President's Report Masthead
March 31, 2013

Center for Civic Engagement

The Center for Civic Engagement sponsored a faculty institute in March – Mutually Beneficial Engagement: Pursuing Academic Work that both Counts and Matters – facilitated by Scott Peters, national co-director of Imagining America (IA).

The institute highlighted the tangible benefits of scholarly community engagement work, and the challenges and barriers that must be addressed and overcome for it to be done more deeply and effectively. Peters framed the topic with his keynote address and a panel of engaged faculty from Binghamton including Thomas Sinclair, associate professor of public administration, Titilayo Okoror, associate professor of Africana studies and

Pamela Stewart Fahs Decker chair in rural health nursing, provided examples and recommendations drawn from their own experiences.
Binghamton University has also become a member of Imagining America, a consortium of 90 colleges and universities from across the country working explicitly at the nexus of publicly engaged scholarship and the humanities, arts and design.

IA works with academic and community partners to develop knowledge about and resources for individual and institutional change through community organizing and movement-building, a large-scale annual conference, and ongoing research and action initiatives. Current initiatives include projects aimed at transforming higher education tenure and promotion policies, assessment practices, and graduate and undergraduate education to cultivate publicly engaged scholarship; linking diversity and engagement efforts on campuses; and partnering with community-based arts, cultural and humanities organizations.