by Catherine Kelly, CFICE Volunteer
A panel of representatives from Ottawa community organizations discusses community-campus partnerships at Carleton’s Mini-Conference Dec. 15, 2016.
©Catherine Kelly
On Thursday December 15, Carleton hosted a mini-conference on community engagement in research and education. Faculty, students and outside organizations were invited to contribute to the discussion.
Organized by Carleton’s Committee on Community Engaged Pedagogy (CCEP), the event began with a panel of guest speakers from outside organizations that hosted Carleton students in their workplaces. Each guest shared their own experiences working with students, and discussed why they believed relationships between academics and the community are beneficial for both students and research.
One of the panelists, Jason Garlough, stressed the need to build more community-campus partnerships. As the executive director of the Ottawa Eco-Talent Network, Garlough sees Carleton as an ideal partner for community organizations.
“Carleton has amazing people,” said Garlough, “You’ve got an educated staff, a huge population of students and faculty that are passionate about getting students out and engaged with the community. That’s an amazing resource for partnerships.”
Jason Garlough of Ottawa Eco-talent Network discusses the opportunities and challenges of community-campus engagement at Carleton’s Mini-Conference Dec. 15, 2016.
©Catherine Kelly
Currently, outside organizations seeking students often have to rely on asking individual professors they already know in order to be connected to suitable students to fill the available positions. This means that only a select-few students are given opportunities that should be open for all.
As an answer to this problem, the university will be launching a new website, Carleton Connected, in the new year. The website is a portal that will connect external organizations, community-engaged scholars and Carleton students together on one platform. This way, organizations seeking students may post placement opportunities viewable by all students, while students seeking placements may search through the many opportunities available to them.
Charts that conference attendees filled in during one of the breakout sessions at the Carleton Mini-Conference, Dec. 15, 2016.
©Catherine Kelly
After outside organizations spoke to attendees about their experiences, the rest of the mini-conference was divided into three sections. Attendees could pick where they wished to spend the rest of their day, either discussing how faculty should best connect internally, how to deal with ethical issues, or how to integrate community projects into the classroom so that students can get credit for their unpaid work placements.
Brian Burns, one of the event’s organizers, believes that the mini-conference will contribute to the functionality of the website. He hopes that students, faculty and outside organizations can not only use the website for placements, but also to help deal with issues like funding, ethics, liability, best practices and as a platform for users share and celebrate their experiences.
Burns sees the mini-conference itself as a way for students, faculty and outside organizations to connect. “The hope for today was to get a wide range of people involved with off-campus, community engaged research and pedagogy together,” said Burns. “Currently, we operate in a very personal way, and I think collectively, we can make it better for everyone on campus with a website to facilitate connections that we’re seeing in this room today.”