Conference Theme

The Engagement Imperative:
Academia, Students, and Communities in Partnership

Are college students academically and civically prepared to meet the challenges facing our local and global communities? Colleges and universities across the region, with varied missions and contexts, share many common goals as they strive to achieve academic excellence and prepare students to be transformative leaders in the 21st century. Common foci of the academy today include:

• increasing access, enrollment, and retention of a diverse student body
• achieving and documenting student learning and development outcomes
• preparing students to lead
• cultivating safe, supportive campus cultures
• promoting and awarding tenure to quality faculty
• building and sustaining campus-community partnerships
• building and sustaining “engaged campuses” that are responsive to the changing needs of our society

Photo courtesy of the Learn-n-Serve Environmental Anthropology Field School (LEAF School) Program at Edmonds Community College © Thomas Murphy

Outstanding community engagement and service-learning programs; campus-community partnerships; and other forms of civic engagement offer effective strategies for addressing these, and other critical issues facing our colleges and universities; our students; and our local and global communities.

The 11th Annual Continuums of Service Conference, The Engagement Imperative: Academia, Students, and Communities in Partnership, will demonstrate how engagement initiatives can advance institutional priorities and strategic partnerships, while building and sustaining healthy local and global communities.  The “Engaged Campus” is the future of higher education and imperative to preparing students for the 21st century!

Three-Year Theme Focus To increase focus and rigor of the Continuums of Service conference, the Western Region Campus Compact Consortium has developed a three-year overarching conference theme:  How can service-learning and community engagement be used as strategies to address critical issues in higher education and communities?  The conference intends to explore different aspects of this theme over three years: 2007:  The conference first introduced the theme and focused on the general concept of using service-learning and community engagement to address critical issues. 2008: The conference will focus more deeply on how service-learning and community engagement are used to address critical education issues. 2009:  The conference will focus more deeply on how service-learning and community engagement are used to address critical community issues.