community
Join the discussion
September 13, 2012
Help SFU craft its community-engagement strategy. Send your ideas and comments to engage@sfu.ca or visit www.sfu.ca/engage.
And answer the following questions to inform your ideas and comments:
- What types of community engagement activities underway at SFU would you like to see expanded or better supported? What community needs need to be addressed?
- What are the obstacles for students, staff and faculty to engage with their communities?
- What would an SFU Community Engagement service provide in addition to an access point for the community?
- Are you interested in being part of a network of community-engaged representatives across faculties and departments that would meet several times a year to share expertise and ideas?
- How can we measure the true impact of our community engagement efforts and show progress towards our vision of being Canada's most community engagement university?
Related Stories:
I would like to see SFU adopt something similar to Google's "20% time" model that would allow staffers the flexibility to pursue volunteer activities on "company time." For example, I am an accredited ESL teacher, and would love to volunteer with non-profits that serve immigrant populations, but the need is for daytime instructors--not evenings and weekends. I would really like to volunteer a couple of hours a week, but at the moment I'm not sure such activities would be supported by the institution.
I think it would be great if SFU had a clear policy about this--even if it was as simple as "up to manager's discretion". Imagine the PR possibilities (not to mention just the pure community enhancement!) if SFU supported its staffers to get involved in worthy causes, regardless of the time of day!
This initiative would definitely be easy to track and therefore would contribute to real numbers when it comes to discussions of engagement impact.