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, competency-based 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 SocietyCreating 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 TomorrowThe 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

ReciprocityEnhances community capacityEnhances student learning and/or research

studiesKnowledge exchange relationship

2-way, co-creationValued 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

• 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 EducateWhat 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 scholarshipChanging Faculty Roles and

Responsibilities20th 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 GoalsPreparation and mastery of relevant knowledge

and scholarshipAppropriate methodologiesSignificance of resultsEffective dissemination and communication

through appropriate channelsConsistently ethical conduct

Glassick et al (1997) Scholarship Assessed

The Nature of KnowledgeThe 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 ProblemsThe 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 CommunityNew 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 andresilient. 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