Connection Over Content: How Civically Engaged Research Can Improve Teaching, Research, and Service

Document Type

Book Chapter - Open Access

Editor

Charity Butcher, Tavishi Bhasin, Elizabeth Gordon, Maia Carter Hallward

Publication Title

The Palgrave Handbook of Teaching and Research in Political Science

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date

11-29-2023

Abstract/ Summary

During the summer of 2021, an interdisciplinary faculty team connected their research to practice by running a youth civic engagement program called Youth Voice with a local community partner, the Merrimack Valley YMCA in Lawrence, MA. The outcomes of this work include successfully submitted conference proposals and academic papers for publication. Additionally, for the political scientist on the team, many of the activities and resources developed for the Youth Voice program were used in the classroom—effectively bridging research, teaching, and community engagement efforts. Youth Voice represents a case study where faculty effectively mentored students, provided service to the community, secured internal and external grant funding, and built out a research agenda that simultaneously resulted in tools used in the classroom. Overall, this actionable scholarship demonstrates how engaged research can answer the call within political science to connect our research with community priorities while meeting college and university expectations for faculty. Embracing these pressures through community-driven research yields opportunities for political scientists to engage in research projects that attract undergraduate research assistants from various fields while increasing access to institutional resources, fulfilling service and community-engagement mission priorities, and enhancing pedagogical methods.

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