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The Renewal of Civic Life:
One College's Journey

The author shares the story of her college, the College of St. Catherine, as it begins to move beyond the rhetoric of renewal, civic education, and democratic action to concretely engage in this issue. In addition, one of St. Catherine's students shares her expectations and observations as the college puts rhetoric into action. Case study plus.

Case Study Plus: Renewal of Civic Life

By Joanne Cavallaro.
Originally published in Higher Education Exchange, David W. Brown, editor.
Copyright © 1995 by the Kettering Foundation.

"Courses on civic education, and workshops on diversity are not enough. "

How can we teach citizenship and democratic skills in an environment that is in many important ways undemocratic? Institutions of higher education will have to take this question seriously if we are going to prepare students for public life and democratic participation. Ernest Boyer challenged higher education to create "a new model of excellence" that could "contribute to national renewal" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 1994). We are called upon by politicians, academes, and the general public to educate students to become active, civic-minded participants in the public affairs of their communities.

The challenges raised by this demand are serious, and difficult, for they require recognition of, and deliberate attention to, the very real and often divisive strains among groups on campus; divisions present not just among students, but among educators themselves. We who are charged with helping students learn the skills necessary for democratic participation in public life must ourselves learn these skills. We must address the divisions that separate us: divisions among discipline, especially between professional and liberal arts departments; between administrators and faculty; and between full-time and adjunct faculty. Unless we do so, unless we take hold of divisiveness itself in a serious, tough-minded way, our allegiance to civic education, diversity, and citizenship will ring hollow if not false.

We know that courses on civic education, obligatory student participation in community service, and workshops on diversity are not enough. In order to renew our culture so that the work of educational institutions is redefined as educating citizens_ethical, informed, skillful, participating citizens_we need to address several serious and discordant issues: issues of power, interest, and identity. On many campuses, pressing questions about patterns of power and governance structures; about the separateness and mutual dependence of institutional, group and individual interests; about identity and the socialization processes and reward structures that help form identity_ these questions are rarely asked. Asking these questions often leads to central, fundamental changes, and such changes are always difficult, often threatening, even when we desire them. If we don't face them, however, we are ensuring that our rhetoric about renewal, civic education, and democratic action will remain hollow and devoid of vital action.

The College of St. Catherine has a double heritage that has prompted it to move beyond rhetoric to concretely engage these issues. A women's liberal arts college, the College of St. Catherine was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, an order with a long history of dedication to women's education and community service. The college has long recognized the need to educate women to be active citizens, and this tradition fosters our recognition of how women have been excluded from or marginalized in decision making and civic life. The Sisters of St. Joseph have, in recent years, been struggling to develop a collaborative governance structure, and their example has encouraged the college in its own efforts.

At the college, our journey of self-renewal began in 1990 with the recognition that we needed to reinvigorate ourselves as a community. As with many campuses across the country, there was fairly widespread agreement that our historical sense of community was being eroded. In particular, the Sisters of St. Joseph, the heart and soul of the college for many years, were no longer the cohesive presence they once had been. Societal pressures had intensified to undermine community, and scarce resources and perceived threats to job security exacerbated the divisions on campus. Increasingly, faculty and staff felt powerless to effect change in any substantial way. Several instances of bigotry against students and faculty shook our image of ourselves as a tolerant, caring community.

Five years ago we began attacking this perceived lack of community with an effort to reinvigorate the faculty. After wide consultation among faculty across disciplines, Project Colleague was created and eventually funded by The Bush Foundation. The goals of the project were twofold: to create a more collegial and less formal climate among faculty by encouraging collaboration across disciplines, and to improve teaching and learning through interdisciplinary faculty collaboration. At the heart of the project was an innovative way to encourage faculty to see collaborative research and study as integral to their work: interdisciplinary faculty study groups. These groups, funded by the grant, gave faculty a chance to come together to learn about issues of mutual intellectual interest that were relevant to their work as educators. By design, each study group had to include faculty from a mix of disciplines, both liberal arts and professional, as well as faculty who were new to the college. In addition, administrative or student affairs staff could also participate. Issues studied by the groups include feminist pedagogy, diversity in the classroom, the nature of work, citizenship and higher education, and the Twin Cities metropolitan area as a classroom. In all, after three years, dose to 60 percent of the faculty had participated in this program.

