Building Higher Education’s “Trust Infrastructure” with Bobbie Laur

Bobbie Laur:

Community engagement is relational. Like it is not an AI bot. Community engagement is not done without people at the center of it, both in terms of the community and the institution.

So I do think in many ways, rebuilding a trust infrastructure, I think community engagement is at its core. And I think in many ways, community engagement can be that trust infrastructure for higher education.

Paul Kuttner:
Hey, welcome to Partnership Work. I’m Paul Kuttner.

Higher education has been in turmoil since Trump took office, with colleges and universities struggling to respond to waves of attacks on research funding, DEI, campus protests. You’ve seen the headlines.

The administration was able to do this partly because so many people have lost confidence in higher education. They see it as too expensive, too inaccessible, a contributor to the deep inequalities in our country rather than part of the solution. My guest today argues that community engagement is key to rebuilding public confidence in higher education.

Bobby Laur is president of Campus Compact, a national coalition of over 300 colleges and universities. Since the mid-80s, Campus Compact has been working to advance the public mission of higher education. They empower campuses to partner with communities and address real-world issues together.

I invited Bobby on to discuss what this political moment means for the work of community campus partnerships. In this episode, Bobby dissects the loss of confidence in higher education and describes how community engagement can serve as a trust infrastructure for campuses. She shares her own journey into partnership work and points to examples of campuses where engagement is not just an add-on, but instead is integrated across the institution. And she offers a peek into some of the federal advocacy work that Campus Compact is building towards. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us on your podcast platform, or just share it with someone.

You can also sign up for the free Partnership Work Substack newsletter at partnershipwork.substack.com, and all our episodes, transcripts, show notes, and more can be found at partnershipwork.org.

And now, Bobbie.

Paul:

Bobbi Laur, thank you for joining me on Partnership Work.

Bobbie:

Oh, thrilled to be here, Paul. I know we’ve been trying to get this scheduled for some time.

Paul:

Yes, it was worth the wait, I’m sure. So I’m just going to jump right into it.

2025 was obviously a hectic, one-of-a-kind year for higher ed, with the administration in particular coming in real strong with attacks on higher ed. First, really focused on elite institutions, but then also kind of focus more broadly as time went on around, DEI, around research funding, even threatening the nonprofit status of universities. I want to kind of just get your perspective.

If you can put yourself back in that, how did that hit you when it first started coming down? What were you seeing in higher ed, particularly around the community engagement part of higher ed, as all of that was starting back in, January, February, March last year.

Bobbie:

My honest answer, Paul, is that not all things are created equal in that. So I think the early executive order around diversity, equity, inclusion wasn’t a surprise to me.

I mean, I think the broad sweep of it was, but we saw a lot of that in Trump 1.0. And we definitely, for those of us that have been in this policy space for, and I’ve been at Compact four years this month. And so, prior to this role, I really wasn’t very involved in more of the federal policy space at a pretty significant level.

So it’s been a quick introduction. And really, it came in parallel with when we have seen a lot of anti-DEI efforts across this country. So really, that executive order that was January 2025, for me, was not the surprising piece of the puzzle.

I mean, the reason that that was able and not able because we actually there was a big win in court two weeks ago. I don’t know if you followed around that executive order where where, in essence, there’s no they’re not going to appeal the decision, the administration around the lack of constitutionality around it. I don’t think there’s a lot of understanding around what does that actually get us because the executive order itself was it created so much compromise and so many institutional and so many choices, both in institutions and in individual campuses.

Where they people were not being required to do things but were doing things because they felt they had to and I don’t know that just because we now have an answer in the courts that says that that executive order doesn’t have the weight I don’t know that that’s really going to change the kind of the decisions that have been made so I think we’ll have we’re going to have to wait and see what happens but there have been so much work there have been so much um work and um threats and loss around dei over the past several years really beginning with Florida, but then really escalating quickly with things SB-17 in Texas. And then we saw an Ohio SB-1. And so we have been, those of us that have been in this work, and I myself have been pretty immersed in it through coalitions, the Freedom to Learn Coalition with Penn America and others to try to really talk about how we hold true to these values that, education needs to be accessible to everyone and that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not bad words and that they have real meaningfulness in terms of purpose and impact and real danger when we weaponize them.

So that wasn’t as much of a surprise. However, I remember being shocked in January 2025 when we saw the federal funding freeze. I think the swiftness and the kind of just carelessness that was that federal funding freeze and when that happened I think that said I would say safe to say everyone on everyone was on their toes of this feels we’ve gone from what could be possible to worst case scenario, quicker than I think anybody thought would be possible.

So I think since then, it has been, particularly when you look at that January to September, October standpoint, when the compact, when the compact from the administration hit the streets, in September and October, I think it was just a churn. Like you said, it started with the federal funding freeze. And then it was there was a little bit of give on that.

And then it was an attack on accreditation. It was an attack on student status. I mean, what we saw happening around immigration and international students, and then it was an attack on a continued attack around research dollars and direct institutional, attacks and deals being made.

