Margaret Mead, for example, invites us to feel the power of small groups of organized idealists. John Tucker describes community as an ecological system, reminding us that the many parts of community need all-at-once tending in order to survive. And John Dewey's exigent message that education must transform itself to meet the radical changes of society still lives on with us today in some sobering contemporary contexts.

Nearest to what drives my own work of community building is the vision of the late James W. Rouse, founder and chairman of the Enterprise Foundation. His words, "What ought to be, can be," will live with me forever. People like Jim Rouse, a leader in developing affordable housing for low-income families, the new colleagues in that arena with whom I have combined my community college work in recent years, and the people who write in this sourcebook would say that the work of weaving the college with the community is not an easy matter.

Leadership in the many sectors of our communities comes in various shapes, forms, and styles, with diverse agendas. Faculty and staff in our educational institutions, on their fine and steady course, have understandable comfort zones that any change in expectations may disrupt. And, of course, there are perceptions, constraints, priorities, and opportunities within our educational institutions and communities that can add both high interest and complications in a dialogue about how to serve the common good.

What is clear is the need to be communal in helping high-quality education and higher-quality communities to prevail and flourish simultaneously. All of us--from the security personnel on our campuses, to the community's political leadership, to the storefront shopkeepers--place an imprint on community or neighborhood life by what we do individually and collectively. Not one of us can do the work of education or community alone. But how do we weave the work of the college with the work of the community?

Teachers, their students, and their love of a discipline are the most sacred of our educational resources in the community college. It is through them that community colleges all across our nation have achieved their reputations. It is through them that decisions, both technological and nontechnological, have diversified the interactive quality of teaching and learning. It is teachers and their students who significantly shape what we become as a society. Service-learning, as described in the chapters that follow, can raise the pitch of societal quality through the heightened interaction between faculty and students and community colleges and their communities.

Our communities are our most sacred domain. They are our homes. On a purely operational level, we educators depend on the people of our communities, in every sector, to financially and politically empower us in a significant way. We are obligated to deliver to student and community clients quality, relevance, and the preservation of culture and society, as only community colleges can do.

Most important, we must decide to make service-learning our own, our community's own, our neighborhood's own. That one principle of ownership can make the ambiguity of how to begin or expand our efforts in service-learning more tolerable. It will also prompt us to listen more intently so that we can integrate service-learning into the needs and issues of our community.

This reweaving of society through service-learning can be as Margaret Mead inspired, as John Dewey and John Tucker proposed, and as James Rouse envisioned. Sifting through this sourcebook, you will be able to read how some learned their way there. Thank the weavers within for their courage, from which we can all gratefully benefit.

Dr. Tessa Martinez Pollack serves as President of Glendale Community College in Arizona. Previously, she was President of the Medical Center Campus at Miami-Dade Community College. She has worked in community colleges for twenty-five years and has also directed student support services at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

She was named as one of the One Hundred Influentials by Hispanic Business magazine. She has served on the Education Commission of the States and presently serves on various national and advisory boards, including the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges Executive Advisory Board.

Dr. Pollack has been published in numerous publications, one of which was presented at the First Sino-American Conference on Women's Issues in Beijing, People's Republic of China, in June 1990. In October 1991, she was a guest of the Fourth European Congress on Continuing Education and Training, where she spoke in Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and Vienna.

		The Roots of Campus-Community Collaboration
		Foreword
		Table of Contents