On November 19, 2024, there is a webinar entitled “The Process is the Prize: Reflections on High Quality Community-Engagement Partnerships and the Carnegie Community Engagement Application.” To quote the description:

The Classification seeks to recognize institutions that demonstrate commitment and excellence in community engagement. As such, it requires a large body of evidence of meaningful and sustained institutional investment of systems and structures that support individuals, groups, and communities to work with each other for mutual benefit and in a context of reciprocal partnership.

In reciprocal and epistemically inclusive partnerships, there are collaborative community–campus definitions of problems, solutions, and measures of success. Community engagement requires processes in which academics recognize, respect, and value the knowledge, perspectives, and resources of community partners and that are designed to serve a public purpose, building the capacity of individuals, groups, and organizations involved to understand and collaboratively address issues of public concern.

And yet, in our engagement efforts, the community typically possesses less authority than the institution, and its assets are often overlooked or considered less essential. Despite progress toward more democratic practices, the dominant framework for university-community engagement continues to view the community as deficient and in need of fixing, and its residents as clients rather than co-educators, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge;

This webinar considers why rhetoric and convictions often fall short of practice, and what we can do . It will explore: 1) Barriers that institutions face in pursuing reciprocity; 2) the benefit of focusing on “partnerships” rather than “projects” to achieve reciprocity; and 3) insights from experts who will share best practices in how to share authority, responsibility and accountability with community partners. Additionally, the webinar will provide key tips on how to weave the community’s voice throughout the application and how to prepare your partners for the application partner survey.

To register for the webinar, please visit the Process is the Prize registration webpage. 

Brian Patrick Kurisky, Ph.D.

Pronouns: He, Him, His

Executive Director for the Collaborative Center for Community Engagement

Division of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Lucy Stone Hall  |  Livingston Campus

Office A329  |  New Brunswick, NJ 08901

P: 848-445-4041  |  brian.kurisky@rutgers.edu