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Abstract

This case example illustrates key opportunities, processes, and outcomes of nearly a decade of intentional efforts to build and support community-engaged faculty culture and institutionalization in the School of Health and Human Sciences at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Situated within a university-wide, faculty-led movement to institutionalize support for community engagement through policy and practice, we describe the motivation of faculty and administrative leadership to integrate support for community engagement across teaching, research and service roles in the Health and Human Sciences unit at UNCG. We present critical moments of opportunity that were leveraged by faculty and administrative leadership to integrate community engagement into visioning and planning documents, faculty rewards and awards, curricular programming, and trans-disciplinary scholarly work through community-engaged partnerships. Using information collected through faculty focus groups and document analysis, and as part of a multi-institutional research program sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, we describe key outcomes of efforts to institutionalize community engagement at the school level and areas in which community engagement is integrated into the School’s strategic plan. Of special importance are areas related to tenure and non-tenure track faculty recruitment, faculty promotion and tenure policies, faculty grants and awards programs, and school-level strategic planning. Finally, we describe various choices made about where to locate various activities, efforts, and resources, whether at the department, school, or university-wide level.

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