Pitzer College
EN-13: Community Stakeholder Engagement

Each year, Pitzer invites community stakeholders to participate in the Community Engagement Center's Steering Committee. It is policy of this committee to ensure that the committee is made up of representatives from community partnerships, community engaged faculty, students and staff. Under the leadership and the guidance of the Steering Committee, the Community Engagement Center (CEC) provides input regarding Pitzer's institutional and departmental planning. The CEC Steering Committee plays a vital role in the center’s activities including: Strategic planning of the center Awarding fellowships and recognition Hiring Guiding assessment, policy, and curricular and co-curricular program efforts Additionally, CEC staff members meet with our community partners regularly throughout the year to establish, revise and re-work our memorandums of understanding to ensure reciprocity and capacity building within the partnership. Finally, as mentioned, we place strong emphasis in creating reciprocal relationships where there is constant communication occurring between our office and our community partners.

Members of the CEC steering committee include community stakeholders that are established partners of the College, that host student internships, partner with faculty on collaborative research projects, and that are staple partners in our ongoing community engagement activities. These all include vulnerable or underrepresented groups, due to the nature of our work in communities and who those communities are.

Past and/or current community stakeholders include executive or program directors from the following local community organizations: Jumpstart (early childhood literacy program) LA County Department of Health (center of disease control and public health initiatives) Pomona Economic Opportunity Center (day labor/immigration rights center) Uncommon Good (educational and environmental community development program)

Community stakeholders engage in policy decisions, program activities, strategic planning and daily operations through the work on our steering committee. Some concrete examples that have resulted have included: - Redesigning our student orientations and trainings for community engagement - Crafting a policy proposal regarding how community engagement is factored into both student learning graduation requirements at the College and tenure/promotion review of faculty at the College - Oversight of student policy initiatives and programming proposals - The creation of new community internship fellowship with the LA County Department of Health (center of disease control and public health initiatives), due to the involvement of the director of this program in our steering committee