“Community Engagement Abroad” Book Launch

Mon, February 24, 2020 4:00 PM - Mon, February 24, 2020 6:00 PM at International Center Room 303

RCAH’s Dean Stephen Esquith and Associate Dean Scot Yoder are contributing authors.

The Office for Education Abroad, with the support of the ISP Dean’s office, invites you to join us for the official launch of the long-awaited edited volume on Community Engagement Abroad, co-edited by Pat Crawford (Director of the School of Design at South Dakota State University; formerly at the School of Planning, Design and Construction at MSU) and Brett Berquist (Director International, University of Auckland, New Zealand; former Executive Director of Study Abroad at MSU).

Several years ago, Brett Berquist convened a group of MSU faculty and staff who had been working on community engagement abroad programs to share their practice and to identify successful program design options.  Pat Crawford was leading the Bailey Scholars program at the time and continued the work as the edited volume project emerged – a collection of chapters showcasing MSU’s leadership in this space. 

On February 24, Brett and several contributing authors (Steve Esquith, Scot Yoder, Rene Rosenbaum, Rae Schnuth, Cheryl Celestin, and Joy Milano) will present a new framework on program characteristics that may be useful for program design and evaluation.  Chapter authors will relate their program choices, success and areas for improvement, and how this relates to the institutional context and the proposed framework.

Since then, the work around Global Community Engaged Learning (GCEL) has continued, culminating in an international symposium in Ghana in summer 2019 and ongoing work on an MSU rubric for high quality GCEL programs. Representatives from the GCEL working group will also be in attendance and will provide an overview of their work as well as give an outlook on what’s next.

The book project started almost a decade ago.  It will be interesting to reflect on the origins of this type of programming, how it connected to our institutional strategy at the time, and where the GCEL group has taken this work now.  Join us to share your thoughts and directions and to gain concrete ideas for your own programming.

The volume will be published by the Michigan State University Press on March 1. Advance copies will be available for purchase at this event.