Ginsberg Center’s Community Engagement @ Michigan Series 2023-2024

With a network of over 300+ community partners across Southeast Michigan, the Edward Ginsberg Center works to connect local communities with U-M courses, researchers, internships and other community-engaged initiatives. Ginsberg Center’s Matchmaking Process helps faculty, staff and students learn about community priorities, translate university opportunities to a community audience, and develop strong relationships with local community partners. Curious about connecting with communities? Starting to plan for your future courses and projects? Join us for this informational session to learn more about Ginsberg’s matchmaking process! 

Open to faculty, admin/staff, post-docs and graduate students.

Developing equitable and mutually beneficial partnerships with community members and organizations requires taking a critical look at how power operates in university-community partnerships. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to key principles of equity-focused community engagement and discuss how relationships of power shape university-community partnerships for research and student learning. We’ll consider how power operates in such areas as: the structure and terms of partnership agreements, participation dynamics in university-community projects, and funding/compensation. Participants will generate strategies for re-shaping inequitable power dynamics, share insights with colleagues, and identify ways to apply key principles to their own community-engaged work. 

This session is designed especially for participants who are involved in (or interested in) community-engaged research, teaching & learning, project/program administration, and/or campus initiatives at Michigan. Open to faculty, staff, admin, and post-docs. 

Community-engaged courses invite undergraduate and graduate students at Michigan to work with and in local communities through course assignments, clinical experiences, research projects, service hours, partnership development and other forms of engagement. Making these community-engaged learning activities accessible to students requires instructors to commit to considerable reflection, planning, and communication with students and community partners. In this session, participants will learn about common barriers to student access associated with community-engaged courses, identify accessibility practices for course design and disability accommodations, and discuss how to apply these practices to their own community-engaged courses and programs. 

This session is designed for participants with instructional responsibilities and is open to faculty, admin/staff, post-docs, and graduate student instructors (GSIs). 

Developing equitable and mutually beneficial partnerships with community members and organizations requires taking a critical look at how power operates in university-community partnerships. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to key principles of equity-focused community engagement and discuss how relationships of power shape university-community partnerships for research and student learning. We’ll consider how power operates in such areas as: the structure and terms of partnership agreements, participation dynamics in university-community projects, and funding/compensation. Participants will generate strategies for re-shaping inequitable power dynamics, share insights with colleagues, and identify ways to apply key principles to their own community-engaged work. 

This session is designed especially for participants who are involved in (or interested in) community-engaged research, teaching & learning, project/program administration, and/or campus initiatives at Michigan. Open to faculty, staff, admin, post-docs and graduate students.

Project management skills are essential for the success of community-engaged projects, yet formal instruction of these skills is often not included in the preparation that students receive for community-engaged assignments, research, and projects. In this workshop for faculty and staff, participants will learn about prerequisite project management skills that students need to know before they enter into community-engaged projects. From effective communication strategies to project onboarding templates, we’ll identify pedagogical strategies for teaching these key skills to students, improving coordination with community stakeholders, and supporting the continued development of students' project management skills as a community-engaged project unfolds. Guest speakers Bri Christy (Community Technical Assistance Collaborative at Ginsberg Center) and Caitlin Posillico (LSA Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences) will highlight practices for students in course and program-based projects, showing how traditional project management techniques can be adapted for these contexts.

This session is open to faculty, admin/staff, post-docs, and graduate students.

Join Nicole Springer, Editor of the Michigan Journal for Community Service Learning & Neeraja Aravamudan, Ginsberg Center Director & MJCSL Editorial Team Member for an interactive workshop on publishing your community-engaged scholarship, co-sponsored by The Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) and University of Michigan-Dearborn's Office of Engaged Learning.

 How is community-engaged scholarship different from other forms of scholarship? What are outlets for this scholarship? How can we maximize the impact of this scholarship for discipline(s), community partners/communities, and the field? What can you do to prepare yourselves to publish community engaged scholarship? Participants will also have the opportunity to apply ideas to their own research.