Developing Capacity for Community Engagement: Communication Strategies for Crossing Organizational, Community, and Geographic Boundaries

Presentation Format

Interactive Workshop

Intended Audience

All Audiences

Program Abstract

The workshop will address the essential role of communication in developing inclusive, democratic processes and partnerships for community engagement. The presenters will introduce findings from their respective research on best practices for campus-community partnerships and facilitate interactive learning activities to enhance participants’ community engagement efforts. Participants will explore how interpersonal communication skills and strategic communication plans intertwine to advance campus-community partnerships and institution-wide community engagement agendas.

Presentation Description

Community engagement activities require significant communication. Building a strong partnership requires shared values, mission and vision to solve the complex challenges and problems facing communities. This workshop will provide opportunities to unearth barriers, explore practical methods to encourage, and understand topics of communication individually and within the context of participants’ institutions and partnerships. Like strong community engagement, this workshop will benefit both the scholar and the practitioner with a hands-on approach to sharing communication techniques supported by a national study of actors within community engagement as well as strategies explored in two in-depth case studies on the institutionalization of community engagement.

In this workshop, participants will:

  • Identify key communication contributors to community and organizational/institutional orientations from a nationwide study of actors in community engagement

  • Discuss common communication barriers related to community engagement

  • Identify stakeholder audiences as part of developing a strategic communication plan

  • Identify one new teaching/facilitation technique to encourage communication among internal and external community engagement stakeholders

Participants will leave the workshop with an action plan to enhance communication for community engagement at their institutions.

Interactive learning activities included in the workshop include:

  • Interpersonal communication exercise

  • Recognizing bias in communication exercise

  • Strategic communication mapping exercise

A similar workshop was presented at the 2015 Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference at Penn State University. The workshop received glowing feedback including encouragement to expand such interactive and developmental offerings that apply research to practical needs among community-engaged faculty and staff and their community partners. Based on feedback received, we modified and expanded the curriculum to include organizational communication strategies. We believe this workshop is well suited to the scholar-practitioner audience present at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement and aligns with the mission and objectives of the conference.

Location

Room - 2005

Start Date

4-15-2016 8:15 AM

End Date

4-15-2016 9:30 AM

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Apr 15th, 8:15 AM Apr 15th, 9:30 AM

Developing Capacity for Community Engagement: Communication Strategies for Crossing Organizational, Community, and Geographic Boundaries

Room - 2005

Community engagement activities require significant communication. Building a strong partnership requires shared values, mission and vision to solve the complex challenges and problems facing communities. This workshop will provide opportunities to unearth barriers, explore practical methods to encourage, and understand topics of communication individually and within the context of participants’ institutions and partnerships. Like strong community engagement, this workshop will benefit both the scholar and the practitioner with a hands-on approach to sharing communication techniques supported by a national study of actors within community engagement as well as strategies explored in two in-depth case studies on the institutionalization of community engagement.

In this workshop, participants will:

  • Identify key communication contributors to community and organizational/institutional orientations from a nationwide study of actors in community engagement

  • Discuss common communication barriers related to community engagement

  • Identify stakeholder audiences as part of developing a strategic communication plan

  • Identify one new teaching/facilitation technique to encourage communication among internal and external community engagement stakeholders

Participants will leave the workshop with an action plan to enhance communication for community engagement at their institutions.

Interactive learning activities included in the workshop include:

  • Interpersonal communication exercise

  • Recognizing bias in communication exercise

  • Strategic communication mapping exercise

A similar workshop was presented at the 2015 Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference at Penn State University. The workshop received glowing feedback including encouragement to expand such interactive and developmental offerings that apply research to practical needs among community-engaged faculty and staff and their community partners. Based on feedback received, we modified and expanded the curriculum to include organizational communication strategies. We believe this workshop is well suited to the scholar-practitioner audience present at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement and aligns with the mission and objectives of the conference.