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Transcript

Building Higher Education's "Trust Infrastructure" with Bobbie Laur · Partnership Work

• 0:00
  Bobbie Laur: Community engagement is relational. Like it is not an AI bot.
• 0:04
  Bobbie Laur: Community engagement is not done without people at the center of it,
• 0:09
  Bobbie Laur: both in terms of the community and the institution.
• 0:11
  Bobbie Laur: So I do think like in many ways, like rebuilding a trust infrastructure,
• 0:18
  Bobbie Laur: I think community engagement is at its core.
• 0:20
  Bobbie Laur: And I think in many ways, community engagement can be that trust infrastructure for higher education.
• 0:32
  Paul Kuttner: Hey, welcome to Partnership Work. I'm Paul Kuttner.
• 0:36
  Paul Kuttner: Higher education has been in turmoil since Trump took office,
• 0:39
  Paul Kuttner: with colleges and universities struggling to respond to waves of attacks on
• 0:43
  Paul Kuttner: research funding, DEI, campus protests. You've seen the headlines.
• 0:48
  Paul Kuttner: The administration was able to do this partly because so many people have lost
• 0:53
  Paul Kuttner: confidence in higher education.
• 0:54
  Paul Kuttner: They see it as too expensive, too inaccessible, a contributor to the deep inequalities
• 1:00
  Paul Kuttner: in our country rather than part of the solution.
• 1:03
  Paul Kuttner: My guest today argues that community engagement is key to rebuilding public
• 1:08
  Paul Kuttner: confidence in higher education.
• 1:10
  Paul Kuttner: Bobby Laur is president of Campus Compact, a national coalition of over 300
• 1:15
  Paul Kuttner: colleges and universities.
• 1:17
  Paul Kuttner: Since the mid-80s, Campus Compact
• 1:19
  Paul Kuttner: has been working to advance the public mission of higher education.
• 1:22
  Paul Kuttner: They empower campuses to partner with communities and address real-world issues together.
• 1:28
  Paul Kuttner: I invited Bobby on to discuss what this political moment means for the work
• 1:32
  Paul Kuttner: of community campus partnerships.
• 1:34
  Paul Kuttner: In this episode, Bobby dissects the loss of confidence in higher education and
• 1:38
  Paul Kuttner: describes how community engagement can serve as a trust infrastructure for campuses.
• 1:43
  Paul Kuttner: She shares her own journey into partnership work and points to examples of campuses
• 1:47
  Paul Kuttner: where engagement is not just an add-on, but instead is integrated across the
• 1:52
  Paul Kuttner: institution. And she offers a peek into some of the federal advocacy work that
• 1:56
  Paul Kuttner: Campus Compact is building towards.
• 1:58
  Paul Kuttner: If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us on your podcast platform,
• 2:03
  Paul Kuttner: or just share it with someone you know.
• 2:05
  Paul Kuttner: You can also sign up for the free Partnership Work Substack newsletter at partnershipwork.substack.com,
• 2:11
  Paul Kuttner: and all our episodes, transcripts, show notes, and more can be found at partnershipwork.org.
• 2:17
  Paul Kuttner: And now, Bobby.
• 2:25
  Paul Kuttner: Bobbi Laur, thank you for joining me on Partnership Work.
• 2:29
  Bobbie Laur: Oh, thrilled to be here, Paul. I know we've been trying to get this scheduled for some time.
• 2:34
  Paul Kuttner: Yes, it was worth the wait, I'm sure. So I'm just going to jump right into it.
• 2:39
  Paul Kuttner: 2025 was obviously a hectic, one-of-a-kind year for higher ed,
• 2:45
  Paul Kuttner: with the administration in particular coming in real strong with attacks on higher ed.
• 2:51
  Paul Kuttner: First, you know, really focused on elite institutions, but then also kind of
• 2:55
  Paul Kuttner: focus more broadly as time went on around, you know, DEI, around research funding,
• 3:01
  Paul Kuttner: even threatening the nonprofit status of universities.
• 3:04
  Paul Kuttner: I want to kind of just get your perspective. If you can put yourself back in
• 3:10
  Paul Kuttner: that, how did that hit you when it first started coming down?
• 3:13
  Paul Kuttner: What were you seeing in higher ed, particularly around the community engagement
• 3:18
  Paul Kuttner: part of higher ed, as all of that was starting back in, you know,
• 3:22
  Paul Kuttner: January, February, March last year.
• 3:25
  Bobbie Laur: My honest answer, Paul, is that not all things are created equal in that.
• 3:29
  Bobbie Laur: So I think the early executive order around diversity, equity,
• 3:34
  Bobbie Laur: inclusion wasn't a surprise to me.
• 3:36
  Bobbie Laur: I mean, I think the broad sweep of it was, but we saw a lot of that in Trump 1.0.
• 3:45
  Bobbie Laur: And we definitely, for those of us that have been in this policy space for,
• 3:50
  Bobbie Laur: and I've been at Compact four years this month.
• 3:53
  Bobbie Laur: And so, you know, prior to this role, I really wasn't very involved in more
• 3:56
  Bobbie Laur: of the federal policy space at a pretty significant level. So it's been a quick introduction.
• 4:03
  Bobbie Laur: And really, it came in parallel with when we have seen a lot of anti-DEI efforts across this country.
• 4:11
  Bobbie Laur: So really, that executive order that was January 2025, for me,
• 4:14
  Bobbie Laur: was not the surprising piece of the puzzle. I mean, the reason that that was
• 4:17
  Bobbie Laur: able and not able because we actually there was a big win in court two weeks ago.
• 4:22
  Bobbie Laur: I don't know if you followed around that executive order where where,
• 4:27
  Bobbie Laur: you know, in essence, there's no you know, they're not going to appeal the decision,
• 4:31
  Bobbie Laur: the administration around the lack of constitutionality around it.
• 4:34
  Bobbie Laur: I don't think there's a lot of understanding around what does that actually
• 4:38
  Bobbie Laur: get us because the executive order itself was it created so much compromise
• 4:44
  Bobbie Laur: and so many institutional and so many choices,
• 4:48
  Bobbie Laur: both in institutions and in individual campuses.
• 4:51
  Bobbie Laur: Where they people were not being required to do things but were
• 4:54
  Bobbie Laur: doing things because they felt like they had to and i don't
• 4:57
  Bobbie Laur: know that just because we now have you
• 5:00
  Bobbie Laur: know an answer in the courts that says that you know
• 5:02
  Bobbie Laur: that executive order doesn't have the weight i don't know that that's really
• 5:05
  Bobbie Laur: going to change the kind of the decisions that have been made so i think we'll
• 5:09
  Bobbie Laur: have we're going to have to wait and see what happens but there have been so
• 5:12
  Bobbie Laur: much work there have been so much um work and um threats and loss around dei
• 5:18
  Bobbie Laur: over the past several years really beginning with Florida,
• 5:22
  Bobbie Laur: but then really escalating quickly with things like SB-17 in Texas.
• 5:27
  Bobbie Laur: And then we saw an Ohio SB-1. And so we have been, those of us that have been
• 5:32
  Bobbie Laur: in this work, and I myself have been pretty immersed in it through coalitions,
• 5:36
  Bobbie Laur: like the Freedom to Learn Coalition with Penn America and others to try to really
• 5:40
  Bobbie Laur: talk about how we hold true to these values that,
• 5:44
  Bobbie Laur: education needs to be accessible to everyone and that diversity,
• 5:48
  Bobbie Laur: equity, and inclusion are not bad words and that they have real meaningfulness
• 5:54
  Bobbie Laur: in terms of purpose and impact and real danger when we weaponize them.
• 5:59
  Bobbie Laur: So that wasn't as much of a surprise. However, I remember being shocked in January
• 6:05
  Bobbie Laur: 2025 when we saw the federal funding freeze.
• 6:08
  Bobbie Laur: I think the swiftness and the
• 6:11
  Bobbie Laur: kind of just carelessness that was that federal funding freeze and when that
• 6:18
  Bobbie Laur: happened i think that said i would say safe to say everyone on everyone was
• 6:23
  Bobbie Laur: on their toes of like this feels like we've gone from what could be possible to worst case scenario,
• 6:31
  Bobbie Laur: quicker than I think anybody thought would be possible. So I think since then,
• 6:35
  Bobbie Laur: it has been, particularly when you look at like that January to September,
• 6:39
  Bobbie Laur: October standpoint, when the compact, you know, when the compact from the administration
• 6:45
  Bobbie Laur: hit the streets, you know, in September and October, I think it was just a churn.
• 6:51
  Bobbie Laur: Like you said, you know, it started with the federal funding freeze.
• 6:53
  Bobbie Laur: And then it was like, there was a little bit of give on that.
• 6:55
  Bobbie Laur: And then And it wasn't an attack on accreditation. It was an attack on student status.
• 7:01
  Bobbie Laur: I mean, what we saw happening around immigration and international students,
• 7:05
  Bobbie Laur: and then it was an attack on a continued attack around research dollars and
• 7:09
  Bobbie Laur: direct institutional, you know, attacks and deals being made.
• 7:13
  Bobbie Laur: Like it's just been a lot to keep up with.
