Community Insights
Learning about the stories of our Colorado communities.
In the Office of Engagement and Extension, we work in partnership with individuals, communities, organizations, policymakers and many others to enable the co-creation of solutions to needs in our Colorado communities. We start with learning.
Public Officials Survey
One way we learn is to invite state and local public officials to provide insight on awareness of CSU’s programs across the state, Extension offerings and changing community needs and opportunities. We use these insights to inform our planning processes and to gather feedback on our progress.
Community Needs Assessment
In 2020, CSU Extension embarked on a statewide Community Needs Assessment process to understand changing community needs and to learn about the story of our communities. Working with stakeholders across Colorado’s counties, our local CSU Extension offices guided a process introducing new insights and learnings in addition to including a broad review of existing data.
Our Community Needs Assessment process consisted of four main elements:
- A perception survey to gauge familiarity with off-campus OEE services, the unique values we add, ways we can enhance our services and barriers to access.
- Secondary data analysis that utilized demographic and economic information as well as other existing data to identify needs and potential partners and informants.
- Key informant data collected through interviews and focus groups to gather qualitative insights on needs and how to address them.
- A community needs assessment (CNA) survey that measured the breadth of needs across a diverse array of respondents.
We continue to use this understanding of needs to work with community partners to co-create program plans and inform regional and statewide program priorities that are central to the needs of Colorado.
