The Community Engagement landscape: initial results from the Carnegie Community Engaged University self-study
VCU was one of the first universities in the nation to receive the Carnegie Community Engaged University Classification in 2005, and one of very few R1 institutions. We earned reclassification in 2015, and are in the midst of reclassifying for the designation now. One of the reasons we do this is to keep growing – to assess how far we’ve come, what we have to be proud of, and where and how we want to grow.
As we have shown in our last blogpost, community engagement is in our DNA. But that’s not enough. We must show it in our policies and procedures and our assessment of our work. And that is what Carnegie is helping us do. From our Carnegie assessment efforts, we have learned that community engagement is indeed a critical element of student learning, that our community reach is wide, that we have evolved to a broadly shared understanding of what community engagement means. We have essential growth areas related to systematic assessment processes.
Community Engagement and student learning
As part of our Carnegie self-study, we surveyed academic Colleges, Schools, Departments, Centers, and Institutes. We learned that community engagement is integrated in all these units, albeit in different ways, reflecting the different needs of different disciplines and student career trajectories. However, all share the common goal of advancing student learning. Here is what the data showed us in terms of how our units integrate community engagement in different ways.
Clearly, our focus on transformative learning advances, and is advanced by, our commitment to community engagement.
Partnership reach
Our survey collected partnership examples across all our units. You can see both a powerful impact on Richmond but also how that impact is spreading to our region, our state and beyond. We also know that while the survey identified many partnerships, it may have missed many others.
A common understanding
Also as part of our Carnegie effort, we surveyed both VCU and community partners as to what they think about when they hear the words community engagement. The word cloud captures a common understanding across campus and community of the core values of community engagement which includes partnership, mutual benefit, supporting community needs, and relationship building.
Fostering growth
The Carnegie process also indicates our gaps and areas where we have opportunities for growth. One of those gaps is monitoring and assessment. As a result of our work as well as insights gained from other lessons learned, we are launching Collaboratory, a partnership database designed that will help VCU understand the landscape of our engagement and impact.
Join us to learn more
We will be discussing what we have learned from the Carnegie process and introducing Collaboratory at a Town Hall Meeting on October 3, 2024. Register here to join us.