• 7:16
  Bobbie Laur: So I think some of that, to be honest, I have been surprised by it.
• 7:20
  Bobbie Laur: Higher education writ large has been something that republicans and democrats
• 7:23
  Bobbie Laur: have long understood the value of it's a you know it's one of the greatest strengths
• 7:27
  Bobbie Laur: of our country it's something we are regarded about around the world and i think
• 7:32
  Bobbie Laur: in the sector we thought we were a lot safer,
• 7:36
  Bobbie Laur: than we have turned out to be um in terms of like people particularly the research enterprise,
• 7:43
  Bobbie Laur: i i think we all felt you know this is where the most innovative and scientific
• 7:47
  Bobbie Laur: discovery happens in the world
• 7:48
  Bobbie Laur: that like no one in their right mind would be coming to destroy them.
• 7:52
  Bobbie Laur: And I think we've all been pretty shocked at like that even something like that is at risk.
• 7:58
  Paul Kuttner: For sure. Now, you mentioned the compact. So that's the compact for academic
• 8:03
  Paul Kuttner: excellence in higher education, which the administration put out.
• 8:06
  Paul Kuttner: It brought together a bunch of different priorities. The administration have
• 8:09
  Paul Kuttner: a bunch of critiques of higher ed into kind of a list of priorities that universities
• 8:17
  Paul Kuttner: and colleges would be asked to align with in order to get kind of preferential treatment for funding.
• 8:25
  Paul Kuttner: I think you, I know you mentioned last time we talked that having it called
• 8:28
  Paul Kuttner: a compact was a bit problematic for you all over at Campus Compact.
• 8:32
  Bobbie Laur: Yeah, yeah, not ideal wording, not ideal wording at all.
• 8:34
  Paul Kuttner: There was a ton of pushback on it, obviously, from higher ed,
• 8:37
  Paul Kuttner: people raising issues of free speech, academic independence, autonomy.
• 8:44
  Paul Kuttner: And I think at this point, Like, none of the original institutions signed it,
• 8:48
  Paul Kuttner: and there's like a couple small conservative colleges that have signed on to
• 8:52
  Paul Kuttner: it, like the one Ron DeSantis overhauled in Florida.
• 8:55
  Paul Kuttner: But it's still evolving. It's still kind of out in the world there and potentially
• 9:00
  Paul Kuttner: could come back in another form once they get feedback on it.
• 9:04
  Paul Kuttner: I wanted to ask you, though, you wrote a really interesting piece right after
• 9:09
  Paul Kuttner: it came out talking about the work of Campus Compact.
• 9:12
  Paul Kuttner: It was called A Higher Education Compact in Action. You put it out on the
• 9:16
  Paul Kuttner: Campus Compact website.
• 9:17
  Paul Kuttner: And I was intrigued by your take on it because you kind of reframed things.
• 9:20
  Paul Kuttner: You sort of, you know, you shared that you agreed with many of the concerns
• 9:26
  Paul Kuttner: about government overreach, but you argued that we sort of can't be in defensive mode around this.
• 9:32
  Paul Kuttner: And I specifically want to quote you here. And I ask you sort of how your thinking may have evolved.
• 9:37
  Paul Kuttner: So you said, the value of higher education is under question.
• 9:41
  Paul Kuttner: While it is tempting to dismiss the loss of public confidence as partisan,
• 9:45
  Paul Kuttner: narrow-minded, short-sighted, or just a messaging issue, we need to take it seriously.
• 9:50
  Paul Kuttner: It's a trend that has been building over years and is based on valid and wide-ranging concerns.
• 9:56
  Paul Kuttner: So before we get to the kind of the solutions you pointed towards,
• 10:01
  Paul Kuttner: I wanted to ask you, what do you see as the valid and wide ranging concerns
• 10:06
  Paul Kuttner: at higher ed that we need to be really paying attention to?
• 10:09
  Bobbie Laur: Yeah. And, you know, I would stand by that quote still today,
• 10:12
  Bobbie Laur: right? Which isn't always the case, these moments where sometimes you make,
• 10:15
  Bobbie Laur: you say something in the best, you know, in the context that you're in,
• 10:17
  Bobbie Laur: and then you look back and you say, I don't, I would shift there.
• 10:20
  Bobbie Laur: I think those, those feelings really still ring true for me.
• 10:24
  Bobbie Laur: And I would say, I think, Paul, you know, I've spent a career in community engagement, as have you.
• 10:28
  Bobbie Laur: I think that positionality and the people that do this work day and day out
• 10:32
  Bobbie Laur: in community engagement, I think that that probably resonates a lot with those
• 10:35
  Bobbie Laur: of us in community engagement.
• 10:36
  Bobbie Laur: And what I mean by that is we are often the people who are sitting on our campuses
• 10:41
  Bobbie Laur: really trying to walk a line of saying, like, there is harm.
• 10:45
  Bobbie Laur: There is potential harm. The universities are not getting everything right.
• 10:48
  Bobbie Laur: We are, like, the problem solvers.
• 10:49
  Bobbie Laur: So I think the confidence numbers, and that is just a statistic that's factual,
• 10:54
  Bobbie Laur: you know, we have seen the confidence numbers in higher education falling for years.
• 10:58
  Bobbie Laur: You know, that's part of where I think created this really challenging landscape
• 11:04
  Bobbie Laur: for us. while we were being attacked, we necessarily weren't in a time where
• 11:08
  Bobbie Laur: broadly across the country, we had everybody coming to our defense.
• 11:12
  Bobbie Laur: And I think some of the reasons for that, like you said, like,
• 11:15
  Bobbie Laur: what are those reasons where I'm saying, like, we have to look in the mirror,
• 11:18
  Bobbie Laur: you know, there's real financial ones, you know, we have higher education in
• 11:23
  Bobbie Laur: terms of its affordability is always the, it's like the number one reasons that
• 11:27
  Bobbie Laur: people have questions about confidence in higher education.
• 11:29
  Bobbie Laur: You know, we have a student loan debt crisis in this country.
• 11:32
  Bobbie Laur: Many people are priced out of getting a college education. And there's lots
• 11:36
  Bobbie Laur: of interesting, innovative solutions, particularly around community colleges in that.
• 11:39
  Bobbie Laur: But the price of higher education, by and large, has skyrocketed.
• 11:43
  Bobbie Laur: At the same time, we have massive increases in just wealth equity gaps across this country.
• 11:50
  Bobbie Laur: So like we are experiencing a time just as Americans where, you know,
• 11:54
  Bobbie Laur: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
• 11:56
  Bobbie Laur: And when you have a higher education system that's talking about economic and
• 11:59
  Bobbie Laur: social mobility a lot, I think we need to kind of look in the mirror and talk
• 12:03
  Bobbie Laur: about, like, yes, there are campuses
• 12:05
  Bobbie Laur: that are doing, that are excellent at economic and social mobility.
• 12:08
  Bobbie Laur: But writ large, what's the responsibility of the sector in the broader distribution
• 12:13
  Bobbie Laur: of wealth in this country?
• 12:14
  Bobbie Laur: And I think that has caused, you know,
• 12:17
  Bobbie Laur: a lot of middle America and folks that aren't pursuing degrees in higher education
• 12:21
  Bobbie Laur: to begin to feel very separate from this institution that feels like this elitist
• 12:26
  Bobbie Laur: kind of continuing to contribute to something that they don't feel is accessible to them.
• 12:30
  Bobbie Laur: You know, when you look in rural America, that is increasingly true.
• 12:33
  Bobbie Laur: Like so the demographics of these confidence questions both
• 12:37
  Bobbie Laur: along political lines are stark and
• 12:40
  Bobbie Laur: then also around geography are stark around the urban
• 12:43
  Bobbie Laur: world divide um i also think that i actually was just on a panel two weeks ago
• 12:48
  Bobbie Laur: at aacnu around advancing public trust and i was asked a question about this
• 12:55
  Bobbie Laur: and i i don't have and i i talked about this a little bit in that um compact and action statement.
• 13:00
  Bobbie Laur: And I don't have this really well tuned, but there's something for me.
• 13:05
  Bobbie Laur: That I'm sitting with that higher education and the work that I have spent my
• 13:10
  Bobbie Laur: career doing and you, Paul, has really been about making the case that higher
• 13:15
  Bobbie Laur: education is essential to our communities.
• 13:17
  Bobbie Laur: We are drivers of not just economic development, but community well-being and
• 13:21
  Bobbie Laur: health equity and what it means to create thriving communities for all,
• 13:24
  Bobbie Laur: because there's so much that we do as colleges and universities that is beyond
• 13:28
  Bobbie Laur: the students that walk through our doors and get degrees.
• 13:31
  Bobbie Laur: And I think there we have to take stock in the fact that so many people are suffering.
• 13:37
  Bobbie Laur: They don't have access to healthy food. They aren't finding ways to find affordable housing.
• 13:42
  Bobbie Laur: They're not able to find jobs that provide living wages. You know,
• 13:45
  Bobbie Laur: we have climate change, climate change crisis is creating just systemic issues.
• 13:51
  Bobbie Laur: We have a mental health crisis across this country that's the worst it's ever been.
