The Scholarship of Engagement

Abstract

American higher education is, as Derek Bok once poetically described it, "a many-splendored creation." The truth is that for more than 350 years, higher learning and the larger purposes of American society have been inextricably interlocked. In 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was founded in Troy, New York, and RPI was, according to historian Frederick Rudolph, a constant reminder that America needed railroad builders, bridge builders, and builders of all kinds. At the beginning of this century, David Starr Jordan, president of that brash new institution on the West Coast, Stanford, declared that the entire university movement in this country "is toward reality and practicality." Abundant evidence shows that both the civic and academic health of any culture is vitally enriched as scholars and practitioners speak and listen carefully to each other.