Provost’s Council for Engagement

Initiatives

The Provost’s Council for Engagement is committed to identifying, promoting and advancing engaged scholarship at CSU for the shared benefit of faculty, students and communities.

Consistent with this mission, Council members are leading specific initiatives for transformative and systemic impact in four key areas:

Telling the story

This work is focused on generating widespread awareness of the value of engagement in informing and enriching CSU’s research, teaching and service missions as a land-grant and Research 1 institution.  The Council seeks to educate and inspire both campus and community through showcasing the diverse and impactful work of CSU faculty and staff, in partnership and reciprocity with the communities they serve.

Council achievements to date include:

• Hosting CSU’s inaugural Engagement Symposium in March 2020, convening campus and community to recognize and celebrate this work, and inspire a heightened commitment to community engagement in the future
• A series of SOURCE spotlights profiling Council members, their engaged scholarship and goals for their involvement
• A series of campus forums with academic leadership to build awareness of the Council and its mission, seek input on Council activities and stimulate continued conversation and attention toward enhancing support for engaged scholarship

Rewarding the work

This work strives to identify and facilitate opportunities to better recognize and reward diverse forms of engagement, not as a separate activity but as a particular approach for achieving teaching, research and service outcomes.

Council achievements to date include:

• Strengthening of engagement-related language across Section E.12 of the Faculty Manual, including the introduction of 12.4 - Outreach and Engagement, encouraging departments to define expectations for these activities in a faculty member’s teaching, research and service effort distribution and specify standards for their assessment.
• Revision of the promotion and tenure dossier template inviting the candidate to present evidence and impact of engaged teaching, research and service during the promotion period
• The introduction of language in the Standard Offer Letter for Academic Faculty Appointments, inviting faculty to seek opportunities to engage as part of their teaching and creative activity toward fulfilling CSU’s land-grant mission
• The addition of new fields in the Digital Measures Faculty and Staff Activity System (FSAS) to enable improved understanding and self-reporting of engaged scholarship
• The launch of the CSU Community Engagement Scholarship Awards program, to be conferred annually in recognition of exemplary engaged scholarship by CSU faculty or academic staff members and their community partner(s).

The Council is continuing its efforts to ensure that engaged scholarship is accurately and comprehensively represented in institutional documents, policies and processes impacting faculty and staff activities and rewards.

Building faculty capacity

This work is focused on identifying and providing needed training, resources, services and opportunities for faculty interested in engaged scholarship.

Council achievements to date include:

• A campus climate survey of a random sample of engaged faculty and staff to establish a baseline against which to measure Council effectiveness and prioritize areas where CSU can grow and improve its support of engaged scholarship
• A focus group with university leadership and award nominees to better understand best practices and needed resources for advancing engagement at CSU
• Hosting of regular faculty and staff networking opportunities to build community among engaged scholars across campus

The Council is exploring the potential for communities of practice at the campus and college level, as well as collaborations with campus partners to develop and deliver training workshops for faculty and staff.

Measuring impact

This work supports Council missions of promoting and rewarding university engagement by identifying and defining diverse and meaningful metrics for evaluating its impact for university and community stakeholders.

In 2019, Council introduced a “Continuum of Engaged Scholarship” framework to identify the breadth of engaged research, teaching and service activities moving from outreach to co-creation, while offering a model to individual faculty and departments for documenting progress, demonstrating impact and evaluating performance.

Council representatives are sharing this model in campus- and department-level conversations aimed at improving support and rewards for engaged scholarship.