Queen's in the Community
Through responsible and meaningful community engagement we can tackle the world’s most urgent challenges. No one person -- and no one institution -- can do it alone. By bringing together students, faculty, staff, and community we aim to co-produce knowledge that addresses and responds to real-world community-identified problems. The goal of community-engaged work is to strengthen mutually beneficial learning experiences, research, partnerships and collaborations with communities. Positive change is possible when led by collaborative relationships between the university and the community.
The Office of the Principal and Vice-Chancellor has appointed Dr. Wendy Craig, Department of Psychology, as Special Advisor to the Principal on Community Engagement in an effort to highlight and enhance community engagement opportunities at Queen’s.
Progress
Dr. Craig’s first focus is on community engaged learning that brings together students, faculty, staff, and communities to co-produce knowledge that addresses and responds to community-identified challenges. These mutually beneficial learning experiences effect positive change through collaboration and meaningful partnerships among students and community organizations.
So far Dr. Craig has been collecting experiences, feedback, and data to inform a comprehensive review of the community engagement landscape at various universities across the country and at Queen’s. She has held meetings with individual faculty and staff members, hosted student focus groups, and is working with a team of students to complete the pan-Canadian scan and to inventory Queen’s courses with a community engagement or service component.
Dr. Craig’s work has uncovered that there are many community engagement learning experiences in the faculties and schools at Queen’s in many different forms. For example, some courses are small-scale, only happen once, or are not embedded in the formal curriculum, while others are long-standing offerings that are interdisciplinary and driven by a team of faculty members.
Stories of Student Learning for Community Impact
Community-engaged learning opportunities often bring together students, faculty, staff, and community partners to address and respond to community-identified challenges. There are ample examples across the university that highlight the breadth of opportunities for both students and community partners.
The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science has embedded community engagement in undergraduate curriculum for all first-year students for the past ten years. Read below about how students work with Queen’s clubs, teams, and groups such as Union Gallery, Queen’s Archives, Physical Plant Services, Science Formal, and the Queen's Bridge Building Team, as well as non-profits and organizations locally and beyond.
Learning how businesses can be forces for good
The Smith Business Experiential Learning Team links together community-engaged learning opportunities for students.
Read the storyGenerating positive change through community-engaged learning
Wendy Craig’s focus is on collaborative learning among students and community organizations. In APSC 101/102/103 at the Faculty of Engineering students work with their peers to develop professional skills through various projects and teamwork.
Read the storyCommunity for Impact Video
As a university for the future, we need to fully embed Queen’s in the community: building deliberate, strategic, respectful, and mutually beneficial engagement with communities outside the University, including Kingston, the region, other organizations and institutions, and national and global networks that share our goals.
See how we are accomplishing our goalsStrategic Focus on Community-Engaged Learning
Queen’s Strategy speaks to a broad definition of community engagement that embeds partnerships and collaborations with communities into the academic mission. Community engagement entails everything from community-based learning to community service work, outreach, and training.
Community Impact
Bring together students, faculty, staff, and community to co-produce knowledge that addresses and responds to community-identified challenges.
Benefits for Students
Enhanced training and networking opportunities and increased professional skills and coursework that addresses community needs.
Impact for Queen's
Create mutually beneficial learning experiences, research, partnerships and collaborations with communities.
Special Advisor on Community Engagement
To contact Prof. Wendy Craig, please email communityengagement@queensu.ca.
Dr. Craig is Professor of Psychology at Queen's University, Canada. Prof. Craig's research program focuses on bullying, victimization, healthy relationships, and knowledge mobilization – moving research into practise and practise into research. As the co-founder of PREVNet (Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network), she has transformed the science of bullying into evidence-based practice, intervention, and policy. She co-leads the Health Behaviour Survey for School-Aged Children Canadian Team, a survey in 50 countries. She is the Co- Director of BRNet, a network that promotes international collaboration among bullying researchers. She has won numerous awards such as Canadian Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community Service, Social Sciences and Humanities Partnership Award, and Order of Canada. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. More information on knowledge mobilization work can be found at www.prevnet.ca.