Insights, Next Steps, and Future Research

In this final chapter, the three researchers share their insights, next steps and future research as faculty invested in student achievement and development. They identify six key areas of focus that they use as a framework of guiding principles for others who may be interested in doing this work at their respective programs and institutions. Civic engagement is discussed at the classroom level, community level, and an individual level. Faculty should strongly consider and plan how service learning assignments and maintaining community connections on their part gives students needed space to deepen their civic engagements and commitments. The insights of the students' who completed the portfolios are also shared and analyzed as well.

The Role of Mentoring in Promoting Civic Engagement

This chapter examines the concerns and challenges that most college millennials face in today's technology-savvy society. Existing research indicates that college students are having interactions both inside and outside of their respective campus environs that are influencing their civic-mindedness and shaping their engagement in civic action. The role of faculty is to assist students' understanding and reflecting upon their civic engagement and how to document and share their contributions, plans and questions with others and themselves. Faculty instructors are transparent with their students around their own approaches and challenges in the area of civic engagement. As a result, students learn strategies and approaches that may be useful after they finish their first year of college and plan for continued engagement over their time in college and beyond.

Building, Shaping, and Modeling Tools for Literacy Development and Civic Engagement

In this chapter, the researchers examine the important inclusion of peer mentors as role models for new students. This is an area of research that has typically been explored with younger student populations and has been limited to the classroom environment. The First-Year Reading, Thinking, and Writing Initiative expands on this literature by using peer mentors with a commitment that extends beyond the classroom borders. These peer mentors, along with the faculty, play a vital role in building, shaping, and modeling tools for college literacy development and civic engagement. Peer mentors in the Initiative are volunteers from the previous year's cohort.

Faculty Pilot First-Year Experience for Incoming Freshmen Interested in Pursuing a Degree in Education

In this opening chapter, the researchers, three full-time college faculty members, discuss the initial focus of their collaborative work and research. Driven by the concerns regarding the reading and writing abilities of students entering their programs and across their campus, they responded to this issue by establishing and co-teaching yearlong linked courses to incoming first-year students interested in education, a pilot that eventually became known as the First-Year Reading, Thinking, and Writing Initiative. The data collected from the first few years of the Initiative indicate the benefits of having a year-long linked course structure for this population of students to promote academic achievement, social adjustment, and, as the researchers learned through this experience, civic engagement.

Student Self-Assessment via Civic Engagement

In Year Four of this Initiative, the two faculty instructors introduced civic engagement portfolios to the cohort of students enrolled in the Initiative. The portfolios were being used to capture the freshmen college students' experiences with civic engagement during their first year of college. The cohort's portfolios were actually creating and piloting the portfolios as part of the larger institution's desire to assess its students' civic engagement as a component of college-wide learning outcomes recently adopted across campus. Initially the assessment was planned for seniors, but based on the encouragement of Initiative faculty, starting these portfolios when students enter college will allow the school to assess students' civic engagement development over time.