Community Activism and Impacting Communities Through High Impact Educational Practice

Almost since their inception, faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities have prepared and promoted their students to be actively engaged as advocates and activists within their communities. For nearly 40 years, through experiential and constructivist learning, primarily in the form of service learning, community-based participatory research, and internships, the Criminology program at Johnson C. Smith University has utilized the various pedagogy to address public safety, health, and other social problems to promote equity. Each of these strategies are deemed effective as high impact practices by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. This chapter is an examination of the experiences of JCSU faculty and their students in affecting change while promoting advocacy and civic responsibility. These strategies have also served as effective pedagogy, a method of student and program assessment, and allow the authors to provide good will beyond their gates.