On Campus Podcast – Learning Beyond the Classroom: Community Engagement in Action

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1. Introduction and Guest Introduction (00:00:06) Ed Butch introduces the podcast and guest Craig Berger, discussing community engaged learning.
2. Personal Background and Career Path (00:02:48) Craig shares his journey in higher education, detailing his roles and experiences leading to Kent State.
3. Defining an Engaged University (00:06:43) Craig explains the concept of an engaged university and its connection to community involvement.
4. Community Engaged Learning vs. Traditional Service Learning (00:08:59) Craig distinguishes community engaged learning from traditional service learning and volunteerism.
5. Impactful Student Experience (00:11:27) Craig recounts a successful community project involving public health students and a local community garden.
6. Benefits of Community Engaged Learning (00:14:28) Craig discusses the transformative benefits students gain from community engaged learning experiences.
7. Role of Faculty in Community Engagement (00:16:06) Craig emphasizes the critical role faculty play in facilitating community engaged learning opportunities.
8. Civic Engagement’s Influence on Student Identity (00:18:22) Craig describes how civic engagement shapes students’ identities and their roles in the community.
9. Challenges in Implementing Community Engagement (00:20:56) Craig outlines the obstacles institutions face in embedding community engagement in the curriculum.
10. Supporting Faculty in Community Engagement (00:23:56) Craig discusses ways to support faculty in integrating community engaged learning into their teaching.
11. Responding to Current Social Issues (00:24:24) Craig explains how community engaged learning can address contemporary social and political challenges.
12. Starting Community Engagement Initiatives (00:25:59) Craig advises on beginning community engagement efforts by listening and building authentic relationships.
13. Importance of Listening in Community Engagement (00:26:43) Discusses the significance of listening and investing in infrastructure for building community partnerships.
14. Language and Its Impact on Perceptions (00:28:24) Explores how labeling off-campus experiences as the “real world” affects student perceptions of campus life.
15. Town-Gown Relations (00:29:40) Highlights the importance of positive relationships between universities and their surrounding communities.
16. Future of Community Engaged Learning (00:30:30) Speculates on the evolution of community engaged learning in higher education over the next 5 to 10 years.
17. Civic Engagement Portfolios (00:32:04) Envisions students graduating with portfolios showcasing community projects and civic engagement contributions.
18. Value of Community Relationships (00:33:04) Emphasizes the blurred lines between university and community relationships, highlighting their positive interconnectedness.

Ed Butch: Welcome to On Campus with CITI Program, the podcast where we explore the complexities of the campus experience with higher education experts and researchers. I’m your host, Ed Butch, and I’m thrilled to have you with us today. Before we get started, I want to quickly note that this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not designed to provide legal advice or guidance. In addition, the views expressed in this podcast are solely those of our guests. Welcome everyone. I am excited for this month’s episode. So as we continue to discuss ways to have an engaged university, the topic of community engaged learning and civic engagement feels like a must have to include in this. So today’s guest is Craig Berger, who serves as the associate Director of Community Engaged Learning at Kent State University. Welcome to the pod, Craig.

Craig Berger: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here with you.

Ed Butch: Awesome. Great to have you. So before we really get into this and dive in, I guess, we should let our listeners know that our paths have actually intersected for some time now.

Craig Berger: Yes, they have, multiple spots on our timelines.

Ed Butch: Definitely.

Craig Berger: Starting with Salem, Ohio.

Ed Butch: Salem, Ohio, going all the way back to middle school, which just seems crazy nowadays. And then, let’s see, we went our separate ways for undergrad. Well, grad school for me, professionally for you. And then, we ended up in Miami together, right?

Craig Berger: Correct. Yep.

Ed Butch: Yep. So I was working professionally after grad school, and then you went back for grad school there. And then, we both left again, and worked our way back to Kent States for a bit after you did a stint at UMBC.

Craig Berger: Correct.

Ed Butch: Yeah. Awesome.

Craig Berger: Yeah, it’s been really cool. And I guess, the other thing to note is that your sister went to Allegheny, which is where I went for my undergrad.

