In the spring semester of 2018, the CCE engaged in a "Semester of Listening" to gather input from around 500 people - including faculty, students, staff, community partners and residents. Underlying this effort to gather extensive input and feedback from communities on and off-campus was a deeper philosophy - the CCE belongs to, and exists to serve, the priorities of the college. With such a role, we felt that our mission and strategic direction should emerge from the college community; in other words, we should be charged with our strategic focuses. Additionally, we sought to embody the principles we espouse and promote - democracy, dialogue and deliberation, and community building and organizing.

Listening Strategies

We phased our Semester of Listening by block to have intentional conversations that built on one another over time. Beginning in Block 5, we gathered input around the state of community engagement at CC. In Block 6, we gathered input around a vision for community-engaged learning, research, and action at the college. During Block 7, we gathered input on strategies for how the CCE might support that vision. Lastly, in Block 8 we shared what we learned and invited feedback.

The forms of listening and types of outreach we conducted varied to invite input from the stakeholders best equipped to answer the questions of each phase. To understand the current state of community engagement at CC, as well as the roots of that landscape, we conducted focus groups with engaged students, faculty, staff, and current community partners, as well as historical interviews with prior leadership in community engagement at CC. We gathered broad input for our vision, popping in to numerous student group gatherings, almost every academic department meeting, and staff divisional and office meetings. During this phase, we also conducted a survey of community partners and residents and a Facebook poll for students. To develop our strategies moving forward, we conducted Skype sessions with civic engagement offices at peer or exemplar institutions across the nation.

Data Analysis

To make meaning and sense of the data, we formed a steering committee of 14 faculty, staff, students, and community organization representatives that analyzed input throughout the semester. The role of the steering committee was to synthesize broad, democratic input into core foundations of our strategic plan, based on the emergent themes and input of communities on and off campus. To enable the committee to have access to this input, we recorded all listening sessions and had them transcribed by a student assistant. We shared written summaries of each session with steering committee members, who then collectively identified patterns and themes. Reflecting these themes, the steering committee worked to re-write the CCE's mission and vision statements and identified the six aspirations on which our strategic plan is centered.