With the
publication of the Hunt Report on the future of third level, there has been a
renewed focus on the role of Universities and other HEI’s in the area of civic
engagement. While many Universities can point to some level of involvement in
broadly defined civic engagement activities these have usually been confined to
pockets of interested staff. The purpose of this paperis to explore some
elements of how this might take place. Civic engagement can take place
in a variety of overlapping spaces, for example: democratic renewal through
participation; social, cultural and economic development; broadening the
curriculum and encouraging active citizenship amongst students; environmental
sustainability and others. This paper explores engagement as democratic renewal
through firstly identifying some of the principal logjams – conceptual,
dispositional and skills - that have developed over time that may limit the
potential of civic engagement as a democratic activity. Through an exploration of
these logjams the paper
proposes ways in which universities can play a strategic role in facilitating more effective and empowering engagement processes and how
they can themselves engage more effectively.