Project Colleague, and the changing patterns of interaction it encouraged, helped lay a new foundation for our common work. Now we were faced with trying to work collaboratively to solve problems of importance to the entire campus community: creating a new core curriculum for the first time in over 20 years. After several failed and divisive attempts, a committee representing every department on campus was created. Committee discussions were heated, partisan, impassioned, but consensus was finally reached. The difference between this successful outcome and earlier attempts rested on two crucial decisions: to incorporate broadbased discussions that openly encouraged diverse perspectives, and to make these discussions public.

Establishing the work of the committee as public work was critical, for it spoke to framing a vision for the college as a whole, a vision that integrated rather than opposed different perspectives, and one in which people could see their own interests embedded. Members of the committee had two tasks: to represent the interests of their departments and to report back to their departments. The open acknowledgment of the role of self- interest in the common goal, and the public reporting of process and progress, created a large, public stage on which faculty could connect their individual work in the classroom and departments to a larger purpose: creating a curriculum that would serve students, faculty, and the college well.

One result of the curricular revision was the creation of a new interdisciplinary course that would be required of all first-year students. Many colleges have such a course; the decision to create one was not new in itself nor particularly controversial. What was new for us was the decision to make both the teaching of the course and the process of creating it collaborative, interdisciplinary and, again, as public as possible. The original blueprint for the course was voted on by the entire faculty. A group of faculty representing humanities, social science, and professional departments then developed a basic framework for the course that was shared with faculty in a college-wide workshop. A second group of faculty from five different departments then refined the plan, which in turn was shared with a large number of faculty from across the curriculum. All in all, faculty from ten departments and staff from student affairs and academic affairs were closely involved in the development of the course.

The assessment process for the course was equally collaborative and public. An assessment plan for the pilot courses taught the fall of 1994 was developed by a group of faculty and staff from the academic dean's office, the learning center, and the music and occupational therapy departments. The plan was then given final form and carried out by different faculty and staff from various departments, student affairs staff offices, and the academic dean's office. Those who participated in carrying out the assessment plan were asked to help shape its implementation.

Individuals were invited to use their particular expertise and creativity to work together across traditional disciplinary lines. Thus, faculty from professional fields such as occupational therapy and business were instrumental in assessing a course whose basic concepts were primarily philosophical. This openness to collaborative assessment built a strong sense of ownership among faculty, staff, and students.

Within this intensely public examination of one particular course, the focus was on formative rather than summative assessment; the performance of neither the instructors nor the students evaluated. Even so, this type of public assessment of what goes on in the classroom challenges some deeply held beliefs about the nature of the work that faculty do. It raises questions of privacy and accountability: Who has the right to judge what goes on in a particular classroom? To whom are faculty accountable in their work? Which aspects of teaching are public and, thus, open to inspection by the community, and which are matters of individual discretion? Who "governs" the teaching and development of a course so central to the core curriculum? We have not answered all of these questions, of course. We are, however, learning at least to frame them. Thus, for example, instead of posing a question such as, "Should Professor X be invited to a particular meeting?" we are learning to ask a broader question, "Who needs to have a voice in the matters to be discussed at this meeting?"

The public discussions regarding the development and assessment of this course also raised important questions about power and participation on campus: how to balance the need for closure with the need to hear all perspectives; how to engage people as equal participants in common work rather than as complainers and criticizers of others' work; how to envision and talk about power in an educational setting; how to balance curricular and budgetary needs; how to create an atmosphere of mutual accountability; how to create governance and other structures that help rather than hinder collaborative efforts.

The process we went through in developing and assessing the pilot course was not always a smooth one. On many important issues, we are still working toward a consensus. Indeed, several issues remain divisive and contentious, and we continue to struggle for a way to come together around those issues. The process has been successful, however, in raising questions, in helping us to break out of polar debate, and in naming the issues that we need to address.

