Dr. Lalita Kaligotla, Associate Director of the Hart Leadership Program from 2019 to 2021, recently published an article in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement on the development of student civic identity in higher education. Now an Associate Clinical Professor and the Senior Director of Leadership, Policy Engagement and Innovation at The Ohio State University, Kaligotla mentored students in community engagement during her time at Duke and taught two classes: “Border Crossing: Leadership, Value Conflicts and Public Life”, the gateway course for the Service Opportunities in Leadership (SOL) program, and “Lead the Way Durham: Civic Engagement, Social Innovation and Community Leadership in the Bull City”.
The article, “Authoring Civic Identities in Figured Worlds: A Case Study of a Curricular Community Engagement Program”, explores how curricular community engagement experiences shape students’ conceptions of civic identity. Using SOL as a case study and combining two prominent theoretical streams on identity development, Kaligotla concludes that civic engagement programs may constitute a “borderland”—a space in which students make critical choices about their education that are deeply tied to their intersectional identities. Writing that the social, cultural, and personal intertwine in shaping civic identity, Kaligotla says, “Students’ civic work seems to be not only in alignment across the various aspects of their lives as college students but also synergistic with how they imagined their life stories evolving.”
Kaligotla’s research has important implications for student development theory and curricular praxis, and the Hart Leadership Program is proud to continue supporting her work.