For the past few years, in looking over the National Academic Advising Association’s (NACADA) request for proposals (RFP) within their research/grant program, I noted a topic area that remained consistent from year to year. I was drawn to it because it questioned the role that advisers play in preparing students for citizenship and community life. I have found that the literature on student learning and community life is unwavering in its claim “Civic engagement is essential to a democratic society” (Checkoway, 2001, p. 126). As a sociologist who teaches courses on community sociology and someone who believes in the value of quality advising, I was intrigued. I quickly realized that what I do in the classroom must also be done in my office. The paths that I offer my students to understand community transformation and, in many cases, the decline of community, as well as the practical steps we can take to rebuild and strengthen what has weakened over time, should also be made available to those whom I advise. However, reading material and case studies alone are not enough. While I knew what must be done, I was equally interested in understanding why such a philosophy of advising was not widespread among faculty, especially given the recent turn toward civic engagement and experiential learning as strategies for extending and enriching a student’s educational experience. This essay will sketch out the challenges as well as the opportunities for a community-minded advising approach.

Understanding the Decline in Community

Robert Putnam tackled community decline in his book Bowling Alone. He wrote, “We seem more engaged with one another as friends than as citizens” (Putnam, 2000, p. 97). His work pointed to a decline in civic engagement since the 1960s, a decline in what he called social capital. Social capital is the “… connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam, 2000, p. 20). Social capital allows citizens to resolve collective problems more easily. It greases the wheels of social interaction, and it makes us aware of the many ways in which we are dependent upon each other. Simply put, it “… makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable society” (Putnam, 2000, pp. 288–290).

Of the explanations offered by Putnam (2000) to describe such a decline in civic connectedness over the years, differences in generation are the most important. The “long civic generation”—those born between 1910 and 1940—reached its peak population in the 1960s. The boomers, their children born between 1945 and 1965 and by far less civically minded than their parents, represented three quarters of the population in this same period (Putnam, 2000, p. 255), far outnumbering their parents. The differences in generational behavior, Putnam (2000) noted,

… hints that being raised after WWII was a quite different experience from being raised before that watershed. It is as though the postwar generations were exposed to some anticivic x-ray that permanently and increasingly rendered them less likely to connect with the community. (p. 255)

National unity brought on by WWII reinforced civic-mindedness; it “… brought shared adversity and shared enemy …,” and “intense patriotism nationally and civic activism locally” (Putnam, 2000, p. 268). Eighty percent of this generation served in the military; it was the “… most leveling event in American economic history” (p. 271). In comparison, the generations that followed lacked great collective events to unite them. In this vacuum, children found meaning in a powerful peer culture; it influenced what they bought, what they wore, how they spoke, and how they understood themselves (Mintz, 2004). As a culture, we cut off opportunities for children to have relationships with adults other than their family or teachers and replaced these personal guides with overly structured activities and toys and games that denied imaginative play. Steven Mintz’s book, Huck’s Raft, is symbolic: The raft itself represents childhood, and the wild river represents life (2004). Huck Finn had Tom for support and guidance on his journey. Tom looked out for Huck and taught him lessons about living, loving, and tolerance. Every child, Mintz argued, needs a Tom. It should be noted that these lessons were not products of the twentieth century; rather, as Mintz (2004) points out, they began as the economy shifted in the mid-nineteenth century. The decline of the apprenticeship system in the 1840s began a trend that would see children removed from important adult mentors in their community. For Mintz, this change was a destructive one.

With people further removed from each other, each successive generation further removed from the next, we developed in society a system of organizations and private companies to meet our needs, to do what we use to do for ourselves. In 2004, Edgar Cahn wrote:

We ask schools to take over the role of families, police to take over the role of neighbors, the healthcare system to function as a support system, and specialized, public interest advocacy groups to function as the equivalent of an alert, engaged citizenry,” wrote Edgar Cahn. (p. 55).

As we contracted out function after function, we left emotional ties, relationships, and values without function, without soil. And such values, it turns out, do not grow hydroponically. People need to be needed by each other in order to reinforce bonds of love and affection. (p. 116)

What we are missing, Putnam (2000) claims, is “bridging social capital” (p. 22). Unlike “bonding social capital” (p. 22), which refers to the more intimate relationships with friends and family, bridging social capital refers to the shallower networks among groups of people, bringing strangers into the fold, lubricating social interaction and building trust. So how do we go about building bridging social capital? What roles do our universities play in this process? What can faculty advisers do? And where do our students fit into this larger picture?

