Community Engagement

Building Capacity

Building Tri-Campus Capacity for Community Engagement

check out the open positions to support the roll-out of a new tri-campus community engagement management system!

“Genuine community engagement does take time, much longer than the tenure of a graduate student or a five-year research grant. That’s why we’re developing a UW home for community engagement that can not only help faculty members or students looking to engage with local communities, but also to ensure that these engagements go beyond any single project. Right now, we’re developing shared principles, practices and accountability for those conducting this kind of work. The academy is often critiqued for doing things TO communities, rather than WITH them which contributes to public skepticism about our institutions. We must ensure that our collaborations are always generative, rather than extractive..” – UW President Ana Mari Cauce, Annual Presidential Address, October 15, 2024.

 

Overview and Background

Building on decades of work and, most recently, each campus’ comprehensive assessments of community engagement through the framework provided by the Carnegie Foundation, which led to each campus’ successful classification as Community-Engaged Campuses in 2020, the UW continues to grow our collective abilities to partner effectively and equitably in community. In recognition of the importance of this collective work within an “impact ecosystem”, in 2022 President Cauce directed resources toward improving tri-campus community engagement infrastructure. Supported by a generous anonymous gift, the goal of this tri-campus effort is to catalyze measurable, positive progress across the University of Washington toward deeper, ethical and effective community engagement by building organizational capacities that support, improve, and celebrate community engaged work.

In fall 2022 a tri-campus Community Engagement Working Group was charged to synthesize existing understanding of campus and university infrastructure, develop strategies and recommend priorities and processes toward that goal. Over the first half of 2023 the Working Group laid some groundwork for strategically investing resources to build capacity for community engagement, in alignment with existing campus and institutional capacities, priorities, and needs. See an overview of this effort (PDF). The project is also supported by the CE Project Champions.

In spring 2023 President Cauce approved initial priorities and allocated funds to build foundational infrastructure. The initial priorities for community engagement infrastructure to be addressed through this funding are the strategic plan of this initiative, and include:

  1. Develop community engagement best principles and blueprints in alignment with diversity, equity, and inclusion
  2. Support or incorporate community engagement in campus-scale strategies and planning
  3. Address fiscal policy/process barriers to community engagement
  4. Improve data collection (tracking, mapping, documentation) and analysis (assessment, evaluation) of community engagement
  5. Support faculty and staff community engagement by developing and expanding resources for professional development, promotion and tenure, and other supports  
  6. Grow student community engagement training and professional development opportunities
  7. Build appropriate tri-campus institutional efficiencies and coordination of community engagement to center the benefits to community partners

During the 2023-4 academic year, the Community Engagement Working group addressed these priorities from multiple angles, leading to important insights and next steps. Officially kicking off at the start of winter quarter 2024, thirteen faculty and staff from Bothell, Seattle, and Tacoma campuses collectively tackled 5 of the 7 infrastructure priorities for community engaged research and learning at the University of Washington. Stemming from the tri-campus capacity-building effort launched in 2022, these Community Engagement Leads worked with faculty, staff students and community partners to assess, recommend and build community engagement supports. The results of their work will be shared in late 2024!

In addition to and intersecting with the Community Engagement Leads’ work, the project hosted the Community of Practice (see below), and the Community Advisory Council (see below). Another effort during 2023-4 was the exploration and evaluation of the UW’s data needs with respect to community engagement, and the selection of an enterprise-wide platform to manage community-engaged activities. Look for the launch of this Community Engagement Management System in the 2024-5 academic year!

AY2024-5 Project Plan

As we continue to build infrastructure, the work under our main priorities is shifting more toward implementation. Our high-level goals are to:

  1. Build Awareness and Integration of tri-campus CE definition, principles, and guidance into policies, processes, and culture.
  2. Grow tri-campus systems, connections, and support of CE.
  3. Build tri-campus Community Engagement Knowledge Hub.
  4. Launch Tri-Campus CE Management System (CEMS) to document, manage, and evaluate CE activities.
  5. Pilot Faculty and Staff CE professional/personal development.
  6. Pilot Student CE training.

The project is led by the tri-campus Community Engagement Steering Committee, and supported by the CE Project Champions. We are excited to bring more folks into this work, and look forward to sharing more as the academic year progresses!

Community Engagement Management System

The Community Engagement Management System (CEMS) is the tri-campus data platform chosen to be funded and supported, to achieve many of the goals of this larger project to build capacity.

What is GivePulse? It is the third-party “Software as a Service” (SaaS) platform selected by the Community Engagement Working Group to host the UW community engagement management system. This data platform is currently leveraged by 200+ higher education institutions to foster local, regional, and global community engagement.

Why a university-wide community engagement data platform? Through the implementation of a tri-campus platform to support and streamline institution-wide management of community engagement activities. This will reduce duplicate efforts, define consistent processes for working with partners, and make community engagement opportunities more accessible and equitably managed for all of UW partnerships. The long-term goal is to allow the UW to assess our community engagement, in partnership with our community partners, to ensure we are aligning our actions with community engagement principles, and to ensure durable positive impact.

Want to learn more? Email jnfrdvsn@uw.edu!

Community of Practice

As part of this tri-campus effort to build capacity, a UW-wide series of conversations was launched in Fall 2023. Entitled Cultivating Connections for Community Engagement, the purpose of these conversations is to connect with others across the UW who practice, support, or are interested in community engagement; to explore what’s happening across the UW in this space; and to contribute your ideas and perspectives for building the university’s capacity for community-engaged research and learning.

Fall Quarter 2024 gathering: November 15, 2024:

 

AY2023-4:

Spring Quarter gathering: April 20, 2024:

Winter Quarter gathering: February 27, 2024:

Fall Quarter launch: November 30, 2023:

Connect with this Project

We welcome you to connect with this project to Build Tri-Campus Capacity for Community Engagement. Feel free to email Jen Davison, Project Director, at jnfrdvsn@uw.edu. UW faculty, staff and students, please subscribe to the communityengagement listserv to receive periodic internal updates.