prisons, and city parks. We’re going to do some things that are really

fabulous that we’re gonna love.’ . . . [T]he community came to a place

where they were in fact a community instead of people living in a

place.

This story of what critical geographers might describe as the space of Oklahoma

City becoming the place of a community provides material to be considered in

answering Harvey’s (1993) question: “Why and by what means do social beings

invest places . . .with social power? How and for what purposes is the power

then deployed and used across a highly differentiated system of interlinked

places?” (p. 21). By raising these questions about marginalization, I draw

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attention to the interaction of individuals within the space produced by shifting

representations and new spatial practices. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power

and its role in shaping space provides the additional tool necessary to read the

landscape of engagement in Oklahoma City.

Symbolic Power

The fundamental concept underlying all of Bourdieu’s work on social

relations and social groups is power, what it is, how it works, how it is disguised

and misrecognized. His field theory, artfully developed across an impressive

oeuvre, is fundamentally a theory explaining the process through which power is

amassed, first through establishing the value of particular forms of capital and

then in the acquisition of power, manifest as capital. In his essay “On symbolic

power,” Bourdieu (1979/1991) discusses the power of symbols to construct

reality. He puts it this way: “[w]hat creates the power of words and slogans . . .

is belief in the legitimacy of the words” (Bourdieu, 1979/1991, p. 170).

Through a historically entrenched production of space, many people are

being left out of the story of Oklahoma City’s prosperous present and future. I

asked a question of everyone who talked to me about the prosperous future of an

affluent present: Who is left out of this picture? In this effort to draw people

back into the portrait of a thriving metropolitan area, I heard stories that

disturbed me and also highlighted the habitus of the affluent city resident and

the movement of social, cultural and economic capital around the field of

Oklahoma City.

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Edmond, Oklahoma, is a predominantly white, upper-middle to upper

class community. Certainly, many assured me, there are people of color and

people in lower socio-economic classes living there, as well as members of other

under-represented groups. Discussions about affordable housing during my

interviews led to rhetorical questions about the definition of affordable in a

community where the average house sells for nearly $300,000. The Edmond

Neighborhood Alliance (ENA) is an umbrella organization for 127 neighborhood

associations; it is the principal organization advocating for neighborhood issues

and resident concerns in municipal politics and policymaking. However, the

older neighborhoods in the center of the city, and the low-income housing and

apartments do not have neighborhood associations and are therefore not

members of the ENA. These are two examples of situations where members of

under-represented groups may be living in Edmond, but their presence in the

community does not necessarily mean that, as one person put it, they are

getting enough attention to have their needs addressed. . . . [N]ot at

the level that I think they should or could. There are a few of us folks

who speak up on their behalf. . . I haven’t found people here resistant

to these ideas, but when your community is the wealthiest community

in the state, by a long shot -- one of the wealthiest in the nation on a

per capita basis – . . . it’s really easy to forget that more than 10% of

our population lives under the poverty line.

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As a community where several people pointed to the city’s unofficial motto –

“uppity and proud” – as a indicator of the quality of life, Edmond is a perfect

example of Bourdieu’s (1989) explanation of habitus as reflective of the people

who make it. Repeatedly in Edmond I note rules of the game (McRobbie, 2005)

which, like the ENA membership example unwittingly exclude or further

marginalize particular groups within the community. Edmond’s Hope Center

provides food, clothing, rent assistance, and several other programs to Edmond

residents in need of support in an economic hardship. UCO’s annual President’s

Club Christmas Party provides gifts and essential clothing and personal items to

more than 600 “underprivileged” students from Edmond elementary schools

each year. Edmond churches host an annual Thanksgiving feast which serves

dinner to more than 6000 people. Each of these events were offered to me as

examples of servant leadership, or the way in which Edmondites are kind,

generous, giving and take care of those who are “less fortunate.” As Bourdieu

(1989) puts it, these are all examples of “tangible interactions” which “mask the

structures that are realized in them” (p. 16). The familiar story of the “less

fortunate” receiving charity from wealthy Edmondites – seems natural in this

setting because habitus, or the mental structures which define ways of

interacting with one another (Bourdieu, 1989), are themselves products of the

field in which they occur.

The demographics of the participants in this case study matched the

demographics of the community of Edmond: predominantly white, well-

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educated, middle to upper-middle class. They painted a uniformly glowing

picture of the city, its relationship with the University of Central Oklahoma, and

the bright future of the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area. I frequently

asked a point question in response: “Who should I talk to who would have a

different experience than the one you’ve just described?” The most troubling

response came from the person I thought the most promising resource for such

information. He described his work with residents in the older, lower income

neighborhoods of the community. He mentioned the people he met there who

were “informal neighborhood mayors.” However, he also refused to share their

names with me. I explained that I wanted to make sure that I told everyone’s

story in my dissertation. After several exchanges on this theme, he dismissed the

subject by saying “I don’t know what that has to do with the university.”

Ultimately, he did share one name, a retired faculty member and former mayor

who could tell me the history of the economic divisions in Edmond.

In this story, boundaries are demarked just as clearly as they were by another

participant who responded to my request for help in contacting residents with a

different experience of Edmond by talking me through a driving route where I

could see those areas. “You should get in your car and drive,” he told me.

“Drive over to Second Street . . . Go down to Frets and turn left. . . .[D]rive

down to 15th Street and then you can turn west across the railroad tracks . . .and

you can see some of that neighborhood.” Alternatively, he told me, I might visit

the older, more “economically diverse” neighborhoods in Edmond. I could also

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“go up north to Thomas and Covell. You’ll see a large apartment complex that

20% of it is subsidized housing. . . . You’ll see up on the corner of Danforth and

Boulevard, you’ll see the apartment complex that is mainly black, and low

income.” He concluded this driving tour map by insisting that “people outside

Edmond [who] say it’s affluent” misunderstood the situation in his community:

“yeah there’s a lot of affluent housing in Edmond but there’s a lot of areas that

aren’t.” Like the earlier Edmondite, when this participant did suggest people to

talk with, he did not name members of under-represented groups. Instead, he

suggested the principal of an elementary school with a large number of

ESL/bilingual students, and staff members at the Hope Center and Edmond

Family Services, a counseling agency providing mental health services to low-

income residents.

Reading these stories through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory allows us to

question the “attitudes, disposition, and ways of perceiving reality that are taken

for granted” (DiMaggio, 1979, p. 1461) by those who inhabit the community,

shape the field and create the habitus (Bourdieu, 1989). From this perspective, I

see a community reflective of its modern origins in white flight, segregated to a

degree that I found both surprising and familiar. I also experienced a

community and a university committed to sharing its good fortune with

residents who had been less lucky in the economic and social games of life. It is

common, I was told, to hear people on campus talking about social justice

projects. One native of northeast Oklahoma City who has many years of

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experience with the University of Central Oklahoma explained that this is the

case because, for example, “people grow up in the Edmond community, go to

work at UCO, interact with poor folks, and then want to do things that have a

social justice orientation to them” as a way of changing the experience of

poverty. There are also “some people who came from the opposite background”

taking their positive experiences in college as an impetus for social justice-

oriented volunteerism and community service initiatives.

Ironically, it is precisely in these moments of good will, volunteerism and

charity that Edmond and the University of Central Oklahoma most clearly

demonstrate the symbolic power of the dominant culture in the community

“which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to

know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it”

(Bourdieu, 1979/1991, p. 164). This dominant culture reflects the overview of the

Greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area outlined in the first layer of data: a

community and a comprehensive university striving, enjoying economic

prosperity and an increase in status as a cultural center in the state and the

region. Engagement initiatives linking the university and the larger community

reflect the primarily urban character of the region through their focus on

economic development and providing leadership for transition to this new

status. Placing these initiatives highlights the unique characteristics of this region

and the University of Central Oklahoma which influence the nature of the

interaction between the two. To further explore the role of place in

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understanding engagement initiatives, I turn in chapter 6 to examine

engagement in a rural area of the Pacific Northwest, noteworthy for the

economic decline of the region’s principle industry, and the particular impact of

state level politics and funding trends on a regional institution and its

engagement with the community it serves.

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CHAPTER SIX

“IDAHO’S REGION 2”

AND LEWIS-CLARK STATE COLLEGE

Josephy’s (1965/1997) history of the Nimií-puu (Nez Perce) 2 opens with a

description of their homeland in the Inland Empire, 150,000 square miles of

eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, north Idaho, and western Montana.

The metropolis of this region is Spokane, Washington; “the area in a sense

revolves around” this city Josephy describes as “a transmountain stranger to the

bustling cities of coastal Washington and Oregon, the farmers of southern Idaho,

and the ranchers of Montana’s eastern plains” (p. xv). The five counties of north

central Idaho – Latah, Nez Perce, Lewis, Clearwater and Idaho – are centrally

located in this inter-mountain region, and Lewiston is the hub of what state

government agencies refer to as “Region 2” (see Figure 5). In 1965, when

Josephy wrote his history, northern Idaho counties were “still without direct rail

link to their capital city and connected with it only by a grueling, canyon-and-

mountain road” (p. xv). As a result of the transportation challenges, and long

standing separatist leanings, many in Region 2 “consider themselves somewhat

2 Nimíi-puu is the Nez Perce language word used by members of the tribe to refer to themselves. It translates into English as “the people.” Fur traders of the Canadian North West Company gave the Nimíi-puu the name “Nez Perce”, or nez percé (meaning pierced nose in French) sometime around 1810, in reference to bits of shell believed to be seen in the noses of some Nimíi-puu (Josephy, 1965/1997; 2007).

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Figure 5. Map of Idaho3 with Region 2 counties outlined (including Clearwater,

Idaho, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce Counties).

3 Source: U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). Census 2000. Retrieved May 29, 2008, from http://ftp2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/stco_outline/cen2k_pgsz/stco_ID.pdf

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neglected relations of the South and feel closer akin to eastern Washington and

western Montana” (Josephy, 1965/1997, p. xv).

This is the region served by Lewis-Clark State College, located in

Lewiston, Idaho. The college thinks of itself as serving a somewhat larger area,

extending into Asotin, Garfield, and in some instances also southeastern

Whitman Counties in Washington. Opened in 1893 as Lewiston State Normal

School, or “LCSC” as the school and its neighbors refer to it, has stood for 115

years in the perpetual shadow of the University of Idaho 30 miles north in

Moscow. The geopolitics of Idaho, leaving residents of north Idaho feeling as

Josephy (1965/1997) described always a little overlooked or misunderstood, play

across the history of this institution and have deep influence in the way college

and community have interacted with one another throughout the institution’s

history.

In this chapter, the discussion begins with a portrait of the region and its

comprehensive state college, including a description of the initiatives linking

Lewis-Clark State College with the community it serves. Following Rogers

(2007) and Shinew and Jones (2005), I uncover deeper layers implicit in this

portrait as a way of exploring relationships between campus and community

which are salient, yet often overlooked, in discussions about engagement.

Layer 1: Overview of Community and Engagement Initiatives

When I moved to Idaho ten years ago, I arrived on December 30. I

remember that year as the one when I had snow in my front yard until mid-

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April. During the frosty white and grey days of February, I held on to what my

chauffeur told me during a job interview the previous December: “You’ll love

the spring. Colors are so vivid here.” Indeed, in May and June, I saw colors that

I thought only existed in Crayola’s collection of 108 crayons. The cerulean sky,

turning to cornflower as the sun came to its highest point. Sepia-toned earth,

plowed and ready for spring planting. I learned, driving east across Latah

County on Highway 8 after a spring rain, that cedar bark gleams mahogany as it

dries in the dandelion sun. In 2008, as I traveled along the Selway on the first

Friday in February, I saw frozen water turned from grey to silver by the ice. In

spring, periwinkle is a flower; at this time of the year, in north Idaho, it is the

color of water peeking through ice in the middle of the river. Fisherman, starting

early in steelhead season, wore clothes matching the fruit of a chestnut tree.

Hayashi (2007) describes Idaho as “a pretty place to play” (p. 31). For me, the

area evokes stronger words, more like those used by historians to describe the

traditional homelands of the Nimíi-puu/Nez Perce, the indigenous people of

north central Idaho. Josephy (2007) calls this topographically diverse area

“rugged and inspiringly beautiful” (p. 2), “breathtaking up-and-down country”

(p. 3).

“Pulp blossoms,” “the smell of money” – these euphemistic terms describe

the odor associated with Potlatch Corporation, the region’s largest employer for

nearly 100 years, and a visual and olfactory marker of the entryway to Lewiston

traveling south on Idaho’s Highway 95. “We’ve got a second smell now,” one

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resident told me. “As much as the compost facility, EKO as it’s called, likes to

say they don’t smell, they do. You can walk outside and tell which smell is

which.” I think of this characteristic as an anomaly of the physical geography in

this region. Lewiston is located at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater

Rivers, at the bottom of a steep, seven-percent grade rising to the rolling hills of

the Palouse. So, rather than wafting across the prairie to the south, the smell is

usually trapped in the lower elevation of the river valley. Visitors traveling 30

miles south from Moscow or 300 miles north from Boise remember this marker of

arriving in Lewiston. Residents, and Potlatch representatives are proud of the

ground-breaking work that the company has done to mitigate the smell. It is

ultimately a toss up as to whether Lewiston is known more for its odors and

Potlatch, the relatively balmy weather for north Idaho, or the rivers and outdoor

recreation opportunities. The answer, on any particular day, depends on the

wind and which way it is blowing.

Established in the 1860s as a port city with access to trade routes on the

Columbia River, Lewiston played an important role in the development of

Idaho’s mining and timber industries. The Snake River, on the western edge of

the city, is the state border and the boundary between the city and its neighbor,

Clarkston, Washington. Relative newcomers to the area, those who have lived in

the Lewis-Clark Valley for twenty years or less, describe two communities

working very hard to come together by thinking and acting like a region, the

southern half of the “Quad Cities,” a designation including Moscow, Idaho, and

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Pullman, Washington. Perspectives on this regionalism vary relative to length of

residence in the area. I also talked to people who were born and have lived their

entire lives of, in one instance, more than 70 years here, and for them the division

between the two cities, and an associated rivalry, are still as strong today as they

ever have been, even if it is mostly expressed only during the regular athletic

contests between Lewiston and Clarkston High Schools. One long-time resident

described it this way: The river is like “a plexiglass wall” between the two cities,

and the Lewiston Grade, that steep stretch of Highway 95 leading to Moscow,

“that’s the Great Wall of China.”

