November 28, 2017
EBT K-State Today News Story
Kansas State University has a long history of engaging Kansas citizens and communities. Certainly, engagement is fundamental to work at K-State. Engagement is in K-State’s mission statement and represents an important focus of K-State 2025. Our engagement work has been critical to achieving the Engaged University designation from the Carnegie Foundation in 2010 and being re-accredited by the Higher Learning Commission in 2012. In order to continue to understand the breadth and significance of campus engagement and to be able to report our engaged work, the Office of the Provost and Center for Engagement and Community Development will begin administering the “Engagement Benchmarking Tool” (EBT) on November 27. The K-State Engagement Benchmarking Tool (EBT) is an online survey of faculty and academic staff regarding their scholarly outreach and engagement. The survey should take approximately 20 minutes. The EBT will be emailed directly to faculty, on-campus Extension specialists, and regional and state Extension educators holding academic appointments. The survey will remain open until February 2, 2018.
Engagement is a form of research, teaching or service in which collaborative efforts between university and community stakeholders result in scholarly activity and community benefit around a public issue. Engagement occurs when an individual's scholarly work connects with citizens, communities and/or organizations outside the academy with the direct goal of improving outcomes for those who live and work in those communities. That is, engagement is some scholarly activity conducted for the direct benefit of audiences external to the academy. Through engagement, K-State endeavors to fulfill its historic land-grant mission.
The 2017 EBT is particularly important as this will be the last campus survey data point before K-State completes and submits its application for the Carnegie Foundation’s Engaged University re-classification. Data collected through the K-State EBT also helps demonstrate the university’s collective commitment of time, scholarly resources, and research discoveries for the direct benefit of citizens, communities, and organizations in Kansas, the nation, and the world. EBT results can help colleges and departments chart their progress toward Vision 2025 engagement, Extension, service and outreach goals. Results from the Engagement Benchmarking Tool also assists K-State in communicating to parents, students, legislators, and citizen leaders the impact the university is having in areas of economic development, public health, civic engagement, food security, sustainability, innovation, arts and culture.
To help you prepare for completing the EBT, a PDF version of the benchmarking survey is available here. You can download this PDF to examine the survey and organize supporting materials in preparation of completion of the online EBT.
Questions regarding the EBT can be directed to the Center for Engagement and Community Development, cecd@ksu.edu or 785-532-6868.