The Aligning Institutions for Community Impact (AICI) Working Group is pleased to welcome Maeve Lydon as its Community Co-lead. Located in Victoria, BC, Maeve brings a wealth of experience from her recent work with Community-Based Research Canada (CBRC) and her history working in the community and international development sectors.

The Aligning Institutions for Community Impact Working Group welcomes Maeve Lydon as its Community Co-lead.

Earlier this month, AICI Research Assistant, Katalin Koller, had the pleasure of interviewing Maeve about her passion for community-campus engagement (CCE):

What does “Community First” in the context of community-campus engagement mean to you? Why is it important?

I think that it first implies a de-centred approach to the university – that we want to be driven by the needs, assets, and visions of the broader society. Community First means that we take a broad public domain approach to looking at engagement, not artificially, but with an interdisciplinary perspective. Who are the communities we are referring to and what are their diverse priorities? The university community is an important asset for growing and supporting the common good and well-being of greater society.

Looking back on the lessons you have learned from your most impactful experiences, what insights do you hope to contribute to the Aligning Institutions work?

First, I believe that a multi-scalar approach to Community First works best. When we envision impact, we need to consider activities at the everyday micro level, the meso program level, and the macro structural level. At the micro level, we need to co-design projects. At the meso level, we can support capacity building, co-training and the co-creation of knowledge infrastructure. At the institutional change level, we need to work together toward structural changes that enable meaningful co-governance.

Second, we need to spend more time celebrating off-campus champions and incentivizing Community First researchers. We need to affirm the value of community-engaged scholarship by working with funders and businesses to create new pathways for funding and creativity, linking the social innovation lens to the engagement framework.

You have an array of experience across a variety of disciplines, in Canada and overseas. What do you see as Canada’s strengths and areas for improvement relative to other countries’ efforts to promote community-campus engagement?

Canada is uniquely placed in the world to make a difference. Our greatest strengths are that we work collaboratively and that our CCE movement has been quite humble and open to best practices. Our overseas partners are inspired by: our intercultural framing of the public domain, our inclusion of Indigenous knowledges, and our respect for multiple knowledges. We are open to ideas and extremely creative; we are innovators. CFICE in particular is seen as setting the national agenda for community-campus collaboration and culture change.

Broadly speaking, when we think critically about mainstream efforts to enable praxis through community-campus engagement, what do we need to consider?

Thus far, CFICE has provided some of the broader scaffolding: we need to listen, to plan, to ensure representation that reflects broader society. We need to enable a creative space for dialogue while continually asking ourselves how community – corporate, government, students, activists, CBOs, Indigenous Peoples – are actually involved in the conversation. Most of all, we all need to break out of our comfort zones and look at where the energy is at.

On behalf of the CFICE team, welcome aboard Maeve!

Members of the UK Community Partner Network chat at an annual summit. ©UKCPN

recently hosted a webinar featuring Sophie Duncan, Deputy Director of the United Kingdom National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE-UK). Sophie’s talk proved of great interest to the work of the CFICE Aligning Institutions for Community Impact (AICI) working group, introducing the history and status of the country’s project, a national initiative launched in 2008 to inspire culture change in how UK universities engage with the public.

The NCCPE-UK defines public engagement as:

the myriad of ways in which the activity and benefits of higher education and research can be shared with the public. Engagement is by definition a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit.

The Beacons initiative was conceptualized in 2007 by the (HEFCE) in response to a perceived breakdown of public trust in scientific research.  HEFCE is the body that funds and regulates universities and colleges in England. In partnership with HEFCE, the and contributed funding to support the initiative, keen to learn how public engagement could be embedded into the culture of post-secondary institutions (PSIs).

This work was informed by the , which was the result of government-sponsored on the relationship between research and the public. The Charter was intended to guide the development of a national strategy on public engagement in research and outlined three principles in the following areas: strategic commitment; implementation and practice; and evaluation and impact.

The Beacons project responded to the Charter by funding six ‘Beacons’ – university-based collaborative centres that support, recognize, reward and build capacity for public engagement work – and creating the NCCPE-UK to act as a national coordinating body to its twenty-three member universities. The project has flourished since 2008, inspiring several shifts in how research capacity is generated, how research impact is measured and funded, and how PSIs institutionalize public engagement.

Generating Research Capacity

The (RDF) is an empirically-driven professional development framework for researchers and their supervisors to plan, promote and support career, life and professional development. It was created in recognition of the need for a new approach to how the UK builds its workforce, research capacity, and research base. The key characteristics of excellent researchers are organized into four domains and twelve sub-domains that represent the intellectual abilities, techniques, knowledge and professional standards to conduct quality research, as well as the knowledge, personal qualities and skills required to work with others and contribute to the wider impact of research. Aside from the RDF graphic below, , as well as other materials, have been developed to assist researchers in applying the tool to their personal needs.

Vitae Researcher Development Framework ©Vitae

Measuring & Funding Research Impact

Another key shift has taken place at the level of research funding. In the UK, PSIs are awarded ‘’ (QR) in the form of an annual block to support the development of their research infrastructures, while smaller funding grants for specific projects and programs are available through governments, charities, and research councils. QR funding represents 65% of total funding in higher education and the weight of the evaluation metrics used to allocate it have recently been realigned to recognize the importance of public engagement, with universities now assessed for their impact on the non-academic community at twenty percent (20%), with traditional outputs now weighted at only sixty-five percent (65%), and environment at fifteen percent (15%).

Institutionalizing Public Engagement

The NCCPE-UK has also worked with the Beacons to develop a self-assessment tool to assist PSIs in evaluating their current level and areas for improvement related to public engagement. The tool anchors the key aspects of embedded public engagement in higher education across nine key dimensions ranging from communication and leadership to learning and recognition. The nine dimensions are organized into three categories to motivate discussion and encourage reflection: Purpose includes embedding goals for public engagement into the mission and vision of the university, and championing it through all communications. Process involves investing in systems to facilitate involvement, maximize impact, and ensure quality. Finally, People recognizes the importance of having staff, students, and the public involved at all stages, utilizing their knowledge and expertise to inform the public engagement strategy. Support for using the EDGE tool can be found .

Thank you to Sophie and Community-Based Research Canada for such an informative talk.  For more information, you can watch the complete webinar .