Similar divisions and rivalries exist between the smaller rural

communities east of Lewiston on Highway 12 toward Montana, and Highway 95

going south to Boise. Cottonwood, a staunchly Catholic community of almost

1000 people, includes the surrounding hamlets of Keuterville, Ferdinand, and

Greencreek in their community development initiatives. “Up on the prairie,” as

the locals say, are the farming communities of Grangeville, Cottonwood, and

Nezperce, is a different place than, for example, the Upper Clearwater Valley

communities of Kooskia, Stites and Kamiah. Less than 100 years ago, Stites was

a booming railroad town periodically swelling from 4000 to 7000 residents.

Today, 200 residents are working to rebuild a sense of pride. Plans for the future

often unfold over a plate of the best food in town at the Chatterbox Café, a

destination lunch spot for residents around the area. The population of Kooskia

is just over 600, and Kamiah is 1150, yet the zip code area recorded a population

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of more than 6000 people in 2000. These demographics create an interesting

dynamic in the area, which is known as a very poor community and also has an

average home value of $195,000. This number is skewed by the million-dollar

homes built on the ridges surrounding the towns. Some of the residents have

purchased property as second homes. Others are transitioning into what one

resident called “second lives.” Leaving metropolitan areas for the woods of

north central Idaho, many are attracted by the rugged beauty. Others come to

enjoy by the relative absence of government intervention, particularly in Idaho

County, notorious as one of the few United States counties with no building

codes.

The Corps of Discovery first encountered the Nimií-puu/Nez Perce

people on the Weippe Prairie in the center of what is now Clearwater County.

Lewis and Clark wintered with the Nimií-puu/Nez Perce at Kamiah on their

return to the east (Meyer, 1999). Idaho’s Highway 12 follows Lewis and Clark’s

trail over the Lolo Pass and the Bitteroot Mountains from Montana, marking the

keystone of the region’s identity. Today, travelers entering Lewiston can

imagine themselves spectators to these encounters as they admire the

commemorative bronzes depicting warriors and explorers, standing amongst

their horses, meeting at the crossroads where Highway 95 turns south toward

Boise, 300 miles down the road.

The economic hopes of the region have for a long time been tied to

Potlatch Corporation, the largest employer in the area. I heard a twinge of fear in

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the voices of most people I interviewed, nearly all of whom referred to the

catastrophe that would befall the area if Potlatch closed. Economic development

professionals associated with the Chamber of Commerce and Valley Vision

emphasized the need to diversify the L-C Valley’s economy, as protection against

the worst-case scenario at Potlatch. During the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial,

tourism seemed to be the answer. As early as 2001, communities along Highway

12 were building the infrastructure and supporting small business development

initiatives to respond to throngs of tourists who, in the end, did not appear. This

leaves the area once again searching for the next idea to return it to the heydays

of the pre-spotted owl timber industry.

Residents described Lewiston, the county seat of Nez Perce County, and

the regional hub of this area, to me as “a very blue collar, working-class

community,” where residents hold “traditional values.” Since 1990, other Idaho

cities have undergone huge swellings of population counts and economic booms.

During this same time, community members report very little change in the size,

socio-economic, and political landscape in Lewiston. In fact, one long time

resident told me about a search for adjectives to describe Lewiston. The

committee discarded “stagnant” as too negative, “stable” as too dismissive of the

current downturn in the timber industry, and ultimately chose “static.”

Nez Perce County, with Lewiston as the county seat, is still a Democratic

Party-stronghold in Idaho. These are “union Democrats” one community

member explained to me, more centrist in their politics than the notoriously

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liberal university community of Moscow, 30 miles to the north. Politics are

interesting in Idaho, and the north central region is itself very representative of

the phenomenon. Reflecting the rightward shift Frank (2004) describes in

Kansas, the more conservative Democrats look like liberals “compared to where I

came from in [the Midwest]” one person explained. His story is emblematic of

the political scene in Region 2. He came to Idaho as a moderate Republican, and

without changing his political views or supporting different national candidates,

he found himself a leader in the county Democratic party organization. Those

who make union Democrats look liberal “don’t like wine-sipping, lesbian-loving

democrats coming in to take away their guns.”

The politics of north central Idaho, particularly Latah and Nez Perce

counties, distinguish this area from the much more conservative southern

counties. Significantly for Lewis-Clark State College, southern Idahoans have

long controlled the Idaho legislature and dictated the tenor of Idaho politics. In

a state where these elected officials have exerted considerable influence over the

fate of the state’s institutions of higher education, political affiliation and alliance

mattered on many significant occasions.

The Last Normal School in the United States

Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus ended the United States’ era of normal

schools in 1971, when he signed legislation changing the name of Lewis-Clark

Normal School to Lewis-Clark State College. Moving away from the normal

school tradition came slowly and only after the college closed for four years in

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the early-1950s as a result of what Peterson (1993) calls “one of Idaho’s oldest

political debates” (p. 125). The debate centered on the location of Lewiston’s

normal school 30 miles from the state’s flagship university. When closure did

happen, it seemed to be largely due to personal and political animosity between

the college president, who had developed extensive plans to expand the college’s

curricular offerings, and the frugal and southern Idaho-based legislators in Boise.

The college re-opened in 1955, and for eight years operated as a branch campus

of the University of Idaho.

This debate, and the closure and branch-campus status, belong here in the

first paragraphs of the college’s story because they continue to loom large in the

psyche of both Lewiston and the college itself. The event was so large that I

heard something about either closure, threat of closure or need to guard against

duplication of University of Idaho-offered programs in every interview I

conducted on campus and in the Lewiston community, 55 years later in the

midst of a period of great popularity for the college president among state

legislators and community members.

Many people in Lewiston grew up in southern Idaho, and talked to me

about empathizing with legislators’ concerns about this fiscal wastefulness. For

most the bottom line is what one person said: “Once you’re up here it does

make sense. [T]hey [serve] two different needs.” The current rationale for

LCSC’s continued operation as a comprehensive regional institution focuses on

the unique functions served by the college. The nursing program at Lewis-Clark

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State College is the only 4-year program leading to a Bachelor’s degree in

nursing offered in the region. The next closest program in Idaho is offered at

Idaho State University, 500 miles away in Pocatello. Lewis-Clark State College

serves older, non-traditional students, many of whom work while attending

college. LCSC schedules classes early in the morning and in the later afternoon

to accommodate work-family-education balance; the University of Idaho does

not. LCSC’s Division of Community Programs offers Adult Basic Education and

GED courses to assist students in accessing educational opportunities not

available in Moscow. The college also serves, according to a state mandate, the

two-year community college function for Region 2 by offering a wide range of

professional technical programs including collision repair, office management,

heating/air-conditioning/appliance technology, web development/web

authoring, and medical transcription programs.

Administrators also report that students from rural communities regularly

choose Lewis-Clark State College for its smaller campus and lower teacher to

student ratios. Students seem to be more comfortable at LCSC than they might

be at “a bigger university where they walk in and there’s suddenly 200 people in

. . . their first math class, when their whole high school doesn’t have 200 people

in it.” Record student enrollment numbers in the last two years suggest that

LCSC meets a particular need in the region.

The mission of the Division of Community Programs at Lewis-Clark State

College is similar to the landgrant university’s extension model in many ways.

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The division includes many different programs reflecting LCSC’s normal school

heritage and commitment to community outreach. When I asked for a list of the

most successful initiatives linking campus and community, the most frequently

cited programs fall under the Division of Community Programs. The programs

include the volunteer center and service learning, AmeriCorps programs, and

LCSC rural outreach centers, the Center for Arts and History, Continuing

Education and Community Events, as well as summer classes and distance

education.

Although many academic and student affairs programs, and the

professional/technical division, have links to the community, the college’s

structure is such that the Division of Community Programs has the front line

responsibilities for what Sandmann and Weerts (2006) refer to as boundary-

spanning. On the LCSC campus, this idea of bridging boundaries between

community and college programs resonates with administrators, one of whom

describes the work of his programs as “facilitating” the interaction between

LCSC and the communities of Region 2. For instance, in the example of summer

school and the weekend/evening course offerings, faculty in the specific

academic or professional/technical programs teach these classes, while

Community Programs handled the administrative tasks. Originally known as

Extended Programs, the division brings campus resources to the community.

Over the last seven years, many of the community-based programs formerly

administered through this unit have been discontinued as the college dealt with

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budgetary issues. For instance, LCSC formerly administered the Senior

Nutrition Program in Region 2. Mary Emery, former director of Grants and

Contracts for LCSC, drew on her background as a rural sociologist and

community development specialist to create a Community Response Team,

including representatives from Community Programs and the workforce

development initiatives of the Center for New Directions, to work with displaced

workers affected by mill closings in the late 1990s.

The Engagement Initiatives

Figure 6 draws on the categories of engagement outlined in chapter 1 to

present a list of initiatives facilitating the interaction between college and

community in Idaho’s Region 2. These projects and activities emerged from

discussions with residents across the region. The list, therefore, represents the

community’s view of “particularly successful initiatives that are liking the

university with the larger community.”

Community-Targeted Programming

Lewis-Clark State College reflects its early history as a normal school in its

continued commitment to community outreach. The college serves as a cultural

hub for the region, offering arts programming and athletics events. An

administrator in the Division of Community Programs points to LCSC

community-target programming efforts as a unique feature of this institution’s

environment:

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Community-targeted programming Arts and cultural programming Faculty consulting Outreach and student recruitmen

Recreation/continuing education programs

International Night NAIA World Series

Center for Arts and History Dogwood Festival

Distance learning opportunities Local history Speakers’ Bureau

(Revival of the) Community Response Team PACE Program – accelerated teacher certification

Adult Basic Education/GED LSCS Outreach Centers – Grangeville, Kooskia, and Orofino

Community-based programs Community-engaged scholarship Economic development initiatives Discipline-based, faculty-led scholarship Community-led events held in university facilities Participatory/action research

LCSC facilities as community event venues Development of aluminum welding President Thomas reads to elementary students certificate program Webster Reading All-Stars participation in Nimií-puu/Nez Perce language courses home basketball games Host families for international students, NAIA athletes Advisory Boards for professional/technical, Student services, and other academic programs LCSC participation in Valley Vision, Chamber of Commerce, recruitment of new businesses in the region LSCS Service Corps/AmeriCorps projects Lewis-Clark Bicentennial celebration Conducted Human Resources training for Potlatch Corporation

Civic/Community-focused education*

(K-16) Community service learning Volunteering Community Service Fieldwork Internships Civic Education

Student-athletes read to elementary students

Student organizations adopt families for holiday celebration Nursing and Radiology Technician students complete fieldwork at regional medical center

Social work and psychology students complete internships in local social service organizations Students enroll in AmeriCorps’ Education Award Only program, serving in community organizations

Business students prepare taxes for low-income residents Paralegal students prepare living wills and durable powers of attorney for elderly residents

Figure 6. Interaction between the communities of north central Idaho and Lewis-Clark State College. *See discussion of Furco (1996) model for definitions, see Chapter 1.

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In academia, there’s a real tendency to see community outreach as

kind of like fluff and not really relevant to the mission. And I think

what makes Lewis-Clark State College different is because we have a

three-part mission where one of those three legs in that stool is

community outreach. Granted, it may not be the first to be considered

when you’re dealing out money and resources, but everybody knows

we’re one of the players at the table. To me, that really has made a big

difference. Because I think we take our role for community outreach

very seriously. And whether it’s economic or we’re just reaching out

to the kids with some fun stuff to do in the summer time, we’re serious

about providing those quality interactions and building those

relationships.

Arts and cultural programming. In 1982, LCSC hosted the first International

Exchange Conference, welcoming an eclectic group: “Scholars and politicians

came, but so did farmers and merchants and students and loggers” (Peterson,

1993, p. 299). These conferences, which continued until the late 1990s, supported

two goals in the L-C Valley: one, the further development of Lewiston as a major

seaport, a dream nurtured by community leaders since the 19th century; and two,

sharing the lives and culture of Pacific Rim peoples with residents of a region

who had previously only known Asian people as miners, massacre victims, and

residents in World War II internment camps (Peterson, 1993; Hayashi, 2007). In

addition to the important economic development function, the International

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Exchange Conferences also brought a steady stream of international students to

Lewiston. LCSC enjoys a large international enrollment relative to the college’s

total student numbers, including large groups of students from Nepal

matriculating each year, along side individual students or groups of 2 or 3 or 5

from other countries. Many international students live with families in the

Lewiston community, following the tradition of normal school students

contributing to the local economy by renting rooms in family homes. Today, an

annual International Night and other culture events provide opportunities for

residents of the region that would be otherwise unavailable without the presence

of Lewis-Clark State College.

Another signature event in the LC Valley also began as an LCSC-

sponsored initiative. Lewiston’s first Dogwood Festival took place almost 25

years ago with an artists festival as an additional attraction for participants in

the Seaport River Run, a marathon very similar to Spokane’s Bloomsday race for

runners and walkers. Today, several events taking place during the month of

April are included under the umbrella of the festival: Grape and Grain, a wine

and microbrew tasting held at the LCSC Center for Arts and History, a public

arts festival, a classic car show, the high school’s spring choir concert, and

athletic events including golf and 3-on-3 basketball tournaments. This year,

festival organizers brought back a concert event, featuring the 1980s rock group

Air Supply. Art under the Elms, described by event organizers as “the region’s

premier artist festival,” takes place each year on the College’s lawn, offering 100

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artists’ booths with pieces for sale, community performing groups, and a fun fair

for children.

Lewiston is noted for its relatively mild weather, but the winter months

are still cold, sometimes snowy and isolating. The Dogwood Festival plays an

important role as Lewiston’s “social event . . .to kick off spring.” One of the

organizers for the event described it this way:

You’re kind of stuck away in the winter. You never see your . . .

neighbors coming and going. All of a sudden they’ll start to poke up

and say ‘HI! How ya doin?’ . . . And . . .when the flowers start to break

and the light changes, there’s just that feeling in the air of like renewal

and I think people feel happier. . . . [A] lot of these events kind of

celebrate people [having been] cooped up in their winter . . . frame of

mind, . . . and then getting out and celebrate that.

Beyond organizing the signature events, LCSC “acts as kind of like a marketing

arm and the overall umbrella” for this festival, a “consortium of events” that

“celebrate spring” in the Lewis-Clark Valley.

The LCSC Center for Arts and History, located in downtown Lewiston, is

the public face of the college in the heart of the community. The center shows

the work of local artists, hosts readings and other literary events, and mounts

exhibits exploring the history and culture of the region. Two permanent exhibits

explore Nimií-puu/Nez Perce arts and culture and the Beuk Aie Temple

(Wegars, 2000), built by Chinese immigrants who moved to the region in the late

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19th century as miners and support personnel in the gold mining industry.

