UT Knoxville’s Office of Research and the Academic Outreach and Engagement Council recently announced a new incentive grant program to fund campus outreach projects.
As part of the campus’ commitment to community engagement and the scholarship of academic outreach, the two units have issued a call for proposals that may include projects, partnerships or programs that promote outreach and engagement in research, scholarship or creative activity; in teaching; or in service. For more information, including submission guidelines, please visit the Academic Outreach and Engagement Council website at http://web.utk.edu/~aoec/.
UT Knoxville, along with an increasing number of its peer institutions, continues to articulate a stronger intellectual foundation for outreach and engagement. Outreach has always been a fundamental part of the mission of American higher education; however, much of academia now sees community engagement as a form of scholarship that cuts across the traditional divisions between teaching, research and service. In this way, academic engagement need not compete with or come at the expense of any other central function of the university.
In essence, academic engagement supports public scholarship and community partnerships that are truly reciprocal, meaning they provide benefits both to the university and to the larger community that surrounds and includes it.
The Office of Research and the Academic Outreach and Engagement Council continue to work together to support this form of outreach. Their work embraces all three parts of UT Knoxville’s VOL Vision 2015 strategic plan: value creation through economic, social and environmental development; original ideas through discovery, inquiry, innovation, scholarship and research; and leadership through the preparation of capable and ethical leaders of the future.
Contact:
Elizabeth Burman (974-8363, eburman@utk.edu)