• 13:55
  Bobbie Laur: I think the fact that we have so much, so many challenges broadly in society
• 13:59
  Bobbie Laur: and at the same time we have spent decades talking about the critical importance
• 14:03
  Bobbie Laur: of higher education in our communities,
• 14:04
  Bobbie Laur: like those two things for me are also sitting there of like,
• 14:07
  Bobbie Laur: why would we expect broad society to be super confident about something when
• 14:13
  Bobbie Laur: writ large, all the things that are sitting at the kitchen table are really tough.
• 14:19
  Bobbie Laur: And so if we're yelling from the rooftop that like college universities are
• 14:23
  Bobbie Laur: essential anchors in our communities,
• 14:25
  Bobbie Laur: they are drivers of all these things, Like they are like critical to how our
• 14:28
  Bobbie Laur: society functions and society is not functioning very well for the average person like that.
• 14:34
  Bobbie Laur: I don't have the exact data points on, but I also think that is playing in to
• 14:39
  Bobbie Laur: the confidence and it's not as clear cut when you look at the reasons,
• 14:41
  Bobbie Laur: because I don't think that we understand how to ask that question.
• 14:44
  Paul Kuttner: Yeah.
• 14:45
  Bobbie Laur: But I think that that's, that's a piece of this. And, and that's how,
• 14:49
  Bobbie Laur: that's how higher education is getting.
• 14:51
  Bobbie Laur: We're seeing similar data points around confidence on
• 14:54
  Bobbie Laur: just you know trust in government and that's a lot of why so those numbers and
• 14:59
  Bobbie Laur: trust in government have been falling for years again way before this current
• 15:03
  Bobbie Laur: administration and we know that that's why people no longer feel like government
• 15:06
  Bobbie Laur: is serving them and i think there's something there about just the health of our community society,
• 15:13
  Bobbie Laur: and people,
• 15:16
  Bobbie Laur: And then the connection, because I feel like we've been effective in making
• 15:20
  Bobbie Laur: the case that higher education is essential.
• 15:22
  Bobbie Laur: And so I feel like that's a piece of also what's happening that is harder to
• 15:27
  Bobbie Laur: put your exact finger on.
• 15:30
  Paul Kuttner: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the complicated things,
• 15:33
  Paul Kuttner: you know, when you're doing partnership work between communities and universities
• 15:37
  Paul Kuttner: at the local level, You're often sort of in these in-between spaces where you're
• 15:42
  Paul Kuttner: sort of arguing for higher ed in community,
• 15:44
  Paul Kuttner: like why community partners should consider working with and collaborating with
• 15:49
  Paul Kuttner: higher ed despite past harm, despite distrust.
• 15:53
  Paul Kuttner: And then you're also in higher ed arguing for how they need to change.
• 15:57
  Paul Kuttner: Now, it almost seems like we've now projected that onto the national level.
• 16:02
  Paul Kuttner: And it puts us in a funny position because, as you said, people in community
• 16:07
  Paul Kuttner: engagement are many of the people who have been pointing out flaws in higher
• 16:11
  Paul Kuttner: education and things that we need to change over time.
• 16:14
  Paul Kuttner: But now with these attacks that are not necessarily always in good faith,
• 16:19
  Paul Kuttner: there is an urge, I think, for many people to sort of hunker down and be defensive
• 16:24
  Paul Kuttner: and not engage in those conversations because they're not necessarily good faith,
• 16:28
  Paul Kuttner: productive conversations.
• 16:30
  Paul Kuttner: And so it's just hard to figure out kind of how to navigate these larger debates
• 16:35
  Paul Kuttner: without without falling back into kind of total defensiveness and higher ed
• 16:39
  Paul Kuttner: is great and why are you, which I think you're trying to navigate.
• 16:44
  Paul Kuttner: So I'm wondering how you see, how do you picture yourself navigating that?
• 16:47
  Paul Kuttner: How do you think we collectively should be thinking about that tension?
• 16:52
  Bobbie Laur: Yeah. So I'm definitely not on the side of that. We don't need to be defending ourselves.
• 16:57
  Bobbie Laur: And frankly, I don't know that a lot of people think we've effectively defended
• 17:00
  Bobbie Laur: ourselves and ourselves being higher education as a sector this year.
• 17:05
  Bobbie Laur: So I think that what's important, you know, there's like a typology that I've
• 17:11
  Bobbie Laur: heard of, like you need builders, bridges, bridgers and blockers.
• 17:15
  Bobbie Laur: Like when you're talking about trying to address a moment like this and in a
• 17:19
  Bobbie Laur: set of attacks like this, you know, there's multiple roles that need to be played.
• 17:22
  Bobbie Laur: So you need bridgers, you need builders, and you need blockers.
• 17:26
  Bobbie Laur: And the blockers are you need, particularly in this case, the biggest strength
• 17:29
  Bobbie Laur: we have had has been the legal community.
• 17:31
  Bobbie Laur: So organizations like Democracy Forward, that I don't think most folks had heard
• 17:36
  Bobbie Laur: of a year ago today, have been essential.
• 17:40
  Bobbie Laur: I mean, you know, holding, you know, utilizing our justice system to be able
• 17:44
  Bobbie Laur: to call out, is this constitutional or not?
• 17:47
  Bobbie Laur: Is it fair to be, you know, attacking whether it's endowment taxes or whether
• 17:51
  Bobbie Laur: it's federal funding freezes or whether it's a tax on, you know,
• 17:54
  Bobbie Laur: using executive orders in certain ways?
• 17:56
  Bobbie Laur: So you need people that are doing the blocking work.
• 17:59
  Bobbie Laur: I think what I'm trying to argue is that we also have to be,
• 18:02
  Bobbie Laur: we can't just be defending a status quo.
• 18:06
  Paul Kuttner: Right.
• 18:07
  Bobbie Laur: I do not think that that is essential. I think there are real things that need
• 18:11
  Bobbie Laur: to shift in higher ed and We need folks who can also help build for the next
• 18:16
  Bobbie Laur: what is what comes next and build for like how do we actually?
• 18:20
  Bobbie Laur: How do we actually build a more inclusive, more accessible, more thriving higher education system?
• 18:25
  Bobbie Laur: And then you need bridgers, people that can connect the dots,
• 18:28
  Bobbie Laur: people that can do a better job, I mean, of making sure higher gets out of being such a siloed sector.
• 18:33
  Bobbie Laur: I actually believe that higher education institutions, particularly those who
• 18:37
  Bobbie Laur: are deeply civic and community engagement, are well positioned to be really builders and bridgers.
• 18:43
  Bobbie Laur: And then I think organizations and coalitions like Compact and others that are
• 18:47
  Bobbie Laur: in this space, we're also particularly attuned to do that within the broader ecosystem of higher ed.
• 18:53
  Bobbie Laur: So, you know, I sit in a lot of tables and a lot of rooms with other organizations in higher ed.
• 18:58
  Bobbie Laur: And a really big one just launched two weeks ago or, yeah, I think it was two weeks ago.
• 19:04
  Bobbie Laur: It's a new organization that people should lock up. It's called the Alliance for Higher Education.
• 19:09
  Bobbie Laur: And it has emerged really as a response to what's been happening in the past couple of years.
• 19:13
  Bobbie Laur: It's led by Mike Gavin, who used to be the president of Delta College.
• 19:17
  Bobbie Laur: And I've been working with Mike along with lots of others over the past couple
• 19:21
  Bobbie Laur: of years to kind of get to this launch point for the alliance.
• 19:23
  Bobbie Laur: And the alliance, to me, is such an important recognition of what we didn't
• 19:28
  Bobbie Laur: have before, which is, you know, a defense-structured organization.
• 19:33
  Bobbie Laur: It's not a membership organization that's not beholden to, you know,
• 19:36
  Bobbie Laur: serving our institutions, which can create real challenge for some of our higher
• 19:40
  Bobbie Laur: ed associations because, you know, are they focused on the research?
• 19:44
  Bobbie Laur: Like, or are they focused on the diversity, equity, inclusion agenda?
• 19:46
  Bobbie Laur: So the Alliance is sitting alongside all of the other membership organizations
• 19:51
  Bobbie Laur: and others, but they are going to be a defense engine.
• 19:54
  Bobbie Laur: And they're going to help, I think, drive kind of visions for the future.
• 19:57
  Bobbie Laur: But there also, I think, if we'd had an organization like the Alliance maybe
• 20:01
  Bobbie Laur: in place a year ago, I think we may have been able to navigate differently.
• 20:06
  Bobbie Laur: Do I think that we would have, you know, stopped the bleeding? I'm not sure.
• 20:10
  Bobbie Laur: But I am excited about something like the Alliance coming online and what it
• 20:14
  Bobbie Laur: might bring in terms of our future ability to, like, work more cohesively as a sector.
• 20:19
  Bobbie Laur: But, yeah, I mean, that's where I mean, I think there's a multitude of roles to play.
• 20:22
  Bobbie Laur: And my main argument I made here that I definitely make anytime I have a conversation
• 20:27
  Bobbie Laur: is it's really about not settling for the status quo of making the assumption
• 20:31
  Bobbie Laur: that higher ed today is working in all the ways it has.