Continuing Education and Community Events, the office charged with

overseeing the Dogwood Festival, is housed in the Center for Arts and History.

This unit also coordinates a speakers’ bureau to provide speakers on local history

to area schools and community groups; offers four, one-week sessions of Kids

College for youth entering Grades 2 through 7; and hosts arts and culture

programming such as last year’s participation in National Public Television’s

Independent Lens project to pre-screen documentary films for the public.

Outreach and student recruitment. Lewis-Clark State College operates three

outreach centers, located in Orofino, Grangeville, and Kooskia. They also

maintain a nominal partnership with the Nez Perce Tribe to offer on-line non-

credit courses through tribal facilities in Lapwai. These outreach centers are

staffed by an outreach coordinator and, in the case of two centers, student

employees on workstudy funds. These centers, according to LSCS

administrators, provide a physical presence for the college in the outlying

communities, serving as a conduit for potential students who may be interested

in taking classes or enrolling in a degree program and need assistance in

negotiating the system at LCSC.

During each of my interviews at LCSC and in the community, I asked for

more information about particularly successful programs involving

representatives of the community and of the community. Nearly every person I

spoke with pointed to these Outreach Centers as the key indicator of LCSC’s

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commitment to the regional community. Everyone affirmed the earlier comment

that the college is “serious about providing those quality interactions and

building those relationships.”

I visited each of the four outreach sites, eager to understand the presence

and position of LCSC in rural Region 2 communities. Before traveling to

Kooskia, I learned that people involved in the original development of the Upper

Clearwater Valley Center considered its location on the second floor of the City

Hall to be particularly well-placed for local residents: “It’s easily accessible. You

have the sheriff’s office there. Then up above you’ve got the [outreach] center. . .

. It’s right across from the post office. It’s next to the bar, . . . . It’s right there.

It’ll be easier for you to attract people.” The Grangeville Center is located in

what used to be the Washington Water Power service center. This placement

resulted from a brief conversation between a WWP lineman and LCSC’s

president, Lee Vickers, at a public function. The story, as I heard it, goes like this:

This lineman who’s daughter is in college was talking to President

Vickers at the time and saying, ‘Any chance you guys want a space for

the college up there?’ So we got a little space up front along with the

Chamber of Commerce and the Summer Recreational people and one

of the linemen had a desk up there so we were all a happy family.

Most recently, the Orofino Center moved to a new physical location in the

building with the University of Idaho/Clearwater County Extension office, and

several USDA offices. With this relocation, all three centers have computer labs

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offering 10-20 computers for public use, a coordinator working 25 hours per

week, and in the case of the Kooskia Center, community volunteers who

facilitate extended service hours at the center.

Listening to the interviews after my visits to the Outreach Centers, I

noticed that none of the digital recordings are in one uninterrupted file. Rather,

taking the example of my visit to Grangeville, I have seven files of varying

lengths: 7 minutes, 42 minutes, 3 minutes, 15 minutes. These are the intervals

between phone calls and drop-in customers seeking advice about a variety of

things: Which computer class should I enroll in? Will there be a belly-dancing

class offered in the next session of personal enrichment classes? Who should I

call in Lewiston about registering for classes? Do you know who in town is

working on a particular project? LCSC administrators describe these centers

almost exclusively in terms of their capacity as a tool for bringing education to

the very rural areas of the region it serves.

After one visit to each place, I understand them differently. Each one

functions as a community center, meeting LCSC’s stated need for assisting first

time and adult students in transitioning to college, but they also do much more.

LCSC administrators hired members of the local community as directors of the

centers. Louise Stolz moved to Grangeville as a young bride, an she and her

husband raised their children there. Her husband owns a business in the

community, and she is very active in several community organizations beyond

her role at LCSC’s outreach coordinator. Danielle Hardy moved to Orofino more

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than 15 years ago, and she and her husband are raising their son in the

community where she is also active in youth athletics. Vincent Martinez moved

to Kooskia during high school, and returned there to live with his wife and

children after graduating from LCSC. He joked with me about being able to tell

how long a community member had lived in Kooskia “if they call me Vinnie,

because Vincent came in college.”

The outreach coordinators describe their roles at the centers in ways that

make clear the importance of these relationships and their knowledge of their

community. “It is an interesting job,” one told me, “made and molded to our

personality, to what we see as important” because the college provides very little

direction beyond the academic advising and student recruitment functions

which are the focus of the centers from LCSC’s perspective. All three centers

offer community enrichment courses, in addition to the on-line classes through

LCSC. The outreach coordinators schedule local programming based on their

assessment of community needs which happens through their informal

networks:

I get it through my interaction with the community. I’m involved in a

lot of things and I know lot’s of people. Its word of mouth is probably

the best thing. That doesn’t mean we can provide what they need

either, just for the record because if they had their way they’d have live

classes here in the community again. They would have full degrees

provided right here.

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This tension between what the community wants and what the college is willing

to offer came up in each of the conversations I had with residents of the region

who live outside the Lewis-Clark Valley. Some were particularly harsh in their

criticism of the college’s change in policy ending the offering of academic and

professional-technical for-credit courses at the outreach centers taught by

instructors in the community. Several people talked about the “real need for

vocational education in these communities and not just for high schools, for the

whole community.” For many residents, however, a viable option means “not

having to go to Lewiston.” One idea emerged in my conversations: establishing

“a community college campus or something to that sort in the [Upper

Clearwater] valley, or even in Grangeville.” By locating a training facility in

Kamiah, this rationale continues, LCSC would be responding to local parents’

concerns “about sending their kids to the big city to go to school. It’s scary to

them and they would be more likely to send them to another rural community to

get that education.”

Recreation and continuing education programs. In addition to the arts and

cultural programming offered through the Center for Arts and History, LCSC’s

Continuing Education and Community Events offers over 1500 continuing

education classes each semester. Unit administrators articulate their

commitment “to creat[ing] opportunities for personal enrichment,” reflected in

the wide range of programming offered in Lewiston and, with the cooperation of

the Outreach Centers, throughout the five-county region.

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Community-Based Programs.

Lewis-Clark State College plays an active role in many programs based in

the communities of Region 2. These programs are typically administered by

community based organizations which draw on or in some way connect to the

physical and human resources of the college.

Economic development initiatives. Current LCSC president Dene Thomas

takes an active role in positioning the college as a resource for economic

development initiatives in Region 2. “Last month, she went with us to tour the

biodiesel plan in Spain. They’re talking about relocating here.” I heard stories

like this one about President Thomas’ involvement in economic development

activities from many community members. The president herself explained the

role of LCSC in the region in economic terms:

You see, the Chamber this year . . . gave us the large business employer

of the year award. Now not many places would think of us as an

employer. They do. I appreciate that because we are. We contribute

to the economy of the Valley. And I am so incredibly grateful for that

recognition because that says that you being here means a great deal to

us. And in a smaller way, if you’ve visited our outreach centers . . .

Orofino, Kamiah/Koskia, Grangeville, Coeur d’Alene. The smaller

communities recognize this, too. They know how important we are to

them.

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An emerging initiative brought together the college’s senior leaders and the

Chamber of Commerce in a partnership focused on promoting the College and

supporting student recruitment. I talked with Dene Thomas on the day of her

first meeting with a Chamber committee on local collaborations for what she

repeatedly called “just a wonderful discussion.”

This conversation marks a new era in relationships between LCSC and the

local community. Lewiston has always supported LCSC. In the 1950s, and again

in the 1980s, when the legislature moved to close Lewis-Clark State College,

business leaders and Potlatch executives joined efforts to lobby for the college

(Peterson, 1993). Support for the college fell off during the administrations of

two unpopular presidents. Now, the chamber is once again saying, in the words

of President Thomas summarizing the message she heard from the Chamber

leaders at the March 2008 meeting:

We understand that these students come here and buy gas, go and eat in

our restaurants, go to the movies here and buy clothes. They are sparks

for the local business. We want to help you grow L-C (LCSC) even more

than it is.

Beyond the economic impact of LCSC students and their visiting families, the

college prides itself on remaining flexible to meet workforce training, human

resource and management training needs, and providing professional technical

training to students from across Region 2 and into southern Idaho.

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Community-led events held in university facilities. During my first research

trip to Lewiston, I stopped in a local business to do some shopping. The

manager struck up a conversation, asking about the purpose of my visit. I

explained that I was interested in the interaction between Lewis-Clark State

College and the community. Moving seamlessly into his new role as interpreter

of the local landscape, he described the college to me as “absolutely necessary”

for the community, as an education destination for prospective students in the

local area. Equally important, he seemed to say, is LCSC’s role as a venue for

local events. Many of these take place at the Activity Center, home of the LCSC

Warrior basketball teams. He attended a sporting event there recently, and met

up with friend he had not seen in several months. This is a regular occurrence

for him when attending events on campus, which serves as something of a

“meeting hall for the town,” in his words. The social service and community-

based non-profit organizations in the community also frequently use LCSC

facilities for community trainings and public health conferences. Any event over

50 or so must be held at the college, “because it’s the only place big enough to

hold that many people,” one community member explained.

Community-Engaged Scholarship.

Many faculty who integrate a commitment to community involvement

with their work do so by focusing their research on community issues. These

projects are relatively common in the context of research intensive institutions

where faculty are expected to maintain an active research agenda. Faculty

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involvement in research in general at comprehensive institutions varies

according to institutional culture, expectations and teaching loads. At LCSC,

facultyteach as many as five courses each semester and in many instances do not

conduct research. Despite Ghodsee’s (2008) recent discussion of attractive

opportunities for faculty development as researchers in positions away from

research universities in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lewis-Clark State

College’s heavy teaching loads seem to preclude sustained involvement by

faculty in research of any sort. It is not expected or valued in tenure and

promotion guidelines, and therefore very few faculty make time for it. I did

hear about the welding instructor who worked with local jet boat manufacturers

to develop a certificate program in aluminum welding, and linguist Harold

Crook who works with the Nimií-puu /Nez Perce Elders Council to document

and preserve this language through books and academic course offerings. Much

more often though, those who are integrating a commitment to civic engagement

more typically do so through community-focused pedagogies.

Civic/Community-Focused Education

Furco’s (1996) continuum outlines five student-centered approaches to

civic engagement including volunteerism, community service, internships, field

work and community service learning. Many academic programs and

individual courses offered at LCSC featured opportunities for some form of

engagement with the community.

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Community-service learning. This is the second year of the Service Learning

Faculty Fellows program at LCSC; eight faculty members have participate in this

opportunity to receive mentoring designed to “implement service learning in

their classes.” Participants learned a framework for thinking about community-

based pedagogy which is grounded in principles of good practice in community

service-learning (Honnet & Poulen, 1989; Howard, 1993; Mintz & Hesser, 1996),

and workshopped their syllabus development efforts over several months. To

date, the participants in this program have been concentrated in the professional

fields and the social sciences, where service-learning is typically readily adopted

by faculty across the country because of the easily discernible link between

service and the need for real world work experience to prepare for future career

opportunities.

Many LCSC faculty, according to one administrator, are taking a less

structured or intentional approach to service-learning: “Many have fairly

unstructured requirements, a ‘do this many service hours and I’ll talk to you

later’ kind of thing.” Institutional efforts to move faculty toward more

intentional service, connection to the curriculum and reflection opportunities are

further challenged by structural issues. For instance, the service-learning

program has been charged, according to an internal document provided by a

participant, with “explor[ing] options and lay[ing] groundwork for a coordinated

Service Learning program at LCSC.” Action items laid out in the document

included in this call are increasing visibility, examining both for-credit and non-

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credit options including catalog designations for service-learning courses, and

the establishment of “a primary point of contact that could interface with

community and regional volunteer organizations to connect the supply and

demand sides of volunteer efforts.”

These plans, which have been included in the institution’s Program

Guidance document, indicate a commitment to increasing community-service

learning opportunities on campus. What is not addressed here is the staffing

challenge in meeting these goals. The person charged with meeting these goals is

also the program director for the 15th largest AmeriCorps program in the United

States, overseeing programs and supervising members in cities across Idaho and

into eastern Washington. Service learning has been coordinated at LCSC by an

AmeriCorps member serving in a one-year position. In the 2007-2008 academic

year, the college was unsuccessful in recruiting a member to take on this role and

lost the position. They hoped to have it awarded again the next program year.

On the whole, “not a lot” of faculty participate in or use service-learning

on campus, and there is what one administrator described as “some very vocal

opposition” localized in one of the academic divisions. The critique most

regularly cited by critics is the one developed by Neidorf (2005), which a former

LCSC program coordinator summarizes this way: “the downfall of a liberal

education is being masked by a band-aid called service learning.”

Volunteering and community service. Although service learning is a

relatively small initiative on campus, students are involved in individual

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volunteering activities, and community service projects. I heard stories about

LCSC’s “big heart.” The student government association once adopted two

families through a program providing Christmas gifts and necessary supplies to

economically-disadvantaged families. During the National Association of

Intercollegiate Athletics’ World Series baseball tournament each spring, student-

athletes from all participating teams visit sixth grade classrooms in Lewiston and

Clarkston to read a book with students. Many LSCS students give their time to

the local YWCA, and several had become AmeriCorps members. By enrolling in

AmeriCorps, students have the opportunity to earn $3000 education awards after

completing 300 hours of service in a community-based setting.

Field work and internships. St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, located a

few blocks away from LCSC, is a teaching hospital, providing facilities and

fieldwork opportunities for the clinical portions of students’ training and degree

programs in nursing and radiographic sciences. Social work and psychology

students complete field experiences at area non-profit agencies including the

Community Action Partnerships, the YWCA, Lewis-Clark Early Childhood

Education Program, and State Hospital North, the in-patient psychiatric

treatment facility in Orofino.

One of the 2008 Faculty Fellows described to me her plans to use the

fellowship opportunity to work on incorporating service learning into a specific

course. In the mean time, the activities her students are involved in fit more into

the category of fieldwork where, like the nursing and radiology science students,

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students practice skills previously learned in the classroom in a community-

based or real-life situation. Psychology students are also involved in an

internship program through the Community Mental Health office. Social work

students complete practicum/internship experiences in the senior nutrition and

client services programs through Community Action Partnerships.

Although Furco (1996) has carefully outlined the distinctions between

various types of community-engaged and community-based learning, these

definitions do not seem to be salient in the discussion of “service-learning” on

the LCSC campus. It was difficult for me to ascertain, based on preliminary

conversations with administrators, the distinctions between volunteerism or

community service and community service-learning. While these distinctions

are likely clear to the faculty and to the Volunteer Center staff, other

administrators and community members on the LCSC campus and across Region

2 do not differentiate between all the different activities that link campus and

community. Accordingly, when I heard about the Business Division faculty

member whose students work with the IRS to provide volunteer income tax

assistance, or the paralegal students volunteering their time to make living wills

and durable power of attorney documents for low-income elderly residents of

the community, I was not able to make a clear assignment of these activities to a

particular type of community-focused education (see Figure 1, p. 6, and Figure 6,

p. 156).

