A Day in the Life
Yesterday was full of meetings, all of them connected to public engagement in one way or another.
Continuing the Discussion on Student Engagement and Student Success Outcomes: A session of about 80 students, staff, and faculty, following up on Fall's Civic Summit, with "the goal to update [participants] on progress towards an engaged campus and to focus discussions on how to create opportunities within our own areas that enhance intentional learning and engagement."
A search committee meeting to recruit a new chair-holder and director for our Science and Technology Policy program. A standard academic exercise, but what could be more pertinent to university-public joint interests than science and technology policy?
A discussion with Gail Dubrow, Dean of the Graduate School, to plan a paper we've been invited to write for the 20th Anniversary of Campus Compact, about integrating public engagement with other aspects of the ethical conduct of research in our programs for graduate students.
A retirement party for Executive AssociateVice President Al Sullivan, who among his other demanding assignments has led a task force to develop metrics and measurements for the University of Minnesota's self-assessment and comparisons with other institutions. Among the most challenging: How to measure our public engagement efforts? The metrics, at least for now, are a survey of citizen satisfaction with the U, our patent and licensing activity, and an undergraduate student survey of their engagement activities.
An end-of-semester show-and-tell by students from Eric Daigre's Literacy Lab class, about their community work teaching citizenship skills to immigrants, assisting in a charter school that focuses on social justice, and working in a school for children with special needs.
Being in touch with this variety of manifestations of public engagement is one of major attractions of my job.