Office of Public Engagement

The Office of the Chancellor – Public Engagement is pleased to issue this call for proposals for a new round of funding for Engaged Unit Program.

Building on the success of the first two cohorts of the program, in which eight college-wide and school-wide units have developed and implemented action plans to further the institutionalization of public engagement into their research and teaching priorities, this new round of funding focuses on strengthening the ways units account for and measure the scale, scope, and impact of their public engagement activities, programs, and partnerships.

As with the previous two cohorts, this Engaged Unit Program will support teams representing overarching academic units—colleges and schools—in identifying and implementing action steps for furthering the institutionalization of community-engaged research and/or teaching in the academic agendas within their units. Specifically, for this round of funding, participants in the program will develop an action plan that identifies strategies for implementing one or more approaches to systematically measuring the level of public engagement activity within their respective unit, such as assessing the participation rates among students, faculty, and department in public engagement, identifying overall trends in the unit’s public engagement activities, and to the extent possible, measuring the impact of the unit’s public engagement on students, faculty, the unit, and the community.

While the University has invested in mechanisms to capture the range and scale of public engagement across the institution (e.g., the adoption of the Give Pulse community engagement measurement system), such systems capture generic data that are valuable and useful at the institutional level. However, in addition to incorporating these institutional systems into a unit’s public engagement efforts, there are additional strategies for units to explore for capturing important data that more directly address the needs and interests of the unit. Having complete and accurate data regarding public engagement in a unit provides useful information that:

• • Guides the allocation of resources for maximum benefits.
  • Identifies gaps in practices and programs.
  • Helps identify and address duplication of efforts.
  • Allows for the tracking of progress and trends over time.
  • Guides program improvement and enhancement.
  • Allows units to provide information on community engagement efforts to key stakeholders.

With this focus in mind, this round of the Engaged Unit Program will support the involvement of up to ten overarching academic units—specifically, colleges and schools— to plan, establish, and implement strategic initiatives (three to five action steps) that focus on enhancing the accounting and assessment systems that measure the scale, scope, range, quality, and impact of the public engagement efforts in their unit. Their action planning and implementation work will take place between January 2025 and June 2026.

Units selected to participate will receive up to $7,500 to engage a team in designing, building, and testing a comprehensive and strategic unit-wide measurement system for public engagement. Unit teams will be given the option to incorporate the University Give Pulse Community Engagement Measurement system into their unit’s plan. Participants in the program will also have access to resource materials (books), technical assistance providers, external speakers, and community-based and university-based networks to enhance their public engagement accounting, assessment, and measurement plans.

Purpose

The Engaged Unit Program builds on the work conducted at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and at other universities to support eligible units in developing and implementing strategic initiatives that integrate public engagement into the unit’s academic programmatic features. Units that participate in the program focus on elevating the criticality of public engagement in order to build a more engaged college or school. Having a strategic and comprehensive measurement system for public engagement is essential to monitor and assess progress in this direction.

An engaged college or school is one that:

• • Utilizes public engagement as a strategy to achieve key academic goals for students and
  • Encourages and supports high quality community-based research and engaged scholarship among faculty and/or students.
  • Incorporates public engagement (local and/or global) into academic coursework to enhance student learning and development.
  • Supports collaborative research and teaching activities between members of the unit (faculty, scholars, department leaders, college administrators, staff) and members of the community (non-profits, government, industry, etc.).
  • Develops and implements strategic initiatives that build on, strengthen, and improve existing public and community engagement activities within the unit.
  • Addresses meaningful and important societal issues in collaboration and partnership with external partners.

Focus of the Program

This program supports participating units in developing and enacting plans that identify specific action steps for building and implementing unit-wide measurement and assessment systems for public engagement. In addition to advancing the implementation of public engagement efforts within units, focusing on systematic unit-level data collection and measurement systems for public engagement contributes to the broader universitywide efforts to advance public engagement. For example, more carefully collecting and assessing information on engagement efforts allows both units and the university to advance the visibility and value of public engagement in promotion and tenure reviews, provide data for the university’s Carnegie Community Engagement classification, and demonstrate the university’s institutional commitment to a broad range of public engagement. Through this program, public engagement measurement models will emerge that will inform and be of much value to other units at the university and to the broader public engagement field.