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This broad commitment to serving the community, without so much focus

on categories or specific definitions reflects the narrative of engagement between

LCSC and Idaho’s Region 2. The narrative developed in this first layer of the

portrait recounts the story of a community and an institution always waiting for

the next thing which might bring good fortune or bad. Both LCSC and the

communities of the region continue to demonstrate a long-standing commitment

to each other, squabbling a little about the details and asking questions about on-

line classes or instructors teaching live at remote sites, professional technical

programs available only in Lewiston or elsewhere in the region? Still the

overarching conversation reflects a degree of good will that comes from a deep

pride on the part of the region in “our college.” These themes of college as

amenity and commitment to active engagement emerge more fully in the second

layer, looking at the goals and common vision which organizes the larger

narrative of engagement.

Layer 2: Themes in the Narrative of Engagement

A particular discourse shapes the description of community and college

offered in the first layer. Reading across initiatives allowed me to identify the

connection between the discussion of engagement initiatives and other

statements of priorities such as mission statements and strategic planning

documents. In other words, how do people in Region 2 and particularly on the

LCSC campus talk about the interaction between college and community in

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general and with regard to particular initiatives? In answering this question, two

themes emerge: college as anamenity and “active engagement.”

Theme 1: College as an amenity

In Region 2, I heard many people with no particular affiliation to Lewis-

Clark State College refer to the institution as “our college.” I asked about that

and learned that people value higher education in a (more or less) abstract sense

whether they or anyone in their family did or will attend college. They are

therefore proud to have an institution of higher learning in their area. A similar

response came from a senior administrator at a major employer in the region

who described the college as particularly attractive to professionals considering

job opportunities in the area. Beyond this ephemeral value, the college provides

cultural programming and resources that are important to the community it

serves.

Lewis-Clark State College has served as something of “a cultural Mecca”

for the Lewiston area and the surrounding region from the time of its opening.

“As early as the 1890s area residents crammed into the administration building

auditorium to listen to debate and orations and watch student plays” (Peterson,

1993, p. 295). John Nydegger, instructor of speech and drama, and later

academic dean of LCSC, arrived in 1963, and began working very hard to

develop cultural and arts programming through the college. In his history of the

college, Peterson recounts one of Nydegger’s comments about this commitment

to community outreach: “I have heard it said that one reason more industries

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don’t come here is because the advance men do not find the arts to attract them”

(1993, p. 296).

This comment is an appropriate backdrop for the contributions of

President Lee and Mrs. Deanna Vickers to the outreach functions and

interactions with the community of Lewis-Clark State College during Vickers’

term as president from 1978 to 1994. During this 20 year period, the very

popular couple worked with campus administration to establish many programs

both on campus and in the community (Peterson, 1993). The Artist Series,

featuring internationally known performers in jazz, ballet, opera, and theater,

and the annual International Exchange Festival brought visitors to campus in the

1980s and 1990s. Lewiston’s annual Dogwood Festival and the Center for Arts

and History located in downtown Lewiston remain, frequently mentioned as

prime examples of successful partnerships and interactions between the college

and the community.

The Lewis-Clark Valley turns to LCSC as the main venue for events larger

than 50 people, because as one community member explained to me, there just

isn’t any place else big enough to hold that many people. Area high schools hold

athletic contests in the LCSC Activity Center. Continuing education and

professional development courses happen in the Student Union Building.

Another annual event, the NAIA College World Series, a championship

baseball tournament, bridges cultural and athletic events, offering another

opportunity to bring the community together. A member of the college’s

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administrative team particularly enjoys this aspect of the tournament. “These

aren’t 5200 baseball fans,” he told me. “These are 2000 baseball fans, and 3000

people looking for something to do . . . [they] want to see neighbors and see old

friends. To them, it’s more of a social event than it is about baseball.”

Arguably, even the LCSC Outreach Centers located in rural communities

are provide, among other functions, entertainment for the local residents. While

these spaces are primarily designed as space for peer mentoring and advising,

on-line courses, or computer training, they also provide computer access for a

nominal fee. These opportunities to surf the web stand in for other after-school

programming for area youth and gathering places for local residents without

computer access at home.

Theme 2: “Active Engagement”

The new catch phrase for LCSC is “active engagement,” encapsulating the

various interactions between students, faculty, institutions and community.

After hearing several people explain their understanding of the term, variously

emphasizing engaged student learning or the continued importance of LCSC’s

continued connections to the community, I began to hear this phrase, at least

where community-university interactions is concerned, as synonymous with

something like “neighborliness.” LCSC administrators in Lewiston and the

surrounding community all spoke of college as an important presence in the

community, a role they seemed to value and take seriously.

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Beyond the commitment to working with economic development

organizations and the business community to meet workforce development

needs, Lewis-Clark State College embodies something of the culture of the west

in what seems to me to be a commitment to do their part in the community.

“We’ve tried to make sure everybody’s taking part in something,” an

administrator told me about the involvement of individual LCSC representatives

to community organizations. He’s “heavily involved in Chamber things. Several

of our Vice Presidents belong to Rotary Clubs. Our president belongs to a Rotary

Club.”

A community member noted that the college is similar to his organization,

another of the largest employers in the LC Valley, in that they both share this

commitment to being involved in the community, which they live by

encouraging employees to take an active membership in community

organizations. This includes the LCSC employees based in smaller communities

in the region, all of whom are expected by their division to participate in the local

chambers of commerce or other equivalent community organization.

A large portion of the interaction between Lewis-Clark State College and

the larger community it serves involves representatives of the college involved in

activities which directly impact the community well-being. Students provide

service to the community through a variety of volunteer, community service,

fieldwork, internship, and service learning projects in schools, social service

organizations, and health care facilities across the Lewis-Clark Valley. While this

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sounds very similar to the “civic responsibility of higher education” rhetoric

common in the scholarly literature (AASCU, 2002; Barber, 1992; Boyte, 2004;

Checkoway, 2001; Ehrlich, 2000; Kezar et al, 2005), I read these examples as a

more locally defined notion of responsibility to community. Rather than

addressing some high-minded generic commitment to making communities

better places, administrators, some faculty and their students seem to be looking

for specific opportunities to engage in the community.

This may not actually be happening successfully, though. Perhaps a

better way to link LCSC and the region would be, as one community member in

Idaho suggested, to require every Lewis-Clark State College faculty member to

join a community-based organization and to be involved in one community-

based service project during each academic year in response to an identified

community issue or need. The community member elaborated on this idea at

great length, ultimately devising a protocol to question the college’s

administrators and faculty on their knowledge of community issues, and their

commitment to addressing these issues.

The entire notion of mandatory community-based activity, however, runs

directly counter to two dominant elements of the culture of higher education:

academic freedom, and promotion and tenure guidelines. The promise of

academic freedom allows individual faculty to pursue through research or

teaching any topic that interests them regardless of its connection to larger

community. Academic freedom has recently been politicized by Horowitz

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(2006) and others both inside and out of academia (Johansen, 2007), yet there is

still little common understanding of the historical need or function of this

cherished and important principle. For example, the community member

suggesting mandatory service offered the following observations about his

recently clarified understanding of faculty work:

I have my own suspicion though. My own suspicion is they say that

[“we don’t do that kind of research here”] as they are speaking the

policy of the institution. You know, . . . this college is not a research

institution. But in reality, as far as I can tell, the college allows every

professor there to just pursue his own interest, whatever it might be. . .

. They don’t really care. And likewise any of the other entities. . . . The

college doesn’t impose that.

“Of course they don’t. That’s what academic freedom means,” came the

response from a LCSC faculty member when I summarized this conversation for

her. Academic freedom is only one issue in this argument. The requirements of

specific position descriptions and the university’s tenure and promotion

guidelines also direct faculty work and focus energy on what is rewarded,

whether it is research or teaching.

The challenge here is that these are aspects of the culture and functioning

of higher education not well understood by the larger community. This situation

creates obvious frustration and missed opportunities for community-university

interaction addressing community issues. Perhaps, as this community member

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suggests, faculty “simply don’t choose to focus on local problems.” This may be

because “they don’t come from here and they don’t plan to stay here very long.”

Rather, it seems that this community member may be right in his guess that

“there’s a huge lack of understanding.” He explains it this way:

Maybe they don’t recognize there’s a need. Maybe they don’t

recognize they could help. . . . These faculty members who are new to

the area . . . aren’t well connected and familiar with the local area to

know where they could help and make a difference. And the business

owners and community leaders don’t have a history of using LCSC.

They don’t even know what to ask. They don’t even know how to

approach and say ‘Can you help us?’ It’s easier for them to go to [a

local business or corporate resource]. Go to a research institution of

some kind. Because they don’t even know how to have that dialogue.

This story suggests to me that the active engagement of LCSC, while not an

illusion, may be carried out more often by administrators, staff members, and

students who have (pre-existing) ties to the community than by those who do

not.

One member of the Lewiston community described Lewiston, as part of

the culture of the western United States, as a place where there is a “kind of

underlying sense that we have some responsibility to our neighbors I think really

defines the area that we live in.” This culture also provided a conceptual link

between the two themes outlined in the second layer. A responsibility to one’s

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neighbors applies to the institution as a citizen, as well as to the individual

employees who have personal connections in the community. Clearly, there are

deep connections between the college and the larger regional community. LCSC

administrators followed President Thomas’ lead in conceiving of their own role

and that of the institution as contributing an important resource to the region.

North central Idaho has a relatively low percentage of residents with higher

education degrees. LCSC’s identity as economic engine, or employer, in a

natural resource-based economy shapes how the college interacts with the

community. This engagement also reflects the cultural, historical and social

context within which it takes place as outlined in the next layer of the data.

Layer 3: Placing Engagement in Cultural, Historical and Social Context

Ideology and discourse influence human action and thereby shape the

space within which the action occurs. Examining these forces requires specific

attention to the culture, history, and social relations discussed Lewis-Clark State

College, the frontier ethos of western culture, nostalgia, and a discourse of

economic impact as engagement provide important context for the interaction

between community and college in Region 2. In this rural setting, the real story

is in the interplay of these three more so than any one of them individually. I

proceed with this discussion by examining each of these individually, and

conclude with a discussion of the interplay which places engagement.

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Frontier Ethos

In the discourse of regional colleges, the institution is often discussed as

though it is an individual, a neighbor; yet, as many told me, the college is really a

composite of the individuals who work there, and “the sense of community that

people working at the institution bring” to their jobs which enriches LCSC’s

commitment to the community. So, when I talk about the theme of “active

engagement” evident in the narrative of engagement between Lewis-Clark State

College and the communities of north-central Idaho and far southeastern

Washington, this element of engagement directly reflects something that is

inherently true of many of the individual people involved in these initiatives.

The frontier ethos that is the cultural heritage of the people who work at

LCSC was therefore imminently germane to this analysis of interaction between

the college and its community. One Montana native now living in Lewiston

explained it as “[t]hat western ideal of rugged individualism. . . . Included with

that is also this sense that people are responsible for each other. And I think it

stems from the fact that in the past that was a survival thing. You had to look

out for your neighbors.” People take “a lot of pride,” she told me, in this

individualism and ability to survive in a harsh climate and rugged economic and

geographic terrain.

Nostalgia

The narrative of engagement and the context in which it is told around Lewis-

Clark State College rippled with tensions between the college’s emphasis on

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economic impact and workforce development as a key piece of its role in the

larger community. This was pitted against local residents’ resistance to change:

“What I really want is for it to be how it used to be” when the mills were

running, one person said.

Behind this nostalgia lies, I think, a great deal of fear and resistance to

change. An always present fear connects back to the 1950s closing of Lewis-

Clark State College, and the 1980s-era talk of once again re-constituting LCSC as

a branch campus of the University of Idaho. Another ever-present concern

focuses on the fate of the Potlatch Corporation’s Lewiston facility. Now publicly

traded, Potlatch is much more susceptible to the ups and downs of the stock

market; long-time employees and neighbors of the region’s largest employer

watch its fate in the news with crossed fingers and nostalgia for the boom times.

In the 1970s, as long-time residents of North Idaho tell the story,

environmentalists discovered the spotted owl, and the timber industry never

recovered. In 2001, Potlatch closed its Jaype plywood mill operation, leaving

several hundred employees without jobs. These plant closures, and associated

changes in levels of employment for other timber industry-related businesses in

the area, continue to plague the local economy.

Many economic development professionals talked to me about the

significant need to diversify the economy of this region. As things stand now,

Potlatch Corporation is not just the largest employer in the city of Lewiston, but

in the region, and the second largest employer in the state (M. VanVleet, personal

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communication, January 28, 2008). Potlatch has been called “the 500 pound

gorilla in the room” in the sense that “it employs so many people and the people

get good wages and benefits there. It’s got a lot of sway in the community and if

anything ever happened to Potlatch it would be devastating for the community.”

After the closing of the Jaype mill nearly wiped out the town of Pierce, 26 miles

up the mountain from Orofino, residents of the region seem to be waiting for the

proverbial other shoe to fall.

In this context Lewis-Clark State College’s Outreach Centers, as they are

envisioned by the college, are sites of conflicting expectations. On campus,

administrators refer to them as a model outreach program, providing access to

educational opportunities through LCSC to the frontier communities in the

region. The outreach center coordinator is described by their supervisor as “a

liaison [in the community]. The extension of the college. She can answer

hopefully an array of basic questions” about financial aid, admissions, registrar

functions. The unspoken assumption here is that the actual role of the centers is

to reach out to a broader base of potential students and bring them to the

educational opportunities offered by a regional college. President Dene Thomas’

views are consistent with this definition of the Outreach Centers: “I believe in

the potential of every human being to grow and develop. And I believe that

education is the best means by which you can do that.” In the rural

communities of Region 2, I did not frequently hear residents talking about the

value of their children leaving the community to pursue further education. I did

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hear, for example, a group from Grangeville speaking with great enthusiasm on

the part of their local steering committee about ideas for vocational and

entrepreneurship training specifically because the training would enable

students to stay in the community, or create opportunities for young adults who

left for college to return.

“Economic Impact”

History and socio-economics merge in discussions of Lewis-Clark State

College and its interaction with the communities of Region 2. The Idaho state

legislature established the Lewiston State Normal School in 1893. Peterson (1993)

explains the location of this institution of higher education in Idaho’s first

territorial capital as a game of political spoils that whirled around drawing

boundaries of new states in the western territories. Moscow received the

University of Idaho as a reward for opposing other north Idaho residents

clamoring for annexation of the northern counties either to become part of

Washington or to join eastern Washington and western Montana in creating a

separate state.

