As part of the evaluation, 21 experienced community leaders associated with the Engaging initiative participated in a two-day summit in September 2002. The summit sought to capture community participants’ perspectives regarding their partnership work with higher education. The principal outgrowth of the summit was the creation of two documents that highlight their experiences. A detailed monograph documenting their experiences will be available on CIC’s website in early September. Additionally, a brochure that encapsulates the information in the monograph on the practices and strategies that community partners identified as being important to successful partnerships has been widely distributed. It is also on the website at www.cic.edu/caphe/grants/engaging.asp.
     More than 4,000 copies of the brochure, Building Partnerships with College Campuses: Community Perspectives, by Sally Leiderman, Andrew Furco, Jennifer Zapf, and Megan Goss were initially mailed in the spring. Since then, more than 2,000 additional copies have been requested by all types of institutions from around the country. The brochures are often ordered in batches of a dozen or more to share with faculty, students, and others who work with community organizations. For additional copies, contact Elizabeth Hamshaw at ehamshaw@cic.nche.edu.
     In the coming months, CIC will continue to disseminate findings from the Engaging initiative.
     Grantee Dissemination Efforts. Grant recipients were encouraged to make presentations at local, regional, and national conferences, and funds were made available to help support both college and community representatives’ participation. More than ten presentations were made at meetings sponsored by the American Association for Higher Education, National Society for Experiential Education, and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, among others. Campus and community representatives were also invited to participate in a national summit held this spring sponsored by Campus Compact, the Ford Foundation, and the Johnson Foundation on strengthening the capacity of community-based organizations to partner with institutions of higher education.
     Effective Practices Exchange. In addition to those dissemination efforts described above, CIC is developing a web-based Effective Practices Exchange that will document the effective practices of grantees and other CIC member institutions that are engaged in this work. Beginning fall 2003, this electronic network represents the final phase of the project. It will enable large numbers of institutions (not just those who received grants) to share information about their work in community engagement.

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Last updated: March 2003
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