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Types of Community Engagement

What is Community Engagement?

Community engagement is a broad term for the process of creating and sustaining intentional partnerships that benefit members of the broader community while also meeting learning goals for students.

Avenues for Community Engagement

Here are examples of how students, faculty, staff, and institutions can practice community engagement:

Co-curricular service—Service projects (one-time or ongoing) that meet community needs and help students learn about direct work with a community agency or on a community issue/challenge. These projects are often conducted by individual students, residence hall floors, student organizations, or other groups of students.

Service-learning—A classroom experience that utilizes community engagement along with regular reflection to meet course goals and community needs.

Internships— An intensive dual mentorship experience involving an employment mentor who provides ongoing feedback to the student employee and a faculty mentor who provides opportunities for reflection and integration of academic work and employment experience.

Engaged research—Research that directly benefits the community by clarifying the causes of a community challenge, mapping a community’s assets, or contributing to solutions to current challenges and also fits a faculty member’s research agenda.

Institutional engagement—University resources intentionally offered without undue barriers to the community; institutional engagement ranges from library cards for the campus library to making campus events accessible to university faculty and staff choosing to use local businesses to supply services or goods needed to complete their work.

Types of Engagement

Under this model, students work directly with consumers, clients, or staff of a community agency to provide a needed service. Here are some examples:

Co-curricular service: University of Minnesota, Morris students tutor K-12 students in the after school program.
Service-learning: Students in creative writing courses plan and implement activities for elders and record their words in the form of found poetry to capture memories, stories, and insights for their loved ones.
Internship: An education student implements curricula in a summer program for at-risk youth.
Engaged research: A faculty member in creative writing conducts community writing workshops and, with permission and IRB approval, uses those workshops as the basis for a study on found poetry as a tool to teach poetic line breaks and titles.
Institutional engagement: Parking for on-campus events is free of charge.

Under this model, students create a product for a community agency or its consumers, clients, or staff. Here are some examples:

Co-curricular service: A student volunteers to create a brochure for the Morris Senior Center.
Service-learning: A communications, media and rhetoric class produces a series of videos about historic figures in Stevens County for a display at the Stevens County Historical Society .
Internship: A computer science major creates several databases for the Land Stewardship project and trains the staff to use them.>
Engaged research: A faculty member in sociology provides Stevens County Human Services with an annotated bibliography of sources related to immigration services in rural communities. She uses this annotated bibliography as background research for a study she is conducting.
Institutional engagement: University library cards are provided to community members free of charge..

Under this model, students conduct research to assess or meet community needs. Here are some examples:

Co-curricular service: A student organization interviews gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender (GLBT) students to record their stories of treatment by medical personnel.
Service-learning: Economics students conduct a survey for the City of Benson to determine why people leave town to go shopping and what non-existent retail options or other changes would keep people in town.
Internship: A student interviews Spanish-speaking clients of the local hospital to determine how well their medical needs are being met locally.
Engaged research: A psychology professor completes a study conducted in a multicultural psychology class about attitudes of parents toward diversity issues; she writes a report for the school, as requested, but also uses the survey data in a study for an academic journal.
Institutional engagement: After completing a study about the best placement for a second campus wind turbine, the community is invited to a forum to learn about the research and weigh in .

Under this model, students bring together community members to dialogue about community issues or build greater understanding of each other. Here are a few examples:

Co-curricular service: A student plans a free community meal to bring together campus and community .
Service-learning: Students in a psychology course plan a series of dialogues with community elders, and then plan a celebratory intergenerational event at the end of the semester.
Internship: A student plans a series of dialogues about gender issues at the local library as an internship project for her sociology course.
Engaged research: Faculty share results of their research (in laypersons’ terms) in forums at the Morris Senior Center.
Institutional engagement: Senior art students’ achievements are celebrated at the local arts center (as well as on campus) during graduation in order to draw more guests to retail shops downtown.

Under this model, students research and write curricula to educate particular community members about social issues or needed skills. Here are some examples:

Co-curricular service: A student volunteers to assist with the adult English as a Second Language (ESL) program at Morris Area Schools Community Education.
Service-learning: A political science class presents Kids Voting curriculum to K-12 students in local schools to teach about the importance and process of voting.
Internship: An education student writes a training manual for tutors at an after-school program.
Engaged research: A faculty member in education provides tutoring services for at-risk K-3 readers, assesses the results of her methods, and writes an academic article on the project.
Institutional engagement: Courses are routinely offered at low cost to community members who are not degree seeking when seats are available.

Under this model, students engage in assessing and developing ideas for developing the community in ways that are inclusive and sustainable. Here are some examples:

Co-curricular service: Students living in the residence halls plan a food drive for the Stevens County Food Shelf.
Service-learning: Economics students conduct a survey for the City of Benson to determine why people leave town to go shopping and what non-existent retail options or other changes would keep people in town.
Service-learning course: About barriers to implementing environmentally friendly household habits.
Engaged research: A faculty member conducts a study of people who are dealing with housing crises in the region to determine how community leaders can find a solution.
Institutional engagement: The Morris campus has a policy to buy as many products and services as possible from businesses within a 100 mile radius, and to purchase outside that radius only if the cost is twiceu as much or the product is not available regional.

Under this model, students organize to respond to a community issue. Here are some examples:

Co-curricular service: Students concerned about renters’ rights prepare a motion for a city council meeting.
Service-learning: A student in an interdisciplinary course focused on radical education theory plans a dialogue to determine best ways to address housing issues in Morris.
Internship: A student interns with Camp Wellstone, an agency focused on community organizing.
Engaged research: A faculty member involved in a local human rights issue brings her research skills to the Morris Human Rights Commission and provides a context for local hate crimes.
Institutional engagement: The Morris campus provides awards for student activists.