Special Session: Building Intentional Community Partnerships

Recent growth in community engagement programs in engineering education reveals the importance of partnerships and community; however, there has been minimal research and reflection on how to design community engagement programs to represent the needs and rights of the community. This interactive special session addresses this gap by challenging participants to learn and critically think about the communities they are serving. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations for this workshop, with an overview of two publications: one that categorizes the way engineers work with the people they serve either as clients, stakeholders, users, or citizens; and the other that categorizes specific interactions, activities, and the language of community engagement partnerships as transactional, cooperative or communal. In addition to the theoretical grounding, the paper also provides a summary of the activities that we will be facilitating during the special session, including analyzing cases and design tools, reflecting on current program structures, and creating an action plan to implement changes in the participants’ current, anticipated, or imagined engagement programs. By the end of the special session, participants will be able to evaluate their past, current or future partnerships, observe how program structures can influence partnerships, and assess the differences that these partnerships can make in the success or failures of community engagement programs. Participants will leave the session with a practical action plan to implement the types of partnerships they wish to build with their community.