Experiential Education and Civic Life

Since Carol Ryan’s “Educating for Citizenship through Experiential Learning: The Advisor’s Role,” published in 1988, there has been a growing body of work exploring the role of higher education in meeting the needs of our communities (Peters, Boyte, Alter, & Schwartzbach, 2010; Saltmarsh & Zlotkowski, 2011). The literature on service learning and civic engagement, for example, has been enjoying a resurgence over the last few years (Jacoby, 2009; Butin, 2010; Strait, Lima, & Furco, 2009; Eyler & Giles, 1999). This research no longer aims to convince the reader of the benefits of experiential education. Its acceptance today encourages authors to explore wider relationships, like those between engagement and the public good, particularly citizenship in a democracy (Nokes, Nickitas, Keida, & Neville, 2005). According to Eyler and Giles (1999), “… community service that is well integrated with an academic course of study, contributes to personal and interpersonal development, learning and application of knowledge, critical thinking ability, and perspective transformation, all of which are relevant to citizenship participation as well as scholarship” (p. 182). Scholars have also given needed attention to the importance of university and community partnerships and their role in strengthening community (Moxley, 2004; Hyde & Meyer, 2004; Timmermans & Bouman, 2004; Schmid & Blit-Cohen, 2009; Checkoway, 2001).

From service learning and civic engagement experiences to community-based research (Strand, Cutforth, Stoecker, Marullo, & Donohue, 2003), many universities are working for and with community partners to address problems. Success stories abound. Faculty as well as students are investing themselves outside the ivory tower, and the benefit for students is extraordinary. Eyler and Giles (1999) found that students in service learning are more likely to develop tolerance, greater self knowledge, greater spiritual growth, increased personal efficacy, and increased feelings of belonging to community, just to name a few. They are developing relationships with people outside their circle of familiarity, relationships that were not accessible in childhood, relationships that introduce students to the world in ways that were not intimidating, like Huck Finn’s relationship with his friend Jim.

Our communities and our democracy suffer when our young are denied opportunities to serve and to learn from others, and we must stop pointing fingers at students alone. Checkoway (2001) wrote:

Today’s universities are uneven in their commitments, faculty members are unprepared for public roles, and community groups find it difficult to gain access to them …. For democracy to function successfully in the future, students must be prepared to understand their own identities, communicate with people who are different from themselves, and build bridges across cultural differences in the transition to a more diverse society. (p. 267)

Uneven commitments in higher education and unprepared faculty block chances for students to develop and mature in these needed areas. It is not surprising that many faculty are not fully engaged in the advising process. Swanson (2006) identified six key threats to such engagement, which include institutional role competitiveness, increasing faculty workloads, inadequate adviser training and preparation, legal concerns, technological barriers, and escalating levels of challenge presented by students and their parents. “As a whole,” he wrote, “these threats add up to a system of institutional disincentives ….” (Swanson, 2006, p. 2). Once over this hurdle, however, faculty must be prepared for public roles. In sociology, as in many other disciplines, the obstacles to this preparation crept up on us slowly through the years.

Former American Sociological Association president Michael Burawoy (2005) wrote:

The original passion for social justice, economic equality, human rights, sustainable environment, political freedom or simply a better world that drew so many of us to sociology is channeled into the pursuit of academic credentials. Progress becomes a battery of disciplinary techniques—standardized courses, validated reading lists, bureaucratic rankings, intensive examinations, literature reviews, tailored dissertations, refereed publications, the all-mighty CV, the job search, the tenure file, and then policing one’s colleagues and successors to make sure we all march in step. (p. 5)

American sociology was born civically engaged; it found its home in Chicago, Illinois, in the early twentieth century. Like other disciplines, though, we have strayed from our origins. Burawoy (2005) called on all sociologists to revisit and reinvigorate a public sociology, a dialogue that engages the public over issues that matter to them. For sociology, some see a move to a community-oriented research agenda as one of the only ways to gain status within the social sciences (Downey, Wagner, Hohm, & Dodson, 2008). In A Different Kind of Politics, Barker and Brown identified the problem as a condition of “successful failure”—our institutions serve as models for knowledge production and dissemination, but they fall short in connecting academic work with civic life (as cited in Dzur, 2010, p. 101).

Where Do We Go From Here?

The community-minded advising approach aims to link students with their communities. Service experiences alone, however, are not enough. As the literature points out, service learning must be a coordinated, well-thought-out program, and this pedagogy is certainly not successful if executed from the hip. Quality programs must focus on five educational design components: placement quality, application, reflection, diversity, and community voice (Eyler & Giles, 1999, pp. 167–178). As faculty, we can work to create these experiences for our students. As advisers, we can encourage students to take classes that not only meet academic requirements but also provide opportunities to experience civic engagement. Our offices can also serve as centers for service information if your campus does not already offer one. Finally, as faculty, we need to come to terms with our own roles and responsibilities within the community. Universities do not exist in a vacuum. In uncertain economic times such as these, institutions of higher education can offer gestures of friendship by providing resources that their respective communities need but cannot afford. If we find ways to angle our work, our writing, and our research to incorporate community needs, we all will benefit. If we can include students in this work, we will all be even better for it.