Pilot Inventory of Community Partnerships

Partnerships with community organizations create increased opportunities for universities to promote community-engaged research, teaching, and service. Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) mission states that the university is committed to sustainable, university-community partnerships that enhance the educational, economic, and cultural vitality of the communities VCU serves. In recognition of its efforts, VCU is among a small number of institutions to be designated as very high research activity and community-engaged by the Carnegie Foundation. It is also a recipient of a NIH-funded Center for Translational and Sciences Award, which promotes community-engaged research. In pursuit of the university’s goal to become a national model for community engagement and regional impact, the Division of Community Engagement (DCE) and Office of Planning and Decision Support (OPDS) – with representatives from across the university - sought to identify current community-university partnerships during 2012-13. The team developed a Pilot Inventory of Community Partnerships (PICP) to test a university-wide data collection process. The findings are presented along with recommendations for improving the long-term ability to count and describe the university’s partnerships. (This effort parallels the VCU Health System’s plans for a similar pilot to identify and document outreach efforts.) The resulting baseline information presented here helps to achieve the University Level Initiative 4 strategy, Define and collate community partnerships and determine measures to leverage assets. The information gathered will provide a resource to our VCU and Health System communities to collaborate, build on existing efforts, and identify gaps

IRB-Approved Community-Engaged Research at VCU: Analysis of Baseline Data and Overview of New Data System

Within the academy and across VCU there is growing recognition that community-engaged research (CEnR) is a valuable framework that enables researchers to conduct research and produce results that can be directly translated into improvements in human health, education, sustainability, and economic development. One example of VCU’s institutional commitment to community engagement is that a description of CEnR has been added to the revised university promotion and tenure guidelines. Additionally, it is included as a key strategy in advancing the discovery of new knowledge, creative expression, and innovation by increasing and diversifying sponsored research and promoting translational research and scholarship that contributes to human health and addresses the most complex global challenges (ULI 3). VCU has not collected information on CEnR systematically. This creates challenges in establishing a baseline of activity against which to measure progress in increasing high quality, high impact CEnR. To address this gap, a team representing the Division of Community Engagement, Office of Research, Center for Clinical and Translational Research, and several academic units pursued a two-prong strategy. First, a survey of principal investigators at VCU was used to identify and collect information about CEnR studies approved by the IRB during 2011-2012. Concurrently, the team identified a brief series of questions that now have been added to the IRB application to track future CEnR studies. Institutionalizing the process for collecting these data, as well as the results of the inventory, will aid in future tracking of CEnR as well as support efforts to advance CEnR across the university. This report highlights findings from the analysis of baseline data and provides an overview of the data collection system now being used as part of the IRB approval process

Measuring & Monitoring Impact of Community Engagement at Virginia Commonwealth University: A Brief Review of Existing and Planned Systematic Data Collection Mechanisms

As a major research university in an urban environment, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is an anchor institution for Greater Richmond, contributing to the economic vitality and health of the entire region. As VCU takes its place among the nation’s top 50 public research universities, determined by The Center for Measuring University Performance, our guiding principles have been an abiding focus on student success at all levels, unparalleled innovation through research, a university-wide commitment to human health, and engagement and empowerment in the communities we serve. VCU strengthened its position as a top-ranked urban, public research university and earned “Research University, Very High Research Activity” status and the elective community engagement classification from the Carnegie Foundation (one of only 28 national public research universities with academic medical centers that hold both distinctions). In building on its commitment, the current strategic plan emphasizes community engagement as a priority and includes community engagement as a means to providing high quality learning experiences and advancing excellence in research (http://www.quest.vcu.edu). Partially due to its commitment in community engagement, the university is one of 60 institutions with a NIH-sponsored Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA). As the size, mission and complexity of the modern university has grown, so has the need for information to support its decision-making and to describe its efforts and impact. This dynamic store of information is commonly referred to as “enterprise data”. This report provides a summary of existing and developing enterprise data mechanisms that track and assess VCU’s engagement with our communities. The data collection mechanisms for the following metric areas are summarized: Service-Learning; Service Hours; Community-Engaged Research; University-Community Partnerships

