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© Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Volume 15, Number 4, p. 87, (2011)
A Reactive, Radical Approach to
Engaged Scholarship
Malcolm Smith
Abstract
While exploring the current challenges facing academic institu-
tions and the needs of their scholars to make their work relevant
in the lives of university constituents, the author advocates for
a reactive and radical approach to engaged scholarship by out-
lining an 8-step process that considers the importance of trans-
formation, immediacy, and relevance in academic research in
the eld of human service.
Introduction
The growing gap between academic research and actual
practice in the eld of human service, particularly in ser-
vice to children and families, is well-known by practitio-
ners and well-substantiated by academics (Osterling & Austin, 2008;
Glasgow, Lichtenstein, & Marcus, 2003; Martin & Martin, 1989). is gap
puts human service faculty members and students at odds with the
growing needs of the human service eld in two ways: academics
oen teach and use methods that have academic relevance but
not practical relevance, and practitioners oen devalue academic
knowledge relative to experiential knowledge. ere is wariness
toward academic solutions that are grounded in theory and litera-
ture rather than in the immediacy of practice. is more theoretical
approach oen makes academic institutions and human service
departments irrelevant in the eyes of practitioners, who see aca-
demic researchers as largely trying to use their programs as testing
grounds for theories and assumptions that are oen not grounded
in real world experience.
e growing gap between human service practitioners and
academics appears to be fueled by changes on both fronts. For
example:
• Many public and private funding streams are requiring
that their recipients use “evidence-based” program-
ming. In reality, human service programs that meet
this intense criterion (usually associated with double-
blind and medical-model-type studies) are (1) few
and far between and hard to nd, (2) oen not exible
enough to be used with rapidly changing social and
Copyright © 2011 by the University of Georgia. All rights reserved. ISSN 1534-6104
88 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
familial conditions, (3) restricted in practicality
and ecacy since “evidence” is oen out-of-date or
addressing antiquated issues by the time it is su-
cient to meet the “evidence-based” criterion, and (4)
oen expensive to procure and administer (Burton &
Chapman, 2004). us, many practitioner programs
have come to distrust “evidence-based” programs.
• ere is a growing inaccessibility of academic peer-
reviewed journals. Academic journal subscriptions
have become increasingly expensive, causing many
libraries, especially university libraries, to discontinue
subscriptions. Few human service agencies can aord
subscriptions to all publications in the eld. In addi-
tion, there has been a continued fragmentation of
academic disciplines into smaller elds, which creates
more places for “evidence” to hide. It can take months
or even years to complete the peer-review process due
to the time constraints of the largely volunteer peer
reviewers. With rapidly changing familial structures,
world and local economies, and demographic land-
scapes, old news is oen not as relevant (Morris, 2009;
Weiner, 2001).
• e promotion and tenure process at many universities
does not reward engaged scholarship. Many research
universities still do not value engaged research (Van
de Ven, 2007), nor recognize it adequately during the
promotion and tenure process.
• Although faculty members access human service pro-
grams to provide students with “real world” intern-
ships and to test research questions, those experiences
are seldom allowed to inuence the university itself. In
order to become more relevant to the eld and to stu-
dents, academic programs could gain immediacy and
relevance if conduits were created through which stu-
dents’ experiences and practitioners’ knowledge could
ow back to researchers.
Although newer models of engagement have emerged, most
of them, like Van de Ven’s (2007) work on the subject, try to use
existing, promotion-based archetypes to describe the process. is
approach oen puts the researcher, rather than the practitioner or
clients, in charge of asking the questions. For example, the rst tier
A Reactive, Radical Approach to Engaged Scholar ship 89
of Van de Ven’s diamond model of engaged scholarship calls for
a researcher to “Situate, ground, diagnose, and infer the research
problem” (p. 10).
is terminology suggests that it is the researcher, not the
community, agency, practitioner, or client, who has the ability to
x a system. us, the decision making goes to a researcher who
“diagnoses” the problem, stepping out of the engagement role by
bringing to the situation an academic bias. Many human service
practitioners have become suspect of academics that try to make
uid real world problems t into neat academic paradigms.