Like, it’s just been a lot to keep up with. So I think some of that, to be honest, I have been surprised by it. Higher education writ large has been something that republicans and democrats have long understood the value of it’s a it’s one of the greatest strengths of our country it’s something we are regarded about around the world and I think in the sector we thought we were a lot safer, than we have turned out to be um in terms of people particularly the research enterprise, I think we all felt this is where the most innovative and scientific discovery happens in the world that no one in their right mind would be coming to destroy them.

And I think we’ve all been pretty shocked at that even something that is at risk.

Paul:

For sure. Now, you mentioned the compact. So that’s the compact for academic excellence in higher education, which the administration put out. It brought together a bunch of different priorities. The administration have a bunch of critiques of higher ed into kind of a list of priorities that universities and colleges would be asked to align with in order to get kind of preferential treatment for funding.

I know you mentioned last time we talked that having it called a compact was a bit problematic for you all over at Campus Compact.

Bobbie:

Yeah, yeah, not ideal wording, not ideal wording at all.

Paul: There was a ton of pushback on it, obviously, from higher ed, people raising issues of free speech, academic independence, autonomy. And I think at this point, Like, none of the original institutions signed it, and there’s a couple small conservative colleges that have signed on to it, the one Ron DeSantis overhauled in Florida. But it’s still evolving. It’s still kind of out in the world there and potentially could come back in another form once they get feedback on it.

I wanted to ask you, though, you wrote a really interesting piece right after it came out talking about the work of Campus Compact. It was called A Higher Education Compact in Action. You put it out on the Campus Compact website.

And I was intrigued by your take on it because you kind of reframed things. You sort of, you shared that you agreed with many of the concerns about government overreach, but you argued that we sort of can’t be in defensive mode around this. And I specifically want to quote you here.

And I ask you sort of how your thinking may have evolved. So you said, “The value of higher education is under question. While it is tempting to dismiss the loss of public confidence as partisan, narrow-minded, short-sighted, or just a messaging issue, we need to take it seriously. It’s a trend that has been building over years and is based on valid and wide-ranging concerns.”

So before we get to the kind of the solutions you pointed towards, I wanted to ask you, what do you see as the valid and wide-ranging concerns at higher ed that we need to be really paying attention to?

Bobbie:

Yeah. And, I would stand by that quote still today, right? Which isn’t always the case, these moments where sometimes you make, you say something in the best, in the context that you’re in, and then you look back and you say, I don’t, I would shift there.

I think those, those feelings really still ring true for me. And I would say, I think, Paul, I’ve spent a career in community engagement, as have you. I think that positionality and the people that do this work day and day out in community engagement, I think that that probably resonates a lot with those of us in community engagement.

And what I mean by that is we are often the people who are sitting on our campuses really trying to walk a line of saying, there is harm. There is potential harm. The universities are not getting everything right.

We are, the problem solvers. So I think the confidence numbers, and that is just a statistic that’s factual, we have seen the confidence numbers in higher education falling for years. You know, that’s part of where I think created this really challenging landscape for us.

While we were being attacked, we necessarily weren’t in a time where broadly across the country, we had everybody coming to our defense. And I think some of the reasons for that. You said, what are those reasons where I’m saying, we have to look in the mirror? There’s real financial ones, we have higher education in terms of its affordability is always the, it’s the number one reasons that people have questions about confidence in higher education. You know, we have a student loan debt crisis in this country.

Many people are priced out of getting a college education. And there’s lots of interesting, innovative solutions, particularly around community colleges in that. But the price of higher education, by and large, has skyrocketed.

At the same time, we have massive increases in just wealth equity gaps across this country. So we are experiencing a time just as Americans where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And when you have a higher education system that’s talking about economic and social mobility a lot, I think we need to kind of look in the mirror and talk about, yes, there are campuses that are doing, that are excellent at economic and social mobility.

But writ large, what’s the responsibility of the sector in the broader distribution of wealth in this country? And I think that has caused, a lot of middle America and folks that aren’t pursuing degrees in higher education to begin to feel very separate from this institution that feels this elitist kind of continuing to contribute to something that they don’t feel is accessible to them. You know, when you look in rural America, that is increasingly true. Like so the demographics of these confidence questions both along political lines are stark and then also around geography are stark around the urban world divide

I also think that, I actually was just on a panel two weeks ago at AAC&U around advancing public trust. And I was asked a question about this and I don’t have, and I talked about this a little bit in that Compact in Action statement, and I don’t have this really well tuned, but there’s something for me that I’m sitting with. That higher education and the work that I have spent my career doing and you, Paul, has really been about making the case that higher education is essential to our communities. We are drivers of not just economic development, but community well-being and health equity and what it means to create thriving communities for all, because there’s so much that we do as colleges and universities that is beyond the students that walk through our doors and get degrees.

And I think there we have to take stock in the fact that so many people are suffering. They don’t have access to healthy food. They aren’t finding ways to find affordable housing. They’re not able to find jobs that provide living wages. You know, we have climate change, climate change crisis is creating just systemic issues. We have a mental health crisis across this country that’s the worst it’s ever been.

