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Universities are being asked to prepare our students to navigate successfully in a complex and interconnected world and to contribute to the solution of difficult problems at work and in the communities where they live. Our universities must do the same. We must adapt our approaches to education, scholarship and community involvement in order to play a meaningful role in addressing the increasingly complex and wicked problems that our communities face. The housing crisis in Portland, Oregon offers an especially important example of a wicked problem that has developed slowly, will be very costly to resolve and involves a lot of uncertainty due to unpredictable social, economic and environmental factors. In 2015, policymakers in communities throughout Oregon began talking about a housing crisis as people searching for affordable housing found themselves competing with both the growing popularity of Oregon as a place to live and a real estate investment boom. Rents rose at a rate of $100/month and over 24,000 units were needed to meet the demand in 2015. The problem remains acute in 2016. This article uses community efforts to understand and address the housing crisis as a focus to explore the changing roles of the university in participating in and contributing to these new social networks, multi-stakeholder initiatives and collaborations.

Our nation's colleges and universities frequently adapt their approach to education in response to the reality of social, economic and environmental challenges. Today the reality is that we are increasingly interconnected on a global scale. This new era of globalization impacts every facet of society, and it offers both an exciting blend of generational change and complex, multifaceted challenges. How shall we educate our students in this new era? What can we expect of our graduates in a global world? The answer to these questions requires our institutions to make significant changes in their approach to educating students and interacting with the communities they serve. This new approach should be shaped by a sense of what it means to be a globally prepared graduate, and should be guided by clear learning outcomes exercised along a sequential pathway of experiences from the first year of college through graduation. These experiences are supported by the use of engaged learning practices that draw students into work that is both personally and socially meaningful, and that includes cross-disciplinary inquiry focused on the goal of addressing big questions in ethical, responsible, and effective ways.

Campuses are developing new ways to respond to complex social, cultural, economic and environmental problems by adapting their educational approaches and their scholarship to address a changing world order. At the same time, government agencies, nonprofit organizations and businesses are embracing collaborative approaches to community problem-solving. These collaborative approaches, on and off campus, are creating new forms of university-community engagement that will require us to rethink the nature of the societal roles we play and how we generate knowledge, create an inspiring educational environment, and assist our students in acquiring the knowledge and skills they will need to work effectively with others to address the complex societal problems that they will face throughout their lives.

The role of higher education is changing in today's world because the world itself is changing, and complex problems confront us daily. This essay will explore the role of an emerging group of individuals who can serve as a bridge between the academic community and the world at large. These administrators, faculty members, staff, students, and community members can help create new opportunities for different disciplines to work together and for all parts of a campus community and members of the broader society to form new working relationships to address the complex problems of today's world. What role will these boundary spanners play in building a culture of engagement? How will their work change our ideas about faculty work, staff work, and the role of students in achieving the goals of the institution and in responding to the changing world around us?

Our nation's colleges and universities are being asked to play demanding roles in creating the capacity for active and engaged collaboration and collective action to address complex challenges that are shaping the world we live in. An essential ingredient of any effort to build healthy communities for any purpose, including education, is the cultivation of equity and inclusion. In this article, we discuss what these terms mean in practice and how to draw upon the talents and experiences of all the members of a diverse community in order to understand and address the pressing social, cultural, economic, and environmental challenges we face in our communities and around the globe.

This conference is built on two very interesting premises; first, that university outreach can change society and second, that outreach can also change the university. What is the mechanism by which this mutual influence can offer? What does the university offer the community, and what does the community offer the university? The short answer is--the opportunity to learn in the company of others in a situation where learning has consequences. [Keynote Address presented at the "Outreach Scholarship 2002 Conference": Catalyst for Change", Worthington, Ohio, Oct 6-8, 2002]

In his first inaugural speech, President Obama declared that "our schools fail too many" and an essential component of laying "a new foundation for growth" will be "to transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age." Concerns about our nation's position in the global education race have led to a focus on college completion. Policymakers and foundations are setting goals for degree completion and are pressing colleges and universities to shorten the degree programs offered, address the barriers to degree attainment, rethink how best to help underprepared students be successful in postsecondary education, and make it easier and less expensive to obtain a college education.

