Faculty

• Integrate engagement into your research or curriculum with support from the Office of Community Impact and this toolkit.
• Connect with peers across disciplines to build relationships to develop solutions to complex societal challenges. 
• Build sustainable relationships with community organizations and local leaders grounded in mutual benefit and shared goals. 
• Apply for awards that recognize and advance engaged scholarship and outreach. 
• Use central and inclusive venues, such as KU Libraries Community Space, to share research and creative activities with a broad audience.
• Explore toolkit resources including repositories of engaged scholarship models, sample syllabi, and Carnegie-ready reporting tools for annual reviews and promotion dossiers.
• Propose a faculty community engagement activity that aligns with your unit mission to your supervisor for a team building experience.
• Document your community engagement activities in the Engaged KU Community Check Box, a shared documentation system, and receive an annual acknowledgement letter from the Office of Community Impact for your teaching and research files.

Faculty play a central role in advancing high-quality academic–community engagement through their teaching, research, and creative activities. They shape the learning experiences, scholarship, and partnerships that bring the framework to life in classrooms, labs, and community settings. Based on the framework standards, the following guidelines outline key practices for faculty to support meaningful, ethical, and rigorous community-engaged teaching and scholarship.

• High-Quality Engaged Teaching & Scholarship: Integrate community engagement into teaching, scholarship, and service using ethical, asset-based and co-created approaches. Identify resources that support faculty in designing high-quality CE courses and scholarship with community partners. Use community co-created goals, asset-based approaches, ethical engagement, and appropriate methods to inform learning outcomes. Disseminate community-engaged learning outcomes to scholarly and public audiences.
• Course Design & Designation: Design courses with clear CE learning outcomes, partner roles, reflection processes, and risk/ethics protocols. Syllabi and other course materials should state CE learning outcomes, partner roles, structured reflection, risk/ethics protocols, and assessment. Use service-learning course designation processes and follow established community-engaged learning curricular standards through the Center for Service Learning, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and other institutional and broader resources. Maintain service-learning course designation to be formally recognized by the institution in supporting and advancing high-quality community-engaged learning.
• Assessment & Improvement: Assess student learning, partner satisfaction, and community benefit; use results to improve course design. Collect evidence of student learning, partner satisfaction, and community benefit. Use information from students and community partners to iteratively improve course design. Provide community partners with opportunities for feedback and support. Submit community engagement course information on learning outcomes and community partnerships to the Center for Service Learning and the Office of Community Impact.
• Recognition & Rewards: Ensure community engaged scholarship is included in promotion, tenure, and annual reviews. Promote community-engaged learning outcomes with campus and community partners and outlets. Document and disseminate engaged scholarship through both academic and public channels.

• Center for Service Learning - Hub for service-learning course support, community partner connections, and faculty development.
• Center for Service Learning Ambassador Program - Connects faculty, staff, students, and community partners who are interested in promoting service learning and community engagement.  
• Service Learning Course List - Current list of service-learning courses across all KU schools and departments.
• Campus Compact Syllabi Library - A repository of hundreds of courses that integrate community-engaged learning across a wide range of disciplines and issue areas.
• Kansas Informal Learning Network Event Calendar - Find informal learning opportunities and community engagement events on campus. 
• OCI Training on responsible community engage scholarship and community engaged work (starting Fall 2026). 
• Service-Learning Course Designation - Information on how to designate a course as service learning by CSL. The site includes a list of course components, a service-learning course submission form and course examples from KU instructors and students. research. 
• Carnegie ready reporting tools for annual reviews and promotion.
• Documentation tools aligned with Carnegie Community Engagement Framework.
• Experts at KU - Online faculty expertise search portal for internal and external users to find research collaborators on the Lawrence and KU Medical Center campuses. 
• Refer to the Carnegie Community Engagement Framework Guidance Document when planning, implementing, and assessing community engagement across departments and units.