Staff & Community Engagement Professionals
Staff are central to identifying, supporting, and executing our mission and vision as a university. They are uniquely positioned to build and sustain strong community relationships while coordinating engagement efforts across KU units. Staff also play a key role in advancing engagement by promoting initiatives and guidelines within their unit’s programs, policies, and practices. This toolkit can support staff in strengthening their own engagement efforts, connecting students to community-based learning opportunities, and aligning their work with KU’s institutional commitment to community engagement.
How do I get started?
- Build or refresh your knowledge of community engagement by exploring key concepts, principles, and examples in the Engaged KU Toolkit.
- Consider how to integrate community engagement into your unit’s programs, policies, and practices.
- Support staff-led engagement efforts by identifying where community partnerships already exist within your unit.
- Pursue professional development experiences related to community engagement and partnership development.
- Encourage other staff, faculty, and students to use the Engaged KU Toolkit as a shared resource.
- Log engagement activities and initiatives in the shared documentation system (CCB).
Standards & Guidelines
- Professional Practice of Engagement: Develop and implement community engagement programs, initiatives, and partnerships. Apply CE standards in operations (partner onboarding, MOUs, honoraria, logistics, safety). Participate in professional development to build CE knowledge and skills.
- Operational Excellence & Partner Care: Maintain clear standards of practices for scheduling, space, materials, transportation, communications, and recognition for partners and student participants. for the Engaged KU Toolkit. Ensure resources and supports are provided by academic partners to remove barriers and enhance opportunities to support community engagement (e.g., transportation/parking, scheduling beyond academic calendars, accessibility, digital access, remote participation, scheduling outside academic hours, translation/interpretation, childcare, safety, compensation). Provide clear, community‑friendly processes and guidelines that support institutional procedures for compensation, recognition, dissemination, and other activities requiring community partner participation in campus or academic practices.
- Assessment and Reporting: Maintain engagement data systems, documentation, agreements, and compliance processes. Collect partner satisfaction and quality improvement information. Publicly report and review with the unit community engagement operations metrics. Promote and communicate exemplars of high-quality community engagement by contributing case examples. Provide community-friendly outputs that are valued by the community. Contribute to scholarship of practice via toolkits, presentations, and reports.
- Recognition and Rewards: Promote community-engaged activities through communications, events, and unit operations.
Staff Resources
- Center for Service Learning - Support for integrating community engagement into unit programs, policies, and practices.
- Center for Service Learning Ambassador Program - Connects faculty, staff, students, and community partners who are interested in promoting service learning and community engagement.
- Designated Service Learning Courses - Current listings of service-learning courses to connect students with engagement opportunities.
- Kansas Informal Learning Network Event Calendar - Find informal learning opportunities and community engagement events on campus.
- Staff Fellows Program - Leadership development program for staff to engage in university-wide initiatives.
- Propose a staff community engagement activity that aligns with your unit mission to your supervisor for a team building experience.
- 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.
Examples
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