Ed Butch: Very true. Very true. Yes. Go Gators, right?

Craig Berger: Yes.

Ed Butch: Well, awesome. I think it’s fun, it’s great. And you’ve really, really gotten into this field and become professionally involved and nationally involved in the conversation. So I’m really excited to have you on and to talk a little bit about this. But, we went through a little bit of your career path there. But, can you just let us know what you’ve been doing, I guess, really at UMBC, and at Kent State, and where you’ve gotten to your current role today?

Craig Berger: Sure. Well, starting with my current role, I currently serve, like you said, as associate director of Community Engaged Learning at Kent State. I’ve been in this role for a little over seven years. In the role, I’m responsible for volunteer and service programming for students. I help lead a coalition of faculty, staff, students, community members that help students register to vote and get the information they need to successfully engage in the voting process. And then, I’m also responsible for a student-led volunteer powered food security initiative at the university, the Flashes Fighting Hunger. We recover and then divert about 150,000 pounds of food from landfills to people in our community who need it. But it’s also really cool because it provides some really great experiential learning opportunities there for students who help run the organization.

But, as we talked about, I was born and grew up in Salem, Ohio. I ended up attending Allegheny College. That environment was really perfect for me. It’s a small liberal arts college in Needville, Pennsylvania. And, when I entered Allegheny, I was really focused on working in electoral politics. I eventually learned that I had no interest in that as a career. I think that’s some of those best career realizations are realizing that you have no interest in them.

Ed Butch: Right. Definitely, yes.

Craig Berger: You thought you did. I was much more interested in the life of the campus, the learning that happens during those years, and what is it about that environment that creates that. So I graduated from Allegheny with a degree in political science, ended up getting a job at Penn State Erie, which was right up the road from Allegheny, served as a live-in hall director. But, I think the most important part for me was coordinating alternative spring break experiences to the Gulf Coast in response to Hurricane Katrina.

So it was there that I saw that I could really fuse civic engagement with politics with higher ed. I went on to earn my master’s degree in student affairs and higher education at Miami University. That was a great experience. And then, I moved to Baltimore and took a job in student life at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, or UMBC for short. And there, I advised the student government. And, it was really there that I started putting together some core philosophies, recognizing that ultimately we just all ought to aim for students to see their environments and their communities as being these fluid spaces, open to transformation by the time they finished their time with us. So worked there for six years.

And then, in late 2017, I ended up getting the job here at Penn State, which I really viewed as being able to merge my professional life with my family. I moved back to Ohio with my wife, who’s from California. So she’s, I think, still maybe a little bit acclimating to life in Northeast Ohio. But we now live in Kent with our two-year-old and we love it, and it’s been really great learning about and getting engaged in this community.

Ed Butch: That’s awesome. I mean, quite the various experiences that you have throughout your entire career, as a former poli sci person as well in undergrad. I also understand realizing not wanting to go into that, into politics. But, I think, you are truly engaging with the students, with faculty, with staff, with the community, and things like that. So when you hear the theme for this season that we have the engaged university, what does that really, I guess, mean to you?

Craig Berger: Well, with the lens that I bring to this community engagement, actually, when I hear that, I go in my head to the opposite of that. What is a university that calls itself an engaged university trying to say that it’s not? Which I see being the stuffy university we think of, perhaps one that sits on a hill above the town that it’s in, that only acknowledges its place in that town when it suits them. So when I hear that term, I think about what the opposite of that is.

And so, for an engaged university, I actually think of an institution that sees itself not as a bubble, but is a part of the fabric of the community. A university that has a curriculum that goes beyond the walls of a classroom or a campus, and intentionally is trying to connect teaching, research, service, and programs to the needs of that community. I think an engaged university also listens to its neighbors. It’s identifying ways to connect its resources and talent with local organizations that are doing great work already and looking for ways to make that even better. And that creates opportunities for students, faculty, staff to make a meaningful impact.

