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Community Engagement Database

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User's Guide

Explore and learn more about SLCC's many community engagement projects and partnerships.

As part of the College's ongoing effort to better coordinate and leverage our community engagement work, connect internal and external communities, and tell our story, the College is creating a central community engagement database.

At its most basic, the engagement database is a tool for faculty, students, and external communities to become more informed about Salt Lake Community College's engaged research, programs, projects, and initiatives taking place. The hope is that the database will encourage us to connect with each other and share resources and information that will help deepen engagement and meet college and community needs.

What are some reasons Colleges build an engagement database?

General goals of a database include:

  • Identify what, where, why, how, and who of engagement
  • Promote quality practices and strengthening of engagement
  • Discover areas of similar work or partnerships
  • Encourage focused/strategic activities
  • Promote collaboration across projects
  • Engage and recognize partners
  • Identify resource needs or benefits of investment
  • Avoid duplication of efforts
  • Enable institution planning, support, and resourcing of individual programs and projects
  • Provide written documentation and visual images of our engagement for internal and external communities

Depending on your role in the College, you might have more specific uses for the database. For example:

  • Administration and Staff
    • Identify where we are engaged, patterns of engagement, areas that need coordination, and gaps
    • Promote SLCC's profile as an engaged institution in recruitment of students, faculty, staff, and community and thought leaders
    • Maintain accurate data on community engagement and public service activities
    • Provide evidence of community engagement to support award and grant applications and internal and external reporting
    • Identify leaders of community engagement at the College and key partners in the community
    • Coordinate and leverage current work
  • Faculty Members
    • Utilize a simple, straightforward process to document and present scholarly artifacts of community-engaged teaching and research
    • Easily collect and share community engagement and public service activities in one place
    • Document community-focused activities and courses for promotion and tenure
    • Connect with and learn from faculty and staff doing similar work or working with the same partner
  • Community Members
    • Find higher education faculty and staff, experienced in specific disciplines and impact areas
    • Be identified with the institution for collaborative projects, sharing related data with your funders, board and clients
  • Students
    • Find faculty or staff mentors focused on your area of interest
    • Find examples of engaged scholarship
    • Better understand priorities of College in the community by seeing what the College does
  • Department Administration
    • Document the full scope of service-learning and other community-based courses across your College/School
    • Quickly review and run aggregate reports on the public service and community engagement activities of your faculty and staff
    • Use data to promote the reputation/ranking of SLCC amongst prospective students and faculty/staff as well as academic colleagues
  • Advancement/Development
    • Use data to match internal initiatives with interests of donors and alumni
    • Leverage data for strategic messaging and communications to reinforce key institutional messages
    • Demonstrate the growing value of the institution and its alignment with alumni goals, values, and interests

What are we collecting?

Community engagement looks different across the College, ranging from free community trainings to deep and longstanding partnerships between College departments and community groups. Not every engagement meets the high bar of "transformative education" identified in our vision. Yet, it is our goal that the combined result of our efforts is transformational for both the community and College.

FAQ

 

At its most basic, the SLCC Community Engagement Database is a tool for faculty, students, and the surrounding community to become more informed about SLCC community engaged research, programs, and initiatives taking place. The Database is designed to encourage users to connect with each other to share resources and information that will help deepen engagement and meet college and community need.

Any time you start a reciprocal project/initiative/program in the community, please take a few minutes to enter details into the SLCC Community Engagement Database.

SLCC staff and faculty: The database is designed to foster a closer, more collaborative approach to planning engagement and avoid duplication of effort. The tool allows faculty and staff to document their activities, see other projects, and explore opportunities to mutually strengthen our engagement plans. You can use the database to connect with colleagues and community members, share resources and information, and identify areas of growth that will help to improve student experience and our collective wellbeing.

SLCC administrators: Administrators can use the database to understand how their departments are engaged, celebrate faculty and staff who work with the community, and build collaborations with other divisions doing similar work or working with similar areas and populations.

Community members and organizations: The database allows community members to see what type of work we are doing where and helps them identify different opportunities for collaboration with the college.

Anyone can access the database at any time without logging in. You can use the search bar or click on the link to view full list of engagements; both are located on the home page. You can narrow your search to only active engagements and/or by using other characteristics, including issue area, location, and engagement type.

If you are SLCC faculty and staff and want to access your account page or enter a new initiative, you will be required to log in with your SLCC username and password.

SLCC faculty and staff can access the system from anywhere, on or off-campus.

No! In fact, you should only log in if you are entering a new initiative, finishing an unsubmitted initiative, or if you would like to access your account page. Otherwise, all basic information is available to you without logging in.

When you login to the database, click “Create New Engagement.” From there, follow the prompts on the form.

