As highlighted by "The Teaching Professor", Zepke and Leach (2010) offer the following strategies for fostering student engagement:

1. enhance students' self-belief
2. enable students to work autonomously, enjoy learning relationships with others, and feel they are competent to achieve their own objectives
3. recognize that teaching and teachers are central to engagement
4. create learning that is active, collaborative, and fosters learning relationships
5. create educational experiences for students that are challenging and enriching, and that extend their academic abilities
6. ensure that institutional cultures are welcoming to students from diverse backgrounds
7. invest in a variety of support services
8. adapt to changing student expectations
9. enable students to become active citizens
10. enable students to develop their social and cultural capital

For more information, see the June-July 2011 issues of The Teaching Professor or check out Zepke and Leach's article at:

Zepke, N. & Leach, L. (2010). Improving student engagement: Ten proposals for action. Active Learning in Higher Education, 11(3), 167-177.