UNM Symposium on Community Engagement set for Nov. 15

The second annual Symposium on Community Engagement at The University of New Mexico on Nov. 15 will feature a day of speakers and panel discussions designed to provide resources on how the university community can build partnerships.

The theme of this year's symposium is "Breaking Barriers." The event will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a reception to follow from 5:30-6:30 p.m. in the Student Union Building. Most of the events will take place in Lobo A&B. Registration is open here.

Tim Castillo, director of the UNM Office of Community Engagement, said the event's overarching goal is to help in the understanding of what community engagement is and why it is important - both for individual faculty or administrators as well as the communities they work with.

"With this symposium, we hope to communicate the value of community engagement and how it can benefit our institution, especially faculty in a variety of disciplines and how it can contribute to the knowledge production," he said.

He emphasizes that UNM's role is not to act as the "expert" in imposing our knowledge on communities, but instead to work with various partners to understand how to share knowledge.

"We want to work with communities using what we have learned with the knowledge they already possess to advance a common set of values," Castillo said.

The event will begin at 9 a.m. with a reception, followed by welcome remarks from Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs James Holloway. The event will then feature a series of panel discussions throughout the day.

The first panel at 10 a.m. will be "The Communities We Serve," which will feature community engagement leaders from UNM, University of Arizona, Texas Tech, and the University of Texas at El Paso. It will explore the impact of engagement on their communities as R1 and Hispanic Serving Institutions.

Cammie Jones-Friedrichs, director of the Carnegie Elective for Community Engagement, will deliver the keynote address at 1 p.m. titled "The Power of Collective Action Work: Breaking Down Barriers in Community Engagement Using Lessons Learned from the Carnegie Classification." Jones-Friedrichs will also moderate a panel called "Why Carnegie? Leveraging the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification."

The final panel discussion, led by Castillo, will be at 4 p.m. "Tenure and Promotion for Engaged Scholarship" will examine how community engagement activities factor into the promotion and tenure process, especially in light of traditional academic metrics that emphasize the value of research output and publications.

"We aim to foster a deeper understanding of community-engaged scholarship and how higher education institutions are shaping their policies for promotion and tenure," he said.

The event will conclude with a reception on the SUB main floor.

The latest schedule can be found on the website.

UNM is currently preparing a report for elective reclassification of the Carnegie Foundation for Community Engagement that the University will submit by April 1. Castillo said that events such as the symposium, along with the Community Engagement Week that was held in April, provide useful awareness and information for faculty and others at UNM who are interested in what community engagement looks like, as well as the benefits of creating such partnerships.