From Community Engagement to Community Emergence: The Holistic Program Design Approach

University-community engagement has the potential to positively transform higher education, but community-engaged institutions must overcome challenges related to defining, planning, and assessing engagement activities. The 2015 Carnegie Community Engagement Classification application process and the results of the 2015 Campus Compact member survey revealed that there is room for improvement in engagement efforts within public and private institutions alike. The authors propose the holistic program design approach to curricular-based engagement as a new framework for building individual and institutional capacity. Utilizing interactional field theory, the framework shows how university-community engagement can promote the emergence or formation of community between a university and local participants. Curricular-based engagement experiences serve as venues for interaction in which students, faculty, and local residents communicate and work to address common, place-based needs. The authors provide operational definitions of university-community engagement and curricular-based engagement, describe a theoretical and philosophical rationale for engagement, and present a conceptual model of student and community development outcomes. They also highlight potential assessment metrics, address five recommendations of the Carnegie Foundation, and suggest directions for future research and development.