Ultimately, I think it’s about co-creating solutions, whether that’s addressing issues like food insecurity, supporting local schools. Ultimately, I think it’s a two-way relationship where both the university and the community grow stronger together. For me, an engaged university is one that lives out its values, sees community engagement is core to its mission, and not just something that’s an extra feature.

Ed Butch: Definitely. Definitely. That’s a really good rundown of that, and I think, it’s important, because I think having worked at Kent State with you for a while, a lot of people don’t necessarily understand what community-engaged learning means. And so, can you just talk with us a little bit about how does that differ from traditional service learning or even volunteerism?

Craig Berger: Sure. Community-engaged learning, I think, goes deeper than traditional service learning or volunteerism because it’s really built on reciprocal partnerships, shared goals, while volunteerism is often about helping others, usually in an episodic or short-term way, community-engaged learning has, what we call, mutuality and reciprocity. So it’s about working with communities, not just for them. It’s also integrating academic content with the actual challenges that are confronting the university, that are confronting these communities where it’s being taught, and teaching otherwise bland, abstract concepts, that way encourages students then to critically reflect on systems, power dynamics, their own roles in creating change. With the service learning piece, when we talk about traditional service learning, there’s often a focus on hours completed, and often, there’s a risk that it can be set up in a way that extracts resources from the community to benefit the university. But community-engaged learning emphasizes impact, relationship building, and long-term collaboration. And it’s not just about doing good, it’s about learning why the work matters, how it connects to core schools and objectives, and really ultimately how both students and communities can benefit and grow together.

Ed Butch: Yeah. So it’s less of a checkbox that we often see for someone to check off, basically.

Craig Berger: Correct. And that’s why it can be difficult, because it can be difficult, especially when we’re talking about assessment and we’re trying to make assessment easy. A lot of times, these relationships don’t necessarily lend themselves to neat tidy assessment.

Ed Butch: Yeah.

Craig Berger: It can be messy because humans are messy and relationships are messy. And, ultimately, to do this work well, it’s about those relationships foregrounding humanity.

Ed Butch: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and having those conversations, right? That’s important is having those conversations. So can you talk to us a little bit about maybe an experience of some sort that has really stood out to you or your students?

Craig Berger: Sure. One that really stands out to me took place right here at Kent State. It was a partnership between the College of Public Health, a local nonprofit named Let’s Grow Together, and our Community Engaged Learning Office. One of the College of Public Health faculty members identified a neglected community garden at a local elementary school here in Kent, and led an effort to transform it into both a vibrant learning lab for the kids at the elementary school, and also a dynamic educational experience for our students at the university. So public health students were involved through one of their courses, where they not only studied concepts like food systems, nutrition, health equity, but they actually got to apply that knowledge in a hands-on way. They helped redesign the garden space. They helped develop lessons for those elementary students about healthy eating, where food comes from. They collected data on student engagement, health outcomes as part of those class projects.

And then, I think what made this partnership even more powerful was the opportunity for students to stay involved beyond the classroom. So they finished their class, but then they could work with our Community Engaged Learning Office. They could hold paid internships through our office with Let’s Grow Together, which then helped them deepen that impact, while they also developed skills in community health, program evaluation, as well as gardening. And, one student, we were talking about this project that they were participating in, and they told me that it was the first time that, to them, public health felt tangible. It wasn’t just something that they read about, but something they could actually see, touch, and tend to. And, it was mutual. Elementary students were excited. Families got involved through the school’s new garden club that started because of the garden’s existence. And I think students left with a deeper understanding of how public health can connect with education and community building. And really, that’s what community engaged learning is all about, is building the sustainable, reciprocal partnerships that we talked about that benefit everyone involved and help transform that academic learning into actual change.

Ed Butch: That’s amazing. Yeah, I mean, being able to have a student who says that they are actually feeling and understanding what they’re studying and what they want to do with their lives, I mean, that’s just great to hear and what you want to hear from all students as well.

Craig Berger: Absolutely.

Ed Butch: So obviously, they’re gaining that experience. But what are you think some other things that students really gain from these experiences that they might not get in a traditional classroom?

