Community-Campus Engagement Halifax Roundtable
On May 17th, 2018 FoodARC proudly hosted The Community-Campus Engagement Canada – Halifax Roundtable. The event was led by the principal investigator of The Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) research project, Dr. Peter Andrée (Carleton University). CFICE is a 7-year action research project that is focused on strengthening Canadian communities by improving community-campus partnerships.
The CCEC Halifax Roundtable is a part of the series of events hosted all over Canada with the intention of gathering a valuable input from the community-campus engagement (CCE) stakeholders.
The Roundtable started with welcome remarks by Dr. Patty Williams (FoodARC, Mount Saint Vincent University), discussion of expectation and goals, followed by an introduction of participants. After that, Dr. Andrée provided an overview of the CFICE project, insights from the CFICE symposium and answered questions about food policy, partnerships with provincial governments and integrated learning experiences for students.
Dr. Andrée’s presentation was followed by a story sharing activity where participants partnered up and discussed their experiences in CCE. Participants were asked to outline the values and challenges of the experiences and bring them to the whole group. Some of the values included: adaptation, collaboration, sharing work, listening to communities, having fun and professional training.
The challenges brought up by participants included: institutional constraints, tired communities, funding, pace and purpose (misalignment of community and academia), power struggles, matching skills and needs, student only-oriented experiences, time struggles, continuity (with the cycle of students), decolonization (value of two-eyed seeing as a research tool), challenges in engaging with Indigenous communities (ethics, power, ownership of the results, research through the intersectionality lens).
Photo gallery
After the story sharing activity, participants were divided into small groups to complete the SOAR exercise that was focused on future visions and actions in CCE. Some of the recommendations developed by the participants included: utilization of positive international and national experience, a creation of shared language understood by everyone involved, transdisciplinary approach beyond the partnerships between communities and academia, leadership from “in-between”, advocacy on the federal level, a value of social capital and common fundamental purpose.
- Event Notes » (PDF 484 KB, 4 pages)
View a full compilation of the notes from the event. - Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE)
For more information on CFICE visit their website.