What does community engagement mean across UC Davis and UC Davis Health, and how does it shape the university’s impact on its surrounding communities? These questions were at the heart of two summits that brought together faculty and staff to seek input and feedback about community engagement across the university. 

A key outcome of these discussions is a new report that highlights opportunities for growth and a path forward to strengthen community engagement at UC Davis. Three key themes emerged:

1. Prioritize community engagement. Participants expressed the need to recognize, incentivize and deepen support for community engagement.
2. Improve coordination and assessment. Create more opportunities for interaction, connection and sharing best practices, as well as improving the university-wide infrastructure to manage, document and evaluate community engagement.
3. Build partnership capacity. Adopt an asset-based perspective, recognizing the expertise of community partners and fostering mutually beneficial relationships.

UC Davis is recognized as a national leader in community engagement by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and in rankings such as Washington Monthly’s College Guide. In recent years, the university has taken significant steps to further promote, support, and institutionalize community engagement efforts, including the Catalyzing Impact Initiative, a multi-year process to document and assess the impact of community partnerships and engagement activities at UC Davis. 

Catalyzing Impact is coordinated with support from a steering committee and three specialized working groups focusing on community partnerships, assessment and communications. The working groups using the summit findings to inform and guide objectives such as defining a shared vision, values and definition for community engagement and developing institution-wide assessment tools.

“This report captures the strength of collaboration happening across the university and offers a roadmap for how we can better integrate community engagement into our core mission as a land-grant university,” said Michael Rios, vice provost of public scholarship. “Adopting a university-wide definition of community engagement will be important for our application to renew our status for the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification.”

The summit series was jointly conceived, planned and sponsored by the Offices of Public Scholarship and Engagement and Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. The first summit was held June 2023 on the UC Davis Health campus, focusing on community engaged work in the Sacramento region. The second summit took place in October 2023 on the UC Davis campus, focusing on Yolo County and surrounding areas. More than 110 people attended the events.

“From innovative health initiatives to transformative educational partnerships, we are seeing how deeply our faculty, residents, students and staff are committed to making a real difference in the communities we serve,” said Hendry Ton, associate vice chancellor for health equity, diversity, and inclusion. “This report helps us to harness their dedication and experience to move from project-based community engaged efforts towards a broad and long-term institutional commitment and roadmap for community partnerships.” 

Additional Resources

• Download the Community Engagement Summit Series Report.
• We invite UC Davis faculty or staff who engage with communities in their work, or are interested in connecting with other community-engaged practitioners and scholars, to join the Community Engagement Collaborative.
• For stories and faculty blogs featuring community engaged research, teaching and learning across UC Davis and UC Davis Health, visit PSE News.