Summer Reading List

Summer time, with its beaches and pool-side lounging, is the perfect time to pick up a book and dedicate some time to reading. With that in mind, we created a list of recommended of books that will enrich, illuminate and inspire your understanding of publicly engaged scholarship.

Here are our summer reading recommendations:

• 1. Publicly Engaged Scholars: Next-Generation Engagement and the Future of Higher Education

  By Margaret A. Post, Elaine Ward, Nicholas V. Longo, John Saltmarsh 

  
  The concern that the democratic purposes of higher education—and its conception as a public good—are being undermined, with the growing realization that existing structures are unsuited to addressing today's complex societal problems, and that our institutions are failing an increasingly diverse population, all give rise to questioning the current model of the university.
  
  This book, which is part of the recommended reading for our Public Scholars for the Future Program, presents the voices of a new generation of scholars, educators, and practitioners who are committed to civic renewal and the public purposes of higher education. They question existing policies, structures, and practices, and put forward new forms of engagement that can help to shape and transform higher education to align it with societal needs.
  
  The scholars featured in this book make the case for public scholarship and argue that, in order to strengthen the democratic purposes of higher education for a viable future that is relevant to the needs of a changing society, we must recognize and support new models of teaching and research, and the need for fundamental changes in the core practices, policies and cultures of the academy.

• 2. Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and Lessons Learned 
  By Barbara Jacoby
  
  “Service-Learning Essentials” is the resource you need to help you develop high-quality service-learning experiences for college students. Written by one of the field's leading experts and sponsored by Campus Compact, the book is the definitive work on this high-impact educational practice. Service-learning has been identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as having been widely tested and shown to be beneficial to college students from a wide variety of backgrounds.
• 3. The Scholar as Human 
  By Anna Sims Bartel and Debra A. Castillo
  
  Recognizing that colleges and universities must be more responsive to the needs of both their students and surrounding communities, the essays in “The Scholar as Human” carve out new space for public scholars and practitioners whose rigor and passion are equally important forces in their work. Challenging the approach to research and teaching of earlier generations that valorized disinterestedness, each contributor here demonstrates how they have energized their own scholarship and its reception among their students and in the wider world through a deeper engagement with their own life stories and humanity. This book is part of our recommended reading list for several of our faculty fellowship programs.
• 4. The Activist Academic 
  By Colette Cann and Eric DeMeulenaere
  
  The Activist Academic is the perfect book for those who are looking to merge activism into their work in academia. Following the journey of two academics, the book provides frameworks and methods for how scholars can marry their academic careers with their interest in activism, social justice and publicly engaged scholarship; but also provides tips for navigating the lived realities of pursuing this work while also raising families and navigating office politics. In short, the book invites academics across disciplines to enter into a dialogue about how to take knowledge to the streets.