A Town Hall Forum: Rhetorical Theories in Action

Many faculty members have attempted to forge communities of knowledge and organizational practice in their classrooms that enable students to develop habits of thinking critically and acting like citizens in the wider community and workplace (Guarasci & Cornwell, 1997). Likewise, administrators are more frequently being asked to enhance students’ experience of the university as “a community of learners” (Boyer Commission, 1998, p. 33) and to foster “student engagement” not only within classrooms, but also within the academic environment in general (Belcheir, 2003). Students also often wish to engage in experiential learning that integrates their academic knowledge and learning processes with social and organizational learning “both on and off campus,” and “students want to be in conversation with college presidents and other administrators” (Long, 2002, pp. 9, 11). These three constituencies have something in common: they can all benefit from the development of an overarching academic community that models in its organizational practices—and therefore most powerfully teaches and influences—civic engagement and responsibility. Indeed, in the vision of the undergraduate student participants of the Wingspread Summit on Student Civic Engagement in 2001, “students should also be viewed as producers of knowledge, not consumers” (Long, 2002, p. 13), and therefore, in order to model community problem-solving methods,