Systems for faculty career advancement – including promotion, tenure, and professional development – have often not kept pace with changing faculty roles. They further have not met the demands of major funding agencies or the mandate that publicly funded research benefit all citizens. To address this topic, the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences and the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute hosted a 3-hour workshop on May 6th, 2016. This workshop guided participants on how to document and assess engaged scholarship and impact in the context of tenure and promotion application.
In February and March of 2017, three workshops were offered collaboratively by CESI faculty affiliates and by the CESI Manager of Community Engaged Learning. These sessions were organized by the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute in collaboration with Open Learning and Educational Development as part of the Teaching & Learning Innovations Workshop Series. They were offered as an initiative for faculty to develop their community-engaged teaching and learning techniques.
The rise of open access and open data publishing has increased the amount of research and data freely available online. However, finding this information and knowing how to access it can sometimes seem impossible.
On February 11th, 2015, CESI hosted a full-day event on community-engaged scholarship to explore themes of complex partnerships, research tensions, and how to structure engaged projects. Over 40 faculty, staff and students attended from various departments at the University of Guelph.
This project emerged from ongoing conversations among a number of organizations in the Guelph-Wellington region about the nature of social planning and decision-making in our current complex web of networks. These conversations led to the development of a more structured partnership, the launch of several interconnected projects, and the joint submission of a proposal for funding called “Engaging for Change: Practicing Collaboration and Planning in Guelph-Wellington”.
On November 4th and 5th, 2010, the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI) co-sponsored and hosted Critical junctures in research, practice, and policy. This conference brought together national and international scholars to discuss emerging research on community-engaged scholarship and its implications for research, policy and practice. Community-engaged scholarship (CES) and community-academic partnerships have been gaining importance in higher education institutions.
The City of Guelph’s 2014 Open Government Action Plan (attached below) was one of the first of its kind in Canada. The Guelph Lab hosted 30 City of Guelph staff and councillors to discuss Open Government – what it means, its history, and how it has (and hasn’t) been adopted across Canadian municipalities.
Starting in 2016, the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute has taken on a number research and knowledge mobilization projects to support the efforts of the Guelph-Wellington community to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for immigrants in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis. These projects are part of our commitment to provide timely and engaged research supports, and leverage the University's research expertise for community benefit.