Ships Passing in the Night?

Marguerite Shaffer, director of American Studies at Miami University, is one of a surprisingly large number of faculty members who are at odds with an academic culture that isn't hospitable to their efforts to combine a public life with a scholarly career. She is concerned about what is happening in her field and about the world her two children will inherit. The Shaffers of academe are one of the forces driving a civic engagement movement on campuses across the country. Not so long ago, the civic education of college students was of little concern. Now, thanks to educators like Shaffer, that indifference is giving way. Leadership programs are common, and students are taught civic skills, including civil dialogue. Faculty, who were once "sages on the stage," have learned to be more effective in communities by being "guides on the side." All in all, there is much to admire in the civic engagement movement on campuses. Another civic engagement movement is occurring off campus. People at the Kettering Foundation have seen it clearly in communities on the Gulf Coast that are recovering from Hurricane Katrina. They have combined what they learned from several communities into a fictional composite in order to report from across the region. In this article, the author discusses this off-campus civic movement by illustrating the story of "Don" and his wife "Mary" and their neighbors in their goal of restoring their community and their way of life after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. [ERIC]