Dr. Caryn McTighe Musil, a distinguished fellow with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), will be the lead presenter at Barry’s seventh annual Community Engagement Symposium on March 31.
Up to last year, Musil was AAC&U’s senior director of civic learning and democracy initiatives. Previously, for 14 years, she served as senior vice president of the association’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives. Over three decades, she contributed to and directed national projects about diversity, democracy, global learning, civic engagement, women, and social responsibility.
The Community Engagement Symposium will be held virtually for the first time. It will consist of four sessions, the first beginning at 9 a.m. and the fourth ending at 3 p.m.
During Session I, Musil will lead a 75-minute workshop titled “Partnering on Purpose: How to Accelerate the Impact of Project-Based Experiential Learning.” Following two concurrent sessions, she will make an hour-long plenary presentation, “Acting on Purpose: Knowledge, Collaboration, and Social Responsibility.”
Now an independent consultant, Musil is the lead author of A Crucible Moment: Civic Learning and Democracy’s Future, a national report released at the White House in 2012. Calling for action to advance civic learning and democratic engagement “from niches to norms,” Crucible recommends that colleges invest in “robust, generative civic partnerships … to address common problems, empower people to act, strengthen communities and nations, and generate new frontiers of knowledge.”
AAC&U is the leading national association dedicated to advancing the vitality and public standing of liberal education by making quality and equity the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education in service to democracy.
Musil’s most recent initiative at AAC&U, Civic Prompts in the Major, aimed to embed designs for social responsibility, equity, and the public good within departmental majors as a dimension of disciplinary inquiry and practice.
In 2013, Musil received the Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Award from NASPA—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
“Engagement in Purposeful Projects: From Awareness to Action” is the theme of the symposium. In relation to community engagement, purposeful projects include experiential learning practices such as service-learning, community-based research, fieldwork, study abroad, capstones, and internships.
Posters reflecting the “Purposeful Projects” theme will be a feature of the symposium, and undergraduates will compete for poster session prizes. All poster presenters—undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty/staff—will be recognized.