About

Reciprocity

The University will recognize and address the power differential and privilege that it holds relative to each community partner and how this may affect the community engagement process including the resources necessary for participating in community engagement. The university prioritizes benefits to community when participating in community engagement, over its own benefits. As part of this process and to achieve true reciprocity, the university must begin by acknowledging how it has benefited from communities and honor this debt in meaningful ways. 

Community engagement can result in numerous potential benefits for our community partners and for the University through shared sense-making; addressing critical social issues, and collaboratively envisioning and contributing positively to our communities and the future. Through this process we will co-learn and create knowledge together. For communities, benefits may include: achieving transformational justice; building flexible and meaningful relationships with the University and people from other communities; inspiring more points of interaction between the University and community members; creating additional pathways to resources, education, and work opportunities at the University; relationship building, and informing contributions made by the University to direct and prioritize responsiveness to the community. When in relationship with the community, the university will learn directly from community members about their needs, challenges, opportunities, and achievements, and therefore benefit by moving the institution away from dominant culture practices, enriching scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhancing curriculum, teaching and learning; and strengthening and developing cultural competencies. 

 Principled Practices: 

• Ensure that community members who contribute their time, wisdom, and skills to university projects are compensated. This could include providing honoraria or stipends. 

• Reduce or eliminate any out-of-pocket expenses for community members participating in university activities. This includes covering transportation, childcare, meals, and other incidental costs that can be barriers to participation. 

• Implement flexible payment schedules for community partners to ensure they are compensated promptly and in a manner that aligns with their needs. This could include upfront payments or more frequent payment intervals to prevent financial strain. 

• Offer the necessary resources, materials, and tools required for community partners to engage effectively with the university. This could include access to technology, office space, or other infrastructure, ensuring that financial constraints do not limit their participation. 

• Waive fees or provide subsidies for community members to attend university-sponsored events, workshops, or conferences. 
• Provide training components that orient and prepare everyone involved for the engagement activity.  

Accessibility

The University endeavors to ensure participation in community engagement centers universal design practices and is accessible to as many members of the community as possible and strives to provide each faculty, staff, and student with the opportunity to be involved in meaningful community engagement during their time at the university. Likewise, the university will provide a well-defined point of access for the community to connect to and explore potential opportunities and resources within the university. The university will be proactive in welcoming community members and clearly identifying specific opportunities available for connection. Furthermore, the University’s formal accessibility requirements will be provided for each and every community engagement activity undertaken.

Principled Practices:

• Increasing access to CE for faculty, staff, and students by providing access to unrestricted funds. through funding. 

• Establishing clear and equitable fiscal and administrative processes for all involved in community engagement. 

• Introduce students to community engagement in their first year at UW through community engaged learning courses and other high impact practices. 

• Create scholarship and funding opportunities and educational support for community members who engage with the university. This could include tuition waivers, access to university courses, or professional development opportunities, helping to build pathways for community members into higher education. 

• Enrich students’ educational experience and learning outcomes by exposing them to holistic local and global perspectives, hands-on co-creation, and exchange with communities. Working closely with each student to help prepare them for the community engagement activities they undertake. 

• Honoring the labor, input, and participation of students in paid and unpaid high impact practices including, but not limited to first year seminars and experiences, community engaged learning courses, co-creation of scholarly knowledge and research, internships and professional development, registered student organizations, student governance, volunteerism, and global, local and civic advocacy movements.

Disrupting Dominant Culture

In order to address and improve inequities in our community, the University will prioritize decentering dominant culture, avoid perpetuating harms, and further social justice principles by practicing mindfulness, intentionality, and reflexivity which involves “strategies to question our own attitudes, thought processes, values, assumptions, prejudices and habitual actions to strive to understand our complex roles in relation to others,” [Bolton, G., Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development, 2010, 3rd ed., Sage]. 

Principled Practices:

• Encourage and support the use of multiple languages and dialects in university communications, materials, and engagements. This goes beyond translation and involves creating environments where non-dominant languages are celebrated and where linguistic diversity is seen as a strength. 

• In concert with communities, co-host free learning opportunities &/or trainings on decolonial ways of being, knowing, and organizing within the community and university 

• Actively work to decolonize university curricula by including more voices, perspectives, and histories that have traditionally been marginalized or excluded. This means also critically examining and challenging the underlying assumptions, biases, and power dynamics present in the curriculum. 

