Andrew Furco

University of Minnesota

https://www.cehd.umn.edu/olpd/people/afurco

Biographical Abstracts

Prior to arriving at the University of Minnesota, Andrew Furco worked at the University of California-Berkeley (1994-1997) as a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education and as founding director of the Service-Learning Research and Development Center, the nation’s first university-based research center to focus its research exclusively on service-learning in primary, secondary, and higher education. He has led more than 30 studies focused on issues pertaining to the impacts, implementation, and institutionalization of service-learning across various countries.  In 1998, he was selected by Campus Compact to serve as a National Engaged Scholar. Through this work he developed and standardized the Self-Assessment Rubric for Institutionalizing Service-Learning in Higher Education, which has been incorporated in the service-learning work at than 500 universities across the globe.

Furco served as the inaugural co-host of the first international research conference on service-learning in 2001, which spawned an annual research conference and the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), which continue today. He has consulted with 150+ universities in more than 30 countries on issues pertaining to the advancement and institutionalization of service-learning and community engagement.  His publications, which include more than 100 journal articles and book chapters on the subject, have been published in various languages.

Along with serving on journal editorial boards, he has been a member of various international boards, including the Vatican Scholars Program Scientific Committee, UNESCO International Values Education Research Consortium, National Society for Experiential Education, IARSLCE, and the Red Iberoamericana de Aprendizaje-Servicio.

Furco is the recipient of several national and international acknowledgements, including the 2003 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Service-Learning Research (presented by IARSLCE), Senator John Glenn Service-Learning Scholar Award (2004), National Society for Experiential Education Researcher of the Year Award (2006), and the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award (2012).

Areas of Expertise

• Experiential learning
• Leading and institutionalizing community engagement in higher education
• Service-learning and community engagement in non-U.S. contexts
• Research methods for the study of service-learning and community engagement
• Student impact and development