• 20:34
  Bobbie Laur: It's also definitely not a throw the baby out with the bathwater moment.
• 20:38
  Bobbie Laur: Like, you know, this is not a moment where I'm by any means advocating that we just start over.
• 20:45
  Bobbie Laur: I mean, higher ed continues to be the primary pathway for people to get opportunity,
• 20:51
  Bobbie Laur: for economic and social mobility, to develop the critical thinking skills,
• 20:54
  Bobbie Laur: to meet the needs of workforce.
• 20:56
  Bobbie Laur: We just have to think about what does that social contract look like with the
• 21:00
  Bobbie Laur: public, I think, in a more meaningful way.
• 21:01
  Bobbie Laur: And that's what I think you said, Paul. You said this, like.
• 21:05
  Bobbie Laur: Well, I don't know that, I don't believe there's really a future for the Trump compact.
• 21:11
  Bobbie Laur: And I think the thing that ended up creating real alignment across a diverse
• 21:15
  Bobbie Laur: set of institutions that receive the initial opportunity is this very clear
• 21:20
  Bobbie Laur: consensus around merit.
• 21:22
  Bobbie Laur: That there's a real value on merit when it comes to research funding.
• 21:25
  Bobbie Laur: That research funding at its core, higher education wants to say,
• 21:29
  Bobbie Laur: like, this should, awards should be given to the most competitive,
• 21:33
  Bobbie Laur: most competitive and right solutions.
• 21:35
  Bobbie Laur: And that they don't want to do anything that is saying, like,
• 21:38
  Bobbie Laur: if I sign this, I'm going to get preferential treatment.
• 21:41
  Bobbie Laur: That there's a real value in the merit system of federal research dollars.
• 21:45
  Bobbie Laur: And that that's what has created the best, you know, best global,
• 21:50
  Bobbie Laur: you know, discoveries of our time.
• 21:51
  Bobbie Laur: You saw every president really that said no, who some of them were places like
• 21:57
  Bobbie Laur: UVA that had experienced a presidential turnover and put in place,
• 22:00
  Bobbie Laur: you know, there would have been leadership changes at many of the institutions
• 22:03
  Bobbie Laur: that I think thought made the administration feel like they would be more likely to say yes.
• 22:09
  Bobbie Laur: But all of them ultimately said, even if we agree with some components of this,
• 22:13
  Bobbie Laur: we disagree on the basis of merit.
• 22:15
  Bobbie Laur: And I think that kind of stopped the whole thing in its tracks.
• 22:18
  Bobbie Laur: And that's something that every, I mean, I think we conservatives and liberals agree with.
• 22:23
  Bobbie Laur: And we have, you know, we have a lot of those conversations happening across the field.
• 22:28
  Paul Kuttner: So the compact may have inadvertently created a moment of consensus among institutions
• 22:34
  Paul Kuttner: that they were really struggling with in their individual responses to Trump.
• 22:39
  Paul Kuttner: These are obviously big, complicated issues, but what do you see as the role
• 22:42
  Paul Kuttner: of community engagement in the building role that you just described?
• 22:51
  Bobbie Laur: I think this question around if the problem that we're talking about is a lack
• 22:57
  Bobbie Laur: of confidence in higher education, and we're like, well, what are the pathways
• 23:01
  Bobbie Laur: to rebuilding that confidence?
• 23:04
  Bobbie Laur: I think that sometimes we conflate that around confidence and trust are the same thing.
• 23:11
  Bobbie Laur: Because some of the metrics even we look at, there's some Pew data that's a
• 23:14
  Bobbie Laur: little bit more on the trust side, the Gallup data.
• 23:17
  Paul Kuttner: What's the difference between confidence and trust?
• 23:19
  Bobbie Laur: So to me, and I don't think this is actually just my personal opinion.
• 23:23
  Bobbie Laur: I think generally this is the way we think of them that confidence is about competency.
• 23:29
  Bobbie Laur: Confidence is like, I'm expecting this thing to happen and I'm confident that
• 23:33
  Bobbie Laur: it is going to happen because there was a promise or I'm paying someone to do something.
• 23:37
  Bobbie Laur: I'm confident it's going to happen on the other end. And, you know,
• 23:40
  Bobbie Laur: trust is a belief in something.
• 23:42
  Bobbie Laur: Like trust is like, I think that this person is honest. I think that,
• 23:45
  Bobbie Laur: you know, I have trust that when they say they're going to do something, they're going to do it.
• 23:49
  Bobbie Laur: Like trust is often about people where to me, confidence is more about you can
• 23:54
  Bobbie Laur: have confidence in institutions and you can have confidence in a product.
• 23:57
  Bobbie Laur: You know, I don't think most of us trust products, right? Like we're confident
• 23:59
  Bobbie Laur: that a product or something is going to deliver us for it. But you have trust in people.
• 24:03
  Bobbie Laur: You have trust in, you know, an elected official or you have trust in your pastor.
• 24:07
  Bobbie Laur: Or you have trust in, you know, and the trust can be broken.
• 24:10
  Bobbie Laur: And so one, I think community engagement is relational.
• 24:15
  Bobbie Laur: Like it is not an AI bot. Community engagement is not done without people at
• 24:21
  Bobbie Laur: the center of it, both in terms of the community and the institution.
• 24:24
  Bobbie Laur: And so I do think like in many ways, like rebuilding a trust infrastructure,
• 24:30
  Bobbie Laur: I think community engagement is at its core.
• 24:33
  Bobbie Laur: And I think in many ways, community engagement can be that trust infrastructure for higher education.
• 24:37
  Bobbie Laur: And I think it's because it's where we connect institutions to the people in
• 24:41
  Bobbie Laur: places whose confidence they need to regain.
• 24:45
  Bobbie Laur: And so I do think community engagement, while we know is not a new idea,
• 24:51
  Bobbie Laur: you know, many of our, you know, our institutions, hundreds and I believe thousands
• 24:55
  Bobbie Laur: of institutions are, you know, thinking about this work.
• 24:58
  Bobbie Laur: There's a difference between doing it in very transactional ways and really
• 25:03
  Bobbie Laur: saying this is at the center of what we do as an institution.
• 25:07
  Bobbie Laur: And that's where I think we need to move. We need to move from community and
• 25:11
  Bobbie Laur: civic engagement. And sometimes campuses use those terminologies,
• 25:14
  Bobbie Laur: like, kind of interchangeably.
• 25:16
  Bobbie Laur: And we could have a whole other podcast, Paul, on just definitions and terms in the field.
• 25:21
  Bobbie Laur: But in the resisting that urge today, I'm going to broadly talk about civic
• 25:25
  Bobbie Laur: engagement as, like, a combined kind of body of work that I think have both
• 25:30
  Bobbie Laur: of them criticality in this moment.
• 25:32
  Bobbie Laur: And I think the moment calls for us to say,
• 25:37
  Bobbie Laur: this civic and community engagement work needs to be sitting at the very top,
• 25:41
  Bobbie Laur: just like we talk about preparing students for the workforce,
• 25:44
  Bobbie Laur: just like we talk about the economic impact of our institution,
• 25:47
  Bobbie Laur: we need to be talking about the civic and community engagement work.
• 25:50
  Bobbie Laur: And that's what I think when I think about the building moment.
• 25:53
  Bobbie Laur: It's moving beyond, oh, great, well, I have a center that's doing some great
• 25:57
  Bobbie Laur: community partnership work.
• 25:58
  Bobbie Laur: Awesome. Or, hey, we have a minor in civic engagement that we have,
• 26:02
  Bobbie Laur: you know, 30 students enrolled in.
• 26:04
  Bobbie Laur: To moving to, we have an expectation that every single student who walks through,
• 26:09
  Bobbie Laur: walks through our doors is going to have, you know, an experience of civic engaged
• 26:13
  Bobbie Laur: and community-based teaching and learning.
• 26:14
  Bobbie Laur: That this is something we are whole, we are embedding in the curriculum.
• 26:17
  Bobbie Laur: It looks like promotion and tenure guidelines being rewritten to really value
• 26:21
  Bobbie Laur: community-based research and scholarship. It looks like having a chief community
• 26:27
  Bobbie Laur: engagement officer at the cabinet level.
• 26:29
  Bobbie Laur: You know, it looks like saying when critical decisions are being made about
• 26:32
  Bobbie Laur: the institution, we are considering community and civic engagement in that room.
• 26:37
  Bobbie Laur: You know, and you know, those are the things that I think are going to make the difference.
• 26:41
  Bobbie Laur: And I think, you know, at Compact, that's what we're focused on helping institutions
• 26:44
  Bobbie Laur: think about in this moment is how do we address, you know, how we're going to
• 26:49
  Bobbie Laur: move forward and how do we rebuild that trust and confidence with putting civic
• 26:53
  Bobbie Laur: and community engagement at the center.
• 27:07
  Paul Kuttner: So I want to pause, actually, on the sort of big picture and talk about you for a minute.
• 27:11
  Paul Kuttner: What were the early experiences that convinced you that community engagement,
• 27:16
  Paul Kuttner: civic engagement, higher ed was something powerful, something important?
