Responses to the Call for a National Strategic Plan

The Service-Learning and Community Engagement Future Directions Project (SLCE-FDP) was launched in 2015. Since then approximately 40 individuals from a wide range of perspectives have come together as contributors of thought pieces that issue bold calls to guide the future of SLCE. In an essay accompanying the ten thought pieces in Fall 2015, Howard and Stanlick (2015) called for the "development and implementation of a U.S. national SLCE strategic plan" (p. 128). Their essay provides one answer to the question of how all of the ideas about the future of SLCE being assembled by the SLCE-FDP--and also being articulated in other publications over the last few years--can become more than individual thoughts, questions, and actions. In this essay we review the highlights of the call for a national plan and then share some of the responses to it as a basis for ongoing engagement with the proposal. Howard and Stanlick (2015) have in mind "an intentional organizing effort broadly developed by multiple stakeholders...[to] move us beyond the current prevalence of independent, individuals efforts ... to a more coherent nationwide collective endeavor" (p. 128). Although the SLCE movement has made strides in the last twenty years, it has primarily occurred at the individual level: individual students, individual faculty and staff, individual courses, individual programs and centers, individual institutions, individual community organizations, individual disciplinary associations, individual regional and national organizations. Howard and Stanlick wonder "what collaborations might evolve if there were a platform to which many SLCE stakeholders and entities could contribute their voices," and they offer the metaphor of a compass that "not only guides individuals...but also synergizes across all levels of organizations...and all stakeholders...for more lasting civic engagement that has greater impact on social justice" (p. 129). Their rationale for a national plan for SLCE includes the sheer growth of the movement within higher education, the recent calls among many thought leaders for new ways to think about and implement SLCE, the innovation and synergy that a national conversation can engender, and the value of greater clarity regarding our ultimate purposes as a movement and how best to advance them. Their sense is that a national planning process is needed to leverage the bold calls for enhancing SLCE being gathered by the SLCE-FDP, providing "the impetus, the structure, and the focus to bring each of them into conversation with other visions and strategies within and beyond this project" (p. 129). Their essay acknowledges several challenges: that the "very idea of a national strategic plan is likely to be contested," that inevitably some voices will not be at the table, and that reaching consensus on either general directions of or specific elements in a national plan will be difficult (p. 130). It asks: "What is the critical mass needed to move forward collectively and how do we best maintain open-ended dialogue around contested ideas?" (p. 131). And it proposes as a first step the identification or creation of a coordinating entity: Could the planning process be driven by a national organizational leader or by a group of representatives from several national organizations and a variety of other stakeholders? However it is coordinated, the authors note, there will need to be a way to engage stakeholders, identify funding, facilitate conversations, and develop and disseminate a product. Howard and Stanlick summarize their call as follows: Intended to support the flourishing of the work and its purposes across a wide range of contexts, such a large-scale strategic plan would, of necessity, be grounded in a sense of our ultimate vision(s), emerge from a set of broad goals, be accompanied by illustrative strategies, and point to indicators of positive change--all dynamic and co-created by the SLCE community as a whole. …