Extension and Engagement: When do the Twain Meet

What’s the Difference Between Extension and Engagement?

George McDowell[1]

Abstract:

“Engagement” is the newest vogue in the language of extension and outreach at many of our Land-Grant universities. The discussion of this paper attempts to explain the differences between extension, Cooperative Extension, the Land-Grant principle, scholarship and engagement. The paper concludes that in is not necessarily desirable for all extension educators to always be involved in engagement of the university. Sometimes it is simply necessary to carry out good functional education. However, in the long-run, most extension educators should participate in the engagement of those of the university who produce new knowledge so that the knowledge produced will in turn be usable, workable, and will generate a positive response from those to whom the knowledge is made accessible.

I. Introduction

There is a lot of palaver out there about extension and engagement. The words are confusing and the meanings are even more confusing. “Extension,” “engagement,” “scholarship,” “engaged scholarship,” “the scholarship of engagement” among others. It really all started with the 1999 Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution report of the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities. Both Dr. John Byrne, Executive Director of the commission, and Dr. Graham Spanier, Chair of the commission, confirmed that “engagement” used in the context of how universities conduct themselves was original in that report of the commission. In that report “engagement” always referred the university in its totality in its relationships with the society around it.

Now it seems every other person in extension wants to be engaged and/or views engagement as the ultimate goal of extension. The ECOP subcommittee on implementing the 21^st Century Vision for Extension has as a major part of its agenda the development of an Academy of Engagement, one of the recommendations of the Vision report. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the ideas about extension and engagement and how they may or may not fit together. Personal intuition tells me that with respect to the desirability of extension being “engaged,” a party to the university’s engagement, or practicing either “engaged scholarship” or the “scholarship of engagement,” it ain’t necessarily so.

“It ain’t necessarily so!

De t’ings dat yo li’ble

To read in de Bible

It ain’t necessarily so!” George Gershwin, Porgy and Bess

It ain’t necessarily desirable for extension educators to always be scholars. It ain’t necessarily desirable for extension educators to always be engaged. And it ain’t necessarily desirable for extension educators to practice engaged scholarship or the scholarship of engagement. These propositions will be supported in this paper.

At the outset, to further confuse this discussion, there is yet another flag that many of us have flown and worked under for a long time that deserves to be included. It is the flag of the “Land-Grant principle,” which has much to say about the practice of scholarship and engagement. The discussion will begin with the Land-Grant principle.

II. The Land-Grant Principle

Many in the Land-Grant system speak of the Land-Grant mission – of teaching, research and extension – and allude to it as having grown into something larger – a “Land-Grant principle.” When the principle is spoken of it is usually in terms of the university doing something to help the society or community that supports it. But, as far as this writer can tell, there is no precise statement of what the principle actually is. The current language of “engagement” from the Kellogg Commission report, The Engaged Institution (1999), further confuses the discussion about the Land-Grant principle because the Kellogg document asserts that engagement goes beyond extension and outreach. Because the Land-Grant principle has to do intimately with scholarly practice, it will first be necessary to discuss briefly how science is advanced and how that applies to the Land-Grant experience and to engagement.

What is Good Science?

There was a long debate during the later half of the 20^th century between philosophers of science about how science is advanced. Two more notable antagonists in the debate were Sir Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn (Blaug 1980). Both agreed that science does not advance primarily by adding bits of insight to established theory, but rather by direct challenges to accepted theory (falsification). They disagreed however, about whether any particular experiment might be a true test of a theory or when it is a test of the skill of the scientist to create an experiment that would indeed be an appropriate test. Popper argued that scientific practice that is anything less than falsification is “hack science.” Kuhn argued that there is much to be learned and many “puzzles” to be solved before one can put together a test of a theory. This solving of puzzles – puzzles of measurement, instrumentation, and many others – is the day-to-day stuff of scientific practice and is not “hack science” according to Kuhn. The solving of these puzzles is a necessary preparation to the direct challenges to accepted theories.