I think the fact that we have so much, so many challenges broadly in society and at the same time we have spent decades talking about the critical importance of higher education in our communities, those two things for me are also sitting there of why would we expect broad society to be super confident about something when writ large, all the things that are sitting at the kitchen table are really tough. And so if we’re yelling from the rooftop that college universities are essential anchors in our communities, they are drivers of all these things, like they are critical to how our society functions, and society is not functioning very well for the average person. That, I don’t have the exact data points on, but I also think that is playing in to the confidence and it’s not as clear cut when you look at the reasons, because I don’t think that we understand how to ask that question.

Paul:

Yeah.

Bobbie:

But I think that that’s, that’s a piece of this. And, and that’s how, that’s how higher education is getting. We’re seeing similar data points around confidence on just trust in government and that’s a lot of why so those numbers and trust in government have been falling for years again way before this current administration and we know that that’s why people no longer feel government is serving them and I think there’s something there about just the health of our community, society, and people. And then the connection, because I feel we’ve been effective in making the case that higher education is essential. And so I feel that’s a piece of also what’s happening that is harder to put your exact finger on.

Paul:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the complicated things, when you’re doing partnership work between communities and universities at the local level. You’re often sort of in these in-between spaces where you’re sort of arguing for higher ed in community, why community partners should consider working with and collaborating with higher ed despite past harm, despite distrust. And then you’re also in higher ed arguing for how they need to change. Now, it almost seems we’ve now projected that onto the national level.

And it puts us in a funny position because, as you said, people in community engagement are many of the people who have been pointing out flaws in higher education and things that we need to change over time. But now with these attacks that are not necessarily always in good faith, there is an urge, I think, for many people to sort of hunker down and be defensive and not engage in those conversations because they’re not necessarily good faith, productive conversations. And so it’s just hard to figure out kind of how to navigate these larger debates without without falling back into kind of total defensiveness and higher ed is great and why are you, which I think you’re trying to navigate.

So I’m wondering how you see, how do you picture yourself navigating that? How do you think we collectively should be thinking about that tension?

Bobbie:

Yeah. So I’m definitely not on the side of that. We don’t need to be defending ourselves.

And frankly, I don’t know that a lot of people think we’ve effectively defended ourselves and ourselves being higher education as a sector this year. So I think that what’s important, there’s a typology that I’ve heard of, you need builders, bridges, bridgers and blockers. Like when you’re talking about trying to address a moment this and in a set of attacks this, there’s multiple roles that need to be played.

So you need bridgers, you need builders, and you need blockers. And the blockers are you need, particularly in this case, the biggest strength we have had has been the legal community. So organizations Democracy Forward, that I don’t think most folks had heard of a year ago today, have been essential.

I mean, holding, utilizing our justice system to be able to call out, is this constitutional or not? Is it fair to be, attacking whether it’s endowment taxes or whether it’s federal funding freezes or whether it’s a tax on, using executive orders in certain ways? So you need people that are doing the blocking work. I think what I’m trying to argue is that we also have to be, we can’t just be defending a status quo.

I do not think that that is essential. I think there are real things that need to shift in higher ed and We need folks who can also help build for the next what is what comes next and build for how do we actually? How do we actually build a more inclusive, more accessible, more thriving higher education system? And then you need bridgers, people that can connect the dots, people that can do a better job, I mean, of making sure higher gets out of being such a siloed sector. I actually believe that higher education institutions, particularly those who are deeply civic and community engagement, are well positioned to be really builders and bridgers.

And then I think organizations and coalitions Compact and others that are in this space, we’re also particularly attuned to do that within the broader ecosystem of higher ed. So, I sit in a lot of tables and a lot of rooms with other organizations in higher ed. And a really big one just launched two weeks ago or, yeah, I think it was two weeks ago.

It’s a new organization that people should lock up. It’s called the Alliance for Higher Education. And it has emerged really as a response to what’s been happening in the past couple of years.

It’s led by Mike Gavin, who used to be the president of Delta College. And I’ve been working with Mike along with lots of others over the past couple of years to kind of get to this launch point for the alliance. And the alliance, to me, is such an important recognition of what we didn’t have before, which is, a defense-structured organization.

It’s not a membership organization that’s not beholden to, serving our institutions, which can create real challenge for some of our higher ed associations because, are they focused on the research? Like, or are they focused on the diversity, equity, inclusion agenda? So the Alliance is sitting alongside all of the other membership organizations and others, but they are going to be a defense engine. And they’re going to help, I think, drive kind of visions for the future. But there also, I think, if we’d had an organization the Alliance maybe in place a year ago, I think we may have been able to navigate differently.

Do I think that we would have, stopped the bleeding? I’m not sure. But I am excited about something the Alliance coming online and what it might bring in terms of our future ability to, work more cohesively as a sector. But, yeah, I mean, that’s where I mean, I think there’s a multitude of roles to play.

