2019 Continuums of Service Conference

Overview: We live in challenging and changing times. Major disruptions in our economic, social and political structures have led to questions about the purpose and meaning of many of our institutions including our colleges and universities. Perhaps more than ever universities and communities need each other to address the challenges we face. Unfortunately, our traditional approaches to community engagement in higher education, while having many strong merits, are not fully capable of responding to the enormity of the challenges we face.  

The emerging model of place-based community engagement offers universities a powerful strategy to attain greater impact in their local communities and also on their campuses. 

This interactive workshops will draw upon lessons learned from a new book Place-Based Community Engagement in Higher Education to present the benefits and challenges of this emerging approach to connecting campus and community.  The session will include a discussion with several leaders of place-based efforts and a practical hands-on exploration of how an institution and its community might further pursue the place-based paradigm. The workshop will particularly explore how focusing on a geographic area shifts the balance of engagement towards an equal emphasis on campus and community impact and also invites a much deeper exploration of issues of power, privilege and race.

Overview: Inspired by Eric Liu’s You Are More Powerful Than You Think and his notion of civic power, this interactive workshop will introduce the concept of community colleges as “Civic Power Plants” generating power in the civic life of their students and campuses.  How can community colleges harness their true public purpose by educating for democracy and sending it out to making a difference in the civic lives of the community that they serve?  This workshop will feature an immersive role-playing exercise, a presentation on model programs from a diversity of community colleges, and a brainstorm/action planning session. ​

Overview: This workshop is an opportunity to experience an implementation of the conference theme by addressing climate change and seeking new strategies for student success. Incorporating multiple ways of knowing, being, and aspiring we specifically work towards a just, equitable, and sustainable future for us all. Humankind needs to include all the knowledge and tools that we can gather from indigenous and “Western” knowledge systems in order to equip ourselves to meet the grand challenges that impact our collective future.

This pre-conference workshop synergizes multiple approaches strengthening high-impact research practices and pedagogies. Brief presentations by participants in the ongoing SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities) project, “Transcending Barriers to Success” (TBS), will address the urgency of dealing with climate change locally and globally, based on interdisciplinary research and pedagogies in a collaboration across disciplines, campuses, and communities. Following the framing presentations, workshop participants will have opportunities to (1) share current project ideas, challenges, opportunities, and outcomes, and (2) develop a wider, deeper, and stronger network of higher education-indigenous community connections within the western region and beyond. The pre-conference will include time to learn from each other and inspire formal and informal education by together outlining practical, usable projects, and/or research and course designs.

Overview: Join Alberto López Pulido, Professor and founding chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of San Diego (USD) and lead for the Logan Heights Documentation Project as well as the Turning Wheels Project, on a path towards making sense and reconciling the critical separation between who we claim to be in relation to who others claim we are. Participants will collectively enter the sacred space of Chicano Park and encounter its eighty-eight monumental murals as contemplative sites for acknowledging disjunctures in our own lives and utilize contemplative practices to acquire meaning and reconciliation. We will evoke the practices and pedagogy of recall, reflect and occupy.  In addition, we will define and introduce the concepts of situated contemplation and trans-generational knowledge as unique pedagogies and practices for working effectively with people of color: our students, colleagues, local communities, and ourselves.
 
*Please note:  There is a limit to the number of people who can attend this pre-conference workshop.  Participants will be admitted on a first-come, first-serve basis. Additionally, this pre-conference will begin with a walk, so wear comfortable shoes and be prepared to be mobile during the pre-conference.  This pre-conference is wheelchair accessible.

Overview: Dialogue is a method for creating new understanding within groups and communities in ways that empower communities to collaboratively develop solutions to challenges facing them. This three-hour session will focus on introducing and applying the Sustained Dialogue Institute's concept of relationship and five stage dialogue to action process, both of which developed out of former Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders’ work in international peace negotiations. During the session participants will have opportunities to learn about the Sustained Dialogue model, to practice applying it to a conflict on their campus or in their community, and to explore processes leading to dehumanization within conflicts. Participants will leave with new tools and potential action steps for addressing conflicts in their community.  

Overview: We invite teams of engagement administrators, leaders, and advocates to join us in developing strategies to identify, collect, interpret, and use community engagement metrics.

Through large group presentations, small group discussion, and individual team work, you will:

• Share individual and institutional motivations for and uses of community engagement data
• Understand the contexts which increase the need for institutions to define and describe community engagement
• Learn with two campuses as they use Collaboratory to collect, analyze, and visualize related data (including examples of data outputs for discussion)
• Explore strategies for using data as a basis for measuring outcomes and impact across faculty/staff, students, community partners, and institutions
• Consider how to create opportunities to increase the rigor of scholarship on the collective activities and impact of community-higher education partnerships
• Review implications of this data for communications and messaging while maintaining best practices and standards
• Examine how data enhances other institutional functions, e.g., the ability to convene and refer individuals and organizations across sectors working toward aligned agendas