Johnson and Zerby (1973) examined the issues of scholars being involved in solving real life problems – not unlike Kuhn’s puzzles – and how they deal with their own values in that process. Johnson and Zerby’s thinking is important because of the strong commitment of Land-Grant universities to solving practical problems. They argue it is impossible to solve practical problems without use of theories. Because many practical problems are unique, there are often no hypotheses to test – only a problem to solve. To keep values from getting in the way in the use of a theory they proposed adhering to rules of objectivity. A concept is objective, they argue, if it passes each of the following three tests:

it is consistent with previously accepted concepts and with new concepts based on current experience;
it has a clear and specifiable meaning; and
it is useful in solving the problems with which one is confronted (Johnson and Zerby 1973, 224).

Each of the three tests – consistency, clarity, and workability – has further dimensions. There are issues of both internal and external consistency. The appeal of mathematical modeling in many subjects is because it assures that there is internal consistency. However, mathematical models may fail the test of external consistency. The test of clarity demands that the concept be clearly comprehendible and communicable. The test of workability comes from pragmatism and is primarily interested in the usefulness of the theoretical insight to solving the particular problem.

The workability test is illustrated when a particular theory or set of theories are employed in solving a real problem. For example, if one is building a house either the flat earth or round earth theory will suffice. Pure empirical observation can lead one to choose a southern exposure in siting the house for the best passive solar heating in the northern hemisphere. However, to explain those empirical results you will likely have to abandon the flat earth assumptions.

By engaging in such problem solving activity, the skill of the scientist is increased and may, in Kuhn’s terms, be more likely to be able to set up the experiment that actually tests the theoretical hypothesis. The test of objectivity that permits the scientist to work from her discipline on the practical problem is the test of consistency. The test that permits an actual solution to be found to the practical problem at hand is the pragmatic test of workability – light moves in a straight line or is influenced by gravity depending on the application. This involvement in solving real problems and the discipline it imposes on the scientist would certainly be consistent with Kuhn’s notion of what is involved in making science better.

Research and extension scholars within the Land-Grant-based science establishment were compelled by the extension obligation to provide workable answers to practical problems. This process served to force the workability test of scientific objectivity on the whole enterprise. Part of the way the test of workability was imposed was through the debates and tension between scholars with research appointments and those with extension responsibilities. The institutionalized and funded engagement via the extension function assured the continuing exposure of the science to the rigors of that test of workability.

Is the Science Relevant?

Relevance to the society of the science practiced is different from the quality of scientific practice. Relevance has more to do with the scientific agenda and the usefulness of the science in dealing with a societal problem. In general within contemporary universities the professors themselves establish the agenda of science. They do that on the basis of where they can find funding, where they can get the work published, and whether they are interested in the problem. Some argue that peer review is a significant part of setting the scientific agenda – peers review both the proposals for funding and the journal publications from the research that was funded. Others like Chubin and Hackett in their Peerless Science (1990) argue that peer review involves neither peers nor review. Particularly in the funding process, it is in many ways the old-boys network formalized.

A relationship between scholars and users of the knowledge produced helps to assure that the scholarly agenda is relevant to at least those users. The relationship imposes on the scientist and science the test of workability, which may also make the science better.

The principle of scholarly behavior that evolved along with the growth and development of the Land-Grant institutions as they struggled to address the problems of American society at the later part of the 19^th century and throughout the 20^th century can now be discerned. Partly because of the character of the society and partly because agrarian interests acted politically to establish the Land-Grant colleges, the early agenda was primarily directed to agriculture. The principle that emerged is general to all scholarship. The contemporary concerns about the captured academy (or to which corporate entity the academy is to be sold) are concerns about to whom the science will be relevant.

The Land-Grant Principle – Generating Engaged Scholarship

Synergistic power derives from scholarship practiced where tests of workability and relevance are institutionalized. Further synergy is generated when access to the knowledge is assured for users who will find it useful in their lives. Some of the power from this approach to scholarship and access to the knowledge it produces is intellectual by virtue of the contribution to both the quality and relevance of the scholarship practiced. Other power is political, resulting from the engagement with users of the knowledge, the access they have to the scholarly product, and the usefulness of the new knowledge to them. This is the Land-Grant principle.