And my main argument I made here that I definitely make anytime I have a conversation is it’s really about not settling for the status quo of making the assumption that higher ed today is working in all the ways it has. It’s also definitely not a throw the baby out with the bathwater moment. Like, this is not a moment where I’m by any means advocating that we just start over.

I mean, higher ed continues to be the primary pathway for people to get opportunity, for economic and social mobility, to develop the critical thinking skills, to meet the needs of workforce. We just have to think about what does that social contract look with the public, I think, in a more meaningful way. And that’s what I think you said, Paul.

You said this, well, I don’t know that, I don’t believe there’s really a future for the Trump Compact. And I think the thing that ended up creating real alignment across a diverse set of institutions that receive the initial opportunity is this very clear consensus around merit.

That there’s a real value on merit when it comes to research funding. That research funding at its core, higher education wants to say, this should, awards should be given to the most competitive, most competitive and right solutions. And that they don’t want to do anything that is saying, if I sign this, I’m going to get preferential treatment.

That there’s a real value in the merit system of federal research dollars. And that that’s what has created the best, best global, discoveries of our time. You saw every president really that said no, who some of them were places UVA that had experienced a presidential turnover and put in place, there would have been leadership changes at many of the institutions that I think thought made the administration feel they would be more likely to say yes.

But all of them ultimately said, even if we agree with some components of this, we disagree on the basis of merit. And I think that kind of stopped the whole thing in its tracks. And that’s something that every, I mean, I think we conservatives and liberals agree with.

And we have, we have a lot of those conversations happening across the field.

Paul: So the compact may have inadvertently created a moment of consensus among institutions that they were really struggling with in their individual responses to Trump.

These are obviously big, complicated issues, but what do you see as the role of community engagement in the building role that you just described?

Bobbie: I think this question around if the problem that we’re talking about is a lack of confidence in higher education, and we’re well, what are the pathways to rebuilding that confidence? I think that sometimes we conflate that around confidence and trust are the same thing.

Because some of the metrics even we look at, there’s some Pew data that’s a little bit more on the trust side, the Gallup data.

Paul: What’s the difference between confidence and trust?

Bobbie: So to me, and I don’t think this is actually just my personal opinion. I think generally this is the way we think of them that confidence is about competency.

Confidence is I’m expecting this thing to happen and I’m confident that it is going to happen because there was a promise or I’m paying someone to do something. I’m confident it’s going to happen on the other end. And, trust is a belief in something.

Like trust is I think that this person is honest. I think that, I have trust that when they say they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it. Like trust is often about people where to me, confidence is more about you can have confidence in institutions and you can have confidence in a product.

You know, I don’t think most of us trust products, right? Like we’re confident that a product or something is going to deliver us for it. But you have trust in people. You have trust in, an elected official or you have trust in your pastor.

Or you have trust in, and the trust can be broken. And so one, I think community engagement is relational. Like it is not an AI bot.

Community engagement is not done without people at the center of it, both in terms of the community and the institution. And so I do think in many ways, rebuilding a trust infrastructure, I think community engagement is at its core. And I think in many ways, community engagement can be that trust infrastructure for higher education.

And I think it’s because it’s where we connect institutions to the people in places whose confidence they need to regain. And so I do think community engagement, while we know is not a new idea, many of our, our institutions, hundreds and I believe thousands of institutions are, thinking about this work. There’s a difference between doing it in very transactional ways and really saying this is at the center of what we do as an institution.

And that’s where I think we need to move. We need to move from community and civic engagement. And sometimes campuses use those terminologies, kind of interchangeably.

And we could have a whole other podcast, Paul, on just definitions and terms in the field. But in the resisting that urge today, I’m going to broadly talk about civic engagement as, a combined kind of body of work that I think have both of them criticality in this moment. And I think the moment calls for us to say, this civic and community engagement work needs to be sitting at the very top, just we talk about preparing students for the workforce, just we talk about the economic impact of our institution, we need to be talking about the civic and community engagement work.

And that’s what I think when I think about the building moment. It’s moving beyond, oh, great, well, I have a center that’s doing some great community partnership work. Awesome.

Or, hey, we have a minor in civic engagement that we have, 30 students enrolled in. To moving to, we have an expectation that every single student who walks through, walks through our doors is going to have, an experience of civic engaged and community-based teaching and learning. That this is something we are whole, we are embedding in the curriculum.

It looks promotion and tenure guidelines being rewritten to really value community-based research and scholarship. It looks having a chief community engagement officer at the cabinet level. You know, it looks saying when critical decisions are being made about the institution, we are considering community and civic engagement in that room.

You know, and those are the things that I think are going to make the difference. And I think, at Compact, that’s what we’re focused on helping institutions think about in this moment is how do we address, how we’re going to move forward and how do we rebuild that trust and confidence with putting civic and community engagement at the center.

Paul: So I want to pause, actually, on the sort of big picture and talk about you for a minute. What were the early experiences that convinced you that community engagement, civic engagement, higher ed was something powerful, something important?

