This book is a companion guide to Campus Compact’s successful publication The Community Engagement Professional in Higher Education. In the first text, Campus Compact Research Fellows - led by award-winning scholar-practitioner Lina D. Dostilio - identified a core of set of competencies needed by professionals charged with leading community engaged work on college campuses. In this companion guide, Dostilio teams up with Marshall Welch to build on the initial framework by offering guidance for how a community engagement professional (CEP) should conceptualize, understand, and develop their practice in each of the original competency areas.

Over 10 chapters the authors address questions for those “brand new to the role” and interested in how to start a community engagement unit or center, or from people who are considering jobs doing the work on a campus, or from individuals “are trying to navigate the political environment on their campuses to expand and deepen their unit’s reach.”

The Guidebook offers a rich and deep dive, breaking down the essential components of a professional’s work. From mentoring faculty research, leading campaigns to build civic engagement curriculum on campus, to managing the staff who support community engagement units, Dostilio and Welch tackle the breadth of the CEP’s work by drawing on key resources and their own decades of experience in the field. Throughout the book, readers will encounter “Compass Points” that call for personal reflection and engagement with the text. These interactive moments combine with end-of-chapter questions to prompt thinking about a CEP’s critical commitments, to create a powerful and engaging toolkit that will be essential for any person doing community and civic engagement work on campus.

Using a conversational voice, the authors provide a foundation as well as a blueprint and tools to craft a community-engaged course. Based on extensive research, the book provides a scope and sequence of information and skills ranging from an introduction to community engagement, to designing, implementing, and assessing a course, to advancing the craft to prepare for promotion and tenure as well as how to become a citizen-scholar and reflective practitioner. An interactive workbook that can be downloaded from Campus Compact accompanies this tool kit with interactive activities that are interspersed throughout the chapters. The book and workbook can be used by individual readers or with a learning community.