Collective Leadership for Community Engagement: Empowering community partners as co-creators and co-educators
Presentation Format
Individual Presentation
Intended Audience
All Audiences
Presentation Description
As institutions of higher education endeavor to engage communities, leadership to support community engagement efforts surfaces as a strategic priority. Within each institution, identifying organizational leadership for specific initiatives is a standard protocol of leveraging existing knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees, developing necessary skills among employees, or acquiring new talent through hiring processes. However, organizational leadership for community engagement can and should manifest differently in response to the tenants of community engagement including reciprocity and collaboration between stakeholders internal and external to the university. Identifying and developing shared, or collective, leadership structures is crucial for developing effective, sustainable community engagement efforts among higher education institution. Specifically, leadership for community engagement must span the boundaries of university to include community stakeholders.
A blended, shared model including community-based leadership and university-based leadership for community engagement has the potential to strengthen related decision-making, program refinement, and ultimately, measurable impact. This presentation shares findings from an institutional effort to develop community leaders perception of their leadership role in community engagement efforts through public narrative strategies. Beyond garnering the buy-in typical of community-engaged strategic planning, the study explores how community members identify their leadership role in co-creating and serving within a leadership structure for a newly created community engagement unit within a public university. The presentation concludes with examples of how the collective leadership narrative has informed next steps in planning and capacity building for community engagement.
Location
Room - 1220A
Start Date
4-14-2016 10:45 AM
End Date
4-14-2016 12:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Purcell, Jennifer W. and Wooten, Brian M., "Collective Leadership for Community Engagement: Empowering community partners as co-creators and co-educators" (2016). Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016. 57.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gss/2016/2016/57
Collective Leadership for Community Engagement: Empowering community partners as co-creators and co-educators
Room - 1220A
As institutions of higher education endeavor to engage communities, leadership to support community engagement efforts surfaces as a strategic priority. Within each institution, identifying organizational leadership for specific initiatives is a standard protocol of leveraging existing knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees, developing necessary skills among employees, or acquiring new talent through hiring processes. However, organizational leadership for community engagement can and should manifest differently in response to the tenants of community engagement including reciprocity and collaboration between stakeholders internal and external to the university. Identifying and developing shared, or collective, leadership structures is crucial for developing effective, sustainable community engagement efforts among higher education institution. Specifically, leadership for community engagement must span the boundaries of university to include community stakeholders.
A blended, shared model including community-based leadership and university-based leadership for community engagement has the potential to strengthen related decision-making, program refinement, and ultimately, measurable impact. This presentation shares findings from an institutional effort to develop community leaders perception of their leadership role in community engagement efforts through public narrative strategies. Beyond garnering the buy-in typical of community-engaged strategic planning, the study explores how community members identify their leadership role in co-creating and serving within a leadership structure for a newly created community engagement unit within a public university. The presentation concludes with examples of how the collective leadership narrative has informed next steps in planning and capacity building for community engagement.
Program Abstract
This presentation details efforts at a public university to integrate community stakeholders into the strategic planning process for community engagement at the institution. Presenters will discuss motivations and barriers to transcending traditional community stakeholder advisory roles in favor of a collective leadership model that empowers community partners as co-creators and co-educators. The presentation includes a review of strategies implemented as well as findings from a qualitative study that explored community partners’ perception of these strategies.