Engaged Departments

To build and strengthen our communities as well as reinvigorate student learning to serve a public purpose, we must focus on engaging departments. There are two components of this: (a) establishing common goals within the department, and (b) effectively communicating these goals and the purpose of these goals with students and community partners.

The following article and rubric, developed by Kevin Kecskes, are useful to assessing the institutionalization of community engagement in academic departments: 

Kecskes, K. (2008). Creating community-engaged departments: Self-assessment rubric for the institutionalization of community engagement in academic departments. 

Howe, C. W., DePasquale, K., Hamshaw, K., & Westdijk, K. (2010). Committing to community engagement: The engaged department initiative in northern New England. New Hampshire and Vermont Campus Compacts. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Campus Compact has also curated a list of resources around building engaged departments.

Engaged department/unit program initiatives at other universities include:

• Duquesne University
• University of Minnesota
• University of New Mexico