This strategic initiative is exploring how universities interact with civil society and the value that they add in the process. It involves universities within the UK and overseas working together to understand the emerging idea of ‘civic universities' and what might make them so special. This is a strategic priority for the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal as it is at the very heart of our approach to act as part of a University that seeks to respond to society’s challenges. By enriching the understanding of what the ‘civic university’ means in practice we are well placed to make a difference.
This research is led by Emeritus Professor John Goddard at Newcastle University (formerly Deputy Vice Chancellor, Newcastle University with responsibility for its engagement with the city and region). He now works with Louise Kempton and Paul Vallance, in the University’s Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies CURDS. During his many years in this field, Professor Goddard has advised Governments at home and abroad, the European Commission and OECD on the role higher education institutions can play in regional and national development and his expertise has helped to establish Newcastle University as a leading proponent of the civic university concept.
When we think of a ‘civic university’ we think of an institution engaged in civil society locally, nationally and globally. Research by Goddard and Kempton has suggested some of the defining characteristics of such an institution. They are working with Ellen Hazelkorn from Dublin Institute of Technology, and a world leading expert in higher education management, in an action learning project with eight higher education institutions in four European countries who are at various stages in developing their capacity to act as civic universities. These are Newcastle University and University College London in the UK; Trinity College Dublin and Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland; the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands; and Aalto University (Helsinki) and Tampere University in Finland.
The team suggest that in the ‘civic university’ there will be strong overlaps and mutual benefits from interaction between teaching, research and engagement beyond the university. A civic university will be involved in ‘transformative, demand-led actions’ in civil society. This contrasts to the traditional university where research and teaching are conducted separately and in distinction from engagement activities (often called ‘third' strand). Civic universities realise the benefits of working across all these three areas, and rewarding and celebrate such activity for the knowledge developments and socio-economic impacts this way of working creates.
John Goddard and his team suggest that a university that wishes to operate successfully as a ‘civic university’ and build outcomes which benefit staff and students, organisations and society at large, should rate itself against the following criteria :
Research context
This research builds upon previous more narrow approaches to conceptualising universities including the ‘entrepreneurial university model’ (Burton Clark 1998), the ‘academic capitalist model’ (Slaughter and Leslie 1993) and ‘triple helix model’ (Etzkowitz et al 2000) and Goddard and Vallance’s new book The City and the University. Their book focussed on the local engagement of universities with their host cities and looked into the university from outside. The new initiative is examining engagement with civil society globally as well as locally and considers the internal leadership and management challenges that arise in building a new type of university. One output of the initiative will be a successor volume to Burton Clark’s Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organisational Pathways of Transformation with the provisional title ‘Leading and managing the Civic University’.