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This chapter traces the development of student engagement as a research-informed intervention to shift the discourse on quality in higher education to emphasize matters of teaching and learning while providing colleges and universities with diagnostic, actionable information that can inform improvement efforts. The conceptual lineage of student engagement blends a set of related theoretical propositions (quality of effort, involvement, and integration) with practice-focused prescriptions for good practice in undergraduate education. The development of survey-based approaches to measuring student engagement is reviewed, including a treatment of recent criticisms of these approaches. Next, we summarize important empirical findings, including validation research, typological research, and research on institutional improvement. Because student engagement emerged as an intervention to inform …