Community Advisory Boards

Posted by HE-SL Listserv on November 14, 2023

A recent post on the Higher Education – Service-Learning (HE-SL) Listserv Posed the following: “We are beginning to research the possibility of creating a community advisory board/community advisory committee with our local community leaders and agencies. I was wondering how others might have created a community advisory board/committee in their local areas.”

Here are some of the responses:

Director of Community Engagement and Bonner Leaders, University of Lynchburg: We were given a “charge” letter from our President for our Advisory Board. Since our Board started in the midst of Covid, we will have our first in person meeting in a few weeks; we meet quarterly.

Dissertation Dish: An Exploration of Two Community Advisory Boards Within Community Engagement Centers at Institutions of Higher Education with Dr. Elizabeth Cannon, was hosted by Lead California on Oct 23, 2023. Here’s the Dissertation Dish recording link.

The Sundborg Center for Community Engagement at Seattle University has an advisory board consisting of community leaders, campus leaders and funders. These three groups meet separately 2 to 3 times per year and all together once per year. Contact Kent Koth, Executive Director at kothk@seattleu.edu for more information.

UCLA Center for Community Engagement: Our center has just recently formed a Community Partners Council – we’ve met once so far. We sent a framing document to Council members when we invited them to join. This document emerged out of a series of conversations that I and another staff member had with some of our long time community partners about what a Council of this type should do, what role they might play, and how they would want to inform the work of our center. Email Doug Barrera, Associate Director for Faculty & Community Engagement, at dbarrera@college.ucla.edu for a copy of the framing document.