Case Study: Community-University Engagement Strategic Planning

By Unnamed photographer in employ of Minsky Brothers & Co. - Scan of postcard printed by Minsky Brothers & Co. Publishing Division, Pittsburgh, PA [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2875821

---

GOAL:

Duquesne University, located in the heart of Pittsburgh, PA, wanted to increase its impact in several adjacent, low-income neighborhoods. The university’s Center for Engaged Teaching and Research (CETR) was interested in developing a strategic plan that would move the university from a set of fragmented community projects to a more holistic, deeper, and impactful partnership with targeted portions of the city. The goal of the planning work was to advance the community’s priorities while enriching student learning and faculty research.

CHALLENGE:

The challenge the university faced was its history of siloed activities that were often shaped by faculty and student needs, rather than community priorities. The timing of the strategic planning work was driven by the interest and funding support from a donor who believed the university could have a much more significant relationship with the city. The planning period was also a time of presidential transition, which subsequently resulted in a separate university-wide strategic planning.

SOLUTION:

Two critical decisions were made in conjunction with the planning process that shifted the work from an academic exercise to a meaningful and impactful university-community partnership. First, the strategic planning committee that was assembled included not only a broad cross-section of university representatives but also several community members from the targeted neighborhoods and partnering organizations. Second, the work of the committee was grounded in a collaborative, action-oriented Strategic Doing process that was informed by quantitative and qualitative data gathering and asset-mapping from neighborhood and university constituents.

OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS:

The strategic planning process yielded a shared vision for engaging the university with the community and centered on three grand challenges. Each grand challenge was designed to tie together thematically-related, but historically siloed activities that partnered Duquesne students and faculty with the targeted neighborhoods. One proposed to bring together a range of health-focused efforts into a new Center for Community Health and Well-Being. A second proposed to leverage the city’s considerable interest in environmental sustainability with the university’s numerous pockets of sustainability-related expertise through a Sustainability Hub. The third focus area proposed to create a Community-University Alliance to catalog, align, and track the university’s community partnerships, and ultimately nuture the development of a culture supportive of impactful partnering. For each of the three grand challenges, value propositions were developed, success characteristics were identified, and key personnel were named from the community and the university. Initial “pathfinder projects” were created and implemented with 90-day action plans, thus allowing each grand challenge strategy to be tested and to build implementation momentum for the strategic plan.

---