Testing Our Mettle: A Webinar Series for Mid-Career Community Engagement Professionals – Sep 16

Posted by International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement on August 30, 2022

Community Engagement Professionals (CEPs) have long occupied liminal spaces at the nexus of campus and community, playing myriad roles in advancing the public purpose of our higher education institutions. However, the current context poses challenges for CEPs to validate our roles and make the case for the impact of our work due to changing institutional priorities, growing inequities, and limited resources. Faced with growing complex challenges, mid-career CEPs are reconsidering our own priorities, aspirations, and pathways to professional fulfillment. This 2-part webinar series will guide CEPs through a process of reorienting our relationships to our professional roles, and reviving our motivation to act as change agents in our institutions and beyond. Registration is free for all participants.

Session One: Friday, September 16, 2022, 2:30 PM

The revolutionary scholarship of Lina Dostilio and colleagues (2016) provided a framework to understand the complexity of CEP’s roles in higher education and the array of knowledge, skills, and critical commitments they demonstrate through these roles. These scholars’ comprehensive competency model has carved out a legitimate space for many who were otherwise classified generally as “staff” at our institutions. Now, as we manage the ongoing fallout of the pandemic and other interlocking justice issues, we invite CEPs to draw on the competency model to set our individual and collective course. Webinar participants will hear from three of the creators of the CEP competency model about how it has guided their community engagement work, and how their perspectives on it have evolved in the changing context of higher education and our world over the past few years.

A moderated Q&A will follow. Participants will review the competency model as a launch point for reflection on their strengths, challenges, and aspirations for their work.

More information.

Register.

The follow-up webinar on October 5 will be a space for reflective conversation, using the competency model as a facilitation structure.