Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 58.54
Liaison Jay Price
Submission Date March 2, 2016
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

University of Tennessee at Knoxville
EN-13: Community Stakeholder Engagement

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Preston Jacobsen
Sustainability Manager
Facilities Services
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Has the institution adopted a framework for community stakeholder engagement in governance, strategy and operations?:
Yes

A brief description of the policies and procedures that ensure community stakeholder engagement is applied systematically and regularly across the institution’s activities:

UT’s Office of Community Engagement & Outreach (OCEO) is charged with advancing campus-wide coordination for community engagement. OCEO reports directly to UT’s vice chancellor for research and engagement and is advised by a Carnegie Advisory Committee that includes members of the external community along with UT faculty, staff, students and administrators. OCEO’s director represents UT on the national boards of the APLU’s Council on Engagement and Outreach and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium.
OCEO works closely with a number of other offices, including the dean of Extension, who co-chairs the Carnegie Advisory Committee and is an integral part of UT’s coordinating infrastructure for community engagement.
An essential part of coordinating community engagement at UT is the deliberate establishment of interlacing communities and communities of practice that weave us together internally while connecting us to our external partners in a more coordinated way. Among these are the Chancellor’s Academic Outreach and Engagement Council, which includes faculty representation from all 11 colleges. Members work closely with the vice chancellor for research and engagement and the director of community engagement and outreach to develop policy, mentor faculty, serve on review committees, liaise with the Faculty Senate and continue their own engaged scholarship.


A brief description of how the institution identifies and engages community stakeholders, including any vulnerable or underrepresented groups:

UT has incorporated numerous mechanisms to ensure the input and feedback of partners in the planning, assessment and improvement cycles at an institutional level. In addition to advisory boards at institutional and unit levels, mechanisms that systematically assess community perceptions of the campus-level mission and strategic plan for community engagement involve an array of tools that are often created and deployed at the unit or department level. We often find unit level mechanisms to be the most useful, as they work where relationships are the most direct. Seven of these mechanisms are included in this response.

(1) UT’s Board of Trustees has a Research, Outreach and Economic Development Committee responsible for assessing programs.
(2) A permanent Carnegie Community Engagement Advisory Committee consists of UT administrators, faculty, students and representatives of the external community. The committee uses a structured method for group brainstorming that includes problem identification, solution generation, and decision making, for ongoing assessment of community perceptions of UT’s engagement efforts.
(3) Six hundred plus members of UT Extension’s 95 county advisory committees help develop programs, curricula, partnerships and resources for assessing and addressing community concerns. An award-winning, custom-built software program tracks Extension's needs and assessment efforts across Tennessee. It is being used as a model for ongoing development of assessment software for use on the rest of the UT campus.
(4) Within UT’s Institute for Public Service, the Municipal Technical Advisory Service, County Technical Assistance Service, Center for Industrial Services and Law Enforcement Innovation Center each assess community perceptions through quarterly advisory board meetings and biennial community surveys.
(5) The Center for Leadership and Service (CLS) annually surveys more than 100 partner organizations to determine perceptions of overall university engagement and efforts of individual students with whom they have worked. CLS’s collection of and response to these data are also valuable at an institutional level because these partners often engage with other units and colleges across campus.
(6) UT’s service-learning courses formally identified by the “S” course designation in the course catalog and on student transcripts include a web-based process of assessing community perceptions as an integral part of course designation and evaluation.
(7) UT’s new Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity holds listening sessions with diverse external communities to inform an inaugural set of programs and infrastructure. A session held in October 2013 with members of Knoxville’s Latino/Hispanic community focused on such questions as: “How is UT viewed in the Latino/Hispanic community?” “How is the UT community engaged with the Latino/Hispanic community?” and “How would you like to see UT engaged with the community?”