Craig Berger: I think, one of the main things is context. They get to see how what they’re learning applies to life outside the classroom, and I think that makes the material stick in a totally different way. They develop critical skills like communication, adaptability, cultural humility, the ability to navigate complex, practical, messy challenges. But I think the most important takeaway is that they gain a sense of purpose. When students see the impact of their work, whether it is in a community garden, a nonprofit office, food security work, they realize that they’re not just preparing for a future career, they’re already making a difference.

Ed Butch: Mm-hmm.

Craig Berger: That learning is transformational. That’s the learning that I think students should experience in college. And I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice when we say that we’re preparing for students for a world after their college experience. The reality is, if we’re doing things well, they’re already making a difference.

Ed Butch: Yeah.

Craig Berger: And it’s not just preparing, but they’re actually making a large impact while they are learning.

Ed Butch: Right. That is for sure. That’s for sure. And you talked a little bit about faculty with that public health example and things like that as well, but in a lot of the other experiences that you’re seeing, is there a role that faculty play in creating these opportunities?

Craig Berger: Yeah, I think they play a critical role. They’re really the bridge between the academic content, and then the actual impact that students are having, and really the community members are having. A lot of times, it starts with a passion project. The faculty member in public health here at Kent State loved gardening, and she was really just trying to find a way to connect that and realizing the implications and the possibilities that could have in an educational setting, that led to her coming up with a thoughtful course design that connected learning outcomes to community needs.

It requires then, a lot of relationship building, collaborating with community partners, ensuring that projects are well-designed with that mutuality and reciprocity, but also making sure that students are prepared for that experience. You can build that experience and set everything up, but if students are not prepared to go into it, they can make mistakes, which can then jeopardize the relationship that the university and the faculty member has with the community. So that’s work that that faculty member can do. They also play a large role in reflection, in helping the students make meaning of what they just experienced and making sure that they’re making those connections with that content that they’re teaching. I just think that faculty have such a large role to play beyond that role of being a content expert, and expanding that role is really important to doing community engaged learning well.

Ed Butch: Yeah. Yes, definitely. So before I ask a little bit about maybe some of the challenges, and push-backs, and support for faculty, I want to move over to the civic engagement side of things. And, how do you see civic engagement shaping students’ identities? So as learners, as citizens, and future professionals.

Craig Berger: I think civic engagement can be incredibly transformative for students. It shapes not just what they know, but there’s an identity piece. It shapes who they see themselves becoming. When students engage meaningfully with specific actual issues in their community, especially through community engaged learning, they start to connect the dots then between their academic work, their personal values, and their potential to contribute to something bigger than themselves. A lot of times, they may not know what their personal values are until they are navigating these experiences. I think one concept that’s really important here is civic agency. It’s that capacity we want students to develop that has them seeing the world around them as unfinished, as being open to transformation, and that’s really huge undertaking for anyone. But, through civic engagement and experiential learning, they can begin to see that they’re not just passive recipients of knowledge, they’re active participants in shaping their communities and professions. They ask better, more informed questions, think more critically about systems and power, and realize that their voice and actions matter.

As learners, I think it deepens their curiosity, they’re not just memorizing content, but they’re applying it, they’re questioning it, co-creating knowledge with others. They’re seeing democracy as something that’s lived and practiced, not just studied. So civic engagement isn’t just an add-on, like I mentioned before. I think it is identity shaping. It helps students become not only more skilled, but also more grounded, reflective, purpose-driven in whatever path they choose. And, one additional note there, I’d actually say the same for universities. Civic engagement is identity-shaping for institutions as well. They also become more grounded, reflective, and purpose-driven partners in our communities when they’re embracing civic engagement.

Ed Butch: Well, I think that’s a great transition into looking at, for both of these, both community-engaged learning and civic engagement, what are really, I guess, some of the push-backs and challenges that institutions might face in trying to embed this in some of their curriculum, but also, how can they really support their faculty in doing this as well?

