Headshot of Sylvia  Gale

Sylvia Gale

Executive Director, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement
  • Profile
    Dr. Sylvia Gale is the executive director of the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at the University of Richmond. She joined the CCE in August 2009. In 2023, Dr. Gale was the Mid-Career Professional Development Award Grantee of the Fulbright Finland Foundation and spent five months in a research role with the Deaconess Foundation in Helsinki where she studied civic action within the Foundation’s network of community centers. Her final project, "Practicing Community, Together: Provocations for Professionals," will be published by the Deaconess Foundation in fall 2024. Dr. Gale also serves on the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life and was a founding co-chair of Imagining America's initiative on "Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship" which explores and advances assessment practices aligned with the values that drive community-engaged work. She was also the first director of Imagining America’s Publicly Active Graduate Education Initiative (PAGE).

    At UR, Sylvia has co-led a class and project which connects small groups of University of Richmond students and young people currently incarcerated in peer storytelling and life writing projects (some examples of co-created products emerging from that project can be found on the UR Scholarship Repository). Before coming to the University of Richmond, Sylvia worked to extend liberal arts learning to diverse communities through the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a PhD in English (concentration in Rhetoric and Composition) in 2008 and where she was the founding director of the Free Minds Project (now known as Free Minds Austin) which offers Austin-area adults who have faced barriers to education and who live on limited incomes with a chance to explore their intellectual potential via a free year-long college course in the humanities. Sylvia is committed to co-creating opportunities for transformative liberal arts learning far beyond traditional institutional boundaries and has published on innovative assessment, engaged graduate education, and the power of institutional intermediaries to effect change.

    In Richmond, Sylvia is at her happiest when exploring the trails in Forest Hill Park or out on the rocks at the James River.
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    • Awards

      Mid-Career Professional Development Award, Fulbright Finland Foundation, 2022-23

      Advisor Excellence Award, University of Richmond, 2014-15

    • Presentations

      "Practicing Community Together," Invited Speaker, Deaconess Foundation, Helsinki, May 2024.


      "Exploring the Practices of Civic Action: A Dialogue," Invited speaker, Deaconess Foundation’s Civic Action Team, Helsinki, June 2023


      "Practicing Civic Action," Invited Speaker, Eurodiaconia, Helsinki, May 2023.


      "Civic Action in Practice," Invited Speaker, Politics of Co-Creation Seminar, University of Helsinki, March 2022


      "Collaborative evaluation," Invited speaker, Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities Hyperlocal engagement working group, April, 2021.


      "What’s wrong with civility?" Invited speaker, American Creed: A Community Conversation, Chesterfield Public Libraries, April 2019.


      "Democratically engaged assessment: Reimagining the purposes and practices of assessment in community engagement," preconference workshop, co-led with Imagining America’s Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship Working Group. Assessment Institute, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, October 2018.


      "Data labs: Assessment ‘experts’ at play," co-presented with Bryan Figura and Katie Turek. Assessment Institute: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, October 2017. 

    • Community Service

      • Member, Imagining America National Advisory Board
      • Graduate, Bike-Walk Academy for leadership in advocacy

  • Selected Publications
    Journal Articles

    "Community engagement professionals at play: Collaborative assessment as culture change," Co-authored with Terry Dolson and Amy Howard. Journal of Higher Education Engagement and Outreach, 23.1: 2019, 227-246.

    "Democratically engaged assessment: Reimagining the purposes and practices of assessment in community engagement," Co-authored with Joe Bandy, Mary Price, Patti Clayton, Julia Metzker, Georgia Nigro, Sarah Stanlick, Stephani Woodson, Anna Bartel. Davis, CA: Imagining America, 2018.
    "Values-engaged assessment: Reimagining assessment through the lens of democratic engagement," Co-authored with Joe Bandy, Anna Bartel, Patti Clayton, Heather Mack, Julia Metzker, Georgia Nigro, Mary Price, & Sarah Stanlick. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 23.1: 2016, 96-101.

    "High-Impact Assessment." Co-authored with Bryan Figura. Engage: A Publication of the Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation. Fall 2015.

    "Turning the PAGE: Ten Years of Leadership for Engaged Graduate Education." Co-authored with Adam Bush. Diversity & Democracy: A Publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. 18.1: 2015, 26-27.

    "This Bridge Called My Job: Translating, Revaluing, and Leveraging Intermediary Administrative Work." Co-authored with Miriam Bartha, Megan Carney, Elizabeth Goodhue, and Amy Howard. Public: A Journal of Imagining America. Fall 2014.

     "Another Kind of Giving." Co-authored with Amy Howard, Style Weekly, Giving, Summer 2010.

    "Bridging the Gap: Emerging Scholars, Emerging Forms of Scholarship (On-line Edition)." Guest Editor, special issue. REFLECTIONS: A Journal of Writing, Community Literacy, and Service Learning. 7.3: 2008.
    Book Chapters

    "Story Circles as Ongoing and Collaborative Evaluation: Roadside Theater's 'Story to Performance,'" Imagining America’s Case Studies and Research on Integrated Assessment, Imagining America, 2012. Web. 14 April 2014.

    "Arcs, Checklists, and Charts: The Trajectory of a Public Scholar?" Collaborative Futures: Critical Reflections on Publicly Active Graduate Education. Ed. Amanda Gilvin, Georgia M. Roberts, and Craig Martin. Syracuse: The Graduate School Press of Syracuse University, 2012. 315-327.