The High-Impact Initiative is working to catalyze and support a multi-year developmental strategy for campus teams involving faculty, administrators (especially provosts and academic leaders), students, and community partners to make community engagement deeper, broader, and more pervasive. In particular, it supports these teams to connect high-impact educational practices with high-impact community engagement, as a strategy that supports student learning and success; deep, reciprocal and meaningful partnerships with communities; and the public mission of higher education.
The Initiative's design is informed by cutting-edge research and scholarship about what works for students, especially students from low-income, first generation, and under-served backgrounds. It is also informed by research and scholarship about the Bonner Program and other models for civic engagement which point to the effectiveness of cohort-based, deep, multi-year, developmental and integrative experiences.
This initiative leverages the powerful research generated in the LEAP Report and College Learning for the New Global Century, as well as subsequent publications about high-impact practices. This research derives from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which is used on more than 1,100 campuses nationwide. This initiative is also one way that the Bonner Foundation is responding to the key insights in the recently released report, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. We believe that we can build on our twenty year experience—while tapping the most promising research about the practices that result in student learning and success—to harness the power of community engagement.
What makes something high-impact are that it is:
- They involve time on task and effort
- They help students build substantive relationships
- They help students engage across differences
- They provide students with rich feedback
- They help students apply and test what they are learning in new situations
- They provide opportunities for students to reflect on the people they are becoming
- They involve mentors
Research suggests that service-learning is one of the most powerful HIPs, boosting students learning in areas (such as critical thinking and deep learning) reflected in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) (Finley & McNair, 2013). Yet, research also suggests that the average student graduates without a systematic involvement in HIPs; Finley and McNair found in a large-scale study involving three state university systems that the average was only 1.3 for a graduating student.
Spreading High-Impact Practices Connected to Community Engagement
Looking at the Bonner developmental model and program, we find that Bonner Scholars and Leaders are effectively involved in multiple high-impact practices over the course of their four years including:
• First Year Experiences
• Internships
• Learning Communities
• Service-Learning
• Collaborative Assignments and Undergraduate Research
• Diversity and Global Immersions
• Capstones
and others. At times these are linked to courses and credit, but at other times they are predominantly co-curricular. Still, they have the characteristics (such as mentoring, reflection, engagement across differences, and the opportunity for applied learning) noted above.
Indeed, we believe and know that all of the high-impact practices can be experiential -- linked with community and civic engagement. By systematically linking practices such as first-year experiences, course-based internships, writing intensive courses, undergraduate research, capstones with civic and community engagement, the project seeks to help campuses scale effective community engagement initiatives that reach more students and maximize the meaningful impact for communities.
A Developmental Cohort-based Approach
The High-Impact Initiative utilizes cohorts, a proven practice. We launched the Bonner High-Impact Initiative in 2012, with nine institutions joining the first cohort. Siena College hosted the first High-Impact Institute in July 2012. Another nine institutions joined in Summer 2013, with the second Institute also hosted by Siena College. A third cohort of six institutions joined in Summer 2014. A third cohort of six institutions joined in Summer 2015, bringing the total to 24.
Each institution is leveraging the leadership of a core team involving experienced program staff, senior and junior faculty members, senior administrators, community partner representatives, and student leaders. The teams drives strategic visioning and planning. They attend a series of three intensive summer institutes, during which time they work collaboratively to map a plan for integrating high-impact practices and high-impact community engagement.
Back on campus and in the community, they mobilize support of their peer and colleagues to implement their plans. The Foundation provides strategic support, as well as resources and models. The Bonner High-Impact Initiative relies on the conviction that the thoughtful integration of high-impact educational practices with community engagement can enable individual campuses and the national network to significantly strengthen their Bonner Programs (or other co- curricular developmental programs), as well as deepen institutional civic engagement.
While building and integrating these high-impact strategies, the institution will also build the capacity and infrastructure to provide public policy research and support issue-oriented community strategies for specific program model and issue areas. The Foundation works to create a national learning community for campuses with civic partners like AAC&U, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Bringing Theory to Practice, Imagining America, NERCHE, and others.
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