The Bonner Network

The Bonner Scholars and Leaders Program is a campus-based community engagement program that currently operates at nearly seventy-five colleges and universities nationwide, engaging over 3,000 undergraduate students annually in the four-year program model. Especially targeting low-income, first generation, and underrepresented students, the Bonner Program provides colleges and universities with a model for a college access program that uses best practices for student success. With student leadership at the core, the model improves the lives of people and communities through sustained partnerships involving colleges and universities in service, community engaged learning, and civic engagement. Through providing students with an access to education and an opportunity to serve, the Bonner Program also provides higher education with a model that promotes colleges’ commitment to civic engagement, community building, diversity, international perspective, spiritual exploration, and social justice. The Bonner Network is an intentional community of practice, comprised of individuals who demonstrate a tremendous commitment to community and civic engagement. Members of the Bonner Network include students who are currently engaged in the Bonner program with one of our campus partners, alumni who graduated from a Bonner program, and campus staff, faculty, and administrators who coordinate or have coordinated a Bonner program. Inclusion in the Bonner Network provides members with a significant number of core competencies. Most notable of these competencies are the learning outcomes connected to the co-curricular, curricular, and integrative experiences associated with the Bonner four-year civic engagement program: civic agency, civic identity, critical thinking and perspective, communication skills, diversity and intercultural competence, empathy, integrative learning, leadership, place- and issue-based knowledge, and social justice.