Synergism derives from scholarly practice when it is subject to the tests of relevance and workability, whether by the voluntary behavior of the scholar or by the institutionalized setting where s/he works. Scholarship practiced in that way can be described as “engaged scholarship.” Engaged scholarship is here defined as being scholarship that is practiced subject to tests of relevance and workability. The Land-Grant principle is an approach to the organization and structuring of the environment where scholarship is practiced to assure that the tests of relevance and workability are applied. The power associated with the Land-Grant principle is the power of engaged scholarship. That power from engaged scholarship is more likely to be achieved by the institutional structures implied by the Land-Grant principle. Those structures include organized and funded research and outreach with faculty members who have those responsibilities as a part of their position descriptions to which they are held accountable.

In the agricultural science experience, the power of the Land-Grant principle and the engaged scholarship it produces translated itself into high productivity of the agricultural knowledge and information system, and into substantial funding support for that system from federal, state, and local government.

The success of the Land-Grant principle as applied to the agricultural problems of the society can be used to guide the development of the larger university. The engaged scholarship that would emerge would assure that universities, particularly research universities, play a larger, more useful role in the society. Further, notwithstanding the fickleness of the political process, practice of the Land-Grant principle across the entire university should provide for greater support from the people and their representatives.

Institutionalizing Engaged Scholarship

The Land-Grant principle that organized and funded agricultural science with support from federal, state and local governments, also created great strife and debates within the university departments where scholars with different assignments (research, teaching, and extension/outreach) were obliged live and work together.

Scholarship Reconsidered – Priorities of the Professorate by Ernest L. Boyer (1990) is widely viewed as the contemporary manifesto of the dedicated and under-appreciated undergraduate instructor. Boyer’s work is heralded as a clarion cry for change in the academy on behalf of what many professors really do – teach undergraduates. While Scholarship Reconsidered nods deferentially to “researchers” and even acknowledges a preeminent role for research within the academy, Boyer argues persuasively that many in the academy are almost completely occupied by teaching. Faculty with those assignments, he asserts, should be evaluated for excellence in that function and their scholarship should reflect that assignment.

Academics and academic departments in the agricultural sciences have struggled with a different conflict than the one between teaching and research. In the agricultural sciences and in the departments and colleges that house them, the mandate to carry the results of scholarship to farms, fields, and barns and to have it work has created as great or even greater tension among academics than that addressed by Boyer. The tension comes from the obligations that go with the funding of extension/outreach imposed on those academics and departments associated with the early Land-Grant agenda and the federal advocate for that agenda – the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In some departments in colleges of agriculture, the extension obligation constitutes somewhere between a third and a half of the faculty full time equivalents (FTE), with some faculty having partial appointments in all three missions – teaching, research, and extension.

Disagreements over evaluating and accrediting activities involved in extension as legitimate scholarship is so great that scholars with predominantly extension appointments at some Land-Grant institutions are tenured under a different tenure system, and/or are housed in separate extension academic units. Both the University of Kentucky and Clemson University offer examples. The analogy within the other part of the university under the tension addressed by Boyer would be to have two chemistry departments, one for chemistry teachers and the other for chemistry researchers. Such arrangements within the agricultural academic establishment are the result of great stridency and power struggles over the definitions of “rigor,” the measurement and evaluation of scholarly output including definition of “peers”, and the nature and meaning of the Land-Grant principle and mission. Institutional responses to the stridency of the dialogue such as separate tenure arrangements or separate extension departments defeat the achievement of the “Land-Grant principle.”

So central is the ethic of carrying out extension and so great is the debate over the reward and respect for extension obligations that these issues within academic agricultural science constitute a major cultural difference between it and the rest of the university. When viewed positively, the cultural difference is described as a greater commitment to “the Land-Grant principle” and to the engagement it implies. At a large number of Land-Grant institutions, even the employment appointments for academics within colleges associated with the original Land-Grant agenda are influenced by this functional and cultural difference, regardless of the character of the individual faculty responsibility. Twelve-month appointments are the norm within colleges of agriculture even where the remainder of the campus has ten-month academic-year appointments. It is not surprising then, given the strong association of this cultural difference with the agricultural sciences, that many people associated with or viewing Land-Grant universities might misunderstand and consider the Land-Grant principle to be agricultural science specific (Graubard, 1997). Indeed, many in colleges of agriculture and Cooperative Extension Services take a similar view.

