Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities

Public Scholarship: Imagining Iowa

 

Project: Improving Communication and Cooperation between Diverse Stakeholders: Mapping the Rhetorical Terrain of the Bioeconomy

Project funding provided by CEAH and the LAS College.

Carl Herndl, Professor, Rhetoric and Professional Communication

Jean Goodwin, Associate Professor, Speech Communication

Lee Honeycutt, Associate Professor, Rhetoric and Professional Communication

Greg Wilson, Assistant Professor, Rhetoric and Professional Communication

In this public scholarship pilot study, this group of ISU rhetoricians will identify the diverse ways that producers, technical experts, industry leaders, policymakers, and community members frame their decisions in considering sustainable biofuels development. In doing so, they will determine how knowledge travels across distances (intellectual, disciplinary, and cultural) and bridges differences (of preconception, values, and discursive forms) when these very different groups communicate with each other--as they must, if we are to re-imagine and acheive a new vision of agriculture in Iowa. This group will, in short, be mapping the rhetorical terrain of the new bioeconomy. Results will help ISU Extension improve outreach communication and develop strategies that agricultural communicators can adopt to bridge differences and promote sound decision making.

What is public scholarship?

Public scholarship takes many forms, and can include service learning projects and campus-community partnerships. Each campus community develops its own unique approach to public scholarship, which provides a wide variety of models from which to base new projects. For more information, the reports linked below, also available on the Imagining America website can help us to understand and to define what public scholarship will mean to the Iowa State community.

"Introduction and Overview." Engaging Campus and Community: The Practice of Public Scholarship in the State and Land-Grant University System
Scott Peters, Cornell University (2005)

The Humanities and the Public Soul
Julie Ellison, founding director of Imagining America.

Excellence in Campus Community Partnerships in the Arts, Humanities, and Design
Report prepared by Cynthia Koch, Ph.D., for Imagining America (2005)

Imagining Your State toolkit
from Imagining America

 

What is going on and who is involved with biorenewables at Iowa State? Check out the Office of Biorenewables Programs website and their Biorenewables News site.

You can also find information about biorenewables on the Bioethics website and from the Institute of Science and Society.

CEAH Programming for 08-09
Sustaining the Earth

CEAH is partnering with Reiman Gardens, the Ames Public Library, the Ames Historical Society, the Bioethics Program, and the Brunnier Museum to sponsor a public scholarship lecture series for fall 2008/spring 2009 titled Sustaining the Earth. This program includes lectures by several leading scholars, whose work features exemplary forms of "public scholarship."

ISU faculty seminarians interested in public scholarship related to sustainability will attend faculty seminars by our guest lecturers/public scholars while forming their own public scholarship projects with collaborating community groups.