More importantly, we understand the need for places and structures that can help foster our desire for, and commitment to collegial, civic-minded environment. Interestingly, one of the first structures to benefit from this new attitude of change was faculty meetings. Many faculty members had felt that not enough of their real work was being discussed there. An initiative to restructure the meetings grew out of one of Project Colleague's Faculty Study Groups on the nature of work. Eventually, the meetings were restructured to increase effectiveness and accountability and to encourage broader participation. Under this new structure, instead of passively listening to reports, faculty are asked to actively participate in identifying questions of importance to them.

An even more inclusive form for open discussion, one not organized exclusively for faculty, has been created in our monthly community meetings. These meetings, which were first convened in response to two instances of bigotry on campus, have enlarged their focus to include all issues of importance to the community. The meetings are open to all members of the campus community: students, faculty, and staff_anyone with an interest in the issue at hand. They are convened and led by a group of faculty and students dedicated to improving the openness of public discourse on campus. Recently, such issues as the classroom environment, diversity, the Catholic nature of the college, and academic integrity have been discussed. While this group has no positional power, collectively they wield substantial influence in articulating questions of campus-wide concern. For example, after a recent meeting in which students voiced dissatisfaction with the avenues for giving feedback about teaching to faculty, the issue was put on the monthly faculty meeting agenda for discussion. In the new format of faculty meetings, the issue became not just what forms should be used for eliciting feedback, but rather how can faculty and Students be mutually accountable for the education that goes on in the classroom?

My name is Sara Koch, and I am a 3rd-year theology student...

It has been my experience with the president and with several of the deans of this college that they are wholeheartedly supportive of the many different ways students express their Catholic and feminist identities within the walls of this institution. We have Women Oriented Women on campus as well as Feminists for Life; we have the College Republicans as well as a chapter of MPIRG. I have been very impressed at the lengths to which members of the administration have gone to assure individual groups their right to have a voice.

At the same time, I think the students are ambiguous and; confused about just how much they can express themselves in the context of our Catholic identity because the college is ambiguous and confused as well. As a college, we do not come out very strongly publicly about either of our identities, because as much as we hate to admit it, this is a business, too, and we have a lot of people to try and please.

Hesitant prospective students concerned about the Catholic identity are assured by their student ambassadors that it's "not that big of a deal here," while at the same time the institutional advancement office is assuring worried benefactors that the college hasn't fallen off the radical end and that we really are still, indeed, Catholic.

As a student I am aware of the reality that the administration is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to claiming our identity. How does a college promote inclusivity of a 54 percent non-Catholic student body while at the same time remaining true to its Catholic identity and to its founding principles? While at the same time remaining true to its identity as a women's and therefore feminist college? After all, aren't Catholics and feminists opposite?

Not according to our founding mothers, the Sisters of St. Joseph. The first sisters began on the streets of France helping women in prostitution find economic liberation. This is both deeply feminist and deeply rooted in Catholic social commitment. The CSJs continue to model this example of dual identity today. I would like to see students have the opportunity to meet these women and ground their activism work in course work as a way of coming to know this image of Catholicism. Women have been working in the church for eons and there are Catholic women role models out there who ought to be a part of every student's understanding of the Catholic tradition because it challenges current perceptions. We have a tradition of our own as women who can provide students with another notion of what it means to be Catholic.

What I am talking about is allowing for many different images of what it means to be Catholic and many different images of what it means to be feminist all at the same time, even though the two may stand in contradiction with each other at times. This would ensure that students have the freedom to explore and express what kind of each they want to be.

One feminist strategy has been to invent new structures to replace patriarchal structures, which have tended to be polarizing and dualistic, rather than dialectic and collaborative. As a women's college in the context of a patriarchal culture, people keep wanting us to choose.

I would like to see us publicly refuse to choose, to allow colleges to be the complicated, controversial, contradictory, plain messy places that they ought to be, and stand firmly behind the chaos and justify it without hesitation to the public as being imperative to an environment of learners. This would not be a comfortable stance. We would constantly be grappling with issues. But I feel it is our obligation to be in a constant state of healthy tension about who we are, because it represents a truthful portrait of a diverse population.

This holds a tremendous amount of power for us as women and for us as an institution, because if we are truly committed to women in society, that means speaking truth to those in power, and that means claiming our diverse identities and allowing for them, in this place, in full view of the public world, not only for the benefit of students and those connected to the college, but for the benefit of the larger society to see this image of a Catholic women's college.