Program solutions designed to attack the increasingly complex
array of stressors that families, children, and individuals are facing
in contemporary society have become multisystemic, multisymp-
tomatic, and constant in their changing nature. One could read
academic literature and on-the-market “x-it” books and still lack
an adequate background to coach anyone on how to remedy these
problems. (For an overview of these current problems, look to the ongoing
“Kids Count” data reports: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011).
Only through immersion in the eld; through the experi-
ence of engagement with agencies, programs, and their clients;
and through careful observation and listening can one truly build
the collaborative skills necessary for eective engagement. What
human service agencies desperately need are partnerships.
In reality, a truly engaged scholar should be a collaborator
whose curiosity and skill allow him or her to observe the problem
from multiple individual and systemic dimensions, and whose
experience in so doing is merely a tool he or she brings to the col-
laboration that is used to assist the other collaborators in owning
the problem or condition, and in designing and testing a solution
to it. If the intended goals are to both immerse students in the best
of eld learning and experience and to boost the relevance of the
academic institution in the eyes of constituencies, faculty mem-
bers must make changes in their relationships to the institutions,
programs, consumers, and communities with whom they engage.
Otherwise, they risk the fate of irrelevance.
Toward a Reactive and Radical Approach to
Engaged Scholarship
e need for universities to dramatically alter how scholars
discover and disseminate knowledge has been well-documented.
As Lerner and Simon (1998) put it, “universities must change from
their currently perceived (and in several respects, actual) status as
90 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
enclaves for ethereal elitism” (p. 4). is realization has led many
universities to reinvigorate a quest for relevance in their communi-
ties and states, and even globally (Stanton, 2008).
e dierence between “ethereal elitism” in current practice
and the world envisioned by proponents of “engaged scholarship”
like Van De Ven (2007) seems to be taking the same researcher-
driven design (i.e., researcher driven questions, researcher driven
hypotheses and goals, researcher driven answers, and researcher
driven conclusions) and replicating this design in the eld environ-
ment. e obvious barrier to this researcher-based collaboration is
that human service agencies have become resistive to approaches
in which a researcher steps out from the halls of academia and
professes to understand the needs of the community without rst
experiencing immersion in the eld.
For many practitioners and community members, this
approach is misguided and demeaning. e days of the academic
institution dictating to human
service practitioners what they
need or should be doing are gone.
Communities expect collabo-
ration in which the researcher
becomes a true collaborator who
can both coach and listen; who
engages in the problem from all
perspectives; who assists the col-
laborative team in understanding the context in which the problem
occurs and the strengths of the community, agency, or client to
overcome it; and who then helps the collaborators adjust their
potential and resources to address the problem.
At this point, the researcher uses his or her academic persona
to help measure the change made by the collaborator. e last stage
in what the author considers radical, enmeshed research is that the
researcher and student collaborators can then share this change
with the university, thus continually updating all facets of academic
knowledge, research, practice, and teaching.
About the Approach
A reactive and radical approach to engaged scholarship is
based on a belief in the fundamentals of outreach scholarship. e
approach works toward transformation of the community, trans-
formation of the researcher and students, and, through the process,
a transformation in the nature of the academic institution and how
“Communities expect
collaboration in which
the researcher becomes
a true collaborator. . . .”
A Reactive, Radical Approach to Engaged Scholar ship 91
it is viewed by constituents. e approach diers from Lerner and
Simon’s (1998), Stanton’s (2008), and Van de Ven’s (2007) in (1) the
extent of immersion by the researcher, (2) the expectations of com-
munity and academic change, and (3) the nature of the relationship
between the researcher and the collaborators. Rather, this approach
to engagement is reactive. e chrono-system (or the inuences of
the social era or happenings, trends and events of the immediate
time in which the engagement takes place; (Bronfenbrenner, 1994) is
crucial to the process of engagement. Real-life issues require imme-
diate analysis, intervention, eect measurement, and change. For
example, if a bullying epidemic is being perceived as causing child
suicides, the situation cannot wait for a longitudinal analysis and
a ve-year study.
