Public Engagement

Yesterday this blog listed major items identified in a SWOT analysis of our Public Engagement efforts at the University of Minnesota. At a meeting of COPE, our Council on Public Engagement, yesterday afternoon, I asked the group to identify three concrete, actionable steps that might be taken to capitalize on our strengths and opportunities, and to mitigate our weaknesses and threats. Here's what they came up with.

Strengths

Interdisciplinary Work

• Focus on a variety of funding levels, not just 2 million plus.
• Help to smooth the path for this work. Okay to start small.
• Use campus compact model for help in promoting.

Role Models

• Develop system for identifying and communication about exemplary people and programs.

Promotion and Tenure

• Putting language in the documents is the beginning, but need to have some carry-through.
• Have examples/case-studies that are discipline specific.
• Faculty Motivation, develop through positive reinforcement but subtle and overt.

Weaknesses

Communication

• OPE needs a communication person and a communications plan
• Need to know what messages to consistently promote
• Where to promote communications both internally and externally
• Continue to catalog stories that will have impact

Support

• Continue to provide and expand opportunities for people already “engagedâ€? to come together and support the work.

Values

• Identify and showcase exemplars—people who are models of good work and partnership
• Establish platforms for partnership as in the case of the University-Northside partnership

Opportunities

Continue to play the role of convener

Focus on Public Engagement Day

• Have a series of programs and events with different stakeholders culminating in Public Engagement Day

Use grants program (new or current) to start a cohort model

Engage interdisciplinary institutes/centers/programs to leverage expertise on public engagement

Threats

External benchmarks do not value public engagement

• U should be voice for reform in those benchmarks
• U should established more enlightened benchmarks internally

Culture shift from cooperation to individualistic means faculty work too much in isolation

• Engage community in cooperatively defining research and service agendas
• OPE could monitor grant opportunities and bring them to the attention of potentially interested units and individuals.

U seems overwhelming, inaccessible and hard to navigate

• Review financial systems to identify impediments to effective cooperation with external organizations.
• Try to make OPE easier to find on web for external users (i.e. community portal).

These are all very useful suggestions, in many cases because they suggest new or more focused ways to build on activities that are already underway.