Bobbie: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, if I really go back, and it’s interesting, Paul, and I’d be curious about your story. For many of the people that I work with at Campus Compact, a good example is I am one of the few Campus Compact employees that did not have AmeriCorps service. So the vast majority of our team at Campus Compact served, whether they were a VISTA, they had some sort of AmeriCorps experience.

That wasn’t a part of kind of my experience. I was a finance major. I did not come up through my, whether it was high school or collegiate experience, kind of grounded in community service.

I think, to be honest, I, I love my upbringing. I have no, I’m from the rural Eastern shore. It just wasn’t a part of kind of what was in the water for me.

And so I think where I initially found such passion in higher ed, not necessarily civic and community engagement, but definitely civic engagement was here was I was just really involved in student leadership as an undergrad. And I ended up being the student government president my senior year of college. And I was on a campus, Towson University, and that really took serious what student voice and shared governance look .

And so I had experiences serving on the university senate and advancing things plus or minus grading. I built a coalition along with other student leaders to advocate for tuition freezes at the system level. I had a rich amount of times to realize that my voice had agency.

And that, I could make an impact. And at the same time, I learned a lot about the power of higher ed. Like, I was, a student leader who spent most of my time in the student government office and working with the president.

And I just fell in love with higher education. Like, I just, I was a finance major and was I can’t go out and work for Morgan Stanley. Like, I’m passionate about this institution of higher education.

And I didn’t have any of the language around community engagement at that time. And then my first job, I found myself at San Diego State University, working in the president’s office at 22. And I had a chief of staff who I was working with.

And she was beginning to get to know, what does this community engagement work look ? This is 20 plus years ago. And she asked if I wanted to help build a community partners database for the university. And so that was really it.

Like, it was a trial by fire. You know, I learned right there and I got to be a part of a team that was trying to understand, what are all the relationships that exist across San Diego State and which of these are working with K-12 and are we tripping over ourselves? Are we our partners actually understanding how to navigate the front door? Like some of the same conversations that I think are still really resonant. Like those were the ones that I got to know.

And I just really loved it. And so I spent a couple years at San Diego State just full-on kind of immersing myself in this whole new world that I’d never heard of around community engagement. And then ended up finding an opportunity to come back and work at Towson University as they were just getting off the ground a new division of economic and community outreach.

And in that space, I was able to get involved with organizations Kumu, but then also to really, from the ground up, build ultimately what became kind of the community engagement infrastructure at the university. And so, a lot’s changed in the 20 years I’ve been doing this, I mean, back then. There weren’t that many centers or institutes, particularly less resourced campuses.

You know, we saw student-facing institutes and centers, that had been, I think, coming up really at the time Compact was created with across those institutions. But when I look now, the Centers for Community Engagement and Partnerships that exist at so many of our colleges and universities, most of those have come about in the past couple decades. So I think some of it’s just you kind of are there at the right time, right place.

So for me, I’ve had the chance to build a lot, most of my career has been spent building things from the ground up and, being and that required early on learning from others, getting to know, well, what was working at this institution? And how can that impact and influence what we’re doing here? Like, we don’t need to we don’t need to reinvent every wheel. And I was involved with networks from the very beginning when I went to Tassel because of Kumu. And so I always had this blessing from at least that time, which was 2006 when I came back to Towson.

So 20 years ago, that’s crazy. So 20 years ago, when I returned to the university, I started working with Kumu in 2006. And so from that time, I was always carrying this kind of duality of doing the work on campus, but then getting to be in this space of kind of national network where it was I just always felt it was just this beautiful thing of I get to see what’s working other places and what’s not working.

And then I also have responsibility of making this happen in all my campus and in the community I live and love. And so that’s really and then I care and then I stayed for 15 years, which was, I think, longer than I know. I know I expected in 2006.

But, this work takes time. I think we all know that, too. You can’t do this work quick. You have to.

Paul: Share a couple of the projects that you built and just kind of the just a little bit of the the life of them that really. I guess the spark of those partnerships that really drove you Bobbie Laur: You know um so a couple some of them are structural but since some of them are just the things that were kind of very specific partnerships you said and honestly when folks ask do you really miss being on a campus it’s definitely what I miss I this work keeps me very busy i’m, I’m so passionate about the work we’re doing at Campus Compact, but I do miss, the direct work with community partners.

I still get a chance to work with faculty and staff all the time, but I no longer work with the community partners. And, I still live here. I live in greater Baltimore.

And so that’s an odd thing of, I felt so entrenched in the community with my work. So that has been a definitely a, it’s been a pivot and, it was something I had to fall into. So, a couple of the things that I feel I look back on and I’m most just proud and, um.

I feel so strong about. Some of them are the small sort of connections that I made that ultimately led to incredible partnerships. Like, just when just recently I ran into at a kid birthday party, at some Chuck E. Cheese. Oh my God. It was Chuck E. Cheese, Paul. It was two weeks ago. My nephew who was turning five was having his birthday party.