is approach to engagement is also radical. Building on the
frameworks of action research (Greenwood and Levin, 1998) and later
the concept of feminist action research (Reid, 2004), radical outreach
calls for researcher immersion and “enmeshment” in a problem to
gain a clearer understanding, followed by radical transformation
in the community members, in the researchers and students, and
eventually in the institutional learning community.
e major dierence between a reactive and radical approach
and other forms of engaged scholarship is the extent to which it
immerses the researcher in a community’s problems. e faculty
member becomes enmeshed with the community and collabora-
tors. e term enmeshment arose from the works of family systems
pioneer Minuchin (1974), who used it to mean “diused bound-
aries.” In the academic setting, enmeshment, or the breaking down
of “silos” between the researcher, the community, the human ser-
vice provider, and the clients, allows understanding of a problem
from all sides. Enmeshment in solving a problem is the purest form
of collaboration, in which all those sitting at the table work toward
the same goal as equals. A reactive and radical approach to engaged
scholarship places the emphasis for scholarship on nding a lasting
transformation of a community’s ability to solve a problem.
Eight Steps in a Reactive and Radical Approach
to Engaged Scholarship
1. Reactive matching and real collaboration. e most impor-
tant and most delicate part of any engaged scholarship endeavor is
the creation of collaboration. e onus is on the faculty member
to begin the collaborative process. is cannot be accomplished
from within the institution. It is a combination of following one’s
92 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
personal passions and curiosities, nding those in the commu-
nity who are actively involved in those areas, and then inviting
practitioners to the academy. e research team becomes a regular
observer in the community.
Reactive matching requires discussions and active listening. It
is the matching of passions among all participants including prac-
titioners, policy makers, and advocates. It is both personal and
professional in nature. Successful collaborators recognize several
necessary aspects of collaboration, including
• interactive leadership. No one entity, be it a funding
entity, community, or university, owns “the right” to
direct a collaborative partnership. Leadership rests in
the member who has the tools, instruments, or need
at each critical juncture in a project.
• the importance of relationships. A common passion
unites collaborators, and that passion to serve is the
basis for relationships necessary to attack the problem.
Trust is the key ingredient for success of any collabora-
tion, and that trust is based on a principle of mutual
respect for each partner’s strengths and needs.
• conict and stress are expected. Any collaborative
relationship based on passion will eventually create
conict and stress. ese are actually healthy signs
of collaboration, and as the collaborators commit to
work through them, trust and mutuality are fostered.
• universities, researchers, or funders cannot force
collaboration. Collaboration is a natural process that
grows from mutual respect, trust, and the need of each
member to pool limited resources to improve the lives
of others.
An example of a reactive and radical approach to engaged
scholarship occurred in 2009, when a group of mothers in New
Hampshire formed a coalition to call for reform in the school
policies and state laws regarding bullying. is was a dire need
of a group of parents. When they contacted the university to see
if there were researchers who might join their eort, a family life
and family policy specialist with the University of New Hampshire’s
Cooperative Extension service responded.
e specialist assessed the problem, compared New Hampshire
law with other state and national laws, policies, and existing
research. He then assisted in draing a new law and provided
A Reactive, Radical Approach to Engaged Scholar ship 93
evidence to the legislature in support of the proposed legislation.
Although not produced by a traditional peer-reviewed process, the
resulting legislation, which was enacted by New Hampshire’s 420-
member legislature in 2010, had a positive outcome. e law clearly
dened bullying and required schools to deal more eectively with
bullying incidents.
2. Experiential observation and listening. Once collabo-
ration has been envisioned, the task of the faculty member is to
become silent. Before asking questions, the most important thing
an engaged scholar can do is observe the problem to ascertain the
context of the interacting systems causing the need.
e purpose of this observation is to ensure that the faculty
member is a good t as a collaborator.
State child support policies are oen fraught with contentious
battling factions. In New Hampshire, the process of reviewing and
updating the state guidelines used by state agencies and courts to
decide who should support the children of divorce stalled, caught
between contentious political attacks between fathers’ rights
groups and women’s advocacy groups. Consequently, there had
been no substantial updating to the state’s policies since 1982, even
though the nature of divorce and shared parenting, formulas for
calculating costs of raising children, and the social issues revolving
around child support had all changed drastically. What was called
for was radical engagement and reactive scholarship.
