The recently published Pathways of Social Impact: Higher Education for the Public Good brings together a range of perspectives to deepen our understanding of students’ interests, motivations, and approaches to social change. At its core is the Pathways framework—a tool designed to help educators better understand and support students’ evolving civic identities and engagement strategies. In this webinar, we take a closer look at two chapters from the Theoretical, Empirical, and Critical Reflections section of the book.

The Pathways framework presents a typology designed to highlight distinctions in ways to engage in social change without intending to sever the connections between them. Each pathway overlaps with multiple other pathways, so that activities falling in one pathway may also exist in another.

Dr. Aaliyah Baker’s chapter "Challenges, Possibilities, and Conscious Responsibility: Directions for the Field” calls on institutions of higher education to consider the responsibility and commitment to addressing social injustice as a fundamental purpose of their mission.

Dr. Agustin “Tino” Diaz authored “Where Refusal Meets the Pathways: A Relational Praxis in, but Not of, the University” with Brenna Lambert and Priscilla Villaseñor-Navarro, exploring the implications of a local tragedy where a child took their life and student leaders organized a vigil.