Announcement from the CETL Advisory Committee, November 25, 2009
The CETL Advisory Committee is seeking nominations for a faculty member who will represent the faculty perspective on Community Engagement on a keynote panel on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 8:30 a.m. The panel will consist of President Earl Potter, Mayor Dave Kleis, Noreen Dunnells (President and CEO, United Way), Nadinne Cruz (Independent Consultant and former Director of Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University), Brian Myres, (President, ING Bank) and one faculty member.
Task: The members of the panel will describe their vision of community engagement between SCSU and the surrounding community, their ideas, their purposes, their definitions, with respect to their position. Their personal experiences in this area will serve as a context for and illustration of their vision.
The panel will present multiple perspectives:
1. President Potter will share the perspective of the University as a whole in the context of the strategic thrust of the University and the emergent academic identity,
2. Mayor Kleis will present the perspective of the City of St. Cloud,
3. Dunnells will bring in her vision from the vantage point of non-profit organizations working with the people on the ground,
4. Myres will discuss his perspective from the business world,
5. Cruz’s remarks will address the questions: how is civic engagement, in the context of campus-community partnerships, conceptualized and expressed in higher education today? How can we respect, honor, and strengthen civic engagement across differences of roles, perspectives, and actions? Why is this important and urgent? And,
6. The faculty member will present the perspective of what it would mean for our work as faculty.
Possible Outcome: Hopefully, the panel’s presentation, along with other conversations (at the keynote session and in break-out sessions and on-going) will help us develop a broad vision and details about what community engagement would mean to us at SCSU: how we would define it for ourselves, how it would fit with our strategic goals, vision and values, and what it will mean for faculty and students.
The committee intends to use fairly broad criteria to evaluate the nominees and invite one faculty member to serve. They include:
a. A personal history of engaging with the community.
b. A history of involving others at the University--including students--in projects involving community engagement.
c. The ability to articulate a vision for how Community Engagement can enhance the learning (epistemological and pedagogical) of students and faculty, and/or bring about social change in the community to make it more welcoming for all people of diverse persuasions.
d. The ability to use personal experiences only as illustrations of their vision from the perspective of what impact it will have on our work as faculty.
Submit nominations by 4:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 25 to Lalita Subrahmanyan, Interim Director, CETL. Any questions? Call 308-5282 or email lsubrahmanyan@stcloudstate.edu.