[Announcement from Comm-engagedscholarship listserv]
Dear community-engaged scholarship colleagues,
Jack Lightstone, President and Vice-Chancellor at Brock
University, authored an editorial about community-university partnerships in
today's Globe and Mail:
Universities: Instead of Ivory Tower, a place in the
neighbourhood
JACK LIGHTSTONE
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Much has been written and said about universities’ role
in developing Canada economically, socially and culturally. Some pundits have
said that universities are not embracing this role, not making a priority of
Canada’s needs. They paint a picture of stodgy, self-referential institutions
resistant to change and deaf to calls to address Canada’s important issues – in
other words, ivory towers. This tired stereotype is simply not true, whether we
are talking about disciplines within the humanities or social sciences, or
“professional” schools like medicine, engineering or education.
For the past 18 months, Ontario’s universities have been
working with the provincial government to establish Strategic Mandate
Agreements (SMAs) for each institution. Each SMA will describe its university’s
mandate, vision and priorities for the next several years.
A quick glance at the first SMA drafts, submitted more
than a year ago, seems to suggest that many of the things Ontario universities
do, or aspire to do, are the same across the board, and probably repeated at
most Canadian universities. And this is as it should be; Canada’s universities
share traits, aspirations and much of their core missions.
However, a closer look at the submissions and at the
institutions themselves demonstrates how different Canada’s universities are
from one another. Each is a product of its own unique history within a context
– in fact a dual context.
Half of that context is the world of academe, a global
world of scholarship and discovery where all universities need to have one foot
firmly planted in similar, although not identical, places. After all, the laws
of physics are the same in Canada as they are in Asia, so an education in
physics must be informed by discovery and scholarship that meets the test on a
global stage.
The other half of the context is the circle of
communities that each university inhabits. Local needs and realities forge a
university’s nature and inform its future. For instance, it makes sense to
teach and research about mining at Laurentian University in Sudbury. Likewise,
energy industry studies are natural for Alberta campuses; viticulture research
thrives at Brock University in Ontario’s grape and wine heartland; First
Nations studies are strong at University of Regina or the University of
Northern British Columbia; Ocean Sciences at Memorial University in
Newfoundland; and so on.
These are the more obvious examples. Scratch deeper; look
at the study of history, or economics, or literature, or sociology. Each of
these disciplines in each of our universities is flavoured by its location, by
the university’s unique place within its surrounding communities and by its
history.
Can we do better in fusing these two elements – the world
of academe, and the concentric circle of communities around a university? Can
we better translate issues and insights across these two worlds? We can, and we
must.
There are likely many new alternative ways to achieve
this translation in research and teaching, but here is an option worth serious
consideration.
What if institutions organized their research efforts not
only along traditional lines (chemistry, sociology, economics, psychology,
etc.) but also around themes that local communities identify as their
priorities?
And what if the proof that these priorities are valid was
measured by community involvement – private, public, or not-for-profit players stepping
up to partner with researchers and their students?
And what if the definition of success required that the
results benefit not only the world of academe (disseminated through articles
published in scholarly journals or books and the training of the next
generation of researchers) but also the development of surrounding communities
(by defined deliverables for the community partners)?
Creating such community-university collaborations would
have a positive impact, for various reasons. Because each collaboration would
pull experts from many areas, the challenges facing our communities could be
diagnosed through more than just the lens of a single discipline. (The fact is,
most of our pressing challenges require the collation of perspectives from more
than one discipline.)
Around each research theme, a true partnership between
the community and university would evolve, as would a rich environment for
students that spans the university, industry and the community.
This approach of partnering with and supporting
development of local communities spurs innovation in its truest sense: It
creates new knowledge, and makes it matter for those outside the academy. And
it is not an unproven concept – it is already thriving at my own institution.
No doubt there are other examples at other universities.
When it comes to developing Canada economically, socially
and culturally, our universities are partners and catalysts, not ivory towers.
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The Community-Engaged Scholarship Partnership aims to
transform university policies & practices to recognize & reward
community-engaged scholarship (CES) Through CES, we seek to realize the
potential of universities to improve the quality of life for all Canadians
Visit us at
http://cescholarship.ca and
follow us on twitter @CESpartnership
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