Connections to Society: Creating a Shared
Future
Utah Faculty Development Institute 2014
Where are we are headed?
• The context of higher education is changing
• The culture of higher education is also changing
• Responding to changing societal needs and
expectations: The nature and role of engagement
• To educate our students
• To enhance the impact of scholarship
• To respond to Wicked Problems
• To build healthier communities
The Context of Higher Education is Changing
• What will be expected of our graduates and how
we must prepare them for life and work.
• Patterns of participation and success
• demographic shifts
• Production and use of knowledge
• Interactions across disciplines
• Impact of technology
• Transitions in the professoriate and in leadership
throughout.
How society is responding to these pressures
• Government: Policies to increase completion
rates, reduce time to degree, improve ease of
transfer
• Traditional IHE: Increased attention to
educational outcomes, student success and
assessments, partnerships, new pedagogies,
improving remedial/developmental education
• New Providers: online delivery, competencybased degree options, expansion of for-profits in
niche markets, online badges to document skills.
Connections to Society: Creating Shared Futures
• What issues are you and your institution facing and how
are you responding to those challenges and opportunities?
• What is your blend of curriculum and pedagogy, forms of
scholarship, collaborations internal and external?
 Local
 Regional or statewide
 National
 International
Connections to Society
Creating Shared Futures
“Organizations and their environments are engaged in a
pattern of co-creation, where each produces the other.”
“Organizations are very much products of visions, ideas,
norms and beliefs” and “are made through the actions of
the individuals, groups and units that populate them.”
Gareth Morgan (1998) Images of Organization. The
Executive Edition. Sage Publications
Today is Already Tomorrow
The Culture of the Academy is changing
• We have entered a decade of major change in academic
culture, values, priorities, methods and operations.
• The choices we make now will influence our capacity to
contribute to the quality of life in our towns and cities, our
states, our nation and the world for many decades to
come.
• To play our role in shaping the future, we will depend
more and more upon collaboration and resource
sharing and the co-creation of knowledge.
• That means engaged scholarship, learning and
teaching will be a component of every institutional
portfolio but its role will vary.
One Answer is Engagement.
What was the Question?
The Question is: How can we best respond to
changing societal needs and expectations?
• Academic structure and new approaches to
faculty work
• New approaches to the curriculum and the
student experience
• Capacity for integration, coherence, collaboration
• Support structures and technical assistance
• Community partnerships of various kinds
• New forms of accountability and analysis of
impact: social returns, economic returns
What is community engagement?
Community Engagement is a method, a way of
doing teaching, learning and research that draws upon
the knowledge, experiences and interests of both the
internal campus community and the broader
community outside academia.
Working together, campus and community members
exchange knowledge, answer critical questions and
apply their learning to a range of significant problems
and opportunities both on campus and beyond.
The Carnegie Definition
Community engagement is the
“collaboration (among) institutions of higher
education and their larger communities
(local, regional/state, national, global) for the
mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge
and resources in a context of partnership and
reciprocity.”
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
What is Civic Engagement?
Community Engagement – the overarching
term encompassing all aspects of an
institutional agenda of interaction with
communities
Civic Engagement – A specific form of
Community Engagement that focuses on the
development of civic and social responsibility
in students and the civic actions and roles of
the institution
Defining Features of Community
Engagement
Partnership (work “with” communities)
Mutually beneficial outcomes
Addresses a community-identified need
Through an intellectual activity of importance
Reciprocity
Enhances community capacity
Enhances student learning and/or research studies
Knowledge exchange relationship
2-way, co-creation
Valued deliverables for the academy and for the
community
Especially Tricky Terms
Mutually beneficial means all parties have
articulated expected benefits and understand
and support the expected benefits sought by
others.
Reciprocity speaks to a sense of “fairness” in
the exchange of knowledge, level of effort and
involvement in the work, assumption of risks
and benefits, interpretation of outcomes and
use of the knowledge gained.
Engagement comes in many forms.
For instance…
Engaged Teaching and Learning
-community-based learning
-service learning
-global learning
-civic learning
Engaged Research/Scholarship
-community-based research
-public issue research
-translational research
-interdisciplinary research
A culture of engagement is becoming an
essential approach to building resilience
• To enhance our relevance and connections to
large societal issues
• To educate our students
• To create capacity to find workable solutions to
local and global problems
• To gain access to critical resources for learning
and knowledge production
• To thrive in a changing environment
Core concepts of engagement
•
•
•
•
•
•
Who names the problems/asks questions?
Who identifies and evaluates options?
Who shares resources to advance the work?
Who cares about the choices made?
Who bears the risk and who enjoys the benefits?
Who interprets the results and defines success?
What does a culture of engagement look like?
• Innovative and relevant educational programs, research
and information resources that draw on the region.
• New academic structures and approaches to faculty and
student work.
• Scholarship that arises from and contributes to efforts to
promote human well-being in a healthy environment.
• Partnerships that address social, economic and
environmental issues at home and abroad ranging from single
studies and projects to long-term collaborations, depending on
the focus and goals of the relationships.
What does a culture of engagement look like?
• Integration of efforts across the institution and a focus on
integration, coherence and progressively more challenging
expectations and assignments.
• Culture of engagement throughout the university with
recognition, support structures and technical assistance.