List of identified community stakeholders:

American Cancer Society
American Heart Association- Greater Southeast Affiliate
Arbor Terrace Assisted Living
Beaumont Elementary School
Beck Cultural Center
Big Brothers Big Sisters
Blount County Children’s Home
Boys and Girls Clubs
Bridge Refugee
CAC Beardsley Community Farm
CAC’s Office on Aging: Senior Nutrition Mobile Meals Program
CAPP Coalition on America’s Poor Health and Poverty
Caswell (Haslam)
Catholic Charities of East TN
Cerebral Palsy Center
Children’s Center of Knoxville, Inc.
City of Knoxville
City of Knoxville- Urban Forestry
Dogwood Elementary
East TN Children’s Hospital
Emerald Youth Foundation
ETTAC (Eat Tennessee Technology Access Center)
Family Crisis Center
FISH
Florence Crittenton Agency
Fort Sanders Educational Development Center
Fountain City Elementary School
Friends of Literacy
Fulton High School
Gibbs High School
Goodwill
Habitat for Humanity
Habitat Thrift Store
Harmony Family Center
Haven House Inc.
Head Start
Helen Ross McNabb Center
Hope Central
Hope Resource Center
Horse Haven
Humane Society of the TN Valley
Ijams Nature Center
Interfaith Health Clinic
J.T. O’Conner Center
Kay Senior Care Center
Keep Knoxville Beautiful
Kingston Pike – Sequoyah Hills Neighborhood Association
Knox Area Rescue Ministries (KARM)
Knox County Health Department
Knoxville Botanical Garden & Children’s Garden
Knoxville College
Knoxville Family Justice Center
Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition and the College of Architecture and Design
Knoxville Urban League
Knoxville Zoo
Ladies of Charity
Lost Sheep Ministries
Love Kitchen
Mane Support
Manor House Assisted Living
Maynard Elementary
Metropolitan Drug Commission
Montgomery Village Ministry
North Haven Healthcare Center
Pace Setters Youth Outreach
Phyllis Wheatly YWCA
Pond Gap Community School
Project GRAD
Random Acts of Flowers
Remote Area Medical
Ronald McDonald House
Salvation Army (Knox Area Command)
Sarah Moore Green Elementary
Second Harvest Food Bank
SEEED (Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development)
Shannondale Health Care Center
Sherrill Hills Retirement Community
South Knoxville Elementary
Special Olympics of Greater Knox
Sunshine Industries
Susan G. Komen for the Cure
Thrive Lonsdale
Vacant Lot Project
Volunteer Fire Department of Seymour
Water Angels Ministry
Wesley House
YMCA
Young-Williams Animal Center


A brief description of successful community stakeholder engagement outcomes from the previous three years:

Partnership with Great Smokey Mountains National Park: partnership helps preserve & protect park for (and from) 20M annual visitors as well; ~1000 people come to the Park every year specifically to participate either in the Wildflower Pilgrimage or the Smoky Mountain Field School; UT provides both with registration infrastructure and UT faculty from many colleges and department serve as teaching staff.

Biology in a Box: Provides grade appropriate exercises and reusable materials to Tennessee/regional classrooms; these materials reinforce math in biological contexts; teacher workshops (specifically for Tennessee urban public schools) within this program have contributed to professional development and interaction between different teaching disciplines.

Knoxville Homeless Management Information System Program: In 2012, there were 9,388 active clients in Knox County, 4% more than 2011. KnoxHMIS data has shown that, contrary to common local belief, the majority (78%) do not arrive from elsewhere but come from the local area. KnoxHMIS's vast data set has led to better services delivery & outcomes reporting. The data suggest that Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing programs have been extremely successful in preventing homelessness for at risk individuals and families, and in quickly placing those who have become homeless back in permanent housing. Since 2009, an average of 91% of clients served are in permanent homes when they exit the programs.

Community Full-Service Schools Program: Community Impact included the provision of health services to students and their families; mental health screenings; academic support for students and their families; and financial support for the families. At-risk urban students at five schools thus far are enabled to create long-term, mentoring relationships with UT students and faculty based on the three tenants of prevention, collaboration, and systems-level thinking.


The website URL where information about the institution’s community stakeholder engagement framework and activities is available:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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