When the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension
received a $110,000 state contract to provide a mandated review of
New Hampshire’s child support formula, a team devised several
ways to solicit input from key constituents. ey surveyed judges
and attorneys; provided six community forums across the state and
took individual testimony at each; and went to legislative groups,
special interest groups, and citizens and provided various means
for each to give input into the process.
In other words, the team became a skilled listener, a partner in
the process of expression and advocacy for both sides. e scien-
tic rigor, the perception of fairness and impartiality that quantita-
tive and qualitative methodology brought to the table was cathartic
for all sides in the debate. e process was unstuck by the fact
that advocates, lawyers, judges, and those who had been caught in
the bureaucracy created by the child support system felt rigorously
heard. e result was six pieces of legislation that dramatically
altered the methodology for child support in New Hampshire and
more fairly supported children of divorce.
94 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
3. Radical immersion and enmeshment. Aer observing the
need, condition, or problem, the faculty member must become
immersed and enmeshed with those who encounter it. e fac-
ulty member will also examine all sides of the issue from academic
journals to popular press, from newspaper and internet accounts
to rsthand perceptions.
It is imperative that, when appropriate, students be brought
into this immersion so that their observations, reections, and
conduits of learning inuence the researcher’s perception of the
problem and vice versa. Enmeshment means that the researcher
sits as an equal member and learner in meetings, hearings, client
sessions, scholarly discussions, and internet and social media dis-
cussions with all of the collaborators. In addition, it is the respon-
sibility of the faculty member to ensure that all collaborators have
access to university resources: data, libraries and journals, tech-
nology, and students.
e guiding purpose of enmeshment is to break down the
barriers between “client,” “practitioner,” “student,” and “scholar.”
e process of enmeshment fuses the trust of all collaborators and
focuses their respective perspectives and talents on transformation
of the social condition.
For example, in a recent study conducted examining work and
family “t” or “balance” of parents in New Hampshire, working
parents were interviewed during focus groups hosted at family
resource centers and through phone surveys. e voices of these
parents, many struggling with issues like transportation, childcare,
housing, and family stress, culminated in a series of state regula-
tions, business regulations, and publications aimed at businesses.
4. Collaborative needs analysis and logical methods. e
faculty member in a collaborative partnership should not be the
dictator of needs assessment formats, logic models, or products of
engaged scholarship. Information is useful to the practitioner and
community when the community members determine it is useful.
A faculty member can facilitate the development of a logic model,
and suggest methods, but should not solely determine the goals,
objectives, and desired outcomes.
A reactive and radical approach to engaged scholarship is
dependent on a mutual trust between the community members
and the faculty member. e faculty member trusts the community
members to identify the problem and produce the means to trans-
form it, and the community members trust the faculty member to
A Reactive, Radical Approach to Engaged Scholar ship 95
be truthful and open in bringing together key collaborators, iden-
tifying strengths and roadblocks, and creating research questions.
In addition, the faculty member should never rely exclusively
on quantitative or qualitative methods. Human service faculty
members, in particular, recognize that case studies, focus groups,
ethnographies, careful observations, and program evaluations are
valid data collection mechanisms. Moreover, validation of the nd-
ings should be provided by the community members.
In recent years, New Hampshire county jails have been trying
to radically change their approach to inmates. With dwindling
county resources to support a costly county-based criminal justice
system, ocials and taxpayers are demanding that these institu-
tions become more than just holding pens. A great deal of lit-
erature has focused on reducing risk or “Criminogenic” factors of
inmates by using prevention education and treatment.
University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension had been
an active partner in this process, but needed more than assump-
tions on which to base a preventative education process with
inmates. Working carefully with jail ocials and teams of inmates,
Extension faculty members and Family Studies students designed a
survey of inmates, given at intake to the jail, that would help iden-
tify what the inmates saw as their family-life needs.
e verbal survey was an option, yet when intake sta explained
that the survey would help them and other inmates get education
that could help them with family, parenting, and relationship issues,
95% of inmates in one county jail and 72% in the other volunteered
to take the survey over a period of 6 months. ey identied that
they needed help with money management and participating in
the “above ground” economy, that they needed help with parenting
and child rearing skills, and that they wanted to know how to form
better, stronger, and more positive relationships in their lives.
