Past Congress of Leaders

Tania Mitchell’s (2008) “Traditional vs. Critical Service-Learning: Engaging the Literature to Differentiate Two Models” serves as the seminal piece that interrogates the degree to which traditional service-learning models are truly serving the community and are creating transformative experiences for students (Butin & Saud, 2013; Cruz & Giles, 2000). During this year of engagement, all four tenants of CSL will be addressed, as it is important to understand all four in order to fully understand the possibilities of CSL however, a vast amount of time will be spent focusing on authentic partnerships, as it is the foundation to starting any CSL or Critical Community Engagement endeavor. During this year-long community of practice, we will address the following questions: How do we create authentic relationships between all stakeholders, what types of outcomes might these relationships create? What impact do authentic relationships have on those, directly and indirectly, involved in the engagement activity?

Possible outcomes for this community of practice include collaborating on a paper for peer-review publication or the development of a toolkit focused on relationship building within the critical service-learning and critical community engagement models.

Meetings will occur virtually and be scheduled based on the availability of the members of each community of practice. Registered participants will be contacted by Dr. Warren-Gordon shortly after registration closes to arrange meeting dates and times.

This community of practice is led by Dr. Kiesha Warren-Gordon, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology in Ball State University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. In addition to her teaching duties in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Dr. Warren-Gordon is the Director of the African American studies program and an affiliate faculty member in the Gender and Women’s Studies program. She teaches a variety of courses including Victimology; Race, Gender, and Crime; and the Senior Capstone Course in Criminal Justice at Ball State University. Dr. Warren-Gordon’s substantive areas of research include community engagement, criminology, and a critical approach to examining race/ethnicity issues within the criminal justice system. Her current research projects include critical pedagogical approaches to teaching positive community involvement outside of traditional criminal justice educational norms as well as, media framing of social movements. Dr. Warren-Gordon currently serves as the Community-Engaged Alliance Senior Faculty Fellow, working with faculty across the state of Indiana as they participate in community engagement and service-learning projects within their communities.

The central topic for this COP is the role of higher education in advancing “collective impact,” a framework used to address complex social issues which hinges on a coordinated, systematic and structured multi-sector commitment to a common agenda. As institutions of higher education consider their obligation to the community, many are examining the intersection of community engagement practices, the responsibilities of anchor institutions and the transformative power of collective impact. Reviewing case studies and models for implementing and evaluating collective impact to define multiple avenues for higher education to contribute, inform and to the public good, this COP will consider the question: If our fleet of community partners are in separate vessels, how do we all row in the same direction?

Participants can expect to examine models of implementation and evaluation of collective impact to create a working framework for collective impact as it relates to community engagement partnerships. They will also explore the role of higher education as a partner in advancing collective impact initiatives.

Meetings will occur virtually and be scheduled based on the availability of the members of each community of practice. Registered participants will be contacted by Dr. Eisenhauer shortly after registration closes to arrange meeting dates and times.

This community of practice is led by Dr. Mary Jane Eisenhauer, Professor of Education and Interim Associate Director of the School of Education and Counseling at Purdue University Northwest. An engaged scholar, Dr. Eisenhauer has presented at Campus Compact, IARSLCE, CUMU, and the International Symposium on Service-Learning and edited the faculty workbook Charting the course for service-learning: From curriculum considerations to advocacy. She is a mentor for the Scholarship of Engagement Fellows at Purdue University and served as Senior Faculty Fellow for Community-Engaged Alliance. In 2015, she received the Brian Douglas Hiltunen Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Scholarship of Engagement. She earned her Ed.D. in Curriculum & Social Inquiry – Early Childhood Development from National-Louis University, and her B.S. and M.S. in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University.

Universities traditionally drive the policies and procedures that support campus-community service-learning partners. This community of practice seeks to flip that paradigm through collaborative dialogue with community partners. Our monthly sessions for community partners will explore the foundations for reciprocal and sustainable community-campus partnerships in critical service-learning with the goal to create a community partner coalition with policies and procedures for successfully partnering with campus critical service-learning courses. The group will seek to implement this work in Tippecanoe County, Indiana; however, the process and outcomes will be transferable to other locales.

Participants will collaboratively:

• Explore the foundations for reciprocal and sustainable partnerships between communities and universities.
• Develop policies and procedures for partnering with university service-learning courses.
• Cultivate relationships and develop a network of community partners engaged in service-learning.

Meetings will occur virtually and be scheduled based on the availability of the members of each community of practice. Registered participants will be contacted by Dr. Payne or Ms. Evich shortly after registration closes to arrange meeting dates and times.

This community of practice is led by Dr. Lindsey Payne, Director of Service-Learning at Purdue University, and Carly Evich, Graduate Assistant for Service-Learning at Purdue University.

In addition to directing service-learning, Dr. Payne also teaches a service-learning course in Environmental and Ecological Engineering. Her research sits at the intersection of sustainability, teaching and learning, and engagement focusing on transdisciplinary decision-making in community-based design. She is the recipient of multiple teaching awards and is the former Chair of the Teaching Academy. She has a BA in Biological Sciences from DePauw University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Ecological Sciences and Engineering from Purdue University. She has also worked professionally in the non-profit and secondary education sectors and currently serves on multiple community-based environmental boards.

Ms. Evich is currently working on a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies, as well as a professional masters in Public Health. She strives to center the needs of marginalized youth, families, and communities through community-engaged research and service-learning. She has a B.S. in Psychology from Eastern Michigan University and an M.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from Purdue University. She is also an alumna of the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program.

Covid-19 has deeply impacted the way individuals work, interact, go to class, travel, and shop. Major changes also happened on a business-to-business and governmental level as responses to all these changes. In this community of practice, we will look at how Indiana was impacted and what companies from different sectors and industries are doing as we learn from and move forward.

Participants can expect to gain a clear understanding of the complexities related to multi-level, multi-tier supply networks and an awareness of the basics of supply chain resilience and their impacts.

Meetings will occur virtually and be scheduled based on the availability of the members of each community of practice. Registered participants will be contacted by Dr. Siegler shortly after registration closes to arrange meeting dates and times.

This community of practice is led by Dr. Janaina (Jane) Siegler, Assistant Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management in Butler University’s Andre B. Lacy School of Business. Dr. Siegler holds a Ph.D. in Operations and Supply Chain Management from FGV in Brazil and Indiana University, Indiana. As a college professor for more than ten years, Jane has taught thousands of undergraduate and graduate students in Brazil, the U.S., and Europe. As a consultant and an entrepreneur herself, Jane has had the opportunity to live and breathe the challenges of the concepts she teaches. Because of her background, Jane is a firm believer that “to teach business to future business leaders, one must engage with the business, both in our backyard and around the world”. She has actively engaged the business community in her academic and professional research aiming to leverage and share the knowledge created together between academia and the businesses, for the business community, and for business students. Her research interests include supply chain resilience, buyer and supplier relationships, business clusters, and technologies related to the supply chain. Dr. Siegler has a special collaboration with the automotive and logistics industry. She has presented her research in dozens of conferences in different parts of the world and her research has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals such as the IJPE, RAC, IJLSM, among others.