Our Story

Since its creation in 2004, the Division of Community Affairs has supported the mission of The University of Alabama to improve the quality of life for the citizens and communities of Alabama and beyond through innovative community engagement programs that integrate teaching, research and service in ways that seek to engage communities and change lives.

The Division emphasizes The 4Rs of Community Engagement — Relevance, Reciprocity, Research, and Resilience — throughout its initiatives. A true community-engaged program will include all these components in a way that is authentic to each partner’s goals and values.

• Relevance — What is the effort seeking to accomplish and what does success look like for all partners?

• Reciprocity — How will the roles of the partners be designed so that their involvement significantly contributes to the success of the partnership?

• Research — What theoretical research framework will be utilized to ensure the success of the effort and how will that research be shared with all partners? Research principles inform all Division collaborations.

• Resilience — Resilience is demonstrated through a university-community partnership’s ability to sustain itself and survive adverse events. Resilience also supports the long-term nature of effective community-engaged research, encouraging a sustainable approach.

The Division’s community engagement success, and by extension that of the University, comes from the synergism resulting from a major research University joining forces with communities to address issues of major concern in such areas as health, education, the environment, race and cultural relations, poverty, science and the economy.

Community Affairs provides leadership and opportunities for faculty, staff, students and community partners to form community-university partnerships that advance the field of community-engaged scholarship in beneficial ways that support the goals of the institution while contributing to the public good.

Over its more than two decades of existence, the Division has facilitated and supported research-based initiatives that have created scores of partnerships involving UA faculty, staff, students and community partners.

UA was the first non-land-grant institution selected for membership in the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, an international aggregation of universities providing leadership in the scholarship of engagement. The University’s vice president for Community Affairs is the immediate past president of its Board of Directors. UA was also the first non-land-grant institution to host the ESC annual conference and sends a large delegation to the conference each year.

Mission

The mission of Community Affairs is to form partnerships for engagement scholarship across teaching, research and service to generate, transmit, apply and preserve knowledge in collaboration with community partners for the mutual benefit of our partners and the University, and to provide intercultural leadership for the campus and community.

Vision

The vision of Community Affairs is to be a world leader in the scholarship of engagement and in the strengthening of intercultural relations through programs that transform lives.

Leverage the intellectual, human and financial resources of the University to improve the quality of life in communities.

Build collaborative relationships in which community partners are vital contributors to and share responsibility for decision making that produces mutually beneficial outcomes.

Integrate learning, teaching, research and service through the scholarship of engagement.

Develop tools that increase the effectiveness of faculty and staff and enhance the development of students to address intellectually and respond strategically to large-scale problems of importance in communities.

Address changing campus norms and community demographics by implementing best-practice strategies that increase cultural competencies.

Create and deliver curricular experiences to prepare students and community members to become civically engaged leaders.

Produce reciprocal knowledge through research and best practices that develop innovative campus and community collaborations.

Assess the process of engagement through traditional qualitative and quantitative measures, benchmarking for academic excellence and impact on communities.

Create space for actively listening to and learning from one another.

Model a respectful work environment that facilitates transformation through engaged scholarship, collaboration and partnership.