• 27:22
  Bobbie Laur: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, if I really go back, and it's interesting,
• 27:27
  Bobbie Laur: Paul, and I'd be curious about your story.
• 27:29
  Bobbie Laur: For many of the people that I work with at Campus Compact, a good example is
• 27:33
  Bobbie Laur: I am one of the few Campus Compact employees that did not have AmeriCorps service.
• 27:38
  Bobbie Laur: So the vast majority of our team at Campus Compact served, whether they were
• 27:44
  Bobbie Laur: a VISTA, they had some sort of AmeriCorps experience.
• 27:47
  Bobbie Laur: That wasn't a part of kind of my experience. I was a finance major.
• 27:51
  Bobbie Laur: I did not come up through my, whether it was high school or collegiate experience,
• 27:56
  Bobbie Laur: kind of grounded in community service. I think, you know, to be honest,
• 28:00
  Bobbie Laur: I, you know, I, I love my upbringing.
• 28:01
  Bobbie Laur: I have no, I'm from the rural Eastern shore.
• 28:04
  Bobbie Laur: It just wasn't a part of kind of what was in the water for me.
• 28:08
  Bobbie Laur: And so I think where I initially found such passion in higher ed,
• 28:13
  Bobbie Laur: not necessarily civic and community engagement, but definitely civic engagement
• 28:16
  Bobbie Laur: was here was I was just really involved in student leadership as an undergrad.
• 28:21
  Bobbie Laur: And I ended up being the student government president my senior year of college.
• 28:25
  Bobbie Laur: And I was on a campus, Towson University, and that really took serious what
• 28:31
  Bobbie Laur: student voice and shared governance look like.
• 28:33
  Bobbie Laur: And so I had experiences like serving on the university senate and advancing
• 28:38
  Bobbie Laur: things like plus or minus grading.
• 28:40
  Bobbie Laur: I built a coalition along with other student leaders to advocate for tuition
• 28:45
  Bobbie Laur: freezes at the system level.
• 28:47
  Bobbie Laur: I had a rich amount of times to realize that my voice had agency.
• 28:53
  Bobbie Laur: And that, you know, I could make an impact. And at the same time,
• 28:56
  Bobbie Laur: I learned a lot about the power of higher ed.
• 28:58
  Bobbie Laur: Like, I was, you know, a student leader who spent most of my time in the student
• 29:02
  Bobbie Laur: government office and working with the president.
• 29:04
  Bobbie Laur: And I just fell in love with higher education. Like, I just,
• 29:07
  Bobbie Laur: I was a finance major and was like, I can't go out and work for Morgan Stanley.
• 29:11
  Bobbie Laur: Like, I'm passionate about this institution of higher education.
• 29:15
  Bobbie Laur: And I didn't have any of the language around community engagement at that time.
• 29:18
  Bobbie Laur: And then my first job, I found myself at San Diego State University,
• 29:23
  Bobbie Laur: working in the president's office at 22.
• 29:26
  Bobbie Laur: And I had a chief of staff who I was working with.
• 29:30
  Bobbie Laur: And she was beginning to get to know, what does this community engagement work
• 29:34
  Bobbie Laur: look like? This is 20 plus years ago.
• 29:36
  Bobbie Laur: And she asked if I wanted to help build a community partners database for the university.
• 29:41
  Bobbie Laur: And so that was really it. Like, it was a trial by fire.
• 29:44
  Bobbie Laur: You know, I learned right there and I got to be a part of a team that was trying
• 29:49
  Bobbie Laur: to understand, like, what are all the relationships that exist across San Diego
• 29:53
  Bobbie Laur: State and which of these are working with K-12 and are we tripping over ourselves?
• 29:57
  Bobbie Laur: Are we like our partners actually understanding how to navigate the front door?
• 30:01
  Bobbie Laur: Like some of the same conversations that I think are still really resonant.
• 30:05
  Bobbie Laur: Like those were the ones that I got to know.
• 30:08
  Bobbie Laur: And I just really loved it. And so I spent a couple years at San Diego State
• 30:13
  Bobbie Laur: just full-on kind of immersing myself in this whole new world that I'd never
• 30:18
  Bobbie Laur: heard of around community engagement.
• 30:21
  Bobbie Laur: And then ended up finding an opportunity to come back and work at Towson University
• 30:25
  Bobbie Laur: as they were just getting off the ground a new division of economic and community outreach.
• 30:31
  Bobbie Laur: And in that space, I was able to get involved with organizations like Kumu,
• 30:35
  Bobbie Laur: but then also to really, from the ground up, build ultimately what became kind
• 30:41
  Bobbie Laur: of the community engagement infrastructure at the university.
• 30:44
  Bobbie Laur: And so, you know, a lot's changed in the 20 years I've been doing this,
• 30:49
  Bobbie Laur: you know, I mean, back then.
• 30:51
  Bobbie Laur: There weren't that many centers or institutes, particularly like,
• 30:54
  Bobbie Laur: you know, less resourced campuses.
• 30:56
  Bobbie Laur: You know, we saw student-facing institutes and centers, you know,
• 31:00
  Bobbie Laur: that had been, I think, coming up really at the time Compact was created with
• 31:04
  Bobbie Laur: across those institutions.
• 31:05
  Bobbie Laur: But when I look now, you know, the Centers for Community Engagement and Partnerships
• 31:10
  Bobbie Laur: that exist at so many of our colleges and universities, most of those have come
• 31:13
  Bobbie Laur: about in the past couple decades.
• 31:15
  Bobbie Laur: So I think some of it's just you kind of are there at the right time, right place.
• 31:20
  Bobbie Laur: So for me, like I've had the chance to build a lot, like most of my career has
• 31:26
  Bobbie Laur: been spent building things from the ground up and, you know,
• 31:31
  Bobbie Laur: being and that required early on learning from others,
• 31:35
  Bobbie Laur: like getting to know, well, what was working at this institution?
• 31:38
  Bobbie Laur: And like, how can that impact and influence what we're doing here?
• 31:41
  Bobbie Laur: Like, we don't need to we don't need to reinvent every wheel.
• 31:44
  Bobbie Laur: And I was involved with networks from the very beginning when I went to Tassel
• 31:48
  Bobbie Laur: because of Kumu. And so I always had this blessing from at least that time,
• 31:53
  Bobbie Laur: which was 2006 when I came back to Towson. So 20 years ago, that's crazy.
• 31:57
  Bobbie Laur: So 20 years ago, when I returned to the university, I started working with Kumu in 2006.
• 32:03
  Bobbie Laur: And so from that time, I was always carrying this kind of duality of like doing
• 32:07
  Bobbie Laur: the work on campus, but then getting to be in this space of kind of national
• 32:11
  Bobbie Laur: network where it was like,
• 32:13
  Bobbie Laur: I just always felt like it was just this beautiful thing of like,
• 32:16
  Bobbie Laur: I get to see what's working other places and what's not working.
• 32:19
  Bobbie Laur: And then I also have responsibility of making this happen in all my campus and
• 32:23
  Bobbie Laur: in the community I live and love.
• 32:26
  Bobbie Laur: And so that's really and then I care and then I stayed for 15 years,
• 32:30
  Bobbie Laur: which was, I think, longer than I know. I know I expected in 2006.
• 32:33
  Bobbie Laur: But, you know, this work takes time. I think we all know that,
• 32:36
  Bobbie Laur: too. You can't do this work quick. You have to.
• 32:40
  Paul Kuttner: Share a couple of the projects that you built and just kind of the just a little
• 32:44
  Paul Kuttner: bit of the the life of them that really.
• 32:48
  Paul Kuttner: I guess like the spark of those partnerships that really drove you
• 32:52
  Bobbie Laur: You know um so a
• 32:57
  Bobbie Laur: couple some of them are structural but since some of them are just the things
• 33:01
  Bobbie Laur: that were kind of very specific partnerships like you said and honestly like
• 33:06
  Bobbie Laur: when folks ask like do you really miss being on a campus like it's definitely
• 33:10
  Bobbie Laur: what i miss like i you know this work keeps me very busy i'm,
• 33:15
  Bobbie Laur: I'm so passionate about the work we're doing at Campus Compact,
• 33:18
  Bobbie Laur: but I do miss, like, the direct work with community partners.
• 33:21
  Bobbie Laur: I still get a chance to work with faculty and staff all the time,
• 33:23
  Bobbie Laur: but I no longer work with the community partners. And, you know,
• 33:26
  Bobbie Laur: I still live here. I live in greater Baltimore.
• 33:28
  Bobbie Laur: And so that's an odd thing of, like, I felt so entrenched in the community with my work.
• 33:33
  Bobbie Laur: So that has been a definitely a, you know, it's been a pivot and,
• 33:38
  Bobbie Laur: you know, it was something I had to fall into.
• 33:39
  Bobbie Laur: So, you know, a couple of the things that I feel like I look back on and I'm
• 33:44
  Bobbie Laur: most like just proud and, um.
• 33:47
  Bobbie Laur: I feel so strong about. Some of them are the small sort of connections that
• 33:51
  Bobbie Laur: I made that ultimately led to like incredible partnerships.