The development of engaged unit activities under this program might involve but are not limited to the following:

• • Implementing the University’s Give Pulse system into the unit.
  • Building a system for cataloguing and tracking the unit’s public engagement efforts.
  • Identifying opportunities to include public engagement-related items within existing data collection systems (e.g., systems already in place that collect data on faculty activities, courses, student programs, etc.).
  • Exploring how peers at other institutions account for and measure their public engagement activities.
  • Build an online footprint map of locations where the unit’s public engagement activities are taking place.

Key Components

Activities that are part of the Engaged Unit Program should include all of the following components:

• • Identification of the existing public engagement measurement activities within the various departments and programs of the unit.
  • Establishment of a systematic and comprehensive approach to capturing the full scale, scope, and range of public engagement efforts.
  • Consideration of who manages the measurement system and the human capital necessary to manage the system.
  • Articulation of a strategy for socializing the public engagement measurement system throughout the unit in order to secure high levels of buy-in and support from members of the unit.
  • Consideration for the kinds of data and information that will be collected, and how those data and information will used in meaningful ways.
  • Consideration of the long-term sustainability of the measurement system.

The university’s public engagement efforts take place in many different community contexts, from local to global and include partnerships with a broad range of external stakeholders and sectors. Each effort and partnership brings with it a unique set of circumstances and situations that warrant consideration and careful planning.

Team Criteria and Expectations

Unit Teams: Up to ten (10) college-wide and/or school-wide teams will be selected to participate in the program. Each team will consist of at least four individuals who will serve as representatives of the unit’s engagement work and action planning efforts. Each unit team must include the following members:

• • at least one individual who serves in a unit-wide academic leadership role (dean, associate dean, dean designee, director, associate director).
  • at least one faculty from the unit (preferably a tenure line faculty member).
  • at least one individual who has data management or other measurement responsibilities in the unit and/or who will be responsible for operationalizing and managing the public engagement measurement system(s).
  • at least one other member, including but not limited to other faculty members, unit staff members, students, and community partners.

Note: There is no maximum limit to the number of individuals who can serve on a unit team.

Engaged Unit Program

The members of each of the selected teams will participate as a cohort in a three-phased, 18-month institute that includes:

• • Planning and Development of a strategic action plan for institutionalizing a unit-wide, systematic accounting and measurement system for public engagement (spring semester 2025).
  • Implementation of the action steps identified within the plan (2025-2026 Academic Year).
  • Reporting to document lessons learned that can be shared campuswide, and to provide some documentation of the different approaches units use to advance and institutionalize public engagement measurement systems into their units.

Planning and Development (spring 2025):

The members of the teams will meet in spring 2025 for two mandatory half-day meetings (each lasting three hours) on action planning focused on building a public engagement measurement strategy for the unit. These meetings will be held on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, 1 – 4 p.m. and Wednesday, May 7, 2025, 9 a.m. – Noon.

All team members are expected to attend these meetings.

The first meeting, Tuesday, January 28, 2025 (1- 4 p.m.) will explore the essential elements of high-quality public engagement, as such efforts pertain to advancing the research and teaching goals of academic units. This meeting will include discussion of the University’s Give Pulse system for measuring community engagement as well as other institution-wide measurement systems available. The meeting will also explore various strategies units might adopt to further the institutionalization of a public engagement measurement system into their unit. Teams will be given a template that will guide them in articulating the goals to be accomplished and key action steps to be implemented over the course of the program to achieve each participating unit’s identified public engagement measurement and assessment goals.

Following this first meeting, each unit team will work throughout the spring 2025 semester to flesh out and refine its Engaged Unit Action Plan.

During the second meeting, Wednesday, May 7, 2025 (9 a.m. – Noon), the members of each Engaged Unit Team will present their respective action plan and solicit peer feedback from the other teams. Each team will then refine and finalize its plan and action steps to prepare for its year-long implementation starting in the fall 2025 semester.