No. All engagements/initiatives/projects should be entered by the lead on the engagement. The SLCC lead can and should include the name and information of other SLCC staff and faculty working on the engagement/initiative/project.

Administrative staff can enter in the information for a dean, provost, etc. Please mark them as the lead on the section marked Salt Lake Community College staff and faculty that are involved in this community engagement.

Unfortunately, you are unable to edit the form once it is approved and posted. If you would like to edit information, please call the Office of Community Relations or email communityrelations@slcc.edu

The hope is that this takes no more than 10 minutes to fill out. We didn’t ask for a whole lot of detail with the goal of making this easy. If you would like to add additional information that is not requested, please include that information in the section called “Misc. Info.”

Public users can see all basic information about the initiative. In fact, if you are doing a search to see what else is out there, you don’t need to login! There are two sections that are only visible to SLCC staff and faculty who are logged in to the database: funders and sponsor information and other notes. Additionally, the section total cost of the project is only visible to the database manager.

Any Time! Please enter information anytime you start a project with community partners, if you are about to start a project with community partners, if you finished a project and it hasn’t been entered into the database yet.

You only need to enter information one time for each project.

Every year in September, we will send an email to you to confirm the project is still active or it has been completed. You can also update any information if needed.

We want to know about what you do with our communities. That means we want to know about ALMOST every type of engagement with our community.

Include information if you, for example:

  • Regularly attend meetings with community members
  • Teach a service-learning course
  • Run an internship program
  • Manage an apprenticeship
  • Give an off-campus lecture
  • Host a community group event on campus
  • Run an on-campus college-community advisory group
  • Host a conference
  • Teach a free workshop

We want to know about:

  • Concurrent enrollment
  • Camps
  • Public lectures
  • White papers
  • Community participatory research

This isn’t the right place to document:

  • Participation in a coalition in your personal capacity (not as a representative of SLCC)
  • Use of community engagement leave (the Thayne Center will record organized Days of Service, but staff community engagement leave hours are collected in our time sheets)
  • Admissions events (those events are collected by the Admissions office)
  • An event organized solely for the benefit of our students, faculty, and staff and no community members were involved in the design or attended the event
  • An event where community members are charged the full amount needed to cover costs
  • A one-time meeting with a community member
  • A campus tour or lunch meeting (Keep building that relationship!)

It is important that we have a mutual understanding of terms used in community engagement work and this database. You can find a link to a list of operational definitions of community engagement terms on the home page of the community engagement database.

If you know the month and the year the engagement started, use the first day of the month (06/01/2022).

If you know the year that the engagement started, use the first day of the first month of the year (01/01/2022).

If an engagement doesn’t occur at a regular interval, please select the recurrance based on how often the engagement occurs. For example, if the engagement occurs 8 of the 12 months of the year, select “Monthly” in the box labeled “Recurrance” on the form. Below the box labeled “Engagement Description” you will see boxes labeled “Days per Month” and “Months per year.” In these boxes you can enter in how many days and months the engagement occurs each year. In this example the engagement happens one day a month, eight times per year. Enter in 1 in “Days per Month” and 8 in “Months per Year” and select “Monthly” in the Recurrance box. This will allow database users to know the event happens one day each month, 8 months of the year.

It doesn’t mean we aren’t working with you; it just means that the SLCC faculty or staff member hasn’t yet put the engagement in the database. Please encourage the lead SLCC staff or faculty member to put your partnership in the database. Your partnership is important to us!

Under location type in Online Courses at Salt Lake Community College and select it as the location. Under Engagement Type select Virtual/Online Event. You can also use the Additional Information section to add more details or explanations as you see fit.

You can always call (801-957-9452 or 801-957-3843) or email (communityrelations@slcc.edu) the Office of Community Relations. We will do our best to help answer any questions.

Operational Definitions for Community Engagement

 

Civic Engagement involves working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the knowledge, skills, values, and motivations to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. (Ehrlich, 2000)
Community is a broad term used to define groups of people external to campus, whether they are stakeholders, interest groups, or citizen groups. A community may be a geographic location (community of place), a community of similar interest (community of practice), or a community of affiliation or identity. Communities can, therefore, be geographical, cultural, linguistic, religious, generational, national, social, economic, or professional. (Penn State Department of Agricultural Sciences)

Community Engagement is, at its best, made up of reciprocal collaborations with local, regional, national, and global communities for the purpose of a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources. College-community partnerships enrich scholarship, research and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good by effecting positive change in the civic and cultural life of our communities.

Engagement entails: (a) purposeful collaboration of the college with the communities external to the college; and (b) mutual benefits from such collaboration.