Ultimately, Moscow business and civic leader William McConnell became

Idaho’s governor, and signed the act establishing Lewiston’s normal school in

January 1893. Peterson (1993) notes that “[s]ome said [McConnell] held

misgivings about that signature, granting a potential rival school to a town

housing many of his political enemies,” (p. 28) and southern Idahoans in

particular opposed the location of another institution of higher education so close

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to the new university, “[b]ut McConnell, foremost a northerner, recognized the

carrot for his part of the state” (p. 28), and signed the new law quickly.

This piece of the college’s history marks Lewis-Clark State College as an

amenity for the region from its founding. College officials speak of the

connection between the college and the community it serves as primarily a

matter of economic impact. Ultimately someone explained it to me this way: “I

don’t know the number, if it’s third or fourth, but we’re the third or fourth

largest employer behind Potlatch.” In fact, knowing the exact ranking of the

college in terms of the number of employees is not the important thing here.

Instead, it is significant that both college employees and members of the

community talk about the college in terms of its role as a major employer, often

mentioning this first on a list of interactions between the community and the

college.

The other element of this economic impact is the workforce development

component of the college’s large offerings in professional technical programs.

Several people told me the story of the jet boat builders in Lewiston who

approached a welding instructor asking for new classes in aluminum welding to

help them meet an employee shortage in their industry. Within the Division of

Professional Technical Programs I heard about challenges with this particular

program. Even so, it stands along with the Center for New Directions as a

significant initiative on the part of the college to respond to workforce training

needs in the community. Occasionally these support Valley Vision or the

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Chambers of Commerce in attracting business to the region, but the discourse

around even these activities is more about economic impact than economic

development.

The Interplay of People, History, and Culture

Life in Region 2 is uncertain as most residents recognize the need to

become a different place but resist the changes required to craft a new identity

for the region in terms of both economics and how the land is used. Timber-

related jobs have long been the staple in north central Idaho, and the downturn

in the timber industry leaves the Region 2 economy severely depressed. This

storyline reflects a specific interaction of the three elements of place: the frontier

ethos, fear of change, and economic impact. The relationship between these

three works something like this: While individual residents of the region feel a

deep pride in their ability to take care of themselves, they also recognize a

responsibility which is a genetically transmitted version of the original Idaho

settlers’ commitment to their neighbors which helped everyone come through

the hard winters safely.

In tough economic times, Lewis-Clark State College has traditionally acted

as a good neighbor, providing social services and programs to the community as

it experiences job loss and increased poverty. Senior administrators at the

college described feeling a sense of responsibility as a major employer to do its

part to take care of the community in Region 2. New economic realities in the

region make self-reliance more difficult. Over the twenty years that the region’s

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timber-based economy has suffered, LCSC has effectively played the traditional

role of good neighbor. Historically, LCSC has responded to economic downturn

by taking on a social services function to assist individuals and families in

addressing needs that emerge from reduced earning capacities, for example. The

college offered assistance in the 1980s and 1990s, through the Senior Nutrition

Program, the Community Response Team, and the LC Service Corps placing

AmeriCorps members in schools and other community agencies. The social

service approach is falling away as LCSC repositions itself.

Beginning with Dene Thomas’ presidency, the college is emphasizing its

role in the state as a training location for professionals in a variety of high-

demand fields, especially nursing and health sciences. More and more often, the

college connects its identity to its role as an employer and a contributor to the

development of new economic strategies for the region. However, where LCSC

has always been a major employer in the region, it has not always been an active

player in the business community. The talk of “economic impact” is

fundamentally a marker of the degree to which the college is working to shift

itself role in the region.

To shore up the economic situation in the Lewis-Clark Valley, leaders in

the business community are perpetually at work to develop new business in

Lewiston and the surrounding smaller communities. The coming changes, and

more to the point the stress of recognizing the need to change, generates

nostalgia for a happier time. Coontz (1992) suggests that the past is easily

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mythologized by people looking for answers to the problems of the present, and

this is clearly going on in Region 2, as the stories of people pining for “the way it

used to be” demonstrate. In Coontz’s work, these myths emerge out of concern

that problems cannot be solved, and this same tension is present in north central

Idaho.

Coontz (1992) demonstrates that the cherished myths about family life in

the 1950s and beyond into colonial times are actually stories which were never

really true for many families. The same seems to be true for the “how it used to

be” thinking in Region 2, based on the recollections of other community

members. One person told me, for instance, about the heyday of the timber

years in Kooskia in the early 1980s:

Some of the things I understand were also existing at that time in that

world was enormous pollution because they had the cone burners

down here and that it was just that you could hardly breathe and you

could hardly see across the river. There were something like eight or

ten bars [in a community of less than 600 people], and pretty regularly

somebody would get shot and killed in a bar.

Holding on to [somewhat altered] memories of a glorious past when everyone

who wanted one had a job near their home, many people find it difficult to

imagine a future that looks different than the comfortable past.

Coontz’s (1992, 1997) work suggests that the perceived “crisis of the

family” of the 1990s is really a subset of a larger group of social problems. In the

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specific context of Lewis-Clark State College, inadequate funding for higher

education from the state legislature is driving much of the shift away from a

social service model, and the college has responded by redefining the concept of

neighborliness left over from the frontier ethos. Providing for the community

now more often means providing education and employment which have the

potential to change lives.

The organizational saga of LCSC and Region 2 is a study of the impact of

larger, national economic forces coming to bear in a particular regional

community per Slaughter and Rhoads’ (2004) discussion of higher education as

an increasingly savvy economic actor. Here, where the economy is failing,

questions emerge about the most appropriate, realistic role of the college.

Ramaley (2000) argues that the comprehensive institution is best able to respond

to community issues at the regional level. The story of LCSC counters this to

some degree, pointing out that the college is only one piece of the puzzle in the

community, and without sufficient resources it cannot be expected to carry the

weight of reviving a regional economy. The final layer of the data juxtaposes this

boiled down narrative against theory.

Layer 4: Juxtaposition of Engagement and Theory

Anzaldua (1987/1999) develops the concept of borderlands to refer both

to geographic and to psychological, sexual and spiritual spaces existing on the

border between two cultures. By focusing on the culture of higher education

(Kuh & Whitt, 1988; Tierney, 1988; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996) as distinct from

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the culture of a local community, I position community-university interaction

such as those discussed in this dissertation as a borderlands of sort. It is not, as

Gupta and Ferguson (1992) say, a fixed place. Rather, they are “interstitial

zone[s] of displacement and deterritorialization that shape the identity of the

hybridized subject” (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992, p. 18). The discourse of these

interactions runs more along a counter-storyline (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002), with

Lewis-Clark State College, its administrators and Lewiston leaders pressing an

agenda of economic growth, development and change against rural

communities’ nostalgia for a better time and desire to change only to the extent

that it allows them to stay the same. Taking up the analytical frame laid out in

chapter 3, I proceed in this layer of the data to draw on both Bourdieu and

Lefebvre to provide tools for placing engagement as human interaction shaped

by the place in which it occurs.

Symbolic Power

Reading engagement in Region 2 through the lens of Bourdieu’s

(1979/1991, 1986, 1989) symbolic power highlights the influence of Lewis-Clark

State College and its particular cultural and social values on interaction between

the regional community and the campus. Unpacking this space in the way a

critical geographer would analyze it is enhanced by Bourdieu’s concepts of field,

habitus, and capital, which I will review first as groundwork for a discussion of

the power operations in this case.

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The power of Bourdieu in the theoretical framing of this dissertation is to

offer an additional lens for the reading of social interaction and human behavior

within a given place. In this work, I treat field as analogous to the concepts of

space or place used by critical geographers. Operationalizing these ideas must

begin with a brief summary of Bourdieu’s theory: Within a social space, or field,

individuals interact with each other according to certain well-established rules of

the game, or what Bourdieu (1979/1991, 1989) refers to as “habitus.” One

principle function of habitus is to define and to reflect the valuation of various

forms of capital, and also the amassing of this capital. Possession of capital –

another process defined by habitus – is a marker of status for participants in the

field, with larger acquisition of capital representing higher status in the field

(Bourdieu, 1986, 1989).

At least three fields exist simultaneously in Idaho’s Region 2: the

community field (arguably, each community, or at least each of the five counties,

might constitute its own field), the campus field, and the field of engagement

between the colleges and the communities it serves. By linking Bourdieu and the

critical geographers, I highlight the influence of history on habitus, and show the

connection between and amongst these three (or more) fields. Tracing the

movement and acquisition of capital in all its forms (Bourdieu, 1986) provides

the clearest reading of these fields.

Bourdieu (1986) focuses on education, either formal or informal, as the

institutionalized form of cultural capital. There is an interesting paradox in

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Region 2, where residents are very proud of “their” college, which they consider

to be an amenity for the region. This does not on the whole reflect individual

value placed on higher education. Instead, practical skills that can be directly

translated into economic gain within the context of the region have greater value.

At the same time, LCSC representatives and outreach specialists promote

several programs designed to increase access to education and improve the

transition into a four-year degree program. I spoke with several people at Lewis-

Clark State College, and in the Lewiston business community, who described

these programs as extremely beneficial to high school students and to adults

considering college enrollment again or for the first time. Education, the

president of the college told me, is a way to change people’s lives. Other LCSC

staff members talked about these programs as an opportunity for young people

to leave the area, see the world, and learn new things.

Leaving the area, seeing the world, and learning new things may be

valuable capital-generating experiences in the field of the campus. To some

extent this value transcends to the community field in the college’s capacity to

shape habitus in the community. However, if we consider the individual

communities as fields unto themselves, a differential valuing of education is

evident. I heard it in a presentation by Grangeville community leaders at the

University of Idaho’s Horizons Program Summit in January 2008: The

community is focusing greater attention on building entrepreneurial education

programs for high school students. LCSC’s Outreach Center will have a role in

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providing some of these opportunities. The focus is specifically on providing

students with the skills and training they will need to be able to stay in the

Grangeville area and find living-wage jobs. One long time resident described the

community’s job market as experiencing a recent trend where young adults

away from home for 10 years are returning with their families to find work, and

raise their children. Although some acknowledge the value of that time away,

there is also a specific focus on making it possible for some students never to

leave their hometown or the immediate area.

This insular quality of the rural communities of Region 2 acts, in terms of

Bourdieu’s thinking on capital, to diminish the relative position of the

communities in the field of Region 2. This happens in two ways. Possessing

smaller amounts of cultural capital – less education, or less valuable education –

puts a person in a less powerful position in the field. Individual position in the

field is also diminished by the quality and the quantity of social capital amassed

through ties to a social network. Bourdieu (1986) explains that one’s own social

capital expands proportionate to the social, cultural and economic capital of

everyone in their network, and in those individuals’ networks. Those who have

larger social networks including other individuals who have amassed greater

social and cultural capital (both of which can convert to economic capital) have

greater amounts of symbolic power than do those with less cultural capital or

access to extensive social networks.

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Bourdieu’s (1979/1991, 1986) theory plays out in north central Idaho very

clearly. Residents describe this region as a place with a long memory, where

many people are related to each other, and family connections play an important

role in life today. One LCSC administrator came to Lewiston in the early 1980s

as a loan officer at an area bank. He lost one prospective customer who offered a

blunt explanation: he would not do business with a bank which mistreated his

grandfather. These are the social connections and family ties that Bourdieu

(1986) describes as social capital.

The “lasting, useful relationships that can secure material or symbolic

profits,” or social capital, are “produced and reproduced” through institutional

rites. “In other words,” Bourdieu (1986) wrote:

The network of relationships is the product of investment strategies,

individual or collective, consciously or unconsciously aimed at

establishing or reproducing social relationships that are directly usable

in the short or long term. (p. 249)

The college systematically builds social capital through individual administrators

and representatives’ active memberships in civic organizations including

chambers of commerce and service organizations. This participation represents

routine attention to the institution rites that are required to maintain a large

network of relationships. Because of its primary identity in the community as a

major employer, there is an emphasis on membership in the Lewiston and

Clarkston Chambers of Commerce. The college has, on the other hand,

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somewhat distanced itself from the social service function it has previously

served through initiatives such as the Community Response Team and the Senior

Nutrition Program. In doing so, individual employees are also less likely to be

involved in social service networking organizations. In some units they are

actively discouraged from this involvement by policies which require staff to use

personal time to attend any community meeting other than the Chamber of

Commerce meeting.

In the organizational saga of Lewis-Clark State College and its

relationship with north central Idaho communities, President Dene Thomas’

behavior and relationship-building with state legislators reflects precisely the

producing and reproducing of relationships which are directly usable to secure

funding and continued good will for the college. This activity is arguably among

some of the most important work she can do, given the pervasive fears about the

albeit very remote possibility that the college might again be slated for closure.

Many people, particularly among LCSC central administrators and

Lewiston’s economic development professionals, point to this work when

explaining Thomas’ success as college president. In doing so, they communicate

what is valuable in the field of Region 2 in the present. The policies, and the

economic focus of campus-community interactions point to the differential value

of relationships with the business community and the social service

communities. That is itself reflective of the habitus of this region which is

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currently emphasizing efforts to transition from timber-related jobs to whatever

is next.

The Production of Space

A general discussion of the need to diversify the economy pervades the

region, calling for new measures to mitigate the influence of Potlatch

Corporation and its dependence on the timber markets. As residents of the

region reflected on these challenges, I heard a tension between the larger towns

and the more rural places on the point of what direction leads to greater

economic stability. The surge toward regional thinking going on in Region 2 is

not a well-developed, or broadly-based consensus. Rather, efforts in this

direction are moving forward in a rather disjointed way, and do not appear to

involve a concerted effort on the part of, for example, city leaders in the region’s

towns. The sense of nostalgia and fear of change which contextualizes many of

the interactions between LCSC in this region is the result of precisely these

uncertain times when habitus is being reshaped by individual practice and also

reshaping the differential values of capital in this field.

The tension is reflective of Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) trialectic of spatial

practice, representations of space, and representational spaces. In essence, the

entire region is undergoing a very slow, and for many a very painful and

frightening, change set against the backdrop of a sluggish economy and a

historic downturn in the timber market. To understand what is at stake in these

conversations and to highlight the misalignments of marketing and messaging

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around engagement, I draw from the organizational saga presented in this

chapter to map the production of space in Region 2. Lefebvre (1974/1991), a

Marxist, used geography to offer a spatialized account of systems of production.

