Office of Civic Engagement

For Faculty & Staff

A key aspect of civic engagement is helping students use what they are learning to engage with real world problems and opportunities in the classroom, through research activities, and out in the community. This pedagogical technique fosters enhanced academic engagement and performance, increases the likelihood of graduation, and helps students understand how they can connect their academic course work to the public good.

Why Community Engagement?

Ann Schulte shares why you might want to use community engagement in your teaching.

Visit Collaboratory to learn about all of the community engagement activities on our campus

Collaboratory is a secure database that collects community engagement and public service activities for our campus. It is a measurement and tracking tool that informs institutional strategy and an educational tool that distinguishes the spectrum of engagement and service activities. It is a public-facing platform that showcases campus partnerships to provide inspiration and validation. 

Collaboratory allows us to: 

  • Generate robust reports that are easily accessible 
  • Publicly demonstrate our community engagement  
  • Generate and diversify funding 
  • Be more strategic in how we create connections on campus and with partners  
  • More efficiently engage and recognize community partners, faculty, and staff 
  • Leverage faculty and staff expertise 
  • Demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of community engagement 
  • More efficiently address community-identified needs 
  • Complete applications, accreditation, and reports 
  • Attract and retain high-quality faculty and staff 

To get started, log in to the CSU Chico Collaboratory portal(opens in new window) and create your own profile(opens in new window).

For help creating an activity, you can find instructions here.

For more information, you can find a Collaboratory tutorial here(opens in new window).

How Collaboratory can be useful to CSU Chico

Top 4 ways Collaboratory™ helps CSU Chico's faculty and administrators

  1. Tells who is doing what, where, with whom and for what purpose including sponsored research,
    student involvement, public events, length and focus of partnerships, and more.
  2. Creates an opportunity to promote greater interdisciplinary collaboration and coherence.
  3. Leverages the knowledge and expertise of faculty to increase funding, resources, and support.
  4. Illustrates the role of faculty, staff, students, centers, institutes, and initiatives in community engaged work to evaluate and internally recognize community engaged activities.

Top 4 ways Collaboratory™ helps CSU Chico students

  1. Provides a database of service-learning and community-engaged courses and experiences offered.
  2. Allows students to explore how CSU Chico is addressing pressing social issues in their city, state, and beyond.
  3. Demonstrates the variety of ways students can practice engagement in their community.
  4. Identifies faculty/staff conducting activities related to areas students are passionate about.

Top 4 ways Collaboratory™ helps  the community

  1. Displays how community partners interact with CSU Chico, including with which units, faculty/staff, or student groups.
  2. Identifies faculty/staff conducting activities related to areas community partners care about.
  3. Showcases the various community organizations are involved with CSU Chico.
  4. Collects data for community partners on their partnerships.

Using Collaboratory in a Dossier

Contact the Director of Civic Engagement at ammagnus@csuchico.edu for training or an opportunity to learn more about the Collaboratory database.

Collaboratory logo