Public Engagement and Organizational. Identity in U.S. Higher Education

Institutional Characteristics and Student Civic Outcomes

“…Formal affi liation with an organization, such as employment, membership, or in the case of students, enrollment, can create emotional ties because one's own social identity (Haslam, 2004;Tajfel & Turner, 1986) is connected to an organization's identity, or members' collective sense of "who we are as an organization" (Whetten, 2006, p. 219). Amid the rising attention paid to organizational identity theory (e.g., Barnhardt, Sheets, & Pasquesi, 2015;Janke, 2009Janke, , 2012Janke, Medlin, & Holland, 2015;Kezar, 2014;Weerts & Freed, 2016;Weerts, Freed, & Morphew, 2014), greater attention to the role of organizational image, how others external to the institution view its identity, on student civic outcomes may be warranted, especially given increased eff orts of HEI's to tell compelling stories of civic engagement (Weerts & Freed, 2016;Weerts et al, 2014) and the rise of online tracking and sharing platforms (Janke et al, 2015).…”