• 33:55
  Bobbie Laur: Like, you know, just like when just recently I ran into at a kid birthday party,
• 34:01
  Bobbie Laur: like at some Chuck E. Cheese. Oh my God. It was Chuck E. Cheese, Paul.
• 34:04
  Bobbie Laur: It was two weeks ago. My nephew who was turning five was having his birthday party.
• 34:08
  Bobbie Laur: And there was another guy there with a five-year-old and he's a professor at Towson in biology.
• 34:14
  Bobbie Laur: And I didn't know him. And I said, you know, oh, what kind of work do you do?
• 34:17
  Bobbie Laur: And he goes, I said, he said, where did you used to work? And I said,
• 34:20
  Bobbie Laur: oh, I used to work in the community engagement space.
• 34:22
  Bobbie Laur: And he goes, oh, I work with them because I am the research director for this
• 34:28
  Bobbie Laur: project up in Port Deposit that you probably haven't heard of.
• 34:31
  Bobbie Laur: And I go, oh my God, you're doing the work with the turtles?
• 34:34
  Bobbie Laur: And he was like, yes, you've heard of it. And I was like, yes,
• 34:37
  Bobbie Laur: I was the person who facilitated that whole early project, you know,
• 34:41
  Bobbie Laur: 10 plus years ago with a biology professor named Richard Siegel.
• 34:44
  Bobbie Laur: And this was a Project Paul where it was like we had this engaged biology faculty
• 34:48
  Bobbie Laur: member who had figured out that the northern map turtles were essential to addressing
• 34:54
  Bobbie Laur: these sediment concerns along a dam that were like really need to be treated.
• 35:00
  Bobbie Laur: But like there was this recognition that this town had become obsessed with these turtles.
• 35:06
  Bobbie Laur: And so there was this moment of like, could we do something around ecotourism.
• 35:10
  Bobbie Laur: Like, could this be a thing in this small little rural, not necessarily thriving
• 35:15
  Bobbie Laur: town called Port Deposit?
• 35:16
  Bobbie Laur: And this is about 45 minutes an hour north of Towson University.
• 35:20
  Bobbie Laur: But that was, to me, that's what it means to be a metropolitan university.
• 35:23
  Bobbie Laur: Like, you know, it's not just about right here. It's this broader regional thing.
• 35:26
  Bobbie Laur: And we built this amazing partnership with the town of Port Deposit.
• 35:29
  Bobbie Laur: We went out, there's a whole facility now, this ecotourism facility,
• 35:32
  Bobbie Laur: student schools come and do field trips.
• 35:34
  Bobbie Laur: And it's like a living, learning lab that's up there now and like that's i mean
• 35:39
  Bobbie Laur: i just like was beaming for days after that conversation at chuck e cheese because
• 35:44
  Bobbie Laur: you know richard's not leading that work anymore i'm not leading that work anymore
• 35:48
  Bobbie Laur: at the university and there's a whole new generation of people that are doing that and.
• 35:52
  Bobbie Laur: It's kind of centers the best of community engagement. So this Northern Map
• 35:55
  Bobbie Laur: Turtle project, it's like a very like, you know, I think in this work,
• 35:59
  Bobbie Laur: sometimes it's about a relationship that you start or an introduction that you can make.
• 36:05
  Bobbie Laur: But then also like I had a chance to work with one of my biggest mentors and
• 36:10
  Bobbie Laur: influences in my life ever.
• 36:11
  Bobbie Laur: Her name is Nancy Grasmick. She was the state superintendent of schools for
• 36:16
  Bobbie Laur: 30 years in the state of Maryland. When I was a kid, she was the superintendent.
• 36:20
  Bobbie Laur: And Nancy was a presidential scholar at Towson, and I had built a program around
• 36:26
  Bobbie Laur: women's leadership, and she loved that program.
• 36:28
  Bobbie Laur: And we ended up having conversations of, like, the deficit of leadership in
• 36:32
  Bobbie Laur: our communities and just in our business community and our public communities
• 36:35
  Bobbie Laur: and what would it look like for the university to do something really bold.
• 36:39
  Bobbie Laur: And we ended up, I ended up getting kind of tasked with building what is now the Dr.
• 36:44
  Bobbie Laur: Nancy Grasmick Leadership Institute. and this institute
• 36:48
  Bobbie Laur: I mean you know it has a staff of its own it's doing
• 36:51
  Bobbie Laur: the most incredible work to like prepare and
• 36:54
  Bobbie Laur: cultivate and support leaders across the region um in
• 36:57
  Bobbie Laur: all kinds of industries and like so I look at that and I like again like just
• 37:01
  Bobbie Laur: being with pride that that came from like just early conversations and so many
• 37:05
  Bobbie Laur: people I'm by far no means deserve the credit for that like there's so many
• 37:09
  Bobbie Laur: people that involved that made that happen but that feels like so um just so
• 37:14
  Bobbie Laur: important and relevant and just I feel.
• 37:17
  Bobbie Laur: I have, when I do get asked of like staying in this work or,
• 37:21
  Bobbie Laur: you know, what drives you, I've always like, I think it may,
• 37:25
  Bobbie Laur: and Towson's a big part of the story, but I've had a chance to like make things happen.
• 37:30
  Bobbie Laur: And I think that's a lot of what community engagement is. like when
• 37:32
  Bobbie Laur: i talk about like big bureaucracies exist in
• 37:35
  Bobbie Laur: higher ed but community engagement i think generally is
• 37:38
  Bobbie Laur: this special little area where you can because you're working with community
• 37:42
  Bobbie Laur: partners who are so resource savvy and like you know and a different set of
• 37:47
  Bobbie Laur: players and i definitely have had a chance to do things like we're dream up
• 37:53
  Bobbie Laur: an idea get the right people around on the table and make it happen.
• 37:57
  Bobbie Laur: And today I can see a bunch of that work that has happened and that doesn't exist everywhere.
• 38:04
  Bobbie Laur: And I think community engagement provides people, and I talk about that with
• 38:08
  Bobbie Laur: our young kind of, we're trying to support people coming up through the field
• 38:11
  Bobbie Laur: now, a lot of compact, and how do we build a pipeline into it?
• 38:14
  Bobbie Laur: I say like, man, this work is really rewarding because you're gonna get to try
• 38:17
  Bobbie Laur: things. Like you're gonna get to be a part of building stuff.
• 38:20
  Paul Kuttner: I love that. My cat is trying to climb up onto my computer from behind.
• 38:24
  Paul Kuttner: Get out of here. Get out of here.
• 38:28
  Paul Kuttner: No, that's beautiful. That resonates with me too.
• 38:31
  Paul Kuttner: I want to follow up on what you said about the future needing to be a different
• 38:36
  Paul Kuttner: approach to community engagement that's really about a core commitment of the entire institution.
• 38:43
  Paul Kuttner: Can you give me one or two examples of who's really doing that well?
• 38:48
  Bobbie Laur: Yeah. So compact, I want to say, I already mentioned this, but this is going
• 38:55
  Bobbie Laur: to be a heavy amount of our work going forward. I think,
• 38:57
  Bobbie Laur: The kind of core commitments, the institutional-wide commitments look different in different places.
• 39:01
  Bobbie Laur: So context does really matter here. And I think we have a new grant from the
• 39:06
  Bobbie Laur: Luce Foundation around campus action planning.
• 39:09
  Bobbie Laur: And that's exactly like what this is going to be about. About how do we help
• 39:11
  Bobbie Laur: campuses meet this moment?
• 39:13
  Bobbie Laur: But understanding this is not like a silver bullet. There's not like this one, this structure.
• 39:17
  Bobbie Laur: Like this is what you just implemented and check these boxes.
• 39:20
  Bobbie Laur: I think there's essential pieces like I talked about. There's leadership,
• 39:23
  Bobbie Laur: there's resources, there's process that matter.
• 39:26
  Bobbie Laur: A couple of places that come to mind for me, Paul, that I think are kind of
• 39:30
  Bobbie Laur: showing the diversity of what this can look like, you know, there's places like
• 39:33
  Bobbie Laur: Weber State University. I don't know if you know Weber State. What do you do?
• 39:37
  Paul Kuttner: Yeah, it's been a decade out of Utah. I know them.
• 39:40
  Bobbie Laur: So, and the reason I say Weber State is, you know, they just have all the pieces there.
• 39:45
  Bobbie Laur: You know, they're doing the work that they've been doing for a couple decades with Ogden.
• 39:49
  Bobbie Laur: You know, they have this Ogden Action Collaborative where they're looking at
• 39:54
  Bobbie Laur: anchor work in real lockstep with the community.
• 39:57
  Bobbie Laur: And it's more like Weber State is the facilitator and convener of this community-led
• 40:01
  Bobbie Laur: effort that is about economic development and workforce development and housing
• 40:05
  Bobbie Laur: and just really thinking about how they can create a thriving Ogden,
• 40:09
  Bobbie Laur: which is the city where Weber State is located.
• 40:11
  Bobbie Laur: But they also have deep commitments to what this looks like in the curriculum.
• 40:15
  Bobbie Laur: They have a long time been leaders with the American Democracy Project at ASCU
• 40:19
  Bobbie Laur: and really thinking about what civic and political engagement looks like across
• 40:23
  Bobbie Laur: the curriculum and across teaching and learning.
