Patti H. Clayton, Ph.D.

Patti has over twelve years of experience as a practitioner-scholar in community-engaged teaching and learning and in experiential education more generally, including leading a multi-faceted scholarship agenda, College-level institutionalization efforts, discipline-based and multi-disciplinary faculty learning communities, engaged graduate and undergraduate education initiatives, and a range of intra- and inter-institutional collaborations. Her work focuses on building the capacity of individuals, units, institutions, and the field as a whole for scholarly community-engaged teaching and learning. 

Patti co-developed with students and faculty a leading critical reflection and assessment model (the DEAL Model for Critical Reflection), models for student leadership in service-learning, and a variety of faculty development and curriculum development processes related to community-campus engagement. Her research interests include the processes and outcomes associated with positioning all partners in community engagement as co-educators, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge.

She and her student and faculty colleagues produced an instructors’ guide and a student tutorial -- Learning through Critical Reflection -- as well as a faculty resource guide on instructional design for integrated service-learning. They have chapters in Teaching and Learning through Inquiry (Virginia Lee, ed., 2004), Students as Colleagues: Expanding the Circle of Service-Learning Leadership (Zlotkowski, Williams, & Longo, eds., 2006), Higher Education and Civic Engagement – International Perspectives (McIlrath and MacLabhrainn, eds., 2007), Establishing and Sustaining the Community Service-Learning Professional: A Workbook for Self-Directed Learning (Jacoby & Mutascio, eds., 2010), International Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Research (Bringle, Hatcher, & Jones, eds., 2010), and Advances in Service-Learning Research (Billig & Bowden, eds., 2008; Moely, Billig, & Holland, eds., 2009); and they have articles in such peer-reviewed journals as Innovative Higher Education, On the Horizon, Creative College Teaching, Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, and the Michigan Journal for Community Service Learning. Clayton has given over 100 conference presentations, many of them co-facilitated with undergraduate or graduate students. She serves as co-editor with Bringle and Hatcher of the 2-volume set Research on Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Assessment and with her IUPUI colleagues has co-authored chapters in To Improve the Academy and The Handbook of Practice and Research in Study Abroad: Higher Education and the Quest for Global Citizenship. 

In the past few years she has also been focusing on reciprocity and mutual transformation in community engagement partnerships and on the relationship between student, faculty, and community member learning. Building on her work with John Saltmarsh and Matt Hartley in the Democratic Engagement White Paper (2009), she is intrigued by possibilities for designing teaching and learning, partnerships, and scholarship in ways that position all participants as co-educators, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge.

Patti is a Board member of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement and a Co-Editor of the Associations’ annual Conference Proceedings. She is also an Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, and she serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education.

She was named the North Carolina College Personnel Association’s Distinguished Scholar and was a Finalist for Campus Compact’s Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning and its Leadership Award for Campus and Community Engagement. 

Patti has integrated service-learning into all of her own courses since 1999, ranging from “environmental ethics” to “leadership” to “contemporary science, technology, and human values.”  In all aspects of her work she seeks to support intellectual, personal, and civic development through creating opportunities for reflective practice, leadership, and mentoring. Beyond community-engaged teaching and learning, her academic interests include environmental ethics, leadership education, and the history and philosophy of science. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. from the Curriculum in Ecology at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Patti lives in Cary, NC with her husband, Kevin, and their feline family. She reads everything she can get her hands on by Parker Palmer (Let Your Life Speak is a constant companion) and Diana Gabaldon (historical fiction), enjoys spending time in the mountains (any mountains, but especially southwest Virginia), fell in love with Zion and Denali National Parks on her first visits, and is lifelong fan of Star Trek and John Denver.



National engagement scholar reference (excerpted from award nomination)




For additional information or to explore potential collaboration please email Patti at: