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Abstract
As university-based community engagement programs expand through curricular and co-curricular initiatives, it is important to understand and assess their impact in advancing a key mission of higher education—to nurture and develop engaged citizens with a well-honed sense of civic identity. A literature review revealed a gap in the conceptualization and understanding of civic identity as a construct that informs, shapes, and undergirds this work. It is essential to advance empirical knowledge about whether and the ways in which community engagement experiences at the baccalaureate level help shape civic identity in students, so we may more explicitly structure pedagogical approaches to facilitate its development. This instrumental case study was crafted to glean insights about the ways in which a curricular community engagement program influenced students’ civic identity development. The study was informed and shaped by blending together two important theoretical threads on identity evolution—self-authorship (Kegan, 1982; 1994; Baxter Magolda, 1999) and the theory of figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998). Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with thirteen students and two faculty members, and document analysis of secondary sources such as program website, course syllabi, and course reading which allowed for triangulation. Primary and secondary data were mutually confirmatory and revealed that early community engagement experiences influenced students’ college choices and their subsequent civic work in college. These experiences may enable the evolution of students’ identities as civic agents and engaged citizens. In generating new empirical evidence and in advancing theoretical innovation, this study highlights the critical importance of university-based community engagement experiences as a crucial mechanism for fulfilling the civic mission of higher education institutions. Study findings have implications for community engagement pedagogy, policy, and praxis.