There has been a rapid growth of scientific knowledge within the field of social work, which has
led to a remarkable increase in specialization and evidence-based interventions for specific
conditions. This explosion of specialized knowledge has created challenges in knowledge
dissemination and communication between researchers and the end users of the knowledge they
generate.
Given these realities, the School has identified four paramount challenges:
1. The need to generate solutions to pressing social problems facing the many communities
served by the University, and, in particular, the most disadvantaged
2. The need to infuse research-generated knowledge into the MSW curriculum
3. The need to quickly transmit knowledge into forms and formats that are available and
relevant to students, consumers, practitioners, and other stakeholders
4. The need to create more effective and far-reaching processes for dialogue and feedback
from students, consumers, practitioners, and other stakeholders in order to generate and
disseminate new knowledge that truly meets stakeholders’ needs
In response to these challenges, the School proposes a new interpretation of the traditional
mandates of scholarship, teaching, and service as an alternative project for CSWE reaffirmation.
Called Engaged Scholarship—a 360 Degree Approach, the approach blends community engaged
scholarship with the idea of 360 degree feedback loops. This innovative project is grounded in a
model that captures the essential functions of a school of social work: community collaboration,
research and dissemination, and cutting-edge classroom content. In the initiative we propose
formalized structures to encourage our faculty to develop ongoing collaboration with
communities, engaging in a dialogue that both shares knowledge and raises questions for
ongoing research. A second part of the model requires faculty to also focus back to the school
(completing the 360 degrees), sharing new knowledge in the classroom so that our students can
immediately benefit from and engage in dialogue regarding faculty community-based research.
Thus our research is grounded in the needs of communities, our findings inform both the
community and the classroom, and the dialogue raises new questions and challenges for our
research agendas.
Here we provide other schools of social work with a 360 degree engaged scholarship toolkit.
This includes our full proposal, as well as materials and templates we have found useful in our
360 degree engaged scholarship process. Our hope is that other schools will find this toolkit
useful, and be able to use and adapt the materials as they move forward in efforts to engage with
communities, infuse research findings into the classroom and the practitioner community, and
work in collaboration with others to address the large social problems of our time.