Craig Berger: Well, so we’ve certainly been talking about how this work is powerful, but it definitely is not without challenges, I think first time is a huge obstacle here. Building strong partnerships takes time way more than just assigning a paper or planning a lecture. Faculty are already juggling teaching, research, service. So then, asking them to add messy community coordination on top of that, especially if there’s no extra compensation attached to it, it can feel overwhelming. I think there’s the structure of higher ed itself, things like syllabi and academic calendars, which we’re very familiar with, they don’t always align with community timelines. A non-profit partner could need help with a project in July, but the class doesn’t start until September, or maybe a semester ends just as momentum is building on a project.

So figuring out how to work around that or within those constraints does take creativity and flexibility. I think, there’s skepticism as well. I think, some folks worry that community engaged learning is less rigorous, maybe to feel good, not academic enough, which I don’t think it’d be further from the truth. I think these experiences challenge students in really complex, meaningful ways, but shifting that mindset does take some effort.

Ed Butch: Yeah.

Craig Berger: And, finally, I think we got to be careful not to put the burden on community partners asking them to mentor students without offering real support or compensation for them. That’s where, I think, institutional buy-in matters, investing in that infrastructure, staffing, and support so these partnerships are sustainable. And that’s transitioning into that next half of the answer. I mentioned it before, but I think faculty being able to have those resources to have the room to imagine new possibilities with their teaching, if they’re not getting that extra compensation, it’s really difficult for faculty members to change tactics, change approaches with courses that they’ve taught before. And so, they do need those additional resources. They need, I think, investment in professional development, whether that’s local or through some national organizations, there are organizations there to help with rethinking how you can do this work in a community engaged way. So I think that’s definitely a way to help support faculty members and also staff members in doing this work.

Ed Butch: Yeah, yeah. Time and money, right? It’s what drives everything.

Craig Berger: Correct. Absolutely.

Ed Butch: All right. Well, again, merging these two things. In what ways, I guess, do you think that community engaged learning can respond or reflect some of our current social and political and other issues within our community and even global community even as well?

Craig Berger: Yeah, I think it’s uniquely positioned to respond to our current challenges. I think, whether students are working on projects that are related to issues like public health, housing, immigration, voter engagement work, they’re engaging with the very challenges that are shaping our society right now and that a lot of us are spending time thinking about. It creates space for dialogue, critical thinking, and action when students are engaging in those issues. It’s not just theory, but it’s practice. And, I think because it’s rooted in partnership, community engaged learning encourages students to listen to diverse perspectives, consider how policies and systems affect people differently. I think, it helps students build empathy at a time when polarization is very high. I think we need a heck of a lot more empathy right now. So I think that’s very important, but it also helps them understand complexity and helps them see themselves as part of a solution to these different challenges.

Ed Butch: Definitely. Could not agree more. So as we start to wrap up a little bit, let’s say, we have some faculty, or staff, or administrators at a university that maybe they’re not doing a lot of this stuff already with their university and they want to be become more engaged with the community around them. Where should they start?

Craig Berger: I think it starts with listening.

Ed Butch: Mm-hmm.

Craig Berger: Meaningful engagement isn’t about launching programs, hoping they land. It’s about building authentic relationships with community members, asking what matters to them, identifying shared goals. It’s a conversation with yourself as well, asking yourself, what do you really care about? Like that faculty member did here in public health. But, I think it’s about mutual work together, and then experiencing reciprocal benefits together in a faculty member and a community organization. It’s both of them working together. So that listening is really important. I think it’s also important to invest in infrastructure that supports those relationships. So look for your community engagement office at your university. There are going to be people there who know how to build a community partnership and can help you identify resources that can support that work. Faculty development, there are centers where you can be trained in how do you build community engaged courses. So find that center at your university. A lot of times, there is funding for those partnerships, so trying to identify those opportunities.

I think you’ve got to look at your culture as well. So looking at things like the curriculum, what opportunities do students have? How does leadership at your university value actual collaboration over programs that are maybe just exclusively rooted in charity? And, I think it’s important to identify how does your leadership see this? And, if you feel so inclined, how can you push your leadership to value community engaged learning over some of those more episodic models of charity and community engagement. I’ll also say that language is often overlooked. But, I think it’s incredibly important as we think not only about how we’re communicating with students, as well as external audiences. And I’ll provide one example. When we label everything outside of the physical campus as the real world, we’re unintentionally communicating a few things to students and our neighbors.

