The scope of involvement in citizen engagement is as diverse as American education itself, and indeed, some institutions have enthusiastically embraced the effort.  Widener, for example, has embarked on a substantial expansion of such activities over the past 10 years. Widener has evolved from a university with only a relative handful of CE opportunities in the 1980's and 1990's, to one where virtually every department and student organization now has some venture that involves or targets the external community through service-learning and civic engagement activities. At this institution, a range of projects have arisen, including a University-sponsored social work agency, law and nursing clinics, a number of activities in support of the regional educational systems, such as reading, cultural enrichment and engineering programs,  and extensive work with an under-resourced school district (Thurlow, Ledoux, McHenry, & Burns, 2007), and neighborhood community development (Musewicz, Pickron-Davis, Harris & Marczyk, 2006).  Further large efforts include a Charter School serving K-5th grades and University Crossings, a $50 million project with a range of community redevelopment goals.  Recent additions to this list include a federally-funded violence prevention center and the Oskin Leadership Institute, funded by a University gift of $5 million.  The mission of this institute is to develop individuals' capacity to understand that global issues and problems are within their power to solve and to prepare individuals to that end; this proposed project aligns with and will help to promote and realize this mission.  

Yet, despite the ubiquity of such efforts and the value that PSI's like Widener, and the larger society, places on them, several very important issues about civic engagement exist and several questions remain unanswered.  Among these is the critical question of the impact of such efforts on the communities that are served. In other words, what are the systemic consequences, both as benefits and costs, which accrue to communities served by a University's civic engagement efforts?  Further, are these impacts sufficient to warrant the huge public and private investment that support the activities?

Dr. Stephen Kauffman, Associate Professor in the Center for Social Work Education, leads an investigation into these questions at Widener's main campus in Chester.  By almost any statistical measure, Chester, a city with a 2008 population of 36,564 (City-Data, n.d.) is one of the most severely distressed cities in the United States. From its founding in the 17th century through the 1960's, the city supported a healthy economic and social environment for a diverse population. This included a large number of good paying industrial jobs, supported by a vibrant cultural life. Yet, beginning in the early 1970s the city experienced several decades of extensive economic change and a lack of effective political leadership, leaving Chester's civic institutions weakened and its population severely impoverished.  A few socio-economic indicators serve to illustrate the city's present condition.  The city has a high unemployment and poverty rate, a median household income that is only 2/3rds of the state of Pennsylvania (City-Data, n.d.) and a severely decaying housing stock (American fact finder, 2010). The city also has serious issues with its educational system, and a crime rate approximately three times the US average (City-Data, n.d.). The incidence of many health problems exceed the state and national averages, including children's lead levels, asthma, teen and pre-teen pregnancy, and low-weight babies.  Part of the health problems have been linked to the environmental conditions in Chester, a city that serves as the quintessential example of the consequences of environmental injustice. Finally, the public school system has some of the highest dropout rates and lowest test scores and attendance rates in the state. 

The current project began in late 2008 with a conversation in which James Harris, the President of Widener University, and Dr. Kauffman discussed the possible benefits to Widener and the surrounding community if some of the impacts of Widener's recent, and continuing, expansion of CE efforts could be identified. Taking on this project, during the next year the outlines of the project were designed by Dr. Kauffman in consultation with a number of other faculty, both inside and outside of Widener.  Recognizing the need for effective program parameters, during the very earliest times of this phase the Goals and Purposes of the project were developed. The purposes and research goals for the project are as follows:

• To assess the scope and impact of Widener University's civic engagement projects
• To develop and implement a system for tracking the civic engagement projects of Widener University and its faculty members and students
• To disseminate the Tracking and Impact Assessment Model widely, through publications and other means, for the use by and benefit of the larger institutional community

As such, there are several data collection activities (all of which Dr. Kauffman coordinates). These include:

Program Tracking. The intention of this system is to identify the entire population of civic engagement activities at the University, and then to identify important characteristics of the activities, including goals, participants, partner organizations, service outputs and desired impacts.  Currently, the implementation of a full-time, online survey available to the entire university community (faculty, administration, students and staff) on the university's intra-net system is underway. Participation is currently voluntary, but several steps have been completed to facilitate and encourage participation. So far, we have identified N=328 programs working with over 1000 organizations.

Organizational Partners Surveys. As programs and activities are identified in the tracking process above, the University community is asked to identify the organizations who serve as partners in our civic engagement activities. These organizations, or partners, are surveyed once each year, with data stored in a database. As the organizations are surveyed, data collected address contact information, characteristics of their relationship with Widener, identified needs or problems in their specific communities, and their perceptions of the impacts of the University's efforts on their community.  The initial population was identified as a by-product of the tracking survey (n=769), although it is assumed that a substantial number of organizations were not reported.  To date, n=120 survey have been completed for the 2012-13 academic years.

Alumni surveys are also underway. These target all University graduates from 2005 on.

On January 18th, the Center hosted the 1st Annual Doctoral Symposium for its doctoral students and faculty.  The Symposium resulted largely from the suggestion of the doctoral students that one of the Center's doctoral candidates, Annette Duranso, present her study "Runaway and homeless youth transitioning to adulthood: An exploration of the risk factors and outcomes for youth served in Transitional Living Programs."  Ms. Duranso had recently presented at the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) 2012 Annual Meeting in New York City.  With a majority of the doctoral students and many of the Center's faculty in attendance, the Symposium allowed the students to experience a formal presentation given by one of their own and provided Ms. Duranso with an opportunity to gain presentation experience as well as acquire valuable feedback for her work.  When asked to share his view of the experience, the Center's doctoral program director, Dr. Tom Young, provided the following comments:

"First, I think it was a tangible expression of the "community of scholars" idea that I have been trying to promote since the program began--social workers dedicated to understanding how to use research in order to figure out how to improve the delivery of social services to vulnerable client populations. Second, I saw it as an experience of the expansion of identity that occurs in the course of pursuing a Ph.D. Annette embodied that and the students in attendance witnessed that and could see themselves embodying that in their own futures."   

As a successful, positive experience for the doctoral students and faculty, the Symposium marks the first of many such educational forums.