• 40:26
  Bobbie Laur: And then they have such a rich office of community partnerships that is doing
• 40:29
  Bobbie Laur: work around community engaged scholarship and understanding what it takes to
• 40:33
  Bobbie Laur: do faculty development, but then also to validate and be responsive to partners.
• 40:38
  Bobbie Laur: They're one of those campuses that for Campus Compact, for example,
• 40:42
  Bobbie Laur: they always have their hand up. Like when we're like, hey, who wants to think
• 40:46
  Bobbie Laur: about this new project we have that we're doing right now around environmental
• 40:49
  Bobbie Laur: stewardship and justice?
• 40:50
  Bobbie Laur: And they're like, we'll try it. You know, so they're also a campus that I think.
• 40:54
  Bobbie Laur: Recognizes that this work has to constantly be supported with innovation and like pushing yourself.
• 40:59
  Bobbie Laur: So like Weber State for sure comes to mind and it's not about a single person.
• 41:03
  Bobbie Laur: And I think that's important. There's not one leader at Weber State that I'm
• 41:06
  Bobbie Laur: like, that's why it's so important. They've had a presidential transition recently.
• 41:10
  Bobbie Laur: That's a place where there's not a part of me that thinks they're going to lose
• 41:12
  Bobbie Laur: this in their DNA. And that's the real test.
• 41:15
  Bobbie Laur: The real test is like, does this survive dynamic, sustained,
• 41:19
  Bobbie Laur: you know, really like transformational leaders? because we have seen other situations
• 41:25
  Bobbie Laur: where you've got a transformational leader who's out there headlining every major association.
• 41:28
  Bobbie Laur: They really believe in this work. And when they leave, so do the commitments.
• 41:33
  Bobbie Laur: And that's what we need to protect ourselves against in many ways.
• 41:38
  Bobbie Laur: You know, another one that's a private institution that I would call out is Colby College in Maine.
• 41:47
  Bobbie Laur: And that's an institution, again, that I think, you know, this is a,
• 41:50
  Bobbie Laur: you know, a more expensive a private institution, but is really focused on what
• 41:54
  Bobbie Laur: it means to be there for the public good.
• 41:56
  Bobbie Laur: They have an incredible amount of partnerships with the city of Waterville,
• 41:59
  Bobbie Laur: which is a little bit farther away, but not far from them, but down the road.
• 42:05
  Bobbie Laur: And they're looking at big-time economic development issues in Waterville.
• 42:08
  Bobbie Laur: And I must say, I think we often face this question of do private institutions
• 42:12
  Bobbie Laur: have the same public responsibility? And I think Colby is a great emblematic
• 42:15
  Bobbie Laur: example of yes, and here's how that can look and what it can look like.
• 42:20
  Bobbie Laur: And they have it there, but they're also doing incredible work,
• 42:22
  Bobbie Laur: again, across the student learning of looking at how community-based teaching
• 42:26
  Bobbie Laur: and learning and civic engagement is not a nice-to-have, it's not something
• 42:30
  Bobbie Laur: only accessible to this small group of students who can,
• 42:33
  Bobbie Laur: but really what does it look like to put it across for every student, every degree.
• 42:38
  Bobbie Laur: And those two things really make sense to me. They also have really strong leadership
• 42:41
  Bobbie Laur: at the top, who's definitely helping to drive this and I think institutionalize it in the culture.
• 42:46
  Bobbie Laur: Those are two, but I could name community colleges. You know,
• 42:50
  Bobbie Laur: it's tougher to do at R1s.
• 42:53
  Bobbie Laur: I think there's some examples, but, you know, I mean, I would say Penn has been
• 42:57
  Bobbie Laur: an example that has really, you know, been able to show that.
• 43:00
  Bobbie Laur: But this is a, you know, Penn is working through its own challenges right now.
• 43:03
  Bobbie Laur: I mean, it's been a tough couple years, and I think we'll have to see,
• 43:08
  Bobbie Laur: right, are they able to sustain those commitments that they've had?
• 43:11
  Bobbie Laur: But Penn is, you know, Penn is definitely an institution that has shown what
• 43:14
  Bobbie Laur: does it look like to do this. That's an institution wide level.
• 43:17
  Bobbie Laur: In some ways, it gets harder. The larger the institution, the more complex the
• 43:21
  Bobbie Laur: bureaucracy, the harder it is to move it forward.
• 43:23
  Bobbie Laur: Brown is one that I would say in the more elite institution,
• 43:27
  Bobbie Laur: our one category, I think is getting a lot of things right.
• 43:30
  Bobbie Laur: You know, they have a vice president for community engagement.
• 43:32
  Bobbie Laur: They have deep work around community scholarship with the Swearer Center.
• 43:35
  Bobbie Laur: But they're doing a lot on workforce development these days.
• 43:38
  Bobbie Laur: And they were already doing it. And now, even with their deal and agreement
• 43:42
  Bobbie Laur: with the administration, they're doing more of it.
• 43:44
  Bobbie Laur: So I think Brown's another one that really has the right structures in place
• 43:49
  Bobbie Laur: to make sure that this isn't just siloed in one area, but is really prolific across the campus.
• 43:55
  Paul Kuttner: Yeah, those are great. I appreciate that. I know there's others you could name,
• 43:59
  Paul Kuttner: and I'm holding you to just a few, which is probably hard for a national organization.
• 44:03
  Bobbie Laur: But well, and I will say, too, because I want to be clear that I didn't name
• 44:06
  Bobbie Laur: Towson or some of my other longtime favorite partners.
• 44:10
  Bobbie Laur: But it's because I am with with that question. I was trying to name a couple
• 44:13
  Bobbie Laur: that might not be the ones that jump to everybody's kind of mind.
• 44:16
  Bobbie Laur: But we all know these these couple are the same ones we lift up every time.
• 44:20
  Paul Kuttner: No, I appreciate that, too.
• 44:35
  Paul Kuttner: So I'm intrigued by the language that you used in the article you wrote back
• 44:39
  Paul Kuttner: in October about a new compact, a different kind of compact with the country.
• 44:44
  Paul Kuttner: And I think recently you said a new social contract.
• 44:49
  Paul Kuttner: What does that mean? What might it look like for higher ed through community
• 44:55
  Paul Kuttner: engagement work to have a different kind of compact with America?
• 45:01
  Bobbie Laur: Man i wish i had like the like answer on
• 45:04
  Bobbie Laur: the tip of my tongue for that paul um i do
• 45:07
  Bobbie Laur: think that there are interesting conversations taking place around what that
• 45:11
  Bobbie Laur: could look like and i i don't think i you know would do anybody justice to say
• 45:14
  Bobbie Laur: like i have the draft sitting like let me just send it over to you i and i i
• 45:18
  Bobbie Laur: also want to say i think it would be almost easier to put really good words
• 45:24
  Bobbie Laur: to paper and try to circulate, for example,
• 45:27
  Bobbie Laur: like a sign-on that's like, everybody sign on to these commitments.
• 45:30
  Bobbie Laur: I don't think that's what this actually looks like.
• 45:32
  Bobbie Laur: And that's how we've operated as a field for a long time of like,
• 45:36
  Bobbie Laur: look, hey, there's three things that you can say you're going to do.
• 45:39
  Bobbie Laur: And if you sign it, then great, we can talk about a thousand institutions that sign this thing.
• 45:43
  Bobbie Laur: I think it is about kind of making deep commitments to sustained, holistic, all-in work.
• 45:53
  Bobbie Laur: And so I think the practice matters more than like the presence in this situation. Um.
• 46:01
  Bobbie Laur: But that doesn't necessarily get the headlines, right?
• 46:04
  Bobbie Laur: Like the headlines that we see in kind of higher ed are driven by these kind
• 46:07
  Bobbie Laur: of broader scale initiatives often that are like, can we get a thousand campuses to sign on to XYZ?
• 46:12
  Bobbie Laur: You know, and those things can carry weight. They can be galvanizers, right?
• 46:15
  Bobbie Laur: But like, I think when I use a frame, like we need a social contract,
• 46:19
  Bobbie Laur: in many ways, this work is so local that like, that's the tension point.
• 46:23
  Bobbie Laur: Like to do this well, like it's always been hard to talk about it nationally
• 46:26
  Bobbie Laur: because it really requires like such a heavy focus on context.
• 46:32
  Bobbie Laur: But I think we do have to solve for it. So I do think that this moment has opened
• 46:36
  Bobbie Laur: up all kinds of questions and real challenges of recognition that even at an association level,
• 46:43
  Bobbie Laur: as in a sector level, like, are we really working as well together as we should be?
• 46:48
  Bobbie Laur: So next week, I'm really excited.
• 46:51
  Bobbie Laur: I almost, it'd be interesting to come back and talk to you after we get through next week.
• 46:55
  Bobbie Laur: So next week, we're going to be in D.C. We're hosting a policy and impact summit
• 47:00
  Bobbie Laur: on Wednesday night and Thursday with about 30 campus teams.
