Outreach and Engagement

Welcome to the Outreach and Engagement CoP!

Outreach and engagement is the mutual exchange of intellectual resources and expertise between the university and its much broader external community of government agencies, businesses, nonprofit organizations, community groups, and individuals. This Community of Practice convenes individuals who are interested in exploring and considering the applicability of the concepts of outreach and engagement to their institutional environments.

Sharing the new knowledge generated by this Community conversation in meaningful ways is a key function of this COP.

Benefits of participation

Explore why O&E is critically important to the academic and financial success of continuing educators through new, collaborative relationships with external entities and new products and services
Develop a better understanding of outreach and its importance to overall institutional success through demonstrating value to communities
Help develop the evolving conversation on engagement
Clarify a practical, operational definition of O&E, i.e., what are faculty doing when they are working on O&E projects?
Capitalize on linkages with other national O&E efforts
Identify how to reward faculty for their participation in O&E activities
Explore the role of scholarship in O&E activities and how this can help to re-position the continuing education function

Opportunities for involvement

Participate in the Outreach and Engagement CoP listserve.
Develop and present a session on key issues in Outreach and Engagement for the UCEA Annual Conference or for a regional conference.
Serve as a member on the executive committee.
Annual Outreach Scholarship Conference (sponsored by Penn State, Ohio State, and the University of Wisconsin)

Outreach & Engagement CoP Documents

CoP Status Report: Spring 2003 (PDF)
Original Proposal to Create Outreach and Engagement CoP (PDF)
Transcripts of recent on-line discussions conducted by the Outreach and Engagement CoP:
- The Evolving Conferencing Business: Technology and Face-to-Face Learning (PDF file) (Speaker: Wayne Smutz)
- Creating a Culture to Support Outreach and Engagement: Defining and Operationalizing Outreach and Engagement (PDF) (Speaker: Ted Settle)
- UCEA's Outreach and Engagement Community of Practice (PDF file) (Speaker: Bobby Moser)

The Outreach and Engagement Community of Practice has created a Knowledge Bank of Internet resources of interest to professionals in this field. The Knowledge Bank includes sections on Partners in Change (through Outreach and Engagement), Delivery Systems, Program Support Systems, and Scholarship, and will be updated on a regular basis.

Members of this Community are concerned with:

Mutual exchange of intellectual resources and expertise between the university and the broader external community of government agencies, business, non-profit organizations, community groups, and individuals.
The role of partnerships: who delivers the services? how are faculty, staff and students engaged and committed to this work? how can faculty and staff participation be evaluated and rewarded?
Organizing an institutional agenda related with outreach and engagement and determining the associated set of products and services

For further information on this CoP, please contact Burton Bargerstock, chair of the Outreach and Engagement Community of Practice, at bargerst@msu.edu

For information concerning membership in UCEA, please contact Cyrus Homayounpour, Director of Membership, at 202.659.3130 or cyrus@ucea.edu.