The investments of federal agencies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education are aimed at a single core question: How can educators ensure that the United States will have a well-prepared and innovative science and technology workforce in an era of increasing global competition? As the exploration of what this entails has progressed in recent years, the purview has broadened to a larger topic: identifying and developing twenty-first-century skills by focusing on how the nature of work and the economy are changing and an exploration of what it takes to be competitive in the new economy. Within STEM education in particular, another critical component of the larger context for examining the curriculum and the student experience is the remarkable change in how science and engineering knowledge is advanced today. This extraordinary revolution in the conduct of science and engineering--the kinds of questions that can be asked, the technologies available to address those questions, and the nature and complexity of the scientific community itself--is leaving the typical undergraduate experience further and further behind. It is no longer only a matter of attracting more people to the study of science and engineering disciplines and making the undergraduate experience more meaningful, as complex as those tasks are. Educators now must also overhaul the curriculum and their approach to the student experience in order to reflect the realities of how scientific understanding is advanced today and how science and technology are shaping the society and people's interactions with the rest of the world. This chapter considers how best to integrate STEM education into the larger context of the undergraduate experience to address important national concerns.

Higher education in this country has always been expected to serve the public good. Sometimes, the emphasis is on preparing educated citizens or practitioners in especially critical fields and how public service can deepen and enrich learning and prepare students to lead purposeful, responsible, and creative lives. Sometimes the focus is upon institutions themselves as major intellectual and cultural resources for a community. In this paper, based on the keynote presentation at the Community-Engaged Scholarship for Health Collaborative's invitational symposium, the author explores four levels of engagement: the individual, the academic community and its concepts of scholarship, the institution and its relationships with its immediate community, and the role of higher education within a large network of interactions that define a region of innovation.

Smart change is a simple yet powerful means to help administrators, faculty, staff, and stakeholders better understand the issues surrounding change initiatives at their institutions. A comparison of three approaches to change: routine, strategic, and transformative provides the foundation for improved planning by focusing on the targeted change environment. This framework provides an approach to increasing planning effectiveness through the understanding of how change affects problem solving, planning focus, change mechanisms, leadership and corresponding core competencies, overall engagement, and accountability. Institutions need to cast off "control" as their main guidance system and begin to practice a broader understanding of change. (Contains 1 figure.)

This concluding chapter, written by a national leader in higher education, reflects on public scholarship from a perspective beyond Penn State and argues that public scholarship promises to strengthen "that special form of public decision making that we call democracy."

Today, educators are expected to achieve high standards of learning for all students as they face the rapid changes brought about by the technologies and social challenges of this age. However, their expectations of what schools can do are really still an expression of their cultural anxieties. In a basic way, these challenges are the same as they were at the turn of the 20th century. As educators seek new ways to define the goals of an educational experience and new tools for measuring what students know and can do with what they know, they will add much needed depth to the way they approach both teaching and learning. In this article, the author explains why Americans keep trying to reform their educational system. She discusses the views of traditionalists and constructivists as to whether it is more important to learn something or to learn how to learn something. Over the past century, educators have argued back and forth about the role of schooling and what kind of education they should provide for young people. Here, the author discusses the kind of education that should be provided for students and describes her own approach to thinking about education in the 21st century. The author's purpose in providing this information is to show how a school or a college or a university can approach its educational mission by defining and then following the dictates and expectations of a shared vision of what it means to be educated. After each element of this vision the author comments on its relevance to assessment. (Contains 2 notes.)

The Education and Human Resources (EHR) Directorate at the National Science Foundation has been examining its role in supporting the development of new approaches to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. This article explores what it means to be scientifically literate, what it takes to become a learning organization, how the EHR Directorate is working towards becoming such an organization through rigorous self-study, and how EHR can best manage its large portfolio of awards that support investigations in STEM education to enhance their collective value to researchers, policymakers and educators. Several elements of the self-study process are described, and the implications for the Directorate as well as for the field of researchers in science education are explored.

What follows is the Portland State University story, a reflection on change as a scholarly act within a learning community using techniques from organizational learning.