Identifying Regional Priorities and Opportunities

During 2014-2105, the Division of Community Engagement collected and reviewed publicly available community assessments to gain a better understanding of community-identified priorities. Twenty-four (24) reports from the past 10 years (2005-2015) were reviewed for their geographical focus, explicit population of interest, data collection methods and stated priorities. The common priorities that emerged from this review are included here, along with the associated recommendations from the assessments. This effort was not intended to replace other assessments, rather as a means to understand the overarching priorities that have been identified through these various community assessments

Community Engagement and Regional Impact: A Review of Systematic Data Collection Mechanisms

This report provides a summary of existing and developing enterprise data mechanisms that track and assess VCU\u27s engagement with and impact on our communities

Measuring & Monitoring Impact of Community Engagement at Virginia Commonwealth University

This report provides a summary of existing and developing enterprise data mechanisms that track and assess Virginia Commonwealth University’s engagement with our communities. The activities included here are limited to those efforts with which the DCE is actively involved. The Division of Community Engagement (DCE) undertook this effort and published the original document in fall 2014. This 2015 report has been updated to reflect progress that has been made during the 14-15 academic year

Council for Community Engagement Grants Impact Report 2007-2012

As Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) takes its place among the nation‟s top 50 public research universities, our guiding principles have been an abiding focus on student success at all levels, unparalleled innovation through research, and a university-wide commitment to human health, and engagement and empowerment in our communities. To that end, VCU has named community engagement as a key focus area in its strategic plan with the aim of developing collaborative university-community partnerships that yield creative and relevant solutions for community-identified needs. These mutually-beneficial partnerships not only support the public good, but they also support our mission to advance knowledge and student success through teaching and learning, scholarship, and outreach efforts. The Council for Community Engagement (CCE) Grants is one way that VCU supports the development of sustainable, mutually-beneficial partnerships. Under the direction of the vice provost for community engagement and the vice president for health policy and community relations of the VCU Health System, the Council provides oversight for the CCE Grants. The CCE projects are designed to enhance and increase university engagement with the community and contribute to community-engaged scholarship. One-year seed grants of up to $20,000 are awarded to proposals that demonstrate the involvement of faculty and students, address community-identified needs, and demonstrate substantive collaboration with at least one community partner. Over the past 7 years (2007-2014 grant years),$581,871 has been awarded to fund 51 community-based scholarship projects, which have involved 107 faculty from 19 academic and academic support units, representing 68 different departments and over 76 community partners (Appendix A). These projects have largely focused on improving health & wellness (34%), education (26%), environmental sustainability (14%), positive youth development (14%) and other (12%). This evaluation examined the impact of the seed grant program from 2007-2012 grant years (2007 – 2011 calendar years) from the perspectives of the community partners, PIs and students. Two overarching questions guided this evaluation: 1) do the grants facilitate successful community-university partnerships, and 2) can seed grant money be a catalyst for long-term partnerships. Although not included in the current evaluation, it is worth noting that two recently funded (2012-13) CCE grantees have already demonstrated successful impact. VCU‟s School of Nursing recently received a $1.5 million grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services to expand the CCE grant, “Community Health and Wellness Program for Older Adults”. In addition, the “CMoR Learning: Developing Interdisciplinary Partnerships for an Inclusive Learning Community” CCE grantee has been ranked in the nation‟s top 10 as a model for children‟s learning museums

Are Your Findings \u27Finding\u27 Their Way to the Community? A Faculty Learning Community Approach to Broad Dissemination

Presented at the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement Conference on September 27, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana

Intro to Community-Engaged Research & Service-Learning

Definitions of community engagement, research, and service-learning. Benefits of utilizing service-learning at VCU, such as increased graduation rate, building professional skills, addressing social problems, engaging faculty with community experts, and creating opportunities for faculty led community-engaged research