Communicating for Social Change in Sierra Leone
By Victor Massaquoi

By Victor Massaquoi

Outreach Scholarship 2006: Engagement through the Disciplines

A Brief Report

Background/Introduction

In the last seven years, scholarship of engagement, academia working with communities to effect social change, is gradually moving to the top of the agendas of university administrators, both nationally and internationally. The choreography of the three-day conference in Columbus lends credence to the supposition that collaboration entails dissimilar endogenous and exogenous factors; but creates a constructive whole to produce a perfect music.

Objectives

From my observation, the two primary objectives of the conference were: (1) to bring academics and community partners together, and share experiences, (2) to explore ways to increase interdisciplinary academic collaboration in universities across the country and beyond.

Sessions: Concurrent and Plenary

There were over 60 sessions dealing with diverse university-community outreach issues. Participants from over 30 states and some countries around the world presented papers on engaging the disciplines, serving the community, service-learning, faculty collaboration and more.

How the Conference would Benefit PCA/CITE

The outreach scholarship conference has enormously enriched my personal appetite for scholastic and community engagement subjects, but, more, so, it would benefit PCA/CITE tremendously (as will be discussed below). The conference shows that the thought of universities engaging their surrounding communities will always be tempered by a complex web of interdisciplinary philosophies, theories and methods, but would be united by one central goal-different expertise collaborating for the symbiotic benefit of the feeding communities and their hungry universities. PCA/CITE can benefit from this conference in the following ways, depending on how useful PCA/CITE finds this report:
. Getting Faculty to Collaborate: Because of the differences in philosophies and approaches to solving community problems and conducting academic inquiries, the president and the department chairs can be fully utilized in this endeavor. How? The president holds a 45 minutes meeting with all his vice presidents and department chairs. He specifically asks them to work with PCA/CITE to engage surrounding communities. The president also appoints a vice president as the liaison to ensure that community engagement through the disciplines, which is part of his strategic vision for the university, is fully complied with. For example, the four presidents of the sponsoring universities were very present in the different conference proceedings, demonstrating how vital this issue is, and gravitating toward the center stage of academe.
· The Dissemination Grant Program: Apart from writing articles in academic journals, newspapers, and other reading documents that very few people read, web-based approach to civic engagement is gaining momentum. Ohio State University is presently funding “Ohio 4-H Cloverbud Connections.” This is a web-based educational newsletter that encourages the community to engage in civic discourse, identify need(s), suggest solution(s), share idea(s) and work with the university to address identified issue(s). “The newsletter comes out quarterly, is cheap and effective,” an OSU evaluator said.
· Active Community Participation: One of the ideas shared and discussed in one of the sessions was for the academics/students to take a back seat in preliminary idea discussions (within established ground rules), allowing the community to run with ideas and produce possible solutions with support from academe. Also, to offer community members leadership roles, because community interest develops if an idea for change emanated and directed by them.
· Fulfilling our Missions/Strategies: The conference fulfilled almost all the provisions in our missions: (1) that partnership should be done horizontally-co-equal participation, (2) resource combination (university and community) can be effective, (3) project must benefit the community and the university through reciprocal input, and (4) we must address sustainability and challenges through a mutually agreed plan.

Conclusion

The conference was a striking success, in virtually every aspect; someone from PCA/CITE should attend next year’s conference in Madison, Wisconsin, should the need arise. Universities are now looking outside their four walls to, in a formal way, engage communities, because at the end of the day, universities get their students from the communities they claim to serve, so, why not engage the community anyway, which will benefit the community and the university; it’s a win-win venture. In one session, the speaker said, for collaboration to work, hopefully well, there should be (1) an established common working language, (2) define need together, (3) identify solution(s) together, (4) design plan of action together, (5) use the logic model (suggested) to measure success, and (6) construct evaluation and sustainability plan together.