• 47:05
  Bobbie Laur: And so the teams are made up of the president, the senior government relations
• 47:10
  Bobbie Laur: official, and then the chief civic or community engagement leader on the campus.
• 47:15
  Bobbie Laur: And this is focused on, we're hosting it in partnership with George Washington University,
• 47:19
  Bobbie Laur: and we're looking at using it as a kind of jumping off space for a new approach
• 47:26
  Bobbie Laur: of how Campus Compact is going to think about federal advocacy and strategy going forward.
• 47:31
  Bobbie Laur: And so we're really centering a series of conversations around the role of higher
• 47:36
  Bobbie Laur: education, both in community-based problem solving and, you know,
• 47:39
  Bobbie Laur: addressing the most wicked issues, but also like really critically in this moment,
• 47:43
  Bobbie Laur: the preparation of students for their lives.
• 47:46
  Bobbie Laur: And what does it mean to really ensure that our students are getting through
• 47:51
  Bobbie Laur: their experience, not just with skills that they need for their for job and career,
• 47:55
  Bobbie Laur: but also making sure that we're talking actively about the critical role of
• 47:59
  Bobbie Laur: civic engagement and supporting pathways into public service.
• 48:02
  Bobbie Laur: To do that we're actually going to bring in a couple congressional leaders
• 48:05
  Bobbie Laur: who are going to be talking about their personal story to start that's how
• 48:08
  Bobbie Laur: we're kicking it off um from across both
• 48:11
  Bobbie Laur: sides of the aisle to talk about the role of civic engagement and how that played
• 48:15
  Bobbie Laur: and kind of getting them to where they are and the importance of that work and
• 48:18
  Bobbie Laur: creating opportunities and access and you know opening people's eyes to like
• 48:23
  Bobbie Laur: the opportunities to make a difference and then we have a series of really exciting
• 48:28
  Bobbie Laur: conversations on Thursday.
• 48:30
  Bobbie Laur: So I very much have that on my mind. That's a big deal for us next week and
• 48:34
  Bobbie Laur: is really going to set a stage for where we're going to go.
• 48:38
  Bobbie Laur: So we're planning to come out of that with a roadmap that we'll be able to share with the fields.
• 48:43
  Bobbie Laur: So kind of check back in, I would say, like, I think we'll probably go public
• 48:46
  Bobbie Laur: with it more like late April, early May, but it's going to hopefully have a
• 48:50
  Bobbie Laur: variety of opportunities for campuses and individuals to get involved.
• 48:53
  Bobbie Laur: Particularly in this moment where things feel like they're not moving.
• 48:57
  Bobbie Laur: And I think we're all frustrated with the lack of response from our leaders,
• 49:02
  Bobbie Laur: you know, both locally and nationally.
• 49:04
  Bobbie Laur: So we're going to try to cut through some of that next week.
• 49:08
  Paul Kuttner: Could you give us at all a preview about how you're hoping that goes or what
• 49:12
  Paul Kuttner: kind of ideas are floating around in that conversation?
• 49:16
  Bobbie Laur: Yeah, I mean, so it is. This is going to take being together.
• 49:19
  Bobbie Laur: And I will say, like, it's also going to talk about how do we build different
• 49:22
  Bobbie Laur: kinds of coalitions, you know?
• 49:25
  Bobbie Laur: I at Compact, and I think like most of I read, I am really taking stock in the
• 49:30
  Bobbie Laur: real criticisms around...
• 49:32
  Bobbie Laur: You know, even around political diversity and ideology in our conversations
• 49:36
  Bobbie Laur: and really ensuring that we are figuring out how to create bigger tents.
• 49:40
  Bobbie Laur: And anybody who, you know, is in this work knows that this has not been historically
• 49:44
  Bobbie Laur: necessarily at a higher ed level,
• 49:47
  Bobbie Laur: the intentionality behind saying like, we need more diverse viewpoints at the
• 49:52
  Bobbie Laur: table to talk about how we build this going forward. So I think that is important.
• 49:56
  Bobbie Laur: So into that light, like for example, one of the conversations we're slated
• 49:59
  Bobbie Laur: to have next week is with a first-term Republican congressman and a first-term
• 50:04
  Bobbie Laur: Democratic congresswoman.
• 50:07
  Bobbie Laur: And I think those conversations are attracted to people, right?
• 50:10
  Bobbie Laur: Because it begins also, not we all, but there's a lot of common ground around
• 50:15
  Bobbie Laur: democracy and commitment to civic values and commitment to thinking about how
• 50:19
  Bobbie Laur: we create opportunity and access for all.
• 50:21
  Bobbie Laur: And so I think that's one of the things that we're prioritizing for next week,
• 50:25
  Bobbie Laur: particularly as we think about Congress as an institution, is how do we help
• 50:30
  Bobbie Laur: bring about conversations across both sides of the aisle around some of these issues?
• 50:36
  Bobbie Laur: We're hoping, and we've been having early conversations, but I think there's
• 50:39
  Bobbie Laur: real promise to engage with a group called the Problem Solvers Caucus that's
• 50:43
  Bobbie Laur: in Congress that is co-chaired by a Republican and a Democrat, and to me, like,
• 50:49
  Bobbie Laur: represents exactly the kind of match made in heaven around community engagement.
• 50:52
  Bobbie Laur: These are the people in Congress who are like, look, problems exist,
• 50:57
  Bobbie Laur: and they don't have political identities.
• 51:00
  Bobbie Laur: Access to food and affordable housing is not a political problem.
• 51:06
  Bobbie Laur: The people who are dealing with these issues are not there wearing the I'm a
• 51:10
  Bobbie Laur: Republican or Democrat on their sleeve.
• 51:12
  Bobbie Laur: They just want the problem solved, and they want better solutions for their
• 51:15
  Bobbie Laur: communities. And I think that's what community engagement is too.
• 51:18
  Bobbie Laur: So I think that's, that's kind of there of like, what does it look like,
• 51:22
  Bobbie Laur: If higher education begins to work more effectively with groups like the Problem
• 51:25
  Bobbie Laur: Solvers Caucus, I mean, that's something we're trying to bring that I think is different.
• 51:30
  Bobbie Laur: I also see, you know, so much of our work in higher education when it comes
• 51:33
  Bobbie Laur: to advocacy, you know, it's about federal financial aid. It's about,
• 51:37
  Bobbie Laur: you know, federal research dollars.
• 51:38
  Bobbie Laur: There are such good people fighting those fights and focusing on those agendas.
• 51:43
  Bobbie Laur: I think we're really trying to be clear at Compact.
• 51:46
  Bobbie Laur: We're trying to talk about an agenda that is about how do we advance higher
• 51:49
  Bobbie Laur: education's capacity to solve problems in our communities?
• 51:52
  Bobbie Laur: How do we address, how do we prioritize higher education's responsibility around
• 51:56
  Bobbie Laur: civic engagement and preparing the next generation of leaders?
• 52:00
  Bobbie Laur: And I think there's a lot of common ground on that. And I think that's,
• 52:04
  Bobbie Laur: again, why community and civic engagement is a path forward,
• 52:07
  Bobbie Laur: because that actually, we know that there is shared interest among both political
• 52:13
  Bobbie Laur: parties to think about those things.
• 52:15
  Bobbie Laur: And, you know, there's a lot of places to start from of people understanding,
• 52:19
  Bobbie Laur: like, we want people in our communities to have access to good jobs.
• 52:24
  Bobbie Laur: And we want hospitals that are being able to serve in rural areas.
• 52:28
  Bobbie Laur: And being able to have conversations around what is the role of higher ed in
• 52:31
  Bobbie Laur: that, like, can I think open up what right now feels like a really polarized,
• 52:36
  Bobbie Laur: tough environment to function in.
• 52:38
  Bobbie Laur: So that's part of what we're going to start a conversation about next week.
• 52:42
  Bobbie Laur: By no means hold me to like us solving the problems.
• 52:44
  Bobbie Laur: But there's also, you know, some big votes on immigration next week.
• 52:48
  Bobbie Laur: So we'll see who actually we're able to get come, right? Because,
• 52:52
  Bobbie Laur: you know, there's a lot of stuff that's on the plates for everybody.
• 52:55
  Paul Kuttner: Yeah, I know we could talk about these things for a lot longer,
• 52:57
  Paul Kuttner: but I want to keep to our time here.
• 52:59
  Paul Kuttner: So I just want to say thank you for joining me on the podcast.
• 53:02
  Paul Kuttner: It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
• 53:05
  Bobbie Laur: Paul, I really loved the conversation. I feel like we had like a couple nuggets
• 53:08
  Bobbie Laur: where we could have like conversations, B, C, D, E, F. So I'm here for them if you want them.
• 53:13
  Paul Kuttner: All right. Sounds good.
• 53:20
  Paul Kuttner: Thank you all for listening. For transcripts, show notes, and links to subscribe
• 53:24
  Paul Kuttner: to the podcast and our Substack newsletter, go to partnershipwork.org.
• 53:29
  Paul Kuttner: Partnership Work is an independent podcast produced with the support of Urban
• 53:33
  Paul Kuttner: Media Arts here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts.
• 53:36
  Paul Kuttner: Visit them at urbanmediaarts.org. Until next time, take care.