III. Extension and Engagement

Thus far, in terms of the goals of this paper, we have some insight to the Land-Grant principle and to engaged scholarship. We have alluded that institutionalized extension (extension’s budget, accountability for use of those dollars, and the political support that flows from extension) serves as a brickbat to the way science is practiced. Specifically, institutionalized extension helps to assure that science is practice subject to tests of workability and relevance producing engaged scholarship and the benefits that flow there from. What has been said about extension thus far does not describe what is meant by extension or the extension function, only the way that extension interacts institutionally in the departments and colleges where it is a formal part of the structure.

Extension

Extension as it was created by the US Congress in 1914 was “to aid in diffusing among the people of the U.S. useful and practical information in subjects related to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the same. (Rasmussen 1989, pg vii.)” As extension emerged and is practiced in the several states, it has been described as outreach from the Land-Grant universities, technology transfer, and knowledge based functional non-formal education. Indeed, it is probably all of these in some degree, but each of the descriptors, particularly the first two, seem to bespeak of a one-way conduit between the center of all knowledge, the university, and the ignorant masses of the society. Indeed, even the Smith-Lever language of “diffusing . . .” seems to imply that notion. However, few in contemporary extension or even those involved in the larger outreach efforts of universities hold the one-way conduit view. As a minimum, even for those who take the technology transfer perspective, the character of the relationship with the extension audience is a paramount concern, if only for the political support that can be generated and garnered.

In general extension educators and extension programming carry out the following four functions:

Of these four functions, extension educators work hardest on the third, providing functional education to satisfy some need of a particular audience. In many cases the situational analysis (identifying people’s and communities’ problems) that guides programming is based on long time experience with a particular audience and is accomplished almost intuitively. The situational analysis is often carried out in an informal way, notwithstanding all of the efforts by staff development professionals to provide guidance to formalize the Programming Development Process. Access to knowledge for programming is either through initiatives that come from university specialists or more often from the field educators own training and knowledge. Sometimes, acquisition of new knowledge is the result of field educators own scholarship and sometimes it is effectively conveying the results of others’ scholarship.

The part of extension work least discussed but almost always implied, and constantly in the consciousness of university and field staff, is the necessity for garnering support for the system from those who have benefited from it. Examining the role and behavior of extension staff from this perspective provides additional insights to extension’s role in the engagement process and to the needs the system has to renew its covenant with the American people.

To formalize thinking about this aspect of engagement and the Land-Grant principle the following are the necessary conditions to be able to earn and collect credit from audiences of an extension or outreach program (McDowell, 1985).

These four conditions are not all under the control of extension professionals but are considerations they must remember as they design and develop programs. The four conditions apply whether one is a state specialist or county educator. The condition that extension educators in the field have the least amount of control over is assuring there is a Positive Net Benefit. Field educators have less to do with the generation of the new knowledge than they do with the other three conditions. Rather, as discussed above, field educators sort through the available knowledge using what, in their judgment, is most useful to the situation. Within that context they then work hard to design programs that meet all the conditions set forth above. To fail to do so would be foolish.

One of the most effective ways to design programs to satisfy these conditions is to particularize information so that it is, or appears to be, absolutely specific to an individual client or group of clients. Efforts so designed have the advantage of most easily meeting the attribution and solicitation conditions. Soil tests and computer generated information programs such as FINPAC, as well as horse camps or pony clubs for 4-H members, easily meet these conditions. Small business management programs especially designed for machine shop operators, dairy farmers, operators of hair dressing salons, wheat growers or other home based businesses would also have this advantage.

Farmers meet the solicitation condition relatively easily because you always know where to find them--they have one foot tied to the ground--when you want to collect political support from them. Extension helped organize agricultural audiences into commodity or farm groups in order to more easily provide them with information, and to elicit support from them – the attribution and solicitation conditions. It is in the attribution and solicitation attributes that 4-H clubs are so valuable to us. However, 4-H in the classroom suffers by having difficulty in meeting the very same attributes. But, we need the “non-duplicative contacts” so we run those numbers up through 4-H in the classroom.