Discusses why science and mathematics should be a central part of liberal education. Also asserts that in addition to learning the habits of mind and forms of expression and inquiry of science and mathematics, students majoring in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) field should be expected to acquire the qualities of a liberally educated person. (EV)

Describes the various factors that motivate higher education institutions in their pursuit of engagement with the community. Discusses the challenges facing those pursuing such engagement, such as disagreements in the academic community about the merits of community engagement. Asserts that engagement, despite such challenges, is well worth it. (EV)

Describes the strategic change process at the University of Vermont in which the institution's leadership collaborated with faculty, staff, and students to use the accreditation process as a catalyst, or "chariot," for institutional transformation. The self-study was both the impetus for change and the foundation for goals that united the disciplines in finding an organizational mission. (SLD)

Discusses service learning research, emphasizing: why institutions are interested in service learning; service learning to promote community involvement; college presidents' role in promoting service learning; creating the capacity for change; and a research agenda. Emphasizes how much can be gained from communication between higher education researchers, program managers, and campus leaders, with the scholar/president as the bridge between them. (SM)

The president of the University of Vermont discusses the relationship between higher education research and practice from an administrative viewpoint. She suggests that good campus decision making begins with a base of scholarly knowledge that is generated by higher education researchers and is ideally modeled by higher education leaders who practice public learning. (DB)

Argues that without the usual advantages of donor loyalty and institutional prestige, urban universities can make a case for support based on their regional and statewide impact and on the quality, cost effectiveness, and value of academic programs and research. Discusses why people give to urban universities; describes how Portland State University (Oregon) has changed in ways favoring fund raising. (Author/MSE)

Our nation's colleges and universities have always sought to prepare their graduates for life and work in their own era. The pressures we face today, both from outside the academy [...]

To prepare a differently educated citizenry and to play meaningful roles in new forms of community-building, colleges and universities must model informed and collaborative ways of learning and working within their own institutional contexts as well as through their interactions with the broader society of which they are an integral part. The path toward a more interactive and collaborative approach to collective action will have implications for every aspect of campus culture and practice--the nature of the curriculum, the expectations of graduates, the approach to learning and teaching, the nature of scholarly agendas, the ways that faculty and staff careers unfold, and the structure of institutions. The path that lies ahead offers both challenges and opportunities for regaining a core role in society by creating sustainable communities, both on campus and in society at large. This article discusses changes and challenges that must be addressed in order to support the new kinds of relationships and collaborations that will be needed to address the "big questions" and challenges that shape our era.

We live in a period of rapid and complex socioeconomic change. The forces driving this change are reshaping the educational landscape in ways that we are only beginning to understand. [...]

Public universities and colleges are being pressured into adopting specific and institution-specific missions and goals by an increasingly urbanized world. Community work must encompass the school's administration, faculty, curriculum, infrastructure and research activities. A case study of Portland State University (PSU) was made to study the responsiveness of urban universities to the research and educational needs of metropolitan regions. PSU successfully promoted comprehensive and systemic changes in academics and administration in support of its urban mission.

IN CYBERSPACE instructors are more exposed, vulnerable, and less able to retain a veil of superior knowledge and expertise that has given scholars a sense of identity. We can, however, [...]

Although ID:p0065 University Studies at Portland State University often receives attention for its signature curricular structure of year-long thematic mentored Freshman Inquiry, thematic mentored Sophomore Inquiry, thematic departmental Cluster courses, and community-based Capstone courses, it is the underlying pedagogical values and philosophy that represent the real revolution in higher education--a revolution that is ongoing at Portland State. Few large state universities can claim to offer a quarter-century of experience with general education change of this magnitude. This article addresses how a shared purpose evolved over the course of University Studies' history and was impacted by what various leaders emphasized during their tenure. Representing bookends of the quarter-century existence of University Studies, two voices make up the authorship of the article: the president of Portland State at the time of the founding of University Studies, who catalyzed the processes that led to this ground-breaking program, and the current executive director, who has made transparent the ethic of care embedded in the program from the start. Together, the authors tell the story of University Studies' past and present and look to its future, highlighting how evidence-based, relational, caring innovation has resulted in the program through the collaborations of its empowered constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]