He argues that the production of space evolves. The changes can be traced

through a trialetic of concepts: changing spatial practices, representations of

space, and representation spaces. In this analysis, I highlight the points where

meaning has been, or is, in flux, resulting in dissonance within campus and

community relationships.

In Idaho’s Region 2, geographic place is changing meanings as the region

moves from a timber-dependent economy to whatever is next. Identifying the

next phase in the economy in this area is the pressing issue for the region, and

the discussion is implicitly asking many residents of the area to change their

thinking about what their community is and how it might function. The tension

emerges here, where regional thinking defines the conceived role of the frontier

communities in the region – those east and south of Lapwai – as providing

human capital and possible land for location of new businesses. This is pitted

against the lived experience of those community members who are struggling to

build an economy that helps their town stay the same.

For Lefebvre (1974/1991), space is designated for a particular use or

purpose, and spatial practices perpetuate the definition of the space according to

these uses. For example, an area in a community is labeled a marketplace,

attracting people to set up a farmers market, where community residents come

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on a weekly basis to purchase local and regionally grown produce and other

goods. From this perspective of how the use of space defines it, Region 2 is a

complex location. The five counties of the region cover more than 150,000 square

miles, including forest lands, mountains, rivers, and a high prairie where

agriculture has been the dominant way of life for several generations. Space is

represented in this region as organized in a large hub and spoke configuration,

with some of the larger spoke communities, such as Grangeville and Orofino,

serving as secondary hubs for the surrounding very small communities.

Representational spaces such as large retailers, a shopping mall, and most of the

largest employers in the region are located in Lewiston; the hub-and-spoke

representation of space also reinforces, and is simultaneously reinforced by,

LCSC’s status as an important amenity and resource for the area.

The space in Region 2 is used in such a way as to serve two distinct and

sometimes competing interests: recreation and the economy. Most residents

described the communities and the region as a whole as being known for the

spectacular opportunities for year-round outdoor recreation: hunting in the fall

and winter, steelhead fishing in the very early spring, water sports and hiking,

snowmobiling in the winter. The New York Times’ travel section presented the

Upper Clearwater Valley area around Kooskia and Kamiah in a feature touting

the region as “the last wilderness” (Egan, 2007).

At the same time the area is gaining recognition as a vacation destination,

Potlatch and other smaller timber concerns are harvesting trees from forests in

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this area, interfering to some degree with the outdoorsman’s enjoyment of the

forests. Slowly, some of these conflicts are resolved as the area somewhat

begrudgingly shifts more resources to the development of tourism opportunities

in what some hope will be the next wave of prosperity for the region.

Where the woods once meant timber for the saw mills or paper mills, the

representations of these spaces are changing as the dominant discourse of

economic development recasts them predominantly as tourist/recreation

destinations. Where the remote communities formerly served primarily as

gateways to both employees and resources for logging, their role in the regional

economy is changing. For LCSC, the outlying communities are not areas to

which services are provided for the sake of meeting locally-defined needs.

Rather, they are areas from which potential students can be recruited through the

Outreach Centers to be trained for positions which support the economic future

of the region and the state.

This spatialized power-conscious reading of interaction between college

and community in north central Idaho documents the differential valuation of

capital in the field of Region 2, suggesting that habitus aligns with what is valued

by the college, namely formal education and connections to powerful political or

lucrative economic networks. In this way, what is “mutually beneficial” to the

communities is more and more often being defined within the context of the

interests of the larger region and the college rather than the individual

communities themselves. Regional thinking in fact redefines and enlarges the

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concept of community, making it more difficult to include the perspective of all

members of the communities. These challenges are particularly pressing in rural

areas, and in instances where a comprehensive university serves a very large

region.

Regional thinking can also efface the presence of indigenous peoples as

unique members of the community with a separate perspective on engagement.

Significantly, this portrait reveals another important piece of the context for and

the lessons learned from engagement in this place in the conspicuous absence of

the Nimií-puu/Nez Perce story in the organizational saga of Lewis-Clark State

College and north central Idaho. This points to the politics and cultural

competencies to be negotiated by university and community members interested

in working with tribal people. I learned from this research experience that there

is misalignment between my institution’s Institutional Review Board process,

and the protocol for obtaining a research permit from the Nez Perce Tribal

Executive Council. I also realized relatively late the many conversations I should

have had early on to build relationships and explore opportunities for

developing a mutually beneficial research experience. I, like many other

researchers, did not make it through this process during the course of this

research project. I did, however, learn a great deal about the responsibilities

inherent in doing community-based research about community-university

engagement.

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Placing interactions between Lewis-Clark State College and Idaho’s

Region 2 highlights the challenges that are unique to engagement in rural

settings. The analysis of this data in separate layers also demonstrates the

necessity to look before the surface of community perspectives. In chapter 7, I

draw on the two case studies to offer a series of reflections on the many things

small and large that this dissertation reveals as overlooked and under-theorized

in the scholarship related to community-university engagement.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOLARSHIP AND PRACTICE, OR

WHAT’S OVERLOOKED IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT?

At Lewis-Clark State College and at the University of Central Oklahoma,

the campus community is frequently defined in layers or sub-groupings of some

sort. For example, at UCO, people described layers: “the UCO family,” the

Edmond community, the greater metropolitan area, the state, and, for some,

national or international groupings. Discussions of community-university

interaction are often not this nuanced. Instead, they address something more

like a monolithic community or neighborhood interacting with “the” university

or college in that area. These unclear references point to a series of problems

which emerged in a spatialized reading of the interaction between regional

institutions and the communities they serve. In this final chapter, I bring

together the discussions of chapters 5 and 6 by returning to themes introduced in

the final layer of data for each portrait, and develop a series of new concepts

which helps us answer one specific question: How does the construction of

space produce the terms of engagement?

Gruenewald (2003b) calls for a place-conscious model for education; his

work is particularly focused on K-12 education yet his constructs are relevant in

the field of community engagement. In chapter 2, I called on Gruenewald’s work

to support the premise that engagement is inherently place-based, rather than

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ephemeral rhetoric about civic responsibility and mission. Bourdieu (1989)

insists that any theory purporting to explain human behavior must account for

both social fact, which I have set as analogous to place, and individual behavior.

Bringing together Bourdieu and Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) work on the production

of space, I offer a spatialized reading of capital which explicitly links engagement

to the cultural, historical and socio-economic context within which it occurs. The

purpose of this final chapter of the dissertation is two-fold: first, to contribute to

an understanding of community-university interaction as shaped by place and

by power; and then, to offer new perspectives on engagement based on a

spatialized reading of Bourdieu’s treatment of power functioning in social fields

that can advance theory, practice and scholarship in this area.

Power and place are insufficiently studied, and under theorized, as they

relate to engagement. As Gruenewald (2003b) says of contemporary school

reform initiaties, the literature on engagement “takes little notice of place” (p.

620) beyond a fairly superficial level. Many studies acknowledge the location of

the initiative so far as to say urban or rural, or to allude to demographic or

geographic challenges associated with the research or partnership (Cox, 2000;

Daynes, Howard, & Lindsay, 2003; Holland, 2005; Maurasse, 2001; Mayfield &

Lucas, 2000; Reardon, 1999, 2000, 2007). Power is primarily an element of the

discussion of engagement with regard to service learning, and the experience of

community organizations in hosting service learning students. Cox (2000)

explores engagement from an interested-based paradigm, suggesting that

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initiatives succeed to the degree that everyone’s interests are served. The result

of this skewed focus on power primarily in service learning but not in other

types of interaction is insufficient analysis of the impact of community-university

engagement on communities. From the perspective of a spatialized reading of

capital, this is problematic because it leaves unexamined the cultural, socio-

economic and historical landscapes shaping engagement through the same

process that is producing and reproducing space/place. Given this gap, the

point of a spatialized power-conscious scholarship about engagement is to

interrogate the functioning and impact of power structures which have sufficient

status to define the spaces of engagement.

The intent of these introductory comments is not to suggest that there are

no examples of place- or power-conscious scholarship about engagement.

Maurasse (2001), for example, offers a review of engagement which differentiates

by institution type, as does Ehrlich’s (2000) collection of article on civic

responsibility in higher education. A few prominent books, including Zimpher

et al.’s (2002) story of the Milwaukee Idea, address community university

engagement in the context of comprehensive universities. Power imbalances,

particularly in the challenges faced by community organizations hosting service

learning students, are increasingly well documented (Bushouse, 2005; Cruz &

Giles, 2000; Eby, 1998; Worrall, 2007). Reardon (2003, 2007) has both spoken and

written about the power imbalances to be undone at the beginning of his work in

East St. Louis on behalf of the University of Illinois. What has been largely

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missing, to date, are discussions of engagement that are conscious of place and

also of power, and of the interaction of the two. This chapter aims to strengthen

the connection between these two concepts in the scholarship written about

university and community engagement.

The chapter is divided into four main sections. First, I present a brief

summary of the literature on the scholarship of engagement which emphasizes

the homogenizing effect of the dual focus on exemplars and the rhetoric of civic

responsibility. In the second section, I develop constructs for a spatialized

power-conscious reading designed to disrupt this homogenization. This is

followed by a discussion of the implications of these concepts for practice,

scholarship and theorizing of and community participation in engagement. I

conclude each discussion with recommendations for practitioners and scholars.

Finally, through a story from the community, I offer comments on future

directions in the scholarship of engagement moving forward with a focus on

understanding mutually beneficial engagement through holistic scholarship.

Homogenizing Heterogeneity

I concluded my first research trip to Lewiston with the following note in

my journal:

Reflecting on my 3 days in Lewiston, I don’t know what I learned . . .

and I’m feeling pretty fearful that I’m talking to the “wrong” people

or asking the wrong question or in general missing something.

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I feel this way mostly because when I ask people about

engagement initiatives they describe things in the past – some as much

as 20 years old. Or they talk about programs that are less than

irrelevant as compared to what the literature talks about – baseball, the

Dogwood Festival, figuring out how to handle parking challenges by

working with a neighborhood task force.

This sense of talking to the wrong people, about irrelevant events, stems from the

dominant discourse of the scholarship of engagement, which has defined

community-university interaction in specific ways. Furco’s (1996) paradigm for

student civic engagement activities discussed in chapter 1 is a good example of

this. This is the result of a conversation dominated by the university without

much input from communities and too much focus on research institutions. The

effect has been to homogenize the discussion of engagement to the point that

there appear to be clear-cut differences between the different types of institutions

and some fairly well-defined few types of interactions. Even my categories of

interaction outlined in Figure 1 move in a direction that might perpetuate this

trend.

These portraits of two regional institutions with their roots in the normal

school tradition demonstrate the diversity of campuses which fall into the

category of comprehensive universities. The Carnegie Foundation has

reconfigured its classification system to fine tune points of comparison between

institutions. The literature on engagement has not, for the most part. This is

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problematic in itself. Where Ramaley (2000) talks about comprehensive schools

as uniquely situated to tap into regional networks, she is overlooking the other

elements of place that dictate an institution’s ability or commitment to such

opportunities to work within communities to address local issues. For example,

UCO and LCSC are very different institutions. The University of Central

Oklahoma is quite large, has offered graduate degrees for more than 50 years,

and continues to strive to establish itself as a leading force in the growth of the

state’s knowledge economy. Lewis-Clark State College has a student body less

than one-third the size of UCO, offers no graduate programs, and must

constantly juggle the demands of working in a depressed funding environment,

providing both academic and professional technical programs, across the state’s

largest geographic region, which covers 13,400 square miles of mostly small

towns separated in most cases by more than 20 miles. As another point of

comparison, the 10-county greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area shown in

Figure 3 (see page 86) totals 7891 square miles.

Beyond these structural and geographic differences between the two

institutions, there are significant differences between the communities served by

these two institutions. Lewiston, and particularly the frontier communities of

Region 2, are rural. Oklahoma City is a large urban metropolis. Population

density differs between the two communities. Oklahoma City is the state capital,

served by an international airport and the state’s flagship research university

which UCO has positioned as a partner. Lewiston is geographically removed

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from the state capital, and relationships with lawmakers continue to reflect

historic tensions between north Idaho and distant southern Idaho cities. The

University of Idaho is a competitor as much as a partner for LCSC. Engagement

initiatives can be roughly delineated in the same categories (see Figures 4 and 6),

yet the exact nature of the events and the relative importance of an event on a

particular campus varied from one location to another.

Another element of this place-specificity in engagement is in this story one

participant told to emphasize the level of intentionality that is implicit in

engagement at non-rural schools: “Think if you were a professor at UCLA . . .

unless you make an overt effort, you may never see anyone you work with

except at school or the Christmas party. . . .” This creates a different sense of

what it means, and what is required to be engaged in community. The urban-

rural distinction introduces the element of intentionality to an analysis of

engagement.

One of the LCSC Outreach Center coordinators talked to me about the

interconnections between her work life as representative of the college and her

personal life as mom and community volunteer. Her story reinforces this point

about levels of intentionality in engagement. As a mother of a young son, she

coordinates a community activity involving 280 children and more than 30

adults:

Those are people I interact with a lot. They know what I do, and then

they ask questions when we are sitting around the table talking about

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when are we going to do our pizza party at the end of the year. Are

you doing that computer workshop next week? Is that going? . . .

[My] involvement connects [LCSC] to the community.

In an urban setting such as Oklahoma City, a university employee’s local grocery

story may not be the campus’ neighboring community grocery. A researcher or

community liaison may not be able to rely as heavily on a mutually reinforcing

network of work and personal acquaintances.

The current scholarship on university outreach and engagement currently

treats all institutions (of the same type) as essentially the same. By doing so, it

does further disservice beyond misrecognizing institutional type as a marker of

sameness. Communities suffer when universities subscribe to the notion that the

metanarrative of exemplars in higher education can be made to fit anywhere.

The homogenizing impact of a literature which has overlooked place and under-

theorized power, feeds on the ambiguity of terms and the rhetoric employed in

the discourse. Community is an amorphous term full of context. This makes it

very easy to call nearly anything community-university engagement and to laud it

as evidence of the university’s commitment to the community. However, this is

also a barrier in achieving mutually beneficial engagement. If we do not define

or know precisely what the community is, how can we know any more about

what is beneficial to that group? This calls for greater care and clarity, and to do

that requires a new way of thinking about the community element of

engagement.

