Praxis in Landscape Architecture

Just as the notices reminding me of my expiring subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education arrive in the mail, the top story in the local newspaper concerns a stinging article in the Chronicle from earlier this month. Robin Wilson’s article, titled “Syracuse’s Slide: As Chancellor Focuses on the ‘Public Good,’ Syracuse’s Reputation Slides,” is mostly hidden behind the subscription wall – unfortunate, especially, for readers of Syracuse Post Standard who attempt to follow the link to the article. The public does have access to the 43 letters to the editor written in response to Wilson’s article.

At issue are high profile initiatives by the university’s chancellor, Nancy Cantor, to actively link the university to the city surrounding it and to diversify the student population. Ms. Wilson’s article quotes several faculty members who voice concern that the university cannot afford these endeavors, that they divert the scholarly mission, that the quality of the students admitted is being compromised, and that a drop in rankings by U.S. News and World Report, from 40 to 62, is a sign that the ship is sinking. The comments section contains several rebuttals from faculty who say that they were interviewed by Ms. Wilson, but had their favorable comments excluded from the resulting article.

The issues raised regarding the role of public engagement in academia have application to praxis in landscape architecture and for landscape architecture academics whose scholarly focus is engagement. Therefore, I will focus on the public engagement side of the controversy and leave the rest of the debate to others (like this article on changing conceptions of university prestige). Here is how Chancellor Cantor’s initiative, Scholarship in Action, is described in the Wilson article.

Syracuse University, she says, “should have an impact on our democracy and do work that addresses pressing issues in the world.” She adds: “It’s not that you stop caring about the fundamentals or quality, you redefine what constitutes quality and exciting scholarly work.”

That’s exactly what Ms. Cantor has done through a campaign she calls Scholarship in Action. It involves moving students, professors, and research off the campus and into the community to work with local officials, nonprofit organizations, and businesses on projects designed to give students hands-on experience and help solve the problems of the city and its people.

How is this controversial? More after the break.

This kind of scholarly engagement with the local community is lauded by some (including me) and is a cause of concern for others, especially guardians of academic rigor who discount this kind of scholarship. Some insights into this debate and ways to evaluate the quality of public scholarship for faculty promotion and tenure are provided by Julie Ellison of the University of Michigan. The title given to her letter to the editor (Chronicle) is “Public Scholarship Deserves Standing.” Several of the letters to the editor build the argument for the value of public scholarship.

For me, though, the response by graduate students at Syracuse University on the value of public scholarship was the most moving. From the blog, Syracuse Engaged Grads:

We embrace engaged scholarship, the building of knowledge that is inseparable from practice. …snip…  Public scholarship is important to us because it mobilizes community and campus resources, brilliance, and creativity.

We view community constituents as our research partners in the knowledge laboratory. This breathes life into the experience – it gives the work a richness and meaning and purpose. The idea that we should not engage the local community in a collaborative effort in creating social change while simultaneously being rigorously challenged academically creates a false dichotomy that does not allow room for the academy to grow.

Our engaged praxis informs our collective understanding of working and writing for change, building meaningful relationships between the university and the community, and perhaps most importantly, including a wider range of perspectives and voices in making knowledge. Relevant and responsible scholarship does not and should not happen in a vacuum. Like the professors Ms. Wilson interviewed, we do feel a commitment to the “broader academic community.” However, we do not see this commitment as something in opposition to publicly engaged work.

And the moving part – just who are these engaged grads?

We are engaged scholars. We are presenters at national research conferences. We are participants in think tanks. We are published scholars. We are students of color. We are partners on the Near West Side on the Gifford Street Community Press.  We are participants in the school and community arts initiative at 601 Tully.  We are allies of First Nation students.  We are advocates who recognize the significance and value of our geographic location on Haudenosaunee Land. We are the Haudenosaunee Promise Program, working to include native students in a predominately White institution. We are disability activists. We are activist writers.  We are creative writers who partner with veterans. We are tutors at the GED tutoring program at Auburn prison. We are QuERI- Arts in Action, encouraging and supporting LGBTQ&A students’ under-represented voices throughout Central New York. We are Intergroup Dialogue facilitators partnering with civically active urban high school students.  We are the SmartKids-Visual Stories project, and we believe students offer insight into school reform.  We are international students who choose not to ignore the community surrounding our university.  We are partners working with local immigrant rights groups and religious organizations. We are the Central New York chapter of Imagining America’s Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE). We are working-class students, studying and working to combat oppression, exploitation, and war. We are teachers and tutors of a diverse constituency of high school students enrolled in our highly competitive Summer College. We are researchers driven by social change who insist on conducting research with not on communities of color as a way of positively impacting society. We are Scholars in Action….

Fears about this kind of community engagement, given voice by The Chronicle of Higher Education, are out of sync with the times, IMHO.