• Support ongoing and new efforts for addressing environmental, social, and climate injustices, recognizing that frontline and fenceline communities are most directly impacted by these injustices. This also includes efforts to not perpetuate existing injustices by centering community voices and ensuring these efforts do not further exclude or marginalize communities.  

• Encourage all participants in community engagement to regularly engage in reflective practice, questioning their own biases, assumptions, and the impact of their actions. This could involve structured reflection sessions, journaling, or dialogue groups that focus on understanding how dominant culture influences their perspectives and behaviors. 

• Move away from transactional and outcome-focused engagements typical of dominant culture, and instead prioritize building deep, meaningful, and long-term relationships with community members. This involves valuing the process of engagement as much as the outcomes, and recognizing the importance of trust, reciprocity, and mutuality.
  

Engaging with Tribal Nations and/or Indigenous Communities 

Engagement with Tribal Nations and their communities involves establishing intentional relationships that honor Tribal sovereignty and their self-determined priorities, while also following their internal cultural and formal protocols. This engagement is built on trust, reciprocity, and a commitment to addressing Tribally-defined priorities, which are mutually meaningful and beneficial to both Tribal nations and their partners. The University honors the fact that the U.S. Constitution recognizes Tribal Nations as entities distinct from states and foreign nations (https://www.washington.edu/tribalrelations/). Recognizing each Tribal Nation as independent and acknowledging each interaction within the Tribal Nation will be unique. 

Since not all Indigenous People are part of federally recognized tribes and are located throughout the world, the university will apply this principle when working with Indigenous People and their communities, which involves establishing intentional relationships that honor their sovereignty and self-determined priorities, while also following their internal cultural and formal protocols. This engagement is built on trust, reciprocity, and a commitment to addressing the priorities that are defined by Indigenous People, which are mutually meaningful and beneficial to both Indigenous People and their partners.  

Principled Practices:

• Honor and uphold cultural sovereignty and ways of knowing. 

• Provide cultural protocols training for university staff, faculty, and students to ensure that they understand and honor the cultural practices and traditions of the communities they engage with. This training should be developed and delivered in partnership with members of these communities and supplement what is offered by the Governor’s office. 

• Ensure that communities retain ownership and control over any data or research findings that pertain to them. This includes establishing clear agreements about data usage, storage, and access, honoring their rights to their own knowledge and information.  

• Review and revise institutional language and terminology to remove colonial biases and reflect the values of cultural sovereignty. This might involve changing the names of buildings, programs, or initiatives to reflect Indigenous or culturally significant names and concepts. 
  

Transformative

To reflect the diversity of people, places, and members of our community, UW’s collaborations and partnerships should span disciplines and sectors and be focused inside and outside the university to support the creation of knowledge and action for the betterment of all communities. This work includes transformational scholarship, teaching, and learning that inspires students, faculty, staff, and communities to deepen their capacity as caring and engaged leaders that help harness and mobilize knowledge and action promoting well-being locally and globally.  

 UW values all voices and lived experiences (faculty, staff, students, and community members) in shaping community engagement and commits to fostering practices of recognition and celebration for community-engaged work. Acknowledging these endeavors strengthens our community bonds, elevates community members’ wisdom and efforts, and encourages continued dedication to community engagement. 

Principled Practices:

• Encourage disciplines from across the university to take part in CE opportunities and activities by providing interdisciplinary funding opportunities to support the work. 

• Increase opportunities for students to have experiences in and out of the classroom through practical and memorable application of their learning. 

• Award and recognize faculty who practice community engaged scholarship through promotion and tenure. 

• During university events, meetings, and ceremonies, make it a practice to publicly acknowledge the contributions of community partners. Examples include special mentions, awards, or dedicated time during events to highlight the collaborative work between the university and the community. 

• Organize exhibitions, showcases, and celebrations on and off campus that highlight community-engaged projects. These opportunities will feature the work of faculty, students, and community members, and serve as a public space for dialogue, learning, and celebration of the community’s wisdom and efforts. These events may include cultural performances, shared meals, and opportunities for informal networking and relationship-building. 

• Regularly feature community-engaged work in university communications, including newsletters, press releases, website highlights, and annual reports. Highlighting this work in official communications underscores the university’s commitment to community engagement and recognizes the contributions of all involved. 