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Disrupting Homogenity

Of course, one of the advantages of being in a position of power is that it enables groups of agents to designate what is “authentic” capital. Generally, the value or otherwise of specific forms of capital is determined within, and often confined to, a particular field – although overlapping does occur.” (Webb, et al., 2002, p. 23)

The homogenizing effect discussed in the previous section is essentially

the creation of a dominant narrative which operates as a hegemonic structure in

much of the literature on the scholarship of engagement. In chapter 3, I

constructed a theoretical framework bringing together Bourdieu’s work on

power/capital with Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) critical geography as a way to

reinforce the key role that power plays in shaping the spaces and the terms of

engagement. In field theory, Bourdieu (1986) writes about capital in its three

forms: cultural, social, and economic. He also clarifies that capital and power

are synonymous terms (Bourdieu, 1989). I use them as such in this analysis, so as

to make clear the connection between sociology and critical geography where

field and place are analogous. For the purposes of this discussion, power results

in some instances from formal or informal education (what Bourdieu calls

“cultural capital”) and also from connections to powerful family, political or

other social networks (or “social capital”). Each of these may be achieved

through or converted into economic capital (Bourdieu, 1986). This discussion

begins with some of specific points on the particular forms of capital and their

conversion, and then moves to the bigger picture of how capital/power is

amassed in the fields of community, university, and engagement.

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“Because the social conditions of its transmission and acquisition are more

disguised than those of economic capital, [cultural capital] is predisposed to

function as symbolic capital, i.e., to be unrecognized as capital and recognized as

legitimate competence” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 245). This clarifies the difference

between LCSC and UCO as not one of size or experience; it is a difference in the

accumulation of cultural capital. Bourdieu argues that the embodied nature of

cultural capital “implies a labor and inculcation” (1986, p. 244) by the individual.

Again, this makes the most sense when thinking about the institution as an

individual in keeping with Achbar, Simpson, Abbott, and Bakan’s (2004)

treatment of corporations. For instance, in Oklahoma City, UCO administrators

and municipal leaders are reading urban development literature focused on

macro-level community change. This is not to say that Lewiston officials are not

reading in the same literature, but if they are it did not rise to the level of

awareness or intentionality in terms of how they talk about their thinking/action

in growing the business community.

Bourdieu also talks about the role of the family in mediating the

acquisition of cultural capital. He is essentially saying that if a family has the

economic capital to “prolong [the individual’s] acquisition process” (1986, p. 246)

– rather than respond to economic necessity and send the kid to work – this

contributes to greater accumulation of cultural capital. This is Bourdieu’s

explanation for the connection between economic capital and cultural capital,

why students from wealthier families have higher achievement records.

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In the context of the present study, this is the explanation for the

differential accumulation of cultural capital by Lewis-Clark State College and the

University of Central Oklahoma. In Idaho, LCSC has struggled for more than

100 years in a state of almost perpetual underfunding. I noticed the ramifications

of this situation even in my interviews, which are broken into five, six, even

seven segments divided by the number of times a participant has to take another

phone call or attend to a visitor to the office. The simple explanation is that

LCSC is understaffed, and many units have been “asked to do more with less” as

several people told me to address the fiscal challenges of the last seven years at

LCSC. As a result, there simply are not, in many offices, enough staff to cover for

the hour that I needed to talk with the participant. The president talked a length

about this very situation, noting the work that she has had to do to shore up the

state appropriations. Others praise her because of her success in these

endeavors. She described dedicating a considerable amount of her attention in

the early days of her administration to restructuring budgets to address funding

shortfalls. Worries about the negative impact of perceived duplication with the

University of Idaho, and threats of closure arising in 30-year cycles contribute to

a vague, ubiquitous fear for the future of the school which seems to be held at

bay by the successful relationship that President Thomas has built with state

legislators. In this environment, LCSC administrators, faculty and staff are no

people who have time to read and think deeply about what the college might be

doing. The discourse I heard was on a much more practical level of the impact of

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the college on the L-C Valley’s economic situation, and how to improve it in the

immediate future.

The region itself is a big, diverse place and hard to get one’s head around.

So, of course in the current situation there is not the luxury of time to read or

more staff to take on responsibilities while a particular administrator ponders the

economic picture. The University of Central Oklahoma, on the other hand, does

have more resources to make this kind of accumulation of cultural capital

possible. So, it really all does come down to the socio-economics of engagement.

Social capital, networks, are part, too, in terms of access/connections to those

who can change, for example, the funding situation.

Place, as a network of social interactions more so than physical location,

matters in this discussion because of the frame it provides to answer a

fundamental questions posed at the beginning of the chapter: How does the

(contested) construction of space/place produce the terms of engagement? The

answer is in three parts: ideology, history, and participation and exclusion.

Ideology

Places are filled with ideologies and the work of spatialized power-

conscious scholarship is to unpack these ideologies (D. Gruenewald, personal

communication, May 16, 2008). Lefebvre (1974/1991) discusses representation of

space, the concept he uses to denote the impact of ideology on the physical space.

In the terms of engagement, ideology matters as the force which identifies and

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validates what is possible, or viable, in terms of interaction between university

and community.

In the case of both the University of Central Oklahoma and Lewis-Clark

State College, specific thinking about the economic situation informs the

engagement agenda. In Oklahoma City, the term “economic development”

frames the discussion – connoting long term, broad-based changes. A focus on

“economic impact” shapes L-C’s entire outlook on its role in the local, regional,

and state-wide communities.

History

Cameron (2008) demonstrates the significance of history in the discussion

of place through stories of the past and the creation of nostalgic feelings about

the inherent significance of places that have been lost. Drawing on Gruenewald’s

(2003) idea of “reinhabitation,” or revisiting history, Cameron emphasizes the

importance of conscious efforts do what Helfenbein (2006b) refers to as placing

ideas. I position historical forces as significant in community-university

engagement because they are the result of long-term trends in attitude, behavior,

and circumstance. These historical trends shape the ontological conditions

which produce ideological positions. For both institutions, then, history matters

as the normal school legacy of regional focus and outreach continue to shape

who and what UCO and LCSC are in the present day.

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Participation and Exclusion

Participation reflects the ideology and history of community issues when

themselves reflect the distribution of power/capital in the community/field.

Webb, et al. (2002) point out in the epigraph for this section that “one of the

advantages of being in power is that it enables groups of agents to designate

what ‘authentic’ capital is” (p. 23). Ideology and history together play an

epistemological role in determining what constitutes an issue requiring or

worthy of being addressed through a community-university partnership and

identifying the people with a legitimate, or “authentic,” interest in resolving that

issue.

Following this same logic history, ideology and the power/capital

misrecognized in the two can operate to exclude participants, issues, and

possibilities. This may result from historic trends, such as the long-term

economic and social class division of Edmond by the railroad tracks into

essentially two communities. One of the communities – to paraphrase one

participant –has something to do with the university. The other does not, or at

least it is conceived of that way by a dominant ideology shaping community

university interaction in the community.

Ideology and history may also conspire to exclude either participants or

projects. In Idaho’s Region 2, the LCSC Outreach Centers are conceptualized by

the university as extension offices providing services to students and potential

students. This has effectively shut off possibilities for community development

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initiatives which could build what Flora (1998) calls entrepreneurial social

infrastructure, or increased capital/power, for the community.

This discussion assumes that the campuses and their leaders want to

engage. I heard that commitment on both campuses, repeatedly. However,

following Morphew and Hartley’s (2006) study of college mission statements, the

definition of words like engagement, community, and service are amorphorous

and this, I argue, undermines the authenticity of these commitments threatening

to render them not much more than strategic communication with external

stakeholders as Morphew and Hartley’s findings suggest.

Implications and Recommendations

This study outlines the layered, complex nature of the relationship

between comprehensive colleges and universities and the communities they

serve. This nuanced look at engagement through the stories of those involved

suggests contributions to community members’ practice of engaging with

regional institutions and the practice of engaged scholarship by university-based

faculty, the scholarship of engagement, and theorizing this literature. This

section addresses each of these four areas in turn, discussing implications of this

research and offering recommendations for further practice and scholarship.

Communities Engaging with Regional Universities

Cox (2000) argues that university and community organizations make

conscious decisions to participate in a community-university partnership effort

in order to serve their fundamental interests in a given situation. In fact, he

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continues, the success of the partnership depends upon these diverse interests:

“Only sufficient types and levels of specific individual interests can create and

sustain the partnership” (p. 9-10). In the Industrial Area Foundation tradition,

community organizers refer to “self-interest” and see this as the glue for long-

lasting relationships. Indeed, one must explore the range of all partners’

interests, resources, and knowledge to understand the partnership as a whole

(Alinsky, 1969, 1971; Chambers, 2003). In the portraits presented in chapters 5

and 6 of this dissertation, resources are more evident in Layer 1. Layer 2 reveals

the interests of the institutions in the discussion of the themes which undergird

the rhetoric of engagement in the regional institutions. Community interests and

the knowledge and other resources which strengthen partnerships are addressed

in Layer 3.

This dissertation is fundamentally shaped by my personal commitment to

critical engagement, defined by Fear et al (2006) as “opportunities to share our

knowledge and learn with those who struggle for social justice; and to

collaborate with them respectfully and responsibly for the purpose of improving

life” (emphasis in original; p. xiii). Through the experience of my research, I

recognized the middle-class values and privilege (Johnson, 2001) that underlie

discussions of “social justice,” and I have moved away from this language. I do,

however, still hold a commitment to partnerships which are fundamentally

about sharing knowledge and learning, all for the purpose of improving life.

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This is the same impetus behind Boyer’s (1996) call and many other exhortations

from the academy. The good intentions, in other words, are in place.

Nadine Cruz, first a grassroots activist and later a pioneer of civic

engagement, points out something often missing from the university’s rhetoric of

civic responsibility in her 2007 discussion of the knowledge that will be required

to resolve all the problems currently facing the world. “Imagine this knowledge

can be represented by a circle,” she says. The portion of that requisite

knowledge which is generated by the academy is represented by a very small

triangle. She estimates that slice to be equivalent to perhaps 3% of the circle. The

portraits presented in this dissertation reinforce Cruz and others’ calls for

community partners to claim their knowledge (Moore & Avila, 2007), Doing so in

turn facilitates the creation of knowledge by the partnership.

Recommendations for Community Leaders and Organizations

1. Take care in clearly defining “community” and involving all interested or

affected parties in discussions of community issues and engagement opportunities. The

story of UCO and its engagement with Edmond and with the greater Oklahoma

City area highlights the degree to which the rhetoric of growth marginalized

under-represented groups and discussions of “good schools” masked issues of

race and class which further exclude many in the community from pertinent

conversations.

2. Identify and consistently articulate community/organizational interests,

resources, and knowledge. Cox (2000) and community organizers (Alinsky, 1969,

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1971; Chambers, 2003) argue the importance of these interests, positioning them

as “the glue” which will hold the partnerships together. The university will

come into any relationship with a clear sense of its interests. The community

bears the responsibility for doing the same.

3. Before becoming involved in a partnership or other initiative with the

comprehensive college or university in the region, become educated about the culture and

history of this institution in particular and of higher education in general. Faculty

members are expected to focus their efforts on particular requirements of their

contracts and are therefore somewhat limited in how they are able to engage

with communities. Understanding these parameters, and learning about the

organizational chart and entry points for the college will be important in

maximizing opportunities to work with the institution.

The Practice of Community-Engaged Scholarship

Bourdieu (1989) offers a point for consideration in this statement: “To

change the world, one has to change the ways of world-making, that is, the

vision of the world and the practical operations by which groups are produced

and reproduced” (p. 23). This suggests that changing the culture of engagement

requires changing the way universities make meaning of indigenous, or

community-based knowledge. The question that remains is simple: how?

This question calls for clarification of common notions about differences

between the scholarship of engagement and engaged scholarship. Typically, the

phrase scholarship of engagement refers to the study of scholarship documenting,

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discussing, or calling for engagement. Engaged scholarship is the work of

faculty members and community partners to address community-based issues by

mobilizing the university’s resources. For many this is a hard and fast

distinction, meaning that the scholarship of engagement is not itself engaged

scholarship. I take issue with this point as a fundamental premise of this

dissertation.

Engagement is defined as “mutually beneficial” (AASCU, 2002; Carnegie

Foundation, n.d.). However, the literature does not often reflect community

voices which would help to clarify what is mutually beneficial. To address this

gap through the present study, I have included representatives affiliated with the

university and those primarily affiliated with community or community

organizations in this study. This dissertation is, then, in some ways an example

of engaged scholarship in that I have taken up with community members the

problem of achieving mutuality in engagement efforts. This may stretch the

definitions of engaged scholarship, but it also points to the relevance of several of

these findings to the practice of both engaged scholarship and the scholarship of

engagement.

Recommendations for Community-Engaged Scholars and Administrators

1. Consider place and its social construction when incorporating lessons from

existing scholarship. This dissertation demonstrates that place matters in

engagement because of the characteristic features of any given community. No

one place is terminally unique, unlike any other place. There are important

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differences between urban and rural communities in various geographic regions,

but even these fairly broad descriptors of communities can mask individual

idiosyncracies which will be important in building relationships and negotiating

the power networks of a given community.

2. To develop mutually beneficial partnerships, work at building relationships

with communities before embarking on the design of a research project. These

relationships will be the basis for understanding the important mix of history,

culture, and social life which is the context for any work in the community. The

absence of the Nimií-puu/Nez Perce story in this dissertation is precisely a

reflection of my failure to learn this lesson early enough in my own research. I

was too far along in my own planning before approaching the Tribal Executive

Council for permission to interview tribal members. That is my mistake, and this

narrative is incomplete because of it. Many have been criticized for drive-by

research (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Reardon, 1999, 2007) precisely because there

was not enough attention given to the community. Many elements of faculty

work make this a challenging proposition. Nonetheless, the rewards are rich for

those who conceptualize their efforts as working with a community.

3. Move beyond binary, “town and gown” thinking about the relationship

between the university and the larger regional community it serves. As Cruz (2007)

has argued, only a small part of the knowledge required to address society’s

issues and opportunities resides in academia. Fear et al. (2006) provide a guide

in their definition of engagement as a mutual sharing of information and

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learning. The question in front of the engaged institution and the engaged

scholar must always be this: What can the community teach about a given

situation or topic?

Scholarship Related to Community-Engaged Scholarship

The principal contribution of this dissertation to the literature on the

scholarship of engagement is the development of layering as a method of data

analysis. The current body of literature consists primarily of descriptions of

individual engagement initiatives fitting into one or another category of

interaction outlined in Figure 1 (see chapter 1, p. 7). More work is appearing

which looks at a single institution, across initiatives, in such a way as to delve

into what I have presented here as the second layer of data. Occasionally, and

somewhat in passing, these pieces suggest or briefly trace relevant connections to

culture, history and social relationships as context for the engagement. This

dissertation demonstrates that in fact, place matters much more than as been

acknowledged previously. For example, the emphasis on changing the regional

economy is the driving theme of engagement in both case studies.

