There are increasing demands for universities to open up to society and to demonstrate their societal impact. Community engagement is a key precondition for societal impact and refers to partnerships between universities and their external communities, encompassing public, business and civil society sectors, to address societal needs. However, universities that wish to become more community-engaged lack methods and tools for doing so, policymakers lack a clear definition of community engagement, its dimensions, benefits and policy options, and communities wishing to partner with universities still find them difficult to approach. The long-term objective of the project Steering Higher Education for Community Engagement (SHEFCE) is to contribute to increasing community engagement of European universities, in the form of partnerships with local and regional stakeholders to address societal challenges. The specific objective of project is to build the capacities of universities, policymakers and stakeholders in Europe for mainstreaming community engagement in higher education. The SHEFCE project will produce four intellectual outputs (IOs): 1) University action-planning for community engagement 2) Policy recommendations for system-level support for community engagement in higher education 3) European online platform for community engagement in higher education 4) Piloting a European university-community engagement heatmap Together, these intellectual outputs will lead to the following outcomes: • Local level outcomes: Improved capacities of 5 universities and their communities for community engagement through institutional self-evaluation and action-planning • National level outcomes: Increased awareness of 5 national authorities/stakeholders of the value of community engagement in higher education, of system-level obstacles and of potential policy solutions • European outcomes: (1) Improved accessibility and quality of supportive resources for community engagement in higher education in Europe; (2) Foundation established for comparing European universities’ community engagement in a transnational context The number and profile of the participating organisations in the SHEFCE project will the following • 15 project team members from 10 consortium members (7 universities, 1 regional university network, 1 NGO and 1 private company) • 12 associate partners (5 high-profile international institutions, 3 dissemination partners and 5 local partners) • 100 participants from 5 action-planning universities The external participants of the project will be the following: • 5 sets of national policymakers and stakeholders from 5 countries (encompassing 75 participants) at national multiplier events • 5 sets of community stakeholders of each partner university (encompassing 50 participants) at local multiplier events • At least 10 high-profile European-level or international institutions in higher education at a European multiplier event • At least 80 consultation event participants (via webinars; 40 via stakeholder events) from universities, policymakers and stakeholders around Europe • At least 5000 unique visitors from at least 10 countries to the European Platform and at least 1000 social media followers The SHEFCE project methodology thus involves parallel actions at the local level, national level and European level. At the local level, the project will apply robust methodologies for developing high-quality plans to improve their community engagement; at the national level, the project will produce analyses to support evidence-based policy-making; and the European level, the project will both produce a valuable information resource for users and will pilot an innovative methodology and tool for measuring university performance in community engagement. The optimal long-term impact of the SHEFCE project (and its resulting sustainability) will be at three levels: • At a university level, the impact will be in the 5 partner universities fully implementing their institutional action plans for community engagement after the end of the project, resulting in improved community engagement and societal impact • At the national level, the impact will be in 5 national authorities consulted in the project agreeing to consider the policy recommendations of the project to remove obstacles for community engagement, paving the way for increased community engagement opportunities for universities • At the EU level, the impact will be in twofold: at a top-down level, EU-level stakeholders agreeing to consider using/endorsing the transnational European University-Community Engagement Heatmap as a future policy tool; at a bottom-up level, in the established European Platform for Community Engagement in Higher Education will support the emerging movement of universities wishing to be more engaged with their communities and will result in the establishment of a European network for community engagement in higher education.
The overall objective of the SHEFCE project was to contribute to increasing community engagement of European universities, in the form of partnerships with local and regional stakeholders to address societal challenges. The specific objective of the SHEFCE project is to build the capacities of universities, policymakers and stakeholders in Europe for mainstreaming community engagement in higher education.
Community engagement in higher education is an increasingly prominent topic both in university practices and in higher education policies. Community engagement refers to partnerships between universities and external communities, encompassing public, business and civil society sectors, to address societal needs. The SHEFCE project aimed to address needs of key stakeholders on how to better structure and support community engagement at the local level (by institutional action-planning at universities, in partnership with communities), at the national level (by providing policy recommendations to remove obstacles to community engagement) and at the European level (by piloting an innovative tool, by developing an online platform and providing recommendations and guidelines for supporting community engagement).