Implementation (fall 2025 and spring 2026):
Each Engaged Unit team will implement its action plan during the 2025-2026 academic year. During this period, there will be two mandatory 90- minute meetings (one per semester, dates to be determined) to discuss each group’s progress and share helpful materials and information. Teams are required to send at least one representative to each of these two 90-minute meetings.

Reporting: One mandatory final meeting (3 hours) will be held at the end of the spring 2026 semester (date to be determined) to review each team’s implementation progress, to assess the progress of the unit’s engagement work, and to identify next steps.

Expectation and Deliverables

Engaged Unit teams that wish to participate in this program agree to the following:

1. 1. Actively participate in all aspects of the Engaged Unit Program, including participating in the required three-hour planning meetings (January 28, 2025 and May 7, 2025), the two 90-minute implementation meetings (fall 2025 and spring 2026, to be scheduled), and the final 3-hour full-team meeting (spring 2026, to be scheduled).
   2. Develop, implement, and refine an engaged unit action plan (template to be provided) that will further the unit’s capacity to measure the scale, scope, range, quality, and impact of public engagement activities within the unit.
   3. Prepare a brief final report (2-3 pages of bulleted notes, template to be provided) at the end of the program that articulates the unit’s experience and lessons learned in this Engaged Unit Program.

Funding Priority and Criteria

Priority for funding will be given to units that:

• • Have participated in previous cohorts of the Engaged Unit Program.
  • Have an established unit-wide action plan for advancing the institutionalization of public engagement.
  • Have demonstrated a strong commitment to public engagement across the departments and programs of the unit.

Priority for funding will be given to proposals that:

• • Offer specific details on unit-wide and program-wide efforts that will take place to integrate a public engagement measurement system into the unit, including ways that public engagement promotes the unit’s academic priorities and agenda.
  • Include plans to assess the uses, benefits, and limitations of the public engagement measurement system(s) that the unit implements.
  • Identify potential ways to incorporate public engagement metrics into existing data collection and measurement systems.
  • Articulate the importance of this grant to advance and/or sustain the measurement and assessment of public engagement
  • Offer visions for what the unit will look like at the end of the grant period and
  • Supplement the Engaged Unit funding with additional support from the college/school or other sources.
  • Use the Engaged Unit funding to leverage other resources to support the measurement system activities.

Funds from this grant initiative can be used for any purpose that supports the advancement of the team’s engagement action plan. These funds may be combined with other university or external funding sources. An 18-month budget (January 2025 – June 2026), against which college/school teams can charge expenditures, will be allocated in January 2025. However, the actual disbursement of funds will occur in three phases: 50% of funds after submission of a completed action plan in spring 2025, 25% of funds at the end of the fall 2025 semester, and 25% of funds at the end spring 2026, after final reports and documents are submitted.

Support to be Provided

Engaged Unit Teams selected for the program will be provided access to a set of resources, materials, technical assistance, and other support to guide the department’s planning and implementation activities. Each team is eligible to receive up to $7,500 to support the development and implementation of their measurement action plan. The resources may be used to (but not limited to):

• • Present specific details on the team’s action plan at unit-wide or program-wide meetings or retreats.
  • Purchase materials, books, or other resources that support the advancement of the team’s action planning or program implementation.

• • Purchase measurement systems that align with the unit’s public engagement goals and priorities.
  • Pay for speakers to offer perspectives that advance the team’s
  • Leverage the support to supplement other resources that support the engaged unit’s team plan.

During the project period, the Office of the Chancellor – Public Engagement will work with each team to secure the necessary support and technical assistance to advance each team’s goals.

Application Process

Complete and submit the attached application (as a PDF) by Friday, November 8 to Penny Nigh, Assistant Director of Administrative Operations and Communications, nigh@illinois.edu or at the link below. Only those applications received by end of business November 8, 2024 will be considered for funding.

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their grant application by Wednesday, December 4.