Extension listened, designed, and implemented programs in
each area, and then went back to the inmates to gauge their inter-
ests. Participation had grown, and recidivism had dwindled. e
collaboration worked.
5. Continuous assessment. During an engaged scholarship
project, there should be a continuous feedback loop among the col-
laborators. e questions “Is this working?” and “How should we
readjust our goals and objectives based on what we have learned,
and what has changed?” should be constantly asked by participants.
For example, success in human service engaged research is
really the measurement of personal transformation. It is based on
96 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
the notion that individuals, systems, and policies are intimately
linked in either promoting or suppressing that transformation.
erefore, change is a growth process that is sensitive to the inter-
actions between individuals and their ecology. e faculty member
is concerned not only about changes made by the individual, but
about how the treatment, intervention, program, or policy aects
the relevant systems. e faculty member facilitates collaborative
monitoring of both the individual participants and the systems
in which the individuals interact. Ultimately, the faculty member
must also measure the change that this research has made in his or
her institution.
When designing a new collaborative family resource center and
student laboratory for the study of parent education in Manchester,
New Hampshire, Cooperative Extension devised a unique method
for both assessing needs of the community and for gathering con-
stant feedback on the collaborative’s ability to meet those needs.
With the YWCA of New Hampshire, the key collaborator, a
series of Friday ice cream socials were initiated for community
leaders, parents, and community stakeholders. ese were sched-
uled for Friday aernoons at the YWCA’s easily accessed downtown
location, and personal invitations were sent to key representatives
of stakeholder groups, inviting them to bring friends.
During the informal conversations, team members would cir-
culate among guests with a series of key questions relative to the
needs, program strengths, and perceptions of service of the col-
laboration. e responses were written down by team members,
coded, and analyzed for key and recurrent themes, feedback, and
response.
Participants quickly caught onto the idea and would make sure
to bring key constituents of the programming to share their percep-
tions, criticisms, and concerns of the programming. is method
of constant feedback has become an integral part of the ongoing
assessment of the program and has increased participation of par-
ents who have been led by satised stakeholders to the resource
center.
6. Communal transformation. e ultimate question for a
faculty member doing reactive and radical engaged scholarship is,
“What changed?” What transformations occurred in the lives of all
the individuals involved in the endeavor?
Measuring communal transformation is not easy. Many dif-
ferent assessments need to be conducted, including assessments of
the perceptions of all those directly involved, of media outlets, and
A Reactive, Radical Approach to Engaged Scholar ship 97
of policy makers as well as those who promote homeostasis in the
ecology of the project.
Transformation can oen be minute, but hopeful. For example,
a reactive and radical outreach and engagement initiative may
not eliminate homelessness in a community, but it may create a
pathway through which families can nd employment, and thus
begin a process of transformation. It may not eliminate bullying in
a school, but it may start a path that will one day result in elimina-
tion of the problem. In short, in order for engaged scholarship to
be radical, it must promote transformation in the community. It is
up to the members of the partnership to measure the value, impor-
tance, and depth of the transformation.
For example, since 2007, senior undergraduate and graduate
students in a University of New Hampshire Family Policy class have
been required to attend and participate in the state’s Summit on
Children’s Issues. e students are required to research the issues
that are aecting families and children in New Hampshire, and to
apply that knowledge by assisting the Children’s Alliance, an advo-
cacy group of children and family agencies, in devising an annual
list of legislative priorities. Over the past 3 years, more than eight
new laws or policy changes have been enacted as a direct result of
class projects. In exit interviews and teaching evaluations, the stu-
dents reported that their participation was transformative in their
academic careers, and members of the Children’s Alliance reported
that the student input and testimony was valuable to the legislative
process.
7. Radical dissemination. Two fundamental beliefs of the fac-
ulty member, both rooted in feminist action research (Reid, 2004),
are (1) that all research is biased, and (2) that all research is political
in nature. With those beliefs in mind, a faculty member promotes
transformation by drawing attention to it.
