About community engagement

Our commitment as a public university means we are a critical partner in helping to address the challenges of our region and the world. Our values — integrity, diversity, excellence, collaboration, innovation, and respect — extend from our campus to people and organizations around the Puget Sound, the Northwest, and the world. Community engagement is at the heart of our work.

Community engagement at the University of Washington can be defined as collaboration between the UW and our larger communities (local, tribal, regional/state, national, global) for the equitable, mutually beneficial creation and exchange of knowledge and resources. These collaborations with public, private, non-profit, and individual partners span disciplines and sectors. They are grounded in reciprocity, entailing co-developed definitions of problems, solutions, and measures of success; and they are asset-based, where community partners’ strengths, skills, and knowledges are respected and incorporated. 

Community engagement enhances curriculum, teaching, and learning; prepares educated, engaged citizens; strengthens democratic values and civic responsibility; supports the vitality of our surrounding communities; and contributes to the public good. This fulfills our mission as a public university.

In addition to driving our work, community engagement serves as a lens by which the efforts of UW faculty, staff, and students may be understood. Such efforts may include but are not limited to community-based research, public scholarship, community-engaged learning, direct service, communication, civic action and participation, and institutional planning and partnerships. Examples in scholarship, teaching and learning, and service follow.

Research and Scholarship

Community-engaged research, scholarship, or creative activity is that which uses community-engaged approaches and methods.

• Citizen science, community-based participatory research, or other means of research, scholarship, or creative activity is community-engaged if it incorporates a reciprocal partnership with community.
• Outreach, public scholarship, applied research, open scholarship, science communication, and other means of translation or broader impact may be considered community-engaged if undertaken in a context of partnership and reciprocity. 

Curriculum and Community-Engaged Learning Activities

Community-engaged curriculum and learning activities are those that use community-engaged approaches and methods.

• This may include community-engaged learning, community-led curriculum and instruction, studio courses, or other ways of teaching and learning if they are undertaken in partnership with community. 
• This should align with the tri-campus definition of Community Engaged Learning courses
  • Community engaged learning (CEL) courses are hands-on, skill-building opportunities for you to engage with community partners through the mutually beneficial exchange of creativity, knowledge, and resources.

Community Partnerships

Community-engaged service includes other individual or organizational activities that happen in reciprocal partnership with community. This may include:

• The mutually beneficial inclusion of community partners on UW councils and committees. 
• Faculty, student, or staff service on external committees or boards, wherein the resources, including labor, political capital/will, funds, or other, of the UW can be brought to bear in mutually beneficial service to the outside organization’s mission.
• Volunteerism, direct service, or other co-curricular or service activities may be considered community-engaged if they are undertaken in reciprocal partnership with community.

More stories

MLK Week: Day of Service activities – The University of Washington’s MLK Week was organized to remind us of the history and the fight that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many other lives have put up for freedom and equality.

UW Honors students use art to disrupt the narrative on homelessness – Students in the Interdisciplinary Honors class “Citizen Acts to Challenge Poverty” collaborated with Real Change to bring the exhibit Portraits for Change to the UW campus.