University of Texas at Austin
EN-9: Community Partnerships

Since its founding in 1883, The University of Texas at Austin has had a rich history of community engagement and service, with service as a key component of its mission. With the launch of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement in 2007, the university is building on its foundation of engagement in new ways. DDCE has been charged with • ensuring the university is responsive to and positively impacts the surrounding community, • ensuring that community engagement remains central to the University’s core academic mission, and • serving as a catalyst to create new opportunities for expanded and more coordinated ties between the university and the community The DDCE's Community Engagement Center promotes and coordinates services, learning opportunities, and research for communities historically underserved by the university. The Center works to foster and sustain respectful, mutually beneficial engagements between UT and diverse communities beyond its walls, especially in ways that work to address inequality and increase social justice. One division of the Community Engagement Center is the The Community Engagement Incubator, which connects faculty, staff, and students with partners in the Austin community to create projects and programs that will advance social change. Recent projects that were part of the Community Engagement Incubator include The Workers Defense Project/Proyecto Defensa Laboral Construction Industry Survey that examined construction working conditions in Austin and the Community Organizer Training Series.

See above Also, for the past 3 years, the Opportunity Forum is a faculty/community collaboration to target research on real community issues as defined by community leaders. Forum has been ongoing. Since 2008, the Alley Flat Initiative (http://soa.utexas.edu/csd/projects/alley-flat) addressed dimensions of equity in housing, family income and green building with student and faculty support