University of New Hampshire (United States)

UNH Graduate Outreach and Engagement Strategic Initiatives

Overview:

Convergence is occurring between external demands placed on U.S. higher education institutions, such as those from state and federal governments for greater accountability, and calls for higher education’s recommitment to public purposes. This convergence has the potential to elevate and advance the higher education sector’s commitment to greater community engagement. Community engagement is the “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 2007).

While many outreach and engagement-based efforts exist at UNH, they are often unaligned, and this impedes collaboration and awareness between internal and external stakeholders. Creating a more cohesive approach to outreach and engagement at the graduate level will provide a key prong to UNH’s overall efforts in this area by leveraging and connecting existing strengths and opportunities, providing data points and increasing the visibility of the impact of UNH research and scholarly activity. In short, these strategic initiatives strengthen UNH’s graduate-level engaged scholarship by:

• Connecting students to each other and to resources across and beyond UNH.
• Training students to become engaged scholars.
• Making their scholarship’s public impact accessible and visible.
• Providing a clear front door for community partners seeking to conduct engaged scholarship with graduate students.

1. Initiatives/Activities:
2. Web-based platform that captures:
   1. Graduate scholarly efforts across all programs categorized by broad themes (e.g., potentially the Sustainable Development Goals) with a callout for engaged research; see Urban Ocean Lab’s Resource Hub as an example).
   2. Outreach and engagement opportunities and resources activities across and beyond campus (see below).[i]
3. Demonstrate the public impact of graduate-level engaged scholarship via:
   1. Monthly “Grad Research in the Community” events
   2. Seacoast Sips of Science
   3. Three-Minute Thesis Competition and Workshops
   4. Graduate Research Conference
   5. UNH Festival of Science (integrates Sips of Science and other initiatives into a single large event).
4. The Collaboratory of Graduate Scholars (COGS), which aims to increase the intersectionality between graduate students’ broad research/scholarly efforts by connecting scholars from a wide range of backgrounds, disciplines, and perspectives. Students are often uninformed about the research being conducted by peers outside of their home department which could inform their own efforts. For example, students from multiple academic departments are performing research on various aspects of climate change but are only sporadically aware of each other’s interests and research strengths. Increasing those interdisciplinary connections will fortify students’ own research programs and also provide useful social relationships via the creation of graduate student-based epistemic communities. In short, COGS aims to strengthen UNH’s graduate-level engaged scholarship by:
   1. Connecting students to each other and to resources across and beyond UNH.
   2. Training students to become engaged scholars.
   3. Making their scholarship’s public impact accessible and visible.
   4. COGS achieves this via an annual questionnaire to students regarding their research foci, creation of a web-based platform to showcase students’ research to one another and bringing students together for in-person events featuring graduate research on a particular theme.
5. Monthly public-facing event featuring grad research on a particular research theme with focus on community engagement and impact; incorporate social media visibility, story content creation via video/storytelling, etc. in order to help drive visibility of research impact.
6. Monthly Grad Community Engagement and Belonging newsletter.
7. The Graduate Engagement Hub, a central and visible place where requests and needs of state and regional-based organizations can be matched with the needs and skills of graduate students. Here, opportunities can be found for mutually beneficial collaboration between external organizations who need the skills of graduate students and the students looking for valuable experience that makes a difference.
8. High visibility and access to courses, workshops, trainings and resources on engaged scholarship best practices and opportunities in conjunction with units across campus, including the Carsey School for Public Policy and the UNH Sustainability Institute.
9. The Grad Advisory Team for Engaged Scholarship (GATES), which features representatives from key UNH units[ii] associated with graduate engaged scholarship. GATES meets in-person on a quarterly basis with the aims of:
   1. Providing guidance on the Graduate Outreach and Engagement Strategic Action Plan
   2. Creating intersectionality across and beyond campus on graduate-level engaged scholarship initiatives.
   3. Communicating graduate-level engaged scholarship opportunities and resources

III. Key Benefits[iii]:

1. Strengthen UNH’s Research Enterprise:
   1. Stronger + more intentional integration + co-beneficial leveraging of cross-campus efforts and opportunities leading to increased transdisciplinary research efforts.
   2. Closer alignment of the stakeholders involved in broad research areas (e.g., climate change mitigation, coastal resilience, PFAS, etc.).
   3. Strengthen connections between relevant UNH departments (e.g., Carsey Schook, UNHSI, Graduate School, Cooperative Extension, UNHI).
   4. Strengthen grant proposals (e.g., content for NSF Broadening Participation area).
2. Student Development and Support:
   1. Train students to become engaged scholars in ways that augment their studies and accelerate their professional development and networking.
   2. More relevant and applied research opportunities
   3. Development of epistemic communities that strengthen relationships and sense of connection and belonging.
   4. Increased visibility and access to external funding opportunities for students.
3. Public Visibility and Access
   1. Provide a mechanism for UNH to more ably inform the public of the impact and breadth of its research and scholarly activity via provide stronger institutional narrative and visibility of outreach and engaged scholarship (e.g., to media, policymakers, potential funders, state offices, etc.).
   2. Make engaged scholarship opportunities easily visible + accessible to all stakeholders (students, external partners, UNH departments).
   3. Track and manage graduate-level outreach and engagement efforts (e.g., easy viewing of internal + external stakeholders engaging specific thematic areas).
   4. Provide mechanism towards measuring the University’s progress in engagement and outreach efforts.
   5. Provide more detailed and contextual information for applications to the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, etc.
4. Support Community Partners:
   1. Create increased engagement between UNH and the state, local communities and agencies via helping to address major challenges and thus helping UNH to fulfill its land-grant mission of sharing and applying knowledge in ways that are impactful towards addressing societal needs and problems across an array of areas.
   2. Help to create a clearer entry point for community partners interested in collaborating with graduate students to enhance their capacity.
   3. Creation of a more accessible “front door” for community partners interested in collaborating with graduate students to enhance their capacity.