How to Embed Community Engagement in University Strategic Plans
This publication is a draft set of guidelines for university presidents and their planning teams to embed community engagement in university strategic plans.
Universities and colleges are increasingly harnessing all of their assets to improve societal conditions. This has led to an interest to understand ways they can increase this social impact by embedding these concepts deeper into their strategic plans and institutions. This paper addresses this interest by introducing a set of questions that presidents and their planning teams can use to stimulate ideas and stretch existing frameworks. These questions have been tested by a group of institutions wanting to embed community engagement in their strategic plans. The questions are based upon a scan of nearly twenty Canadian institutions (one American) who had explicit community engagement objectives in their strategic plans.
The guidelines on how to embed community engagement in university strategic plans address missions, values and goals. They serve as a checklist and discussion guide for university strategic planning teams.