Ed Butch: Yes.

Craig Berger: First, anything that happens on campus is a fantasy, and that very real problematic dynamics and systems that we know exist, we’re saying that they don’t actually exist there, and we know that couldn’t be further from the truth. Two, the campus itself, in this real world phrase, we’re basically saying the campus itself is just a waiting room for students until their life actually begins. Three, it creates a false divide making it seem like the campus is this bubble that’s disconnected from that community where it’s located and the community members are part of that external real world, rather than co-creators of knowledge, change, wellbeing, when in reality, universities and communities are very deeply interconnected.

Ed Butch: Yeah.

Craig Berger: So I guess, I’m just saying the language is a part of that culture that I just mentioned. And I think we just have to be mindful of what we are saying and how we’re framing things lands.

Ed Butch: Yes. I cannot agree more. Going into that whole counting down relations, as they like to call it, I think, having worked at Kent and being very involved in the community still, I can appreciate what Kent State has done over the years and Kent community has done over the years to really make sure that there is a positive relationship between the two. And, I’ve been at schools and I’ve worked at institutions where that’s not necessarily the case. And so, I think that’s extremely important for anyone that is looking to start this engagement with their students and getting them into the community, that has to happen first, is getting those connections and making sure that they’re positive.

Craig Berger: Totally agree.

Ed Butch: So to end, I always like to have my guest be a little bit of a fortune-teller. And, looking at community engaged learning and civic engagement, where do you really see the future of this heading at universities over the next 5 to 10 years?

Craig Berger: So 5 to 10 years, that means you could be asking about the next presidential term, correct? There could be-

Ed Butch: For sure. That would be. Yep.

Craig Berger: … Because I think there’s a two party answer there. I think, we have some immediate challenges we’re facing, especially in states that are passing significantly restrictive legislation, like ours, in Ohio. But, with that time horizon, I do ultimately think experiential and community engaged learning can find its way to becoming a mainstream concept in higher education. I’m an optimist. I think we’ll see it become a core requirement at many universities in the future, right alongside general education. I’ll go further and say that in that timeframe, probably on the later end of that timeframe, I do see that transcripts will not just list courses and grades predominantly, but will also highlight impact, and that that will be commonplace. I think students will graduate with civic engagement portfolios that showcase community-based projects that they contributed to and the communities they collaborated with.

And honestly, I’ll be cheering this on, because I think it frames higher ed as not just a place to earn a degree, but a launchpad for solving real problems, building relationships, creating change. And, I think it is going to take some time, given where we are right now, but I do think that’s exactly where we’re headed.

Ed Butch: That’s awesome. I really like that transcript idea and then having that on an official university transcript of the things that students did to help the community and those around them, so that’s fantastic. Well, Craig, thank you so much for coming on, and being a guest, and talking to your old pal.

Craig Berger: Of course.

Ed Butch: I really appreciate it. Some great stuff, some great work that you’re doing at the university. I know that to be a fact. And so, I truly, truly do appreciate it. Any final thoughts or anything before we wrap up?

Craig Berger: I don’t think so. Just that I really value our friendship and it’s been great working with you. And, I want to name that I feel very fortunate to work in this community where I think there is a great relationship between… I even hesitate to say between the university and the community, because it sets it up as this relationship that has this definite boundary that I think a lot of times doesn’t exist, it’s blurred because we have such great relationships. And I know it didn’t always used to be that way. But, you’re right, over the past decade or so, maybe a little more, I think it really has gotten to a place where there’s some really great interconnected relationships that are leading to some really great things in our community.

Ed Butch: Well, thank you again. Hope that you are well and take care.

Craig Berger: You too. Thank you.

Ed Butch: I invite all of our listeners to visit citiprogram.org to learn more about our courses and webinars on research, ethics, compliance, and higher education. I look forward to bringing you more expert guests to discuss what’s happening on campus.