A contemporary view of civic leadership: Understanding college student perspectives and addressing barriers of service and engagement.

Abstract

Civic leadership programming can be found across the United States and allows individuals the opportunity to gain skills focused on engaging their local community, creating space for change and impact to occur, and developing civic agency, a practice of working together across differences. This work describes civic leadership understanding, an examination of Generation Z characteristics, and provides a description of the Civic Leadership Academy at one university. The results of a 3-year longitudinal series of phenomenological focus groups identify student-derived themes that set a definition of civic leadership: catalyst of social awareness and change, bridging people and passions, and developing a culture of service. In addition, they identify barriers to service and provide strategies to challenge these barriers through curricular and co-curricular programs.