And there was another guy there with a five-year-old and he’s a professor at Towson in biology. And I didn’t know him. And I said, oh, what kind of work do you do? And he goes, I said, he said, where did you used to work? And I said, oh, I used to work in the community engagement space.

And he goes, oh, I work with them because I am the research director for this project up in Port Deposit that you probably haven’t heard of. And I go, oh my God, you’re doing the work with the turtles? And he was yes, you’ve heard of it. And I was yes, I was the person who facilitated that whole early project, 10 plus years ago with a biology professor named Richard Siegel.

And this was a Project Paul where it was we had this engaged biology faculty member who had figured out that the northern map turtles were essential to addressing these sediment concerns along a dam that were really need to be treated. But there was this recognition that this town had become obsessed with these turtles. And so there was this moment of could we do something around ecotourism.

Like, could this be a thing in this small little rural, not necessarily thriving town called Port Deposit? And this is about 45 minutes an hour north of Towson University. But that was, to me, that’s what it means to be a metropolitan university. Like, it’s not just about right here.

It’s this broader regional thing. And we built this amazing partnership with the town of Port Deposit. We went out, there’s a whole facility now, this ecotourism facility, student schools come and do field trips.

And it’s a living, learning lab that’s up there now and that’s I mean I just was beaming for days after that conversation at chuck e cheese because richard’s not leading that work anymore i’m not leading that work anymore at the university and there’s a whole new generation of people that are doing that and. It’s kind of centers the best of community engagement. So this Northern Map Turtle project, it’s a very I think in this work, sometimes it’s about a relationship that you start or an introduction that you can make.

But then also I had a chance to work with one of my biggest mentors and influences in my life ever. Her name is Nancy Grasmick. She was the state superintendent of schools for 30 years in the state of Maryland.

When I was a kid, she was the superintendent. And Nancy was a presidential scholar at Towson, and I had built a program around women’s leadership, and she loved that program. And we ended up having conversations of, the deficit of leadership in our communities and just in our business community and our public communities and what would it look for the university to do something really bold.

And we ended up, I ended up getting kind of tasked with building what is now the Dr. Nancy Grasmick Leadership Institute. and this institute I mean it has a staff of its own it’s doing the most incredible work to prepare and cultivate and support leaders across the region um in all kinds of industries and so I look at that and I again just being with pride that that came from just early conversations and so many people I’m by far no means deserve the credit for that there’s so many people that involved that made that happen but that feels so um just so important and relevant and just I feel.

I have, when I do get asked of staying in this work or, what drives you, I’ve always I think it may, and Towson’s a big part of the story, but I’ve had a chance to make things happen. And I think that’s a lot of what community engagement is. when I talk about big bureaucracies exist in higher ed but community engagement I think generally is this special little area where you can because you’re working with community partners who are so resource savvy and and a different set of players and I definitely have had a chance to do things we’re dream up an idea get the right people around on the table and make it happen.

And today I can see a bunch of that work that has happened and that doesn’t exist everywhere. And I think community engagement provides people, and I talk about that with our young kind of, we’re trying to support people coming up through the field now, a lot of compact, and how do we build a pipeline into it? I say man, this work is really rewarding because you’re gonna get to try things. Like you’re gonna get to be a part of building stuff.

Paul:

I love that. (My cat is trying to climb up onto my computer from behind. Get out of here. Get out of here.) No, that’s beautiful. That resonates with me too.

I want to follow up on what you said about the future needing to be a different approach to community engagement that’s really about a core commitment of the entire institution. Can you give me one or two examples of who’s really doing that well?

Bobbie: Yeah. So compact, I want to say, I already mentioned this, but this is going to be a heavy amount of our work going forward.

I think, The kind of core commitments, the institutional-wide commitments look different in different places. So context does really matter here. And I think we have a new grant from the Luce Foundation around campus action planning.

And that’s exactly what this is going to be about. About how do we help campuses meet this moment? But understanding this is not a silver bullet. There’s not this one, this structure.

Like this is what you just implemented and check these boxes. I think there’s essential pieces I talked about. There’s leadership, there’s resources, there’s process that matter.

A couple of places that come to mind for me, Paul, that I think are kind of showing the diversity of what this can look there’s places Weber State University. I don’t know if Weber State. What do you do?

Paul Kuttner: Yeah, I spent a decade out in Utah. I know them.

Bobbie: So, and the reason I say Weber State is, they just have all the pieces there. You know, they’re doing the work that they’ve been doing for a couple decades with Ogden.

You know, they have this Ogden Action Collaborative where they’re looking at anchor work in real lockstep with the community. And it’s more Weber State is the facilitator and convener of this community-led effort that is about economic development and workforce development and housing and just really thinking about how they can create a thriving Ogden, which is the city where Weber State is located. But they also have deep commitments to what this looks in the curriculum.

