SECTION 2: Campus, Community, and Community Engagement Context
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- Describe your institution in a way that will help provide a context to understand how community engagement is envisioned and enacted.
- Region; founding and history; current institutional mission; institutional culture; types of degree programs; and demographics of student, faculty, and staff populations.
- Leadership priorities, vision, and strategic plan, initiatives and other features that shape and distinguish the institution, particularly as they relate to community engagement.
- Describe the communities to which the institution is accountable to, including community characteristics, community priorities, and the relationship of the community to the institution.
- Describe the institutionally sanctioned definition of community engagement and related terms.
- List the terms and definitions here that provide the institutional standards for community engagement.
- Describe how the institution ensures that students, faculty, staff, and community partners have equitable access and opportunity to community engagement activities and partnerships.
- Describe the relevant contexts—both within the institution as well as beyond (local, regional, national)—that shape how equitable access and opportunity in community engagement is defined, discussed, planned, enacted, and held accountable on your campus.
- Describe institutional systems and structures that address equitable access and opportunity in community engagement for students, faculty, staff, and community partners.
- Describe how the campus ensures that community partners have “significant voice” and input into institutional or departmental planning and collective goals.
- Describe the resources made available to community partners that support community engagement (e.g., professional development, compensation, materials, space, acknowledgement, awards).
- In what ways does the campus collect information from partners to ensure accountability to the community—in particular reciprocity, mutual benefit, and respect?
- As evidence for your earlier classification, you provided a description of the campus-wide coordinating infrastructure (i.e.., center, office, network or coalition of centers) to support and advance community engagement and you reported how it is staffed, how it is funded, and its reporting line.
- For Re-Classification, describe what has changed, if anything, with this infrastructure, its mission, staffing, funding, and reporting since the last classification. If the campus has more than one center coordinating community engagement, describe each center, staffing, and purpose and indicate how the multiple centers interact with one another to advance institutional community engagement.
- Describe the most recent internal budgetary allocations dedicated to supporting institutional engagement with the community, and what has changed, if anything, with the budgetary allocations since the last classification. Describe whether the sources of these funds are permanent or temporary. Describe how budget shortfalls may have impacted funding for community engagement.
- As evidence provided for your earlier classification, you described strategic fundraising efforts and/or external funding (grants) specifically undertaken to support community engagement. For Re-Classification, describe the most recent strategic fundraising efforts and/or external funding (grants) specifically undertaken to support community engagement and identify any specific endowments earmarked for community engagement.
- Describe how community engagement efforts have been impacted and shaped by recent local, national, and/or global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, greater attention to racial and social justice, the crisis of decreasing trust in democracy and institutions, and natural disasters.
- Describe how the institution tracks and assesses engagement with communities.
- How the institution maintains systematic campus-wide tracking of engagement with the community, including the purpose for tracking, what data is collected, what systems are used to track data, who is responsible for collected data, how often data is collected, and how data is used.
Office of the Vice President for University Outreach