Community engagement is a term that can be used to encompass a broad category of specific forms of engagement. Examples of specific engagement activities include, but are not limited to, community-based research, clinic services, board membership, and service-learning.

Community-Engaged Economic Development initiatives are designed with community and business leaders to revitalize communities, develop, and rehabilitate affordable housing, promote sustainability, attract investments, build wealth, encourage entrepreneurship, and create jobs. (* adapted from Community Action Partnership)
Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning is a pedagogical approach that connects the university and community in the broadening and sharing of knowledge to deepen academic and civic learning. Community-engaged teaching and learning integrates service in the academic curriculum in order to experientially teach course content and active citizenship skills. This term is often used interchangeably with service-learning. (Marquette University)
Community-Based Research is a participatory and action research methodology. It is a collaborative process between the researcher and community partner that creates and disseminates knowledge and creative expression with the goal of contributing to the discipline and strengthening the well-being of the community. Community-based research identifies the assets of all stakeholders and incorporates them in the design and conduct of the different phases of the research process. (Marquette University)
Community Partners are individuals and/or entities within the community that accurately represent its interests, needs, and/or concerns because they are knowledgeable and empowered to represent the community. (Sadler, L. S., Updegrove, S., Bouregy, S., Breny-Bontempi, J., D'Agostino, G., Dickey-Saucier, L., … (2009) )
Community Service is often unidirectional application and provision of institutional resources, knowledge, or services that directly benefits community individuals, groups, organizations, and/or the public in general. Examples include benefit concerts, student volunteers, public lectures, or health fairs. (Marquette University, Janke & Clayton, 2012)
Engaged Scholarship is the co-creation of knowledge that shifts the position of students and community groups from knowledge consumers to knowledge producers and partners in problem- solving. Engaged scholarship is the generation of new knowledge through the combining of academic knowledge and community-based knowledge, eliminating a hierarchy of knowledge and a one-way flow of knowledge outward from the college or university. (Brown University's College and University Engagement Initiative)
Participation in External Boards, Chambers, and Coalitions - representing Salt Lake Community College in your service to a board, chamber, or coalition.
Partnerships are sustained relationships between institutions, individuals, or communities (see community partner definition) for the mutually beneficial exchange, exploration and application of knowledge, information, and resources. Examples are research, capacity building, or economic development. (Marquette University)

Pathways of Public Service is an approach that describes a range of engagement types with the goal of advancing the common good.

  • Community Engaged Learning and Research - Connecting coursework and academic research to community-identified concerns to enrich knowledge and inform action on social issues.
  • Community Organizing and Activism - Involving, educating, and mobilizing individual or collective action to influence or persuade others.
  • Direct Service - Working to address the immediate needs of individuals or a community, often involving contact with the people or places being served.
  • Philanthropy - Donating or using private funds or charitable contributions from individuals or institutions to contribute to the public good.
  • Policy and Governance - Participating in political processes, policymaking, and public
  • Social Entrepreneurship and Corporate Social Responsibility - Using ethical business or private sector approaches to create or expand market-oriented responses to social or environmental problems.

(*Adapted from Pathways of Public Service, in partnership with the Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University)

Place-Based Community Engagement (PBCE) is a long-term, university-wide commitment to partner with residents, organizations, and other leaders to focus equally on campus and com- munity impact within a clearly defined geographic area. This definition of PBCE includes a number of key components: 1. a geographically defined focus, 2. equal emphasis on campus and community (50/50 proposition), 3. long-term vision and commitment, 4. university-wide engagement that animates the mission and develops the institution, and 5. drawing upon collective impact. (Yamamura & Koth, 2018)
Public Scholarship encompasses diverse modes of creating and circulating knowledge for and with the public (external to the college). It often involves mutually beneficial partnerships between higher education and organizations in the public and private sectors. Its goals include enriching research, creative activity, and public knowledge; enhancing curriculum, teaching, and learning; preparing educated and engaged citizens; strengthening democratic values and civic responsibility; addressing and helping to solve critical social problems; and contributing to the public good. (https://imaginingamerica.org/)
Reciprocity is the continuous and intentional practice of valuing and drawing on the various forms of knowledge, resources, and other assets that each person contributes to the shared activity and outcomes to a degree that the experience is felt by all to be equitable. (adapted from Janke from Janke & Clayton, 2012)
Service-Learning is a pedagogy that incorporates critical reflective thinking and civic engagement into academic coursework by means of integrating service opportunities with nonprofits, governmental, and/or educational community partners. Service-learning involves students in activities that attend to local needs while developing their academic skills, increasing their subject matter knowledge, and commitment to their communities. This term is often used interchangeable with community-engaged learning. (SLCC Service-Learning)