The Summit

Dr. Zahra Ahmed is a scholar-activist who has worked in higher education and other community-based educational spaces for over 20 years.  She is experienced in the fields of policy advocacy, civic engagement, and community organizing.  Dr. Ahmed earned her Masters degree in Social Work from Georgia State University with a focus on community partnerships and her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine with a focus on civic and community engagement.  She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Politics at St. Mary’s College of California where she integrates restorative justice and contemplative practices into her teaching as a means of supporting the mission of social justice movement building.  Her academic research focuses on contemplative justice and pedagogical practices that support political mobilization among students and people of color. Dr. Ahmed is also the founder and CEO for ONE Community Consulting, a community based consulting firm specializing in youth engagement and leadership development among marginalized communities.  In this role, she has supported public policy evaluation, strategic planning and systems change work among community based organizations throughout the states of Georgia, Louisiana, and California. 

Dr. Andrew Furco, Associate Vice President for Public Engagement, University of Minnesota

Andrew Furco is Associate Vice President for Public Engagement at the University of Minnesota, where he also serves as Professor of Higher Education. At the University of Minnesota, he has worked to elevate the centrality of community engagement across the institution’s research, teaching, and outreach activities as a strategy for building a more engaged university that serves and advances the public good.

His research and scholarly work focus on examining the role of service-learning and community engagement in primary, secondary, and higher education systems in the U.S. and abroad.  He has led or co-led more than 30 research studies that have explored various issues regarding the implementation, impacts, and institutionalization of community engagement within educational systems. His publications include several books and more than 90 journal articles and book chapters on service-learning and community engagement, several of which have been translated into multiple languages.

Prior to arriving in Minnesota, he spent 14 years at the University of California-Berkeley as the founding director of the Service-Learning Research and Development Center and as a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education.

Some acknowledgments of his work include the 2003 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Service-Learning Research (presented by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement), Researcher of the Year Award (presented by the National Society of Experiential Education, 2006), and the Thomas Ehrlich Civic Engagement Faculty Award (presented by Campus Compact, 2012). In 2015, he was inducted into the national Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship.

Currently, Furco is co-leader of the National Forum for University Chief Engagement and Outreach Administrators and serves on the Executive Committee of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities’ Commission on Economic and Community Engagement.