Community
Community, in the context of Community Engagement, refers to external communities. Whoever we reach or is touched by what we do is part of these communities. External communities include but are not limited to non-governmental organizations and other community groups, marginalized communities, governments at all levels, Aboriginal communities, schools and educational institutions, neighbourhoods, campus residents, alumni, local and global companies, and individual community members. UBC also has special relationships with the provincial government, local cities, and with the Aboriginal communities upon whose traditional territories the Vancouver and the Okanagan campuses are located.
While the CE strategy focuses on relationships external to UBC, there is a recognition that these interactions happen with internal communities, which include students, faculty, staff, residents, and others. These are important communities and relationships that will have an impact on the success of a CE strategy; however, the CE strategy primarily focuses on how UBC engages with external communities.
Engagement
There is a continuum of activities from outreach to partnership that occur in community-university engagement. The scope of engagement and this strategy remains broad to respect many forms of engaging, and recognizes that within and across disciplines there will be differences in defining effective scholarly community engagement. That said, there are also harmful or negative instances of engagement. A commitment to CE holds all of UBC accountable to principles of how we engage, irrespective of intensity or scope of the engagement, with great attention paid to the quality of engagement.
