Public Engagement in Institutional Strategies

Many of our partner HEI’s have their public engagement objectives defined in their institutional level strategies (see the table below). And in some instances there is a requirement for each college, school, institute or department to create and implement public engagement in their own strategies and annual plans. We have gathered some examples of sucessful implimentations in the table below.

The Edinburgh Beltane’s Reward and Recognition group have drafted some suggested wording to help you integrate this into your own plans. The wording is drawn largely from the Knowledge Engagement Strategy developed by the Univserity of Edinburgh's College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

Suggested Wording

Definition

Public and Cultural Engagement involves deploying our knowledge and expertise to interact with schools, colleges, specific interest groups and communities and the general public to inform people about, consult people about, involve people in or empower with our research, knowledge and expertise.

In this way our work brings great benefits to society by contributing to public debate and engaging people with valuable (cultural) experiences. By engaging in such activities academic colleagues raise their profile beyond the University, increasing the potential for further collaboration.

Goal

Our strategic goal is to maximise our contribution of knowledge, ideas, skill and expertise for social, cultural and economic benefits locally, nationally and internationally.

We will do this by:

• Recognising, embedding and promoting public engagement 

• Building relationships for collaboration and knowledge exchange

• Securing funding for public engagement

Objective

In order to achieve or strategic goal we will:

• Embed a culture in which public engagement is promoted and recognised as a mainstream activity integrated with, and bringing benefits to, research and teaching.

Strategies

Strategies to achieve the object include;

• Supporting colleagues in conducting public engagement activities and developing spaces for sharing experiences and best practice

• Encouraging the involvement of students in public engagement activities led by staff as well as by students themselves

• Ensuring quality in public engagement by encouraging staff and students to gain training and experience in public engagement activities through the University’s and Edinburgh Beltane’s training programmes and the use of partnerships with public engagement professionals where appropriate

• Creating mechanisms for reporting public engagement activities aligned with the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework and the Scottish Funding Council Knowledge Transfer return

• Working with the Human Resrouces Department to ensure public engagement activities are included in performance review and as a criteria for promotion

• Establishing reporting procedures to support our public engagement and communications professionals in understanding and publicising our research work.

This is a wiki page.  If you are aware of any other good examples of public engagement as an objective in institutional strategies, please add to the list.