Abstract

Higher education takes on many different agendas when setting goals of graduating “educated” students. Not only would they like to graduate students that have been well versed in their area of focus, they would also like to graduate students into the area of civic engagement, to create engaged citizens. There has been much discussion in the world of academia in recent years in the different approaches used to achieve this goal of the active or engaged citizen. This paper will discuss the concept of civic engagement in higher education, as well as the use of service-learning classrooms. A survey that measures the level of civic engagement was given to two sets of students: 1) Students enrolled in a service-learning course 2) Students in a traditional course. The survey was given in hopes of gaining speculation into whether service-learning courses have any affect on student’s commitment to the concept of civic engagement. Discussion of service-learning’s effectiveness and the role of higher education in creating engaged citizens will follow.