New Open-Access Resource Offers Educators Practical Tools for Building Reciprocal Campus-Community Partnerships

Engaging Community: A Toolkit for Reciprocal Teaching and Learning Beyond the Campus, published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and Campus Compact, brings together research, practical tools, case scenarios, and community perspectives to help educators rethink how teaching and learning can take place in partnership with communities. 

This is the second in a series of publications meant to offer practical tools for educating for democracy, following the publication of Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals. Longo’s work has consistently explored how education can connect learning with civic life, beginning with his first scholarly book, Why Community Matters: Connecting Education with Civic Life. His research has continued to examine deliberative dialogue, youth civic engagement, and community-based learning.

From the Classroom to the Community

The toolkit guides educators through what the authors see as the six defining principles and practices of community-engaged learning: cultivating stories and building community; taking an asset-based approach; applying a critical lens; developing reciprocal partnerships; facilitating dialogue and bridging divides; and assessing impact. Each practice has its own easy-to-adapt module which combines foundational concepts with lesson plans, readings, videos, interactive activities, and opportunities for reflection.

By providing educators with practical tools and adaptable learning modules, Engaging Community offers a resource for institutions seeking to strengthen their relationships with communities and make this style of learning a more reciprocal and meaningful part of higher education. The release of Engaging Community is part of the broader effort on the part of the Rutgers Democracy Lab to position Rutgers as a place where students can develop the knowledge and skills necessary to participate meaningfully in civic life. 

A host of national civic engagement leaders have endorsed Engaging Community. 

Endorsement Quotes for Engaging Community 

“Civic learning that is rooted in place and relationship is civic learning that will stick. This innovative toolkit offers just that kind of learning. It makes big concepts tangible, it invites us all to act mindfully, and it can be adapted to any campus or community.” 

- Eric Liu, CEO of Citizen University and author of Live Like a Citizen

“What makes this toolkit valuable is not just the content but also the timing. As institutions face growing pressure to prove the value of collective community work, we need resources that move beyond good intentions toward genuine, reciprocal practice. The authors and voices of this toolkit offer purposeful shared language, practical tools, and the kind of grounded wisdom that only comes from culture bearers doing this work in real communities. This is what our field needs at this moment.”

- Chris Nayve, Associate Vice President for Community Engagement and Inaugural Endowed Chair, Karen and Tom Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness, and Social Action, University of San Diego

“This is an impressive toolkit, inviting, accessible, and useful. Through honest case studies, rich readings, thoughtful discussion questions and activities, and most of all, by centering the perspectives of community partners and community engagement practitioners, the authors invite learners of all kinds into the kind of reflection that has the potential to propel community-engaged education towards justice. I’ll be using and recommending it often!”

- Sylvia Gale, Executive Director, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, University of Richmond 

“This toolkit is a rare blend of heart and craft—clear enough to use tomorrow, and deep enough to reshape how we engage with communities for the long haul. With rich case scenarios and grounded lesson plans, Engaging Community doesn’t romanticize partnerships—it operationalizes reciprocity. Longo, Perrotti, and Roy write from lived practice, providing a roadmap for community engagement that is story-driven, asset-based, critically aware, and accountable to the people beyond the campus.” 

- Ariane Hoy, Vice President, Bonner Foundation

“The Engaging Community toolkit offers thoughtful possibilities by inviting educators to approach community engagement as a collaborative process of inquiry, reciprocity, and shared learning. Through six ready-to-use lesson plans, it creates opportunities for students, faculty, and community partners to become co-creators of knowledge. More than a toolkit for community engagement, it is an invitation to reimagine higher education as a place where collaborative learning cultivates civic responsibility, strengthens relationships across differences, and renews the public purposes of higher education. At a moment when colleges and universities are being challenged to demonstrate their relevance, this toolkit provides an inspiring roadmap for reconnecting learning with community and strengthening democracy.”

- Shannon Wheatley Hartman, President of the Interactivity Foundation and Co-Creator of the Collaborative Discussion Project 

“Quality construction and repair require well crafted tools and skilled users who understand nuance and imagination. This toolkit is a dynamic and fulsome resource for educators serious about pedagogies of life.”

-Timothy Eatman, Professor and Inaugural Dean Honors Living- Learning Community, Rutgers University-Newark

“This Engaging Community teaching and learning toolkit is the most thorough resource in this area that has been produced. It is thorough, interactive and divided into six manageable modules that engage the learner on all dimensions of learning. The videos are integral to the community engaged learning process. I only wish this resource had been available 30 years ago when I began community engaged teaching and learning.”

- Dwight E. Giles, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Boston