I am convinced that this is what many women are looking for if we are willing to come out strong and say this is what we are: Catholic and feminist both.

Last year, Phase Two of Project Colleague received funding from The Bush Foundation. This second phase, called the Teaching-Learning Network, not only continues the emphasis on collaborative efforts but also aims to increase our theoretical understanding of the difficulties and complexities involved in collaborative work in education. To begin this phase, we broadened our definition of who is considered an educator. We know that faculty are not the only educators on campus and education endeavors do not take place solely in the classroom. Our assumption, then, was that educators include not only faculty but also staff who work with students in cocurricular learning experiences; professionals in many fields who teach students in off-campus, community settings; and students who assume teaching roles through the Learning Center or other campus organizations. We further assume that all of these people are learners as well as teachers.

Through the partnerships among these groups fostered by the Teaching-Learning Network, the college has begun a serious conversation about the nature of collaborative work in real-life settings, with all of the power differentials, deadlines, and conflicting interests that those settings entail. As we learned in our efforts at curricular reform, true collaboration is messy, often time-consuming, and always difficult.

We do not have final solutions to these problems and issues, but we are beginning to surface some key questions and to learn some of what is desirable in creating an environment conducive to civic education:

1. We have learned that we need to move beyond individual initiatives to institutional investment and involvement. Just as a top-down imposition of change does not work well, so individual initiatives are rarely enough. Much of what we have accomplished so far has been the result of individuals who are passionate about something and who join others to effect change. Often these efforts have been parallel to, or totally outside of, the existing college structure. While this stage has been productive, the time has come to change the structures themselves so that they encourage collaboration and public work, rather than act as obstacles. We have begun this process by examining the reward structures for faculty so that now collaborative research and curricular work count as scholarly activity. More, of course, needs to be done.

2. This difficult work will only be successful_indeed, will only happen_if those who represent the institution as a whole see its self-interest as being enhanced by a more civic, democratic environment. The president of the College of St. Catherine, Dr. Anita Pampusch, has challenged the college to become a "hotbed of ideas for discussion carried out in a civic manner" and a place where students and educators learn to "come to public judgment" (Boyte & Kari 1995).

3. We have learned the value of some things that are often overlooked in strategic plans and budget decisions. One is public space, an area where diverse groups of people can meet to discuss issues of common concern, where people who usually meet in hierarchical roles can come together as partners in a common enterprise, thereby sharing perspectives and discovering more about each other. This public space is especially important for faculty and students, as it offers a place outside of the classroom and all its traditional power relations.

4. As we learn the value of community forums, we also learn to appreciate individuals who hold memberships in multiple groups. These individuals can cross institutional dividing lines and share the perspectives of one group with several others. As Daryl Smith points out in the 1994 issue of Higher Education Exchange, work in one group is both informed and strengthened by active participation in others. She goes on to note that groups that encourage the full participation of people from various groups on campus are more likely to work collaboratively.

5. Most of all, we have learned and continue to learn the importance of a theoretical framework that can guide us in understanding and assessing our efforts at self-renewal. For us, the concept of public work functions as one such framework. Boyte and Kari define public work as "common work on public tasks by diverse groups of people tied to a broader purpose" (1995). At the College of St. Catherine, we are working toward redefining our common energies as public work by engaging in campus-wide reforms that are collaborative and inclusive of diversive perspectives; that revitalize self-interest into a deeper sense of collective ownership; that allow expertise to be widely shared in joint problem solving; that connect our everyday work to a larger meaning; and that develop "civic values like accountability, discipline, and self-respect" (Boyte & Kari 1995).

Our continuing work is institutional renewal. We will, of course, never finish, but that is part of the joy and excitement of public work.

Reference

Boyer, E. 1994. "Creating the New American College." The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, p. A48.

Boyte, H. & Kari, N. 1995. "The Good Work: The Making of Citizen Politics." The New Democrat 7 (2): 18-21.

Smith, D. 1994. "Community and Group Identity Fostering Mattering." Higher Education Exchange, pp. 29-35.

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