They have a long time been leaders with the American Democracy Project at ASCU and really thinking about what civic and political engagement looks across the curriculum and across teaching and learning. And then they have such a rich office of community partnerships that is doing work around community engaged scholarship and understanding what it takes to do faculty development, but then also to validate and be responsive to partners. They’re one of those campuses that for Campus Compact, for example, they always have their hand up.

Like when we’re hey, who wants to think about this new project we have that we’re doing right now around environmental stewardship and justice? And they’re we’ll try it. You know, so they’re also a campus that I think. Recognizes that this work has to constantly be supported with innovation and pushing yourself.

So Weber State for sure comes to mind and it’s not about a single person. And I think that’s important. There’s not one leader at Weber State that I’m that’s why it’s so important.

They’ve had a presidential transition recently. That’s a place where there’s not a part of me that thinks they’re going to lose this in their DNA. And that’s the real test.

The real test is does this survive dynamic, sustained, really transformational leaders? because we have seen other situations where you’ve got a transformational leader who’s out there headlining every major association. They really believe in this work. And when they leave, so do the commitments.

And that’s what we need to protect ourselves against in many ways. You know, another one that’s a private institution that I would call out is Colby College in Maine. And that’s an institution, again, that I think, this is a, a more expensive a private institution, but is really focused on what it means to be there for the public good.

They have an incredible amount of partnerships with the city of Waterville, which is a little bit farther away, but not far from them, but down the road. And they’re looking at big-time economic development issues in Waterville. And I must say, I think we often face this question of do private institutions have the same public responsibility? And I think Colby is a great emblematic example of yes, and here’s how that can look and what it can look .

And they have it there, but they’re also doing incredible work, again, across the student learning of looking at how community-based teaching and learning and civic engagement is not a nice-to-have, it’s not something only accessible to this small group of students who can, but really what does it look to put it across for every student, every degree. And those two things really make sense to me. They also have really strong leadership at the top, who’s definitely helping to drive this and I think institutionalize it in the culture.

Those are two, but I could name community colleges. You know, it’s tougher to do at R1s. I think there’s some examples, but, I mean, I would say Penn has been an example that has really, been able to show that.

But this is a, Penn is working through its own challenges right now. I mean, it’s been a tough couple years, and I think we’ll have to see, right, are they able to sustain those commitments that they’ve had? But Penn is, Penn is definitely an institution that has shown what does it look to do this. That’s an institution wide level.

In some ways, it gets harder. The larger the institution, the more complex the bureaucracy, the harder it is to move it forward. Brown is one that I would say in the more elite institution, our one category, I think is getting a lot of things right.

You know, they have a vice president for community engagement. They have deep work around community scholarship with the Swearer Center. But they’re doing a lot on workforce development these days.

And they were already doing it. And now, even with their deal and agreement with the administration, they’re doing more of it. So I think Brown’s another one that really has the right structures in place to make sure that this isn’t just siloed in one area, but is really prolific across the campus.

Paul:

Yeah, those are great. I appreciate that. I know there’s others you could name, and I’m holding you to just a few, which is probably hard for a national organization.

Bobbie:

But well, and I will say, too, because I want to be clear that I didn’t name Towson or some of my other longtime favorite partners. But it’s because I am with with that question. I was trying to name a couple that might not be the ones that jump to everybody’s kind of mind. But we all know these these couple are the same ones we lift up every time.

Paul:

No, I appreciate that, too. So I’m intrigued by the language that you used in the article you wrote back in October about a new compact, a different kind of compact with the country.

And I think recently you said a new social contract. What does that mean? What might it look for higher ed through community engagement work to have a different kind of compact with America?

Bobbie:

Man I wish I had the answer on the tip of my tongue for that Paul um I do think that there are interesting conversations taking place around what that could look and I don’t think I would do anybody justice to say I have the draft sitting let me just send it over to you I and I also want to say I think it would be almost easier to put really good words to paper and try to circulate, for example, a sign-on that’s everybody sign on to these commitments. I don’t think that’s what this actually looks .

And that’s how we’ve operated as a field for a long time of look, hey, there’s three things that you can say you’re going to do. And if you sign it, then great, we can talk about a thousand institutions that sign this thing. I think it is about kind of making deep commitments to sustained, holistic, all-in work.

And so I think the practice matters more than the presence in this situation. Um. But that doesn’t necessarily get the headlines, right? Like the headlines that we see in kind of higher ed are driven by these kind of broader scale initiatives often that are can we get a thousand campuses to sign on to XYZ? You know, and those things can carry weight.

They can be galvanizers, right? But I think when I use a frame, we need a social contract, in many ways, this work is so local that that’s the tension point. Like to do this well, it’s always been hard to talk about it nationally because it really requires such a heavy focus on context. But I think we do have to solve for it.

So I do think that this moment has opened up all kinds of questions and real challenges of recognition that even at an association level, as in a sector level, are we really working as well together as we should be? So next week, I’m really excited. I almost, it’d be interesting to come back and talk to you after we get through next week. So next week, we’re going to be in D.C.

