News

On September 2010, eight international networks supporting community university engagement across the world gathered to participate in the first Global Video Dialogue on Enhancing North-South Cooperation in Community-University Engagement.  Read more..

OCBR-UVic is pleased to offer the following four documents in “The CBR Booklet Series”  which highlight CBR concepts, practices and resources. 

1) What is CBR?
2) CBR & Partnerships
3) Creative Methods in CBR
4) Why CBR Matters

We thank Drs. Robin Hood and Catherine Etmanski, Marc Christensen and Pamela Spalding for their research, writing and layout work.

The booklets are downloadable and intended to be widely used and distributed. We acknowledge core support for this work from the University of Victoria Research Services, and a grant from the Vancouver Foundation via the BC Healthy Communities CBR Capacity Building Project. Other Canadian and global CBR resources are available on the OCBR and Community Based Research Canada websites www.uvic.ca/ocbr and www.communityresearchcanada.ca 

Comments and ideas are very welcome. Reply to the Office of Community Based Research at ocbr@uvic.ca 

Release of White Paper on the Centrality of Engagement in Higher Education by the Coalition on Engagement and Outreach of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (USA) (attached to this note)-courtesy of Dr. Hiram Fitzgerald, President of the Coalition on Engagement and Outreach and Associate Provost for Outreach at Michigan State University. (Fitzger9@msu.edu)

Another very useful statement of principles and values from universities in the USA that are providing exceptional leadership in this field.  See the core principles below.

Core Principles

The centrality of engagement is critical to the success of higher education in the future.
 
•Today’s higher education leaders find themselves at a difficult and important decision point
 
A coalescence of political, social and economic pressures may push institutions to consider disengaging from their communities.

•However, a more comprehensive level of engagement between the university and its many communities will foster stronger support from multiple sources for the future of higher education and society.

•Through engagement we can shift the established framework of higher education to a stronger level of societal relevance that transforms us into a stronger, wealthier and more equitable society while advancing institutional goals.

•Engagement is essential to most effectively achieving the overall purpose of the university which is focused on the knowledge enterprise. The university, within the broader societal system, has responsibility to fuel knowledge creation, transfer and application to enhance societal purposes.

Today’s engagement is scholarly; is an aspect of learning and discovery; and enhances society and higher education.
 
•Through the engagement model, the community and university partners work to co-create solutions on a local, national and global level.

•Undergirding today’s approach to engagement is the understanding that not all knowledge and expertise resides in the academy, and that both expertise and great learning opportunities in teaching and scholarship also reside in non-academic settings.

•Engagement is an umbrella that covers every good practice in teaching, research and service. By recommitting to fulfilling their societal contract, public and land-grant universities can fulfill their promise as institutions that truly produce knowledge that benefits society and prepares students for productive citizenship in a democratic society.

•This new engagement also posits a new framework for scholarship that moves away from emphasizing products (e.g., publications) to emphasizing impact.

New approaches must be taken to embed engagement into the central core of the institution.
 
•To thrive in the 21st Century, higher education must move engagement from the margin to the mainstream of its research, teaching and service work.

•To fully embed engagement into the central core of the institution, it must be scholarly; cut across the mission of teaching, research and service; be reciprocal and mutually beneficial; and embrace the process and values of civil democracy (Bringle & Hatcher, 2011).

•Engagement should be aligned with key institutional priorities.

•Engagement projects and initiatives should be viewed as mechanisms for making engagement an essential vehicle to accomplish higher education’s more important goals.

•For institutions to fully incorporate engagement into all aspects of the institutional mission it must fully address issues related to structure, budget and operation.

•Faculty involvement and support for engagement are essential for furthering the institutionalization of engagement.

Bellagio Initiative releases Summit ‘aide-mémoire’ outlining actions to guide future philanthropic and development collaboration.

We are pleased to announce that the next Community University Exposition, CUExpo, will be organized in beautiful Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada! Save the date and plan to join us June 12-15, 2013.
CUExpo is a Canadian-led conference designed to showcase exemplars in Community-University partnerships worldwide, and together to introduce creative ways of strengthening our local communities.  See the website for more information about the CUExpo movement and the last conference.
Please forward the attached flyer to interested colleagues and stay tuned for more details!

York University

links to our work include

web site: http://www.researchimpact.ca/home/
blog: http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/
twitter: http://twitter.com/researchimpact
ResearchSnapshot library: http://www.researchimpact.ca/researchsearch/
journal club: https://researchimpact.othree.ca/journalclub
as well as http://pi.library.yorku.ca/dspace/handle/10315/4566

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH)

Community-Campus Partnerships as a Strategy for Social Justice: Where We've Been & Where We Need to Go
CCPH's 15th Anniversary Conference
April 18-21, 2012 in Houston, TX USA
Session and poster proposals are due Sept 26. 
Details: bit.ly/hFPPlr

CES4Health

CES4Health peer-reviews and publishes products of community-based participatory research (CBPR), service-learning and community engagement projects that are in forms other than journal articles.  For example, videos, curricula, toolkits, resource guides, assessment instruments etc.  Products are reviewed by community and academic experts.  Products published through CES4Health can "count" as peer-reviewed publications in the faculty promotion and tenure process, and are freely available and widely disseminated.  Examples of products published include a video on conducting CBPR in Aboriginal communities, digital stories of refugee youth, a cultural competency curriculum and a healthy eating cookbook.  Learn more, submit products and apply to be a reviewer at http://CES4Health.info

Community-based research and evaluation (CBRE)

Capacity building activities at the Community-University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families (CUP) in Edmonton, Alberta:
http://www.cup.ualberta.ca/cbre

We have been offering our CBRE Workshop Series since 2007: http://www.cup.ualberta.ca/cbre/cbre-workshop-series

In 2010, we launched the CBRE Certificate Program: http://www.cup.ualberta.ca/cbre/cbre-certificate-program . In collaboration with our host, the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta, we offer this program for currently registered graduate students.

Here at OCBR we have had a very busy fall with plenty of changes.  We look forward to an exciting 2012!  Besides the ongoing activities from the fall, OCBR will continue on with many new projects.  Read our newsletter to find out more....

Dear Participants of my 2010 IDRC research project:
 
Last year I was working on the research project at IDRC on university-civil society research collaborations for international development. The Report has been "pending" since February. It was finalized, however, and the delay is due to IDRC transitioning to the new website and the bottleneck effect. Dr. Luc Mougeot suggested that I distribute the revised version now. Please, find attached the revised Report after the reviews by three project participants. Thank you very much for your participation!
 
Have a good day!

Elena Chernikova