Faculty members understand that community members who
invest in public institutions want to see the fruit of their invest-
ments, not have them buried in obscure academic journals.
erefore, the faculty member welcomes media involvement,
public discourse, debate, and input, and promotes the work or the
collaborative. All participants in the engagement endeavor should
benet from this information dissemination. e faculty member
should also advocate for the diverse forms that engaged scholarship
products take. For example, blogs, newspaper articles, and radio or
television talk shows are venues where practitioners, funders, and
other non-academics increasingly gather their news.
98 Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
e issue of work and family “t” or balance has been an
increasing concern of the University of New Hampshire. As part
of the ongoing investigation, the researcher and others have been
involved in a legislative policy committee concerned about the
intersection of family life and work life. As a result, a consider-
able opportunity has been presented over the past four years to
advocate for change in how companies regard the non-work lives
of their employees.
In 2008, the researcher began to write a monthly column in
the New Hampshire Business Review, a popular trade journal about
work and family life research. In addition, the University of New
Hampshire Cooperative Extension began to host a series of annual
conferences for business professionals and legislators on work and
family life. Cooperative Extension also became the host agency for
the Sloan Award for excellence in work and family life work, which
is a prestigious national award given to businesses for their accom-
plishments in work-life balance.
Suddenly, the researcher and his colleagues became featured
speakers at business luncheons, chamber of commerce meetings,
and other business-type venues as well as at non-prot family-
serving agency meetings. As a result, in part, of this increased vis-
ability, the research team was asked to examine work and family
stress factors experienced by working parents in New Hampshire.
e results may be used to inform future legislation. e oppor-
tunities provided by relationships with these new stakeholders
for the university and for the students were obvious. Suddenly,
yogurt companies and engineering rms were seeing a whole new
relevance for the university’s work. Chief executive ocers began
asking if they could speak to a class on family policy.
8. Personal growth and transformation. e radical passion
that drives a faculty member to investigate and facilitate commu-
nity collaboration is a deep desire to better understand the world,
and a deep commitment to making personal transformation
through discovery. e faculty member must also ask: “What’s in
this for me?” “Will it further my passion?” “Will it feed my desire
for altruism?” “Will it give me a legacy?” “Will it alleviate my aca-
demic homeostasis?” In a reactive and radical approach to engaged
scholarship, faculty members should measure their personal trans-
formation and growth.
e researcher was a part of all of the previous examples men-
tioned in this article over the past four years. e result has been
that instead of coming to a new university and being isolated in the
A Reactive, Radical Approach to Engaged Scholar ship 99
cold connes of the ivory tower, the researcher developed friends,
collaborators, and trusted condants in the worlds of business,
in politics, in the researcher’s chosen eld of human service, and
across the campus.
Radical outreach and reactive engagement has allowed the
researcher to help prisoners stay out of jail; be a founder of a parent
resource center and student laboratory; to co-write legislation that
has made children safer and more secure; to be a columnist and a
frequent media guest; and, most importantly, to see how research
can make a dierence in people’s lives. However, best of all, this
approach has led to great stories, wonderful collaborators, and real
world research to share with my students, to engage them with, and
to arouse their passion to radical outreach and reactive engagement.
Conclusion
A reactive and radical approach to engaged scholarship changes
the community, academic institution, researcher, and students. It
breaks down the barriers that exist between research and action. It
builds trust, loyalty, and lasting relationships between stakeholders
and the university. It transforms the researcher into a meaningful
social changer.
Reactive engagement and radical outreach oer a clear path
for engaged faculty members to become more relevant to the com-
munities with which they are partnering. It allows institutions to
become more visible and useful to their constituencies. Finally, it
oers research projects that teach university students – through
immersion – ethics, values, and collaborative and critical thinking
skills.
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About the Author
Malcolm Smith is the Family Life and Family Policy Specialist
at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. He
is also an Associate Extension Professor in the Department of
Family Studies who is active in research about bullying and peer
victimization in children; work and family life issues; reduction
of criminogenic factors among inmate populations; and the
science of outreach and engagement. He earned his bachelor’s
degree in Education and Communication Arts from Washburn
University, his master’s degree in Education from Minnesota
State University, and his Ph.D. in Family Studies and Human
Services from Kansas State University.