We’re hosting a policy and impact summit on Wednesday night and Thursday with about 30 campus teams. And so the teams are made up of the president, the senior government relations official, and then the chief civic or community engagement leader on the campus. And this is focused on, we’re hosting it in partnership with George Washington University, and we’re looking at using it as a kind of jumping off space for a new approach of how Campus Compact is going to think about federal advocacy and strategy going forward.

And so we’re really centering a series of conversations around the role of higher education, both in community-based problem solving and, addressing the most wicked issues, but also really critically in this moment, the preparation of students for their lives. And what does it mean to really ensure that our students are getting through their experience, not just with skills that they need for their for job and career, but also making sure that we’re talking actively about the critical role of civic engagement and supporting pathways into public service. To do that we’re actually going to bring in a couple congressional leaders who are going to be talking about their personal story to start that’s how we’re kicking it off um from across both sides of the aisle to talk about the role of civic engagement and how that played and kind of getting them to where they are and the importance of that work and creating opportunities and access and opening people’s eyes to the opportunities to make a difference and then we have a series of really exciting conversations on Thursday.

So I very much have that on my mind. That’s a big deal for us next week and is really going to set a stage for where we’re going to go. So we’re planning to come out of that with a roadmap that we’ll be able to share with the fields.

So kind of check back in, I would say, I think we’ll probably go public with it more late April, early May, but it’s going to hopefully have a variety of opportunities for campuses and individuals to get involved. Particularly in this moment where things feel they’re not moving. And I think we’re all frustrated with the lack of response from our leaders, both locally and nationally. So we’re going to try to cut through some of that next week.

Paul:

Could you give us at all a preview about how you’re hoping that goes or what kind of ideas are floating around in that conversation?

Bobbie: Yeah, I mean, so it is. This is going to take being together.

And I will say, it’s also going to talk about how do we build different kinds of coalitions. I at Compact, and I think most of I read, I am really taking stock in the real criticisms around.. You know, even around political diversity and ideology in our conversations and really ensuring that we are figuring out how to create bigger tents. And anybody who, is in this work knows that this has not been historically necessarily at a higher ed level, the intentionality behind saying we need more diverse viewpoints at the table to talk about how we build this going forward.

So I think that is important. So into that light, for example, one of the conversations we’re slated to have next week is with a first-term Republican congressman and a first-term Democratic congresswoman. And I think those conversations are attracted to people, right? Because it begins also, not we all, but there’s a lot of common ground around democracy and commitment to civic values and commitment to thinking about how we create opportunity and access for all.

And so I think that’s one of the things that we’re prioritizing for next week, particularly as we think about Congress as an institution, is how do we help bring about conversations across both sides of the aisle around some of these issues? We’re hoping, and we’ve been having early conversations, but I think there’s real promise to engage with a group called the Problem Solvers Caucus that’s in Congress that is co-chaired by a Republican and a Democrat, and to me, represents exactly the kind of match made in heaven around community engagement. These are the people in Congress who are look, problems exist, and they don’t have political identities. Access to food and affordable housing is not a political problem.

The people who are dealing with these issues are not there wearing the I’m a Republican or Democrat on their sleeve. They just want the problem solved, and they want better solutions for their communities. And I think that’s what community engagement is too.

So I think that’s, that’s kind of there of what does it look If higher education begins to work more effectively with groups the Problem Solvers Caucus, I mean, that’s something we’re trying to bring that I think is different. I also see, so much of our work in higher education when it comes to advocacy, it’s about federal financial aid. It’s about, federal research dollars.

There are such good people fighting those fights and focusing on those agendas. I think we’re really trying to be clear at Compact. We’re trying to talk about an agenda that is about how do we advance higher education’s capacity to solve problems in our communities? How do we address, how do we prioritize higher education’s responsibility around civic engagement and preparing the next generation of leaders? And I think there’s a lot of common ground on that.

And I think that’s, again, why community and civic engagement is a path forward, because that actually, we know that there is shared interest among both political parties to think about those things. And, there’s a lot of places to start from of people understanding, we want people in our communities to have access to good jobs. And we want hospitals that are being able to serve in rural areas.

And being able to have conversations around what is the role of higher ed in that, can I think open up what right now feels a really polarized, tough environment to function in. So that’s part of what we’re going to start a conversation about next week. By no means hold me to us solving the problems.

But there’s also, some big votes on immigration next week. So we’ll see who actually we’re able to get come, right? Because, there’s a lot of stuff that’s on the plates for everybody.

Paul:

Yeah, I know we could talk about these things for a lot longer, but I want to keep to our time here.

So I just want to say thank you for joining me on the podcast. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.

Bobbie:

Paul, I really loved the conversation. I feel we had a couple nuggets where we could have conversations, B, C, D, E, F. So I’m here for them if you want them.

Paul:

All right. Sounds good. Thank you all for listening. For transcripts, show notes, and links to subscribe to the podcast and our Substack newsletter, go to partnershipwork.org.

Partnership Work is an independent podcast produced with the support of Urban Media Arts here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts. Visit them at urbanmediaarts.org. Until next time, take care.