Community Engagement at Â鶹¹ÙÍø’s is a shared commitment to working alongside communities to co-create knowledge, advance equity and well-being, and prepare students to contribute meaningfully to a complex world. Over the coming months, we will share stories about students, faculty, staff, educators, and community partners engaged in meaningful work locally, nationally, and globally. This series reflects Â鶹¹ÙÍø’s commitment to Community Engagement as a collaborative process grounded in reciprocity, respect, and shared benefit.
Aligned with Â鶹¹ÙÍø’s Community Engagement Framework, these stories illustrate how community-engaged research, learning, and service bring the university’s mission to life while responding to community priorities.
Engagement as Partnership and Co-Creation
At Â鶹¹ÙÍø's, community engagement is where learning, research, and service intersect with lived experience; where theory meets real-world complexity; and where students, faculty, and community partners learn with and from one another. This work is fundamentally relational; it is built on trust, mutual accountability, and recognition that communities are not recipients of knowledge but co-creators of it.
The stories in this series highlight how partnerships develop, how diverse forms of expertise are valued, and how collaborative work can lead to lasting change for both communities and the university.
From Local Action to Global Impact
Community engagement at Â鶹¹ÙÍø's contributes to priorities that extend beyond campus, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Whether the focus is health, education, climate change, social justice, or community well-being, these initiatives show how locally grounded partnerships can address global challenges.
By sharing these narratives, we also affirm Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Bicentennial Vision of strengthening the university's role as a partner in building a more just, sustainable, and inclusive future.
Why Stories Matter
In a university environment that often emphasizes outputs and metrics, stories offer insight into the processes behind the work. They invite us to reflect on questions such as: What did we learn from one another? How did relationships evolve over time? What impacts emerged for communities and students alike? What does responsible and ethical engagement look like in practice? Drawing attention to these partnerships by publicizing them also shares these lessons with others, allowing subsequent community engagement to build on past community engagement.
Stories make visible the human dimensions of collaboration; the challenges, breakthroughs, and transformations that numbers alone cannot capture.
Building a Culture of Engagement
Through this series, we aim to cultivate a more connected and reflective culture of community engagement at Â鶹¹ÙÍø's, one that values partnership, honours community expertise, and recognizes engagement as a transformative approach to education, research, and service.
As our stories are shared, we invite you to read, reflect, and discover the many ways community engagement is shaping our university and the communities we serve. If you would like to share your own community engagement story in a future feature, we would be delighted to hear from you.
For more information or any inquiries, contact communityengagement@queensu.ca