The Visioning Process

From October 2018- April 2019, many faculty and current community partners joined Environmental Studies for visioning sessions on how to improve our campus/community partnerships. We began in October with a World Cafe, an event designed for faculty and partners to get to know each other and to identify what they were looking for in campus/community partnerships. Then, in November and December, we hosted a series of system dynamics modeling sessions to further explore barriers to successful partnerships. From January-April, we collected data on our current & past partnerships through interviews. Finally, we  hosted a logic model building session in April 2019. We want to extend a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to this process so far. We're already incorporating the feedback we received during these sessions into our programs. Read on for a summary of recommendations from the visioning process, and the changes we're making as a direct result of the time and energy you invested in this process.

Key Findings from the Visioning Process

1. Partners and faculty invest a lot of time and energy in their community-engaged projects, but there is not yet sufficient infrastructure to support and sustain these relationships over time.

2. A mismatch frequently exists between the needs of students, community partners and faculty for community-engaged projects.

3. Lack of funding and lack of time to identify community partners are the top faculty barriers to community engagement

Recommendations from the Visioning Process

1. Define a process and protocol for identifying, working with, and maintaining relationships with community partners.
   1. Develop explicit criteria to identify the projects and partners best suited for Sustainability Exchange and other community-engaged courses. Consider how WashU's involvement may validate a project or increase its exposure and whether or not this something the partner and the university want.
   2. Develop and facilitate a process to match faculty expertise and interest to community partners and projects.
   3. Establish a protocol for aligning expectations and defining a realistic scope of work before the project begins, including specified contact points and milestones
2. Support faculty by sharing tools and resources, including a network of others involved in community engagement.
3. Support partners by making them more aware of opportunities to partner with environmental programs on campus, and managing their expectations about working with our programs.
4. Seek to establish dedicated funding for environmental community engagement work.
5. Institutionalize community engagement & anti-racism training for students and faculty in our programs

Current Action Items

Recommendation	Action Item	Timeline for Completion
1.1: Develop explicit criteria to identify the projects and partners best suited for Sustainability Exchange and other community-engaged courses	Develop and test a checklist of criteria for accepting Sustainability Exchange projects	Draft criteria completed Spring 2019 Discuss and finalize criteria Fall 2019 Test criteria for projects beginning in Spring 2020
1.2: Develop and facilitate a process to match faculty expertise and interest to community partners and projects	Develop a page on our website that allows organizations & individuals to submit requests for support to Environmental Studies, like the Office for Socially Engaged Practice does in the Sam Fox School	Bring website online by Fall 2019
1.3: Establish a protocol for aligning expectations and defining a realistic scope of work before the project begins, including specified contact points and milestones	Require faculty advisors and partner organizations to draft and sign a scope of work for Sustainability Exchange projects prior to the start of each semester	Require signed scope of work for each project beginning Fall 2019
2: Support faculty by sharing tools and resources, including a network of others involved in community engagement	In collaboration with other community engagement offices & staff on campus, coordinate and cross-promote faculty community engagement networking events	First networking event hosted April 2019 Next event planned for Fall 2019
3: Support partners by making them more aware of opportunities to partner with environmental programs on campus, and managing their expectations about working with our programs	Strengthen our communication of collaboration opportunities to partners by increasing regularly scheduled email & web communications of opportunities and offering an in-person workshop on partnering with our programs	Increased web-based communication of partnership opportunities in Fall 2019 In-person workshop developed in Summer 2019 and scheduled for Spring 2020
5: Institutionalize community engagement & anti-racism training for students and faculty in our programs	Develop a retreat for Sustainability Exchange students and faculty that covers the history of racism in environmentalism & sustainability, the history of St. Louis's segregation, and practical skills in entering & exiting communities and applying an equity lens to Sustainability Exchange projects	First retreat completed in January 2019 Next retreat scheduled for September 14th, 2019

 

Stay tuned for updates as we complete and add additional action items!