National Collaborations
The National Center for the Study of University Engagement (NCSUE) participates, and in some cases takes a leadership role, in a number of cross-organizational bodies that focus on the advancement of outreach and engagement. Among other things, these collaborations work on defining, assessing, benchmarking, classifying, and advocating for outreach and engagement.
National Outreach Scholarship Conference (NOSC)
The National Outreach Scholarship Conference is an institutional membership organization that seeks to research and study throughout the world, the scholarship of engagement; to facilitate international cooperation among individuals concerned with promoting conditions that will bring about engaged scholarship as a criterion influencing higher education faculty performance evaluations; to encourage the realization that the scholarship of engagement is a critical aspect of university responsibility; to promote education, research and study of the effects of engaged scholarship on community-campus partnerships; to promote research and study of the impacts of community-campus partnerships; to conduct meetings, workshops, institutes, symposia, conferences and congresses domestically and throughout the world: to disseminate research (original, basic and applied) from a wide variety of disciplines on the impact of campus-community partnerships, to discuss and share questions, problems, issues, information and theories regarding campus-community partnerships; to advance the study of campus-community partnerships and to educate the public on effective programs for community change; to publish and communicate through print and electronic media the proceedings (including abstracts and scientific papers) of the aforementioned workshops, institutes, symposia, conferences or congresses; to publish and disseminate research on the scholarship of engagement through newsletters, books, monographs, reports, studies and periodicals, in any language, and also to make the foregoing available through electronic media.
It conducts an annual forum for critical reflection on the public mission and work of an academic institution along with the scholarship that underpins this work and to strengthen institutional support for engagement and public scholarship. Current Members are Michigan State University, The Pennsylvania State University, University of Wisconsin Extension, The Ohio State University, University of Georgia, University of Alabama, North Carolina State University and Auburn University. Associate Provost Hiram E. Fitzgerald serves as President of NOSC and he and NCSUE Co-Director Burton Bargerstock serve on the partnership's steering and implementation committees. They are also contributors to the Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop. Fostered by NCSUE and organized by advanced graduate students from across the country, the Workshop is held in conjunction with the National Outreach Scholarship Conference which jointly sponsors it with NCSUE.
Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU)
Council on Engagement and Outreach (CEO)
Commission on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Economic Prosperity (CICEP)
Michigan State University is a member of APLU and Associate Provost Fitzgerald and NCSUE Co-Director Burton Bargerstock participate in the CEO and its Benchmarking Task Force. Efforts on this task force have included helping to define the qualities of university engagement and giving presentations to the Council on the assessment and documentation of outreach teaching, research, and service. Bargerstock also participates in the CICEP Metrics Working Group which attempts to identify measures of university contributions to regional economies.
Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)
Committee on Engagement
The Committee on Institutional Cooperation is an academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. The CIC Committee on Engagement developed a definition of engagement, a draft set of metrics for assessing engaged scholarship, and is currently focused on a broad set of issues related to community-campus partnerships focused on community and economic development, talent development, regionalization, and urban regeneration. The MSU Associate Provost for University Outreach and Engagement, Dr. Hiram Fitzgerald, chairs the CIC Committee on Engagement.
Higher Education Network for Community Engagement (HENCE)
The Higher Education Network for Community Engagement formed as a result of a Johnson Foundation Wingspread summit meeting (2006) that led to a declaration to create a national network that would coordinate efforts across organizations that deal with university-community engagement. HENCE addresses important gaps and next steps critical to community engagement endeavors across the higher education sector. Cross-organizational teams work on: advocacy and policy at the federal and state levels; visibility and dissemination of engagement's impacts; better coordination of existing resources, guides, and conferences; professional development for higher education leadership; new networks among engaged researchers; and identification of effective tools and strategies for assessment and documentation. Associate Provost Hiram Fitzgerald represents MSU at HENCE.
HENCE is a response to the growing need to deepen, consolidate, and advance the literature, research, practice, policy, and advocacy for community engagement as a core element of higher education’s role in society. Increasingly, higher education institutions are intentionally connecting academic work to public purposes through extensive partnerships that involve faculty and students in active collaboration with communities. This idea of "community engagement" is renewing the civic mission of higher education and transforming academic culture in ways that are both exciting and challenging.
Carnegie Community Engagement Classification
Institutional Pilot Study Participants
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, as part of an overall revision of its higher education classification system, has created a new Community Engagement classification. This classification allows higher education institutions the option to describe and represent their outreach and engagement work. In 2005, MSU and 12 other colleges and universities helped to develop a set of indicators and a framework for the classification. Dr. Fitzgerald, the Associate Provost for University Outreach and Engagement, and Dr. Zimmerman, former Director for the National Center for the Study of University Engagement, represented MSU in the pilot project and are the primary authors of the MSU report.
In January 2007, Carnegie selected Michigan State University as one of the first universities to be designated as a "community-engaged university" using its new Community Engagement Classification criteria. The selection includes recognition in curricular engagement as well as outreach and partnerships--the highest achievement possible within the classification framework.
View the Carnegie Reclassification Pilot Study - Michigan State University Response
After submitting the report for the original pilot that resulted in the new classification, MSU submitted some additional materials about service-learning and a grid describing representative MSU-community partnerships. View Addendum I | View Addendum II.