Community engagement at the Universitat de Girona: results of TEFCE toolbox implementation

Abstract

The EU-funded project "Steering Higher Education for Community Engagement" aims to further build the capacities of universities, policymakers and stakeholders in Europe for mainstreaming community engagement in higher education. It builds upon the learnings and tools developed by the TEFCE project – Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education (www.tefce.eu). Community engagement is understood as a process whereby universities engage with external organisations to undertake joint activities that can be mutually beneficial even if each side benefits in a different way. The SHEFCE project planned to have three partner institutions implement the TEFCE Toolbox and report back with their findings. This document is the final report of the implementation of the TEFCE Toolbox of the Universitat de Girona assessing its level of community engagement according to seven thematic dimensions: (I) teaching and learning, (II) research, (III) service & knowledge exchange, (IV) students, (V) university-level engagement activities, (VI) institutional policies and (VII) supportive peers. The Universitat de Girona (UdG) was the only institution not guided during the implementation process. The self-assessment is based on the collection and analysis of evidences across the institution of community engagement activities, which in this report is called “mapping practices”. The UdG gathered over 70 practices and activities. Once the mapping and first analysis was ready, the results were shared and discussed in two focus group sessions with relevant stakeholders from the institution and from the region. The discussions were integrated into the mapping report and validated the summary scores for the heatmaps of each sub-dimension. The focus groups also contributed to the results of the SLIPDOT analysis (analysis of strengths, areas of low intensity, potentials for development, opportunities and threats). This document also collects the main findings regarding community engagement at the UdG based on the Toolbox application, and particularly on the SLIPDOT analysis