University Asks Faculty and Staff to Document Community Engagement, Public Service

To better understand the full extent of the University’s community engagement and public service efforts, Duquesne is now using Collaboratory—a secure web-based platform—to document its community-based work, projects and research.

“Community engagement and public service are essential ways by which we live and deliver on the Duquesne University mission. Our work in those areas accomplishes goals related to our work in and with the community,” Bill Generett, vice president for community engagement, said. “Because Collaboratory helps us work together in innovative ways to address complex community problems, it is vital that people enter all of their institutional community engagement efforts into the database.”

The Collaboratory platform connects campus-wide information about community engagement and public service relationships, resources, activities and outcomes in one public, searchable database. The information will help external constituents better understand the depth of our work and mutually beneficial partnerships.

“Centralizing Duquesne’s community engagement data also will enhance reporting and grant writing, and greatly assist with accreditation processes,” Generett said.

The Office of Community Engagement (OCE) is developing a process to ensure that adding these details to Collaboratory is simple and convenient.

Dr. Jessica Mann, director of the Center for Community-Engaged Teaching & Research (CETR) in the OCE, is lead Collaboratory administrator at Duquesne. Faculty and staff are asked to provide Mann with a list of volunteer or community engagement activities by Saturday, Sept. 21.

Mann and her team will follow up with more information about Collaboratory and details on how to use this community engagement platform. Contact Mann at mannj@duq.edu or 412.396.5893 with questions.

Visit https://he.cecollaboratory.com/duq to learn more about the University’s Collaboratory platform.