• Resources to invest in the future through engagement with
people throughout the local community, the state, the region
and beyond, as appropriate to mission.
Applications of Engagement
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•
•
•
To educate our students
To enhance the impact of scholarship
To respond to Wicked Problems
To build healthier communities
To Educate
• How can we align educational outcomes, practices and
policies with the demands of today’s world?
• What key areas of skill and knowledge should all
students develop in college?
• What can we expect of a college graduate at each
degree level, AA, BA/BS/MA/MS?
To Educate
What should students aim to achieve in their major at
each degree level?
• How do we know what our students are learning and
how can students demonstrate their achievements?
• What can we do to facilitate transfer and mobility
while ensuring increasing achievement at each stage of
an education?
….while preparing our students to deal with
real-world problems?
To enhance the impact of scholarship
Changing Faculty Roles and Responsibilities
20th century: One standard/measure of faculty
performance (grants, publications) and one measure of
student achievement (mastery of content)
21st century: One standard framework for measuring
faculty intellectual quality and impact of diverse work
and new approaches to what we expect of a college
graduate, all based on diversity of skills, interests,
ambitions and backgrounds with a strong emphasis on
diversity, equity and inclusion.
adapted from Holland 2014
We are becoming more integrated in our
approach to learning and scholarship
• Research is more collaborative and networked
because of the broad distribution of knowledge
and data
• Universities are increasing their collaboration
across disciplines and professional fields and
building infrastructure to support these working
relationships
Indicators of Quality for All Scholarly Work
Clear Goals
Preparation and mastery of relevant knowledge and
scholarship
Appropriate methodologies
Significance of results
Effective dissemination and communication through
appropriate channels
Consistently ethical conduct
Glassick et al (1997) Scholarship Assessed
The Nature of Knowledge
The Growth of Hyper-complexity
“Since the time of Democritus, scientists have been busy
dividing reality into increasingly smaller bits, leaving us
today with atoms and quarks, proteins and genes…But the
simplest legacy of this history of division is an exponential
explosion of combinatorial possibilities. For as the list of
constituent parts has multiplied, so too have their possible
interactions, making the boundaries drawn around
scientific disciplines increasingly porous.”
Michael Segal, Nautilus, February 2014,
Mergers and Acquisitions
To respond to Wicked Problems
 The problem involves many stakeholders with
different values and priorities.
 The issue’s roots are complex and tangled.
 The problem is difficult to come to grips with
and changes with every attempt to address it.
 No one knows how to solve the problem and
there is nothing to indicate the right answer.
 Every wicked problem is a symptom of
another difficult problem.
from Camillus 2008, HBR
Responding to Millennial Problems
• Research is more collaborative and networked because of
the broad distribution of knowledge and data
• Universities are increasing their collaboration across
disciplines and other sources of expertise and building
infrastructure to support these working relationships
• Linking learning, research and engagement increases
knowledge production, and attracts diverse sources of
funding support
• Students must learn how to live and work in a world of
hyper-complexity.
adapted from Barbara Holland, 2012
The Changing University Community
New Behaviors in the Face of Complexity
• Learning differently
• Working together differently
• Defining success and measuring
outcomes differently
• Drawing on different perspectives to
address WICKED PROBLEMS
To build healthier communities
A sustainable community is economically
environmentally and socially healthy and
resilient. An engaged citizenry meets challenge
through integrated solutions rather than
fragmented approaches that meet one of these
goals at the expense of others while taking a
long-term perspective focused well beyond the
current budget or election cycle.
Institute for Sustainable Communities, Montpelier, VT
So, You Want to Get Engaged.
Now What?
 Explore the campus, community and state
context. What are the challenging questions?
 Align your ideas with campus and community
priorities and concerns.
 Build Your Plan: Select a good first project.
 Identify Allies and Resources.
 Remember that change is a scholarly act.
 Create a compelling narrative/story backed
up by evidence.
Getting Started
What issue will you choose as a vehicle for
promoting a culture of engagement?
• To educate your students
• To enhance the impact of scholarship
• To respond to Wicked Problems both local
and global
• To build healthier communities
• Some combination of these?
Creating a Culture of Engagement:
Words to the Wise
 Most of the time, institutional leaders are thinking about
what to do, rather than how to do it.
 Fostering a culture of engagement requires significant
institutional change. Be patient.
 At the end of the day, the personal, political and culture
aspects of change in your own context will make or break
your efforts.
 Think like a Master Gardener: Only select items from the
catalog of choices that will grow in your campus climate. Be
sure the soil is suitable for what you want to grow. Amend
the soil as needed and take your time.
 Don’t worry if some of your efforts do not thrive. You may
learn more from those efforts than from a smooth success.
Keep in mind that, in the end…
Engaged Universities are more likely to thrive!
• Focused mix of interdisciplinary expertise
• Extensive and collaborative knowledge
partnerships with other universities, sectors,
communities, nations
• Involvement in community-based
research/teaching methods – engagement with
“the Big Questions” and “Wicked Questions”
Keep in mind that, in the end…
Engaged Universities are more likely to thrive!
• Educational success among a socially inclusive
student population
• Innovative (technology-based and experiential)
teaching methods that enhance student learning
and completion
• Excellence is created by the measurable impact of
the above actions on quality of local and global
life, culture, health, economic stability, and
environment
Judith A. Ramaley
jramaley@pdx.edu