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Through responsible and meaningful community engagement we can tackle the world’s most urgent challenges. No one person -- and no one institution -- can do it alone. By bringing together students, faculty, staff, and community we aim to co-produce knowledge that addresses and responds to real-world community-identified problems. The goal of community-engaged work is to strengthen mutually beneficial learning experiences, research, partnerships and collaborations with communities. Positive change is possible when led by collaborative relationships between the university and the community. 

The Office of the Principal and Vice-Chancellor has appointed Dr. Wendy Craig, Department of Psychology, as Special Advisor to the Principal on Community Engagement in an effort to highlight and enhance community engagement opportunities at Queen’s.

Progress

Dr. Craig’s first focus is on community engaged learning that brings together students, faculty, staff, and communities to co-produce knowledge that addresses and responds to community-identified challenges. These mutually beneficial learning experiences effect positive change through collaboration and meaningful partnerships among students and community organizations.

So far Dr. Craig has been collecting experiences, feedback, and data to inform a comprehensive review of the community engagement landscape at various universities across the country and at Queen’s. She has held meetings with individual faculty and staff members, hosted student focus groups, and is working with a team of students to complete the pan-Canadian scan and to inventory Queen’s courses with a community engagement or service component.

Dr. Craig’s work has uncovered that there are many community engagement learning experiences in the faculties and schools at Queen’s in many different forms. For example, some courses are small-scale, only happen once, or are not embedded in the formal curriculum, while others are long-standing offerings that are interdisciplinary and driven by a team of faculty members.

Stories of Student Learning for Community Impact 

Community-engaged learning opportunities often bring together students, faculty, staff, and community partners to address and respond to community-identified challenges. The stories shared below are examples across the university that highlight the breadth of opportunities for both students and community partners.