Community Engagement:
The Writing Program at USC
What is Community Engagement in the USC Writing Program?
Community engagement is enshrined at the core of USC’s mission statement. Our university’s goal is “the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit.” We are charged with accomplishing this task through “teaching, research, artistic creation, professional practice and selected forms of public service.” As a university, we should strive to impart and gain knowledge inside and outside of the classroom. Through community engagement, we can address social needs and also learn from the communities in which our classrooms exist.
While labs, books, and lectures can instill students with what the USC mission statement identifies as “love of truth and beauty, moral discernment, understanding of self, and respect and appreciation for others,” these are not the only or superior means to do so. Truth and beauty exist in abundance beyond our university’s gates; moral discernment cannot be a mere intellectual exercise when it affects the lives of real people; we cannot understand ourselves without understanding the world around us; and we cannot respect and appreciate others if we do not engage people face-to-face within and beyond the filters of our institution.
“While social issues ranging from racial inequities in the judicial system to gentrification in central cities are important topics for academic study, service learning courses too frequently engage in damage-based (Tuck, 2009) community engagement in which the focus is on the problems, pathologies, and needs of communities, not on their resources, wisdom, and strengths.” –Tania D. Mitchell and David M. Donahue “Ideal and Real in Service Learning”
How Do We Define Community Engagement?
The USC Writing Program defines "community engagement" as the critical practice of linking scholarship, experience, and reflection in engaging with the world outside of the university. Community engagement critically considers the social and political systems that create marginalization and oppression, and participants seek to create spaces for community stakeholders to resist unjust institutions and policies, including those that our own institution may perpetuate. These systems include institutional racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia, among others.
Community engagement involves collaboration and resource sharing among faculty and/or students affiliated with our academic institution and community stakeholders outside of academia. Central to community engagement at a university is the understanding that many students, staff, faculty and other university-affiliated stakeholders also identify with the community surrounding our institution—these groups are not binary. We foster community partnerships that are mutually beneficial, ethical, collaborative, and sustained across campus and communities, and we support projects that collaboratively articulate the local need of those communities, devise strategies to align with and achieve partnerships’ goals, and build on the communities’ strengths and successes.
Community engagement promotes “an extraordinary closeness and willingness to help one another,” and “for those within its compass the Trojan Family is a genuinely supportive community” (USC Mission Statement). Enacting these values requires something more than time, effort, or service. It requires genuine engagement.