One of the most common ways of particularizing knowledge to specific members of an audience is in the one-on-one consultation – in agricultural programs it is the farm visit. This type of information delivery produces both benefits and problems. It reinforces the positive net benefit but sometimes confuses the attribution condition. When information is delivered one-on-one, the client often attributes the information to the agent/specialist – by name – and not necessarily to extension or the university as an institution. Some agents/specialists then use that personal political credit to extract support for their particular part of the program, rather than to grow the total program.

All four conditions are necessary and none is, in and of itself, sufficient. However, the first of the conditions, the positive net benefit condition, is most important because without it none of the others operate. It is the condition most closely associated with the new knowledge scholarship side of the Land-Grant principle. The message from the positive net benefit condition is that our programs really must be built on knowledge that people value. If programs are not so based, there is a limited amount of support we can expect from audiences. The positive net benefit condition makes clear that engaged scholarship is central to the survival and success of extension.

Engaged scholarship can be carried out by extension educators but for the most part it is not. Most of the engaged scholarship that is used by extension educators comes directly or indirectly from faculty in academic departments. Thus, the positive net benefit condition makes clear the importance of the relationship between people in campus academic departments and field educators.

According to the Returning to Our roots: The Engaged Institution, engagement in the context of an institution of higher education refers to “institutions that have redesigned their teaching, research, and extension and service functions to become even more sympathetically and productively involved with their communities, however community may be defined (NASULGC 1999, pg. vii).” The report then sets forth a seven-part test of characteristics that seem to define an engaged public institution of higher education:

Much of the engagement discussion of the Kellogg report on engagement of the university is in terms of the impact on undergraduate instruction and the enhancement of students learning experience. However important enhancing undergraduate education is, even greater payoff to universities comes from facilitating the conduct of, and accessibility of the public to engaged scholarship. Such mechanisms need to meet the seven part test. That is, the university mechanisms encouraging engagement in scholarship must assure the scholarship is relevant (responsiveness and respect for partners) and that partnerships that are resource sharing are easily accomplished. The mechanisms must assure that scholars maintain their academic neutrality and not become advocates for their partners. In terms of the earlier discussion of the Land-Grant principle, the scholarship must pass tests of objectivity.

The university mechanisms employed to encourage this engagement must facilitate accessibility of the public to the scholarly resources of the university and further, assure that findings of scholarship are accessible to partners and the public alike. The university needs to find ways to assure that such activities do not become silo’s of knowledge and that complementary and synergistic activities are fully exploited. Those who practice such scholarship need to be appropriately evaluated and rewarded for that work.

Thus we see that engagement, when its goals are explicitly with respect to enhancing the character of the scholarship practiced within the university, are virtually synonymous with the earlier statement of the Land-Grant principle.

There is a confusion about the meaning of the word “engaged” applying to Cooperative Extension per se, and its use in “engaged institution” and/or the role of Cooperative Extension in the engagement of its parent university. Staff of Cooperative Extension are obliged by the character of their assignment to be sensitive, responsive, accessible, maintain their objectivity as educators and meet all of the other parts of the seven part test of engagement. If they are, does that mean they are engaged? It may only mean they are good extension educators.

Even though extension educators may be engaged with their communities, as professionals they may still be not much involved in the engagement of the university (of which they are a part) with the society of the state where they serve. There was a time when people at the University of Minnesota spoke of two extension services – the one on the campus and the one in the field. The one primarily in the field was even called the Minnesota Extension Service and not the University of Minnesota Extension Service as it is today.

Cooperative Extension does not account for all of the engagement of the Land-Grant universities, just as extension, in and of itself, is not the Land-Grant principle,. Extension education and educators can be integral to the Land-Grant principle because they can help assure that the scholarship practiced meets tests of relevance and workability. When extension educators develop educational programs based on relevant, workable knowledge, they are reasonably assured the program will meet the positive net benefit condition. They must then assure that the other conditions necessary to garnering support are also met.

Similarly, extension educators can be integral to engagement directed at scholarly output. They can help assure that the scholarship practiced is relevant to collaborating partners in solving their problems. Extension educators can assist groups seeking to partner with the university to find the right campus partners, and can collaborate with non-university partners to finance and implement educational programs once the scholarship has been completed. Extension educators can also serve directly as collaborators with university scholars to develop relevant scholarship to address a problem identified by the extension educator as relevant to a significant group and potential audience.

