Partnerships are integral to the ability of higher education institutions to fulfill their urban and metropolitan missions. Yet, a clear understanding about these community partnerships is often lacking.
The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is a decentralized institution in which community engagement is conceptualized differently in each unit. Yet, it is an institution where partnerships are ingrained in its identity.
Through two graduate-level service-learning capstones, the UNO Community Engagement Measurement and Assessment committee has created the Community Partnership Initiative - an infrastructure that allows for a sophisticated understanding, analytics, and display of community partnerships, projects, issues addressed, complexity levels, geographic locations, legislative districts, types of engagement, and more.
On the micro-level, this tool allows UNO to answer questions and provide complete transparency regarding community partnerships and projects - including responses to the ‘who, why, when, how, and where’ questions.
On the macro-level, the analytical structure has allowed UNO to address strategic questions, including the ability to identify strategic alliances, discuss equity in resources and issues addressed, and provide an innovative framework for measuring impact.
The measurement of impact is the next phase for the committee. We will be implementing an evaluation protocol to measure the partnership outcomes. The categorization of the data allows the committee to quantify the results by issue area (e.g. economic sufficiency, social justice, health and wellness, international service, educational support, and environmental sustainability), geographic location, legislative district, engagement type, and organization types among others.
