From the Director’s Desk: 11/2016

November 22, 2016

Greetings Wisconsin Campus Compact Enthusiasts!

October was a month full of energy and non-stop activities here at Wisconsin Campus Compact! I attended several conferences—from the WI College Personnel Association to the Assessment Institute (hosted by IUPUI) to the Pen to Paper Writing Retreat (hosted jointly by 5 Campus Compacts in Lake Geneva)—and made several campus visits (St. Norbert College, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Gateway Technical College, UW-Madison).  Plus, we interviewed and hired a new staff member, Lynne Blinkenberg, in the Associate Outreach Specialist role.  We’re so pleased to have Lynne on board.  Feel free to send her a welcome e-mail at lynne.blinkenberg {at} uwex(.)edu. MLK Day of Service Grants were also announced for our region HERE. There have been so many things happening, but I’d like to focus on my Top 5 takeaways from the recent Assessment Institute.

  1. How can you have a coherent community engagement data collection framework? A great preconference session put on by a team of folks from IUPUI, IN Campus Compact, and consultants framed how to go about putting together a campus strategy for assessing and tracking community engagement data. They offered a helpful DATA PLANNING FRAMEWORK and a Google Drive FOLDER complete with many helpful resources.
  2. What do you have to show for all that data? IUPUI has launched a public tool called “Data Link” that allows users to visually see things like how many faculty participate in high-impact practices (HIPs), the extent to which faculty / staff / students have participated in community engagement activities, and campus climate surveys.
  3. How do you assess progress toward a student’s sense of community engagement? Santa Clara University’s Experiential Learning for Social Justice (ELSJ) aspect of their core curriculum shared a recent evaluation they conducted to see if, in fact, they were effectively teaching community engagement to their students. See more about their evaluations HERE.  Their community engagement assessment was a combination of survey measures from the area of diversity, social justice, and civic engagement.  We’ve linked that to our website HERE.
  4. What’s next for HIP assessments? The next “generation” of assessment work for service-learning (as well as other HIPs) will likely be quality control. It is pretty well-established that HIPs actually make a difference in student success (hence their name).  But, not all HIPs are created equal.  That’s why IUPUI launched a series of taxonomies to help train faculty and staff about “good” vs “not-so-good” HIPs.  See HERE.  Specific one for service-learning is HERE.
  5. Does context matter? You bet it does. Iowa State University’s Personal and Social Responsibility Inventory is also part of the “next generation” of assessment and evaluation for our field.  They are looking at the extent to which campus climates support a student’s commitment to long-term civic engagement.  Guess what.  They’re finding that CONTEXT MATTERS.  Your campus can sign up to participate in this study if you are interested.

A special thank-you goes out to Milwaukee Area Technical College, University of Wisconsin-Madison, St. Norbert College, and Western Technical College for hosting our four regional meetings across the state.  If you missed them, the documents are available on our website HERE.

Finally, I want to extend our sincere sympathies to the family and friends of University of Wisconsin-Stout student Hussain Saeed Alnahdi, an international student who was literally beaten to death in downtown Menomonie.  Not as many details are known about the motivations behind his killers, but the fact remains that he was an international student at one of our Wisconsin campuses.  It’s up to us as higher education leaders to not stand for this kind of brutal violence ANYWHERE, but in particular in the communities with whom we want to partner.  Let’s unite together against this act.  And, all from UW-Stout reading this, we are here to support you in any way possible.

Good luck as everyone heads into the final stretch of the semesters! Know that we are always here to help advance your campus’s community engagement work.  Keep it up!

Best,

Gavin