So, the responsibility for extension educators, whether campus based or county based, is to appraise the problems of their community (however defined) and determine whether educational programming based on existing known knowledge is available to address particular problems. If there is no relevant, workable information available, the extension educator has to choose whether to work on another issue where knowledge is available, or else generate the knowledge needed by their own scholarship or by enticing an appropriate scholar to get involved. When using existing scholarship, the extension educator is not likely a party to scholarly engagement but is simply being a responsible extension educator. Where new scholarship is needed and initiated, the extension educator is very likely the key to the engagement because they are describing the problem, brokering/implementing the engaged scholarship, and assuring use of that scholarship in an educational program that further tests the workability and relevance of the knowledge. The Parents Forever program at the University of Minnesota is a clear example of an outstanding extension program resulting from engaged scholarship by field educators who subsequently involved campus faculty (McDowell, 2001).

Thus, in the context of university engagement with respect to scholarship, there are four possible roles for extension educators, as follows:

1. As “educators” they use existing validated scholarship to address a need;

2. as “problem identifiers and/or scholarship facilitators” extension educators identify the issues and bring the appropriate researchers/scholars together with the issue so that the scholarship needed to address the issue is generated;

3. as “engaged scholars” they participate in the actual conduct of the scholarship they or others have identified as important; and

4. as “educators/validaters” of the results of new engaged scholarship they help to confirm whether it meets the tests of workability and relevance.

Of the four roles set forth above, only the first has little to do with total university engagement. However, even in that role, to the extent that in the conduct of purely educational programs staff meet the four necessary conditions to garner support from the programs, they will contribute to the positive reputation of extension and the university. In each of the other three roles, extension educators are, in addition to being educators, actively involved in generating or testing the efficacy of scholarship they require and thus directly involved in engagement of the university with respect to the scholarship it houses.

It ain’t necessarily so – that all extension programs should be, need be, or will be based on engaged scholarship or that extension educators will always be “engaged” or even scholars. Extension staff must always be good educators and that comes very close to being scholars. So moving from time to time into scholarship is not impossible or unexpected. Extension educators should be evaluated on being good educators and that usually requires that they themselves be engaged with their own community. Thus, the seven part test that the universities face to determine that they are engaged may be useful to determine whether extension educators are themselves engaged with their communities.

It ain’t necessarily so – that extension educators should always function so as to assist in the engagement of their parent university. Their first obligation is to provide functional education to audiences with whom they work. However, over time, if they are good, professional educators (themselves engaged with their community, however community is defined) it is likely that they will require new knowledge to address some problem and will thus need to facilitate the engagement of the resources of the university to address that problem. One would hope that there are mechanisms in place in their university that facilitate that engagement.

There is great disparity in the capacity to facilitate engaged scholarship within Land-Grant universities. For reasons of history and failures to change, the mechanisms that facilitate engagement are most functional within the parts of the university covered by the formal agreements between the university and the United States Department of Agriculture (the Land-Grant principle). Those colleges and university units with engagement resources and mechanisms in place have entirely different cultures about engagement than do other parts of the university. That disparity leaves extension educators who are truly professional and attune to their communities with great difficulty particularly when the university resources they require is from a part of the university without either the tradition or the mechanisms for engagement in place.

Part of that disparity is a result of the character of the federal partner, the United States Department of Agriculture. Part of the disparity is the result of the capturing of the extension agenda by agricultural interests. Much of the disparity is the result of university leadership of the past who lost sight of the roots of the Land-Grant universities and to which, in order to be again engaged, current leadership must “return.” Unfortunately, many in university leadership roles do not have the necessary vision or courage to return to our roots. In that setting, Extension and extension educators can play an important educational role with a new extension audience – university presidents, boards of trustees, and state and local politicians. The educational program could be called “Engagement: explaining the role of the research university to the society that supports it.”

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[1] Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech. Paper prepared for the 2003 Western Mid-Managers Conference, July 15-17, 2003, Newport, Oregon.