Understanding natural resource-based economies and the increasing emphasis

on building regional markets in response to globalization as a context for

engagement becomes clearly more important to discussions of community-

university interactions in a regional setting.

By not giving attention to place and context, the literature remains stuck

in discussions of university mission, faculty work, and the rhetoric of civic

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responsibility. These themes also support a prevalent focus on faculty reward

systems (Driscoll & Lynton, 1999; Diamond & Adam, 2000; O’Meara, 2002, 2005;

Rice & O’Meara, 2005) and institutional best practices (Bringle, Games, & Malloy,

1999; Lynton & Elman, 1987; Singleton et al, 1999; Walshok, 1995). Scholarship

perpetuating the exemplar model is problematic for two intertwined reasons.

First, these pieces do not often carefully place the engagement (Helfenbein, 2006b)

in cultural, historical and social context, and then explicate the import of that

context. Second, place cannot be replicated given that it is socially constructed

(Cresswell, 2004; Harvey, 1993) by its users and simultaneously shapes those

users. This means that no other combination of person and place can reproduce

my experience in the place where I work, regardless of how well-documented

the best practices. All this is to relate one pivotal point emerging in the current

work: This dissertation is powerful only in what it says about the specific cases it

examines, and in the methodology used to arrive at the findings. It should not be

read as any sort of checklist for issues in engagement or even engagement in

regional institutions.

Recommendations for Scholarship Related to Engagement

1. Be specific in defining community on the community’s terms and then hold the

university or individual researcher to that standard in evaluating their work. The

power relations that are highlighted by the critical framework of this dissertation

demonstrate that some people are being routinely left of out “the community,”

and the university becomes complicit in this marginalization. Scholars of

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engagement must take every opportunity to hold higher education to the

rhetoric of mutuality and civic responsibility most broadly defined.

2. Include community perspectives in the scholarship of engagement. Prevailing

definitions of engagement (AASCU, 2002; Carnegie Foundation, n.d.) emphasize

mutual benefit, yet as I have demonstrated in this dissertation, the absence of

community perspective in the literature and in the design of many projects

endangers mutuality. A key future direction for scholarship is toward a broader

understanding of the community experience of engagement. Scholars involved

in community-engaged research must consider and then include the wisdom of

the community in their projects. Equally important is the work of scholars

studying these projects to draw lessons from them that are informed by the

community’s experience of the partnership.

3. Consider history, culture and social relations as important context for

engagement. The message of this dissertation’s methodology emphasizes two

points relevant to the scholarship of engagement and also to engaged

scholarship. First, interrogate critically the place, with focus on understanding

the current issues and the context within which they developed. Then,

investigate the way power is exercised, by whom, to what end. By being open to

these things, research can include the community and achieve the

transformative, authentic engagement envisioned by Fear et al. (2006) and others

(AASCU, 2002; Carnegie Foundation, n.d.).

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Theorizing

The organizational sagas presented in the top layer of the data mirrors the

common stuff of engagement narratives that are readily available in the

literature. This body of work does not go far enough to provide a nuanced

understanding of the interaction between a community and a comprehensive

university. Placing engagement in the way Helfenbein (2006b) suggests requires

something more like the thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the ethnographer.

While years in the field are neither required nor possible, the scholarship does

need to be cognizant of historical, socio-economic, spatial and cultural

particularities of the place where the engagement is located.

More to the point, the analysis undertaken in this study calls for pushing

current understandings of community-university interaction by bumping up

against the theorectical literature in a way that expands the discussion beyond

organizational theory, much of which emerged from the business management

literature. Given Slaughter and Rhoads’ (2004) positioning of universities as

economic actors on a corporate model, organizational theories contribute to the

homogenizing effect of the literature on the whole. A spatialized power-

conscious reading instead disrupts the dominant narrative of best practices and

exemplars and introduces additional opportunities to employ critical social and

cultural theories to the study and practice of university engagement.

227

Recommendations for Theorizing Engagement

1. Look for power in the relationships that produce and reflect engagement

between comprehensive universities and the regional communities they serve. The

university’s role in shaping communities and exerting influence through

cultural, social and economic capital on the tenor and purpose of relationships is

under-examined. Ignoring the working of capital in this way perpetuates the

potential for exploitative and university-centric interactions with communities.

This recommendation reflects the praxis focus of critical theory, and it also

assumes that exposing the workings of power will provide valuable insights for

doing these relationships differently.

2. Draw on cultural and social theory to produce new readings of engagement.

To date, literature in this field has focused to a large degree on engagement from

an organizational perspective, positioning people as little more than

organizational actors. Many participants in this study spoke colloquially of

“wearing different hats,” or playing a variety of roles in the community. The

scholarship in this field needs a more robust way of exploring the interplay of

these various identities and their impact on shaping the space of engagement.

The narrative approach taken in this dissertation, supported by the growing use

of narrative inquiry in organizational studies, reveals the value of understanding

individual experience as something that is part of and also more than the story of

the organization.

228

In summary, place and power matter tremendously in the practice,

scholarship and theorizing of engagement to a degree that has been under-

appreciated to date. This section explores some of the implications of this

oversight, and offers specific recommendations for spatializing this field and

drawing on critical theory to interrogate and reconstruct relationships between

community and university in the context of regional institutions. Greater clarity

on these issues reinforces the central argument of the dissertation: engagement

which is truly mutually beneficial reflects the input of all members of the larger

community, representatives of the university and beyond. Mutual benefit

reflects a deep understanding of the assets and opportunities, and clear planning

about mobilizing one to refer to the other. In the final section of this dissertation,

I stress this particular point, borrowing a story about the meeting of souls as a

way to express the importance of careful relationship building and attention to

the broadest definitions of community.

Arriving at Mutual Benefit

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (2002), the

national organization for regional colleges, calls for engagement which is a

“direct, two-way inter-action . . . through the development, exchange, and

application of knowledge, information and expertise for mutual benefit” (p. 7).

Another relevant definition, particularly as the University of Central Oklahoma

seeks “Community Engagement” classification, is the Carnegie Foundation’s

(n.d.) statement, which reads as follows: ”Community Engagement describes the

229

collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger

communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial

exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and

reciprocity.” Both definitions of engagement are deceptively simple, and might

be understood to mean that having a partnership is by definition reciprocal and

mutually beneficial. Indeed, similar definitions have been read this way for a

long time and the result is the precise body of literature that I critiqued in

chapter 1 for the absence of community perspectives. What is missing from the

well-documented projects and partnerships as a whole is broad evidence of the

involvement of community members in conceiving, planning, implementing and

reporting these reciprocal partnerships.

I asked questions at both sites in this research about the structures

supporting communication between university and community. In Region 2,

these conversations happen in “pretty informal” ways, “because everyone knows

each other well enough, or are comfortable enough that they can pick up the

phone and say maybe we need to have discussions about this.” This notion that

“everyone” is represented in these phone calls may be somewhat naïve, given

the discussion of marginalization in chapter 5. UCO and the city of Edmond

established the more formal structure of bi-monthly meetings, facilitating

smoother coordination on large projects (e.g., planning water usage needs and

appropriate plumbing for the new residence hall being built on the edge of

campus). These do not, however, begin to touch the issues and opportunities

230

that truly matter to community residents. In fact, the existence of these meetings

serves to highlight the absence of obvious conduits for expanded interface

between community members and interested faculty. In this way, the story of

these meetings is proleptic, an introduction to an argument which needs to be

developed in future scholarship.

A member of the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan community,

describing the University of Central Oklahoma’s engagement, suggested a

reason for the relative absence of community perspectives in the scholarship and

the practice of engagement. He continued, offering a plan to address this. First,

the university and the city should have identified liaisons to work directly with

one another. Beyond these staff positions, he called for a monthly face-to-face

gathering, “probably . . . a breakfast or a lunch and have the university talk about

what they’re doing and then have the city talk about what they’re doing, and

then they can each disseminate information.” The absence of these clearly

defined structures for interaction, he argued, limits the degree to which the

university is truly responsive to community issues. I described the bi-monthly

meetings between UCO administrators and City of Edmond officials as an

example of institutionalized interaction. He dismissed the bi-monthly meetings:

Yeah. And see, those aren’t the souls. Those are just the . . . those are

just the worker jeans. The city manager’s not the soul of the city.

They’re just the worker bee. And some of these VPs of administration,

231

they have no soul. They’re just . . . a mechanic, you know. And so the

souls aren’t really meeting, are they?

This simple observation is the key message of this dissertation. Building

mutually beneficial engagement initiatives first requires a deep understanding of

both the university and the community. This dissertation purposefully

developed an approach for reaching this deeper understanding through a

layered reading of the narrative of engagement which intentionally builds upon

the surface stories of partnerships by analyzing the discourse which frames these

interactions, places engagement in context, and then draws on theory to offer new

understandings of the story of the interactions between comprehensive

universities and the regional communities they serve.

If we are to take Boyer’s (1996) call for engagement seriously, and link it to

the empassioned writing on civic responsibility (Boyte, 2004; Checkoway, 2001;

Ehrlich, 2000) and transformative engagement (Fear et al., 2006), the souls must

meet. Perhaps the language presents a barrier and instead the discourse should

focus on the analogous idea of a power node; these are interchangeable terms in

this work, reflecting the importance of personal passion in the careers of faculty

doing community-engaged scholarship (Moore and Ward, 2007). The soul of an

institution or community is diffuse. It may be in actuality an individual person,

groups of people, or mythical qualities ascribed to the college itself accessed only

through people as in Clark’s (1970/2007) study of distinctive colleges.

232

Regardless of language, or the location of the power node(s) of an

organization, the questions remain the same: who has power? How is it

expressed? How does this shape the terms of engagement? These questions

cannot be answered without the involvement of representatives of the

comprehensive university and of the regional community it serves. When all

interested parties – beyond the people labeled “STPs,” or “same ten people,” by

one community member – are involved, the resulting initiatives stand a better

chance of being mutually beneficial.

233

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APPENDICES

258

Appendix A: Nominated Initiative Interview Guide

I am studying the interaction between Lewis Clark State College/ the University

of Central Oklahoma and the larger community. In our conversation, I want to learn about North Central Idaho/the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area from your perspective.

1. When I ask you about “community,” what does that mean to you?

2. I haven’t lived here very long/in a long time. Tell me a story about this community that will help me understand the place where you live.

How long have you lived here? What is it like to live here? How do people treat each other? What is the community known for?

3. Tell me about your role in the community. What is your role? How long have you been in that role? What’s required to do that role well? Who do you work with in your role? What do you love about your role? What is the most challenging thing about your role?

4. I’d like to know more about the place where you work. Tell me about your employer. What’s your job there? Who do you work with in other parts of the community? When/how do you interact with them? What role does your employer play in the community?

5. Tell me about your vision for this community. What is important to you about the place where you live?

Why is this important? What is required to maintain this? What needs to change to help this to happen? Who could help make things better? If you were in charge, tell me what you would do to make sure this happened.

259

6. Tell me a story about a time when you were involved with something that included people from the community who worked at the university, as well as people from other sectors of the community.

How did the initiative start? Who was involved? Why? Who wasn’t involved? Why? What worked well? What should go differently next time? What is it about this experience that made you choose it to share with me?

7. What else do I need to know to understand this community and your role in it?

260

Appendix B: Non-Advancing Initiative/Withdrawing Partner Interview Guide

I am studying the interaction between Lewis Clark State College/ the University

of Central Oklahoma and the larger community. In our conversation, I want to learn about North Central Idaho/the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area from your perspective.

1. When I ask you about “community”, what does that mean to you?

2. I haven’t lived here very long/in a long time. Tell me a story about this community that will help me understand the place where you live.

How long have you lived here? What is it like to live here? How do people treat each other? What is this community known for?

3. Tell me about your role in the community. What is your role? How long have you been in that role? What’s required to do that role well? Who do you work with in your role? What do you love about your role? What is the most challenging thing about your role?

4. I’d like to know more about the place where you work. Tell me about your employer. What’s your job there? Who do you work with in other parts of the community? When/how do you interact with them? What role does your employer play in the community?

5. Tell me about your vision for this community. What is important to you about the place where you live?

Why is this important? What is required to maintain this? What needs to change to help this to happen? Who could help make things better? If you were in charge, tell me what you would do to make sure this happened.

6. What else do I need to know to understand this community and your role in it?

261

7. Tell me a story about a time when you were involved with something that included people from the community who worked at the university, as well as people from other sectors of the community.

How did the initiative start? Who was involved? Why? Who wasn’t involved? Why? What worked well? What should go differently next time? What is it about this experience that made you choose it to share with me?

8. I’m interested to know about challenges that have come up in initiatives linking the community and the university. Based on the experience you just shared with me, tell me about the obstacles you see in making these relationships work.

What are the obstacles? How might they be addressed? Tell me about a time when obstacles were resolved effectively. What went right? Tell me about a time when obstacles were not resolved effectively What could have gone more smoothly?

Tell me how these experiences have impacted your subsequent decisions to get involved in activities that involve the university and the larger community.

9. What else do I need to know to understand your experiences with

frustrating or failed initiatives?

262

Appendix C: Informational Interview Guide

I am studying the interaction between Lewis Clark State College/ the University

of Central Oklahoma and the larger community. In our conversation, I want to learn about North Central Idaho/the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area from your perspective.

1. When I ask you about “community,” what does that mean to you?

2. I haven’t lived here very long/in a long time. Tell me a story about this community that will help me understand the place where you live.

How long have you lived here? What is it like to live here? How do people treat each other? What is this community known for?

I also want to learn more about specific initiatives that are linking the university with the larger community. I want to know more about both initiatives that have been successful, and those that have met challenges and perhaps failed. I would appreciate your help in identifying projects and people I should speak with.

3. Tell me about initiatives that you consider to be particularly successful. What is the initiative? Who is involved? What is it about this initiative that you think of as successful? What challenges have the members of this team experienced? How have those challenges been resolved?

4. Tell me about ideas for engagement that have met with significant obstacles, and/or have not been able to go forward

What was the idea/initiative? Who was involved? What obstacles arose? What efforts were made to address these obstacles? What worked? What didn’t? Tell me what you know about why the idea was not able to go forward.

263

I’m also interested to speak with partners who may have been involved with projects between the university and the community, who are no longer participating in those efforts. I would appreciate your help in identifying some of these folks.

5. Tell me about people who may have previously been involved in partnerships but are no longer working on these efforts.

What was s/he involved in? Why, from you perspective, is s/he no longer working with the initiative? How might I contact him/her?

Thank you for your assistance with this research project. I look forward to continuing our conversation during my visit to Oklahoma City/Lewiston later this fall.