Longevity and Trust 

The University endeavors to approach and participate in community partnerships with integrity, supporting sustainable, long-lasting relationships. Our community engagement efforts will be future-oriented, considering both the current and future needs of people and the planet. Building trust will be prioritized by honoring the strengths, ways of knowing, lived experiences, perspectives, and contributions of all partners, and establishing clear shared expectations. The university will be responsive to partners’ time and place needs and will facilitate clear, accessible, and timely communication. The University must begin relationships by acknowledging past harms and work collectively to repair and rebuild in meaningful ways.  

Principled Practices:

• Invest in building long-term capacity of community partners through our collaborations. 

• Increase support for university members’ capacity to allow for multiple touch points with the community, to facilitate repeat interactions and relationship building. It is through the longevity of relationships that we build trust. 

• Incorporate succession planning into community engagement strategies to ensure continuity of relationships even when key individuals (e.g., faculty, staff, or community leaders) transition out of their roles. This could involve mentoring programs, knowledge transfer processes, and the establishment of institutional memory through documentation. 

• Establish long-term partnership agreements with community organizations that outline shared goals, responsibilities, and expectations. These agreements should be designed to support sustained collaboration over multiple years, ensuring that the partnership can evolve and grow to meet changing community needs. 

• Establish and maintain active and resourced community advisory boards to guide and support university-community relationships. These boards can help ensure that the university’s engagement efforts remain aligned with the long-term goals and priorities of the community. 

• Begin all new partnerships by openly acknowledging any past harms or negative impacts the university had on the community. This process should include listening to community members’ perspectives, apologizing where necessary, and making a commitment to do better moving forward. 

• Establish clear, transparent, and consistent communication channels between the university and community partners. This includes regular updates, opportunities for feedback, and open dialogue about challenges and successes 

Assessment and Accountability

In upholding these principles, UW is committed to weaving assessment and accountability into the fabric of our initiatives. At UW, we track, recognize, and acknowledge our progress and setbacks in meeting our community engagement goals. Through systematic data collection, assessment, and evaluation, we map our efforts onto real-life examples, showcasing tangible outcomes and areas for improvement. We also understand that accountability is not just a static concept but an ongoing process that requires continuous effort and reflection.  Accountability is not confined to financial and administrative processes, instead, it is integrated into the narrative of our community engagement journey and shared contextually in documents, discussions, and gatherings. By embracing accountability as a guiding principle, UW ensures that our commitment to co-learning environments and community engagement remains steadfast and impactful. 

Principled Practices:

• Assess and be accountable to our relationships with Tribal and Indigenous communities. 

• Track and monitor accomplishment of community engagement goals through continued Carnegie Classification (Re-classification) processes by and across centers and offices of community engagement. 

• Generate an annual tri-campus report that is shared widely through multiple platforms. 

• Move away from traditional, quantitative metrics of success that often reflect dominant culture values, and instead develop new ways of evaluating community engagement that prioritize equity, community well-being, and relational outcomes. This will involve more qualitative, process-oriented, and participatory approaches to assessment. 

• Within partnerships and projects, university and community members develop shared goals and assess their progress toward the goals. This increases the accountability of all collaborators and builds trust. 

About this Definition

*in 2024 the Building Tri-Campus Capacity for Community Engagement initiative’s Priority Work Team led by Anaid Yerena, Janelle Hawes, Mark Pagano, and Layla Taylor, has worked collaboratively to outline a comprehensive vision for community engagement that aligns with UW’s DEI goals. Through this work, the University of Washington seeks to formalize a shared understanding of community engagement, ensuring that future partnerships reflect our commitment to ethical practices, accessibility, and long-term relationship building. The process of creating these definitions and principles drew on extensive input and inspiration from across the UW community, including feedback from Community of Practice (CoP) meetings, a tri-campus survey, Indigenous scholars and community members, UWT Faculty Senate, the Chancellor’s Town Hall, and several key documents such as the UW Diversity Blueprint 2022-26, UW campus strategic plans and the Okanagan Charter. Additionally, the group looked to external examples from peer institutions to shape these guidelines. We hope this language serves as a foundation for ongoing and meaningful collaboration between UW and the diverse communities we serve.