DeKalb – Starting Monday, NIU’s Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development will celebrate Global Community Engagement Week.
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday the division of OERD will host a table at the Holmes Student Center to share with students their initiative, hear from students and allow other organizations on campus to share their programs.
“Global engagement day is Jan. 28, every year, and that just happened to fall on a Sunday this year. So, we decided to make that following week Global Community Engagement Week to kind of expand the initiative,” said Kendall Hampton, graduate assistant for the Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development.
OERD will give out free “NIU Engage” pins and provide a raffle for students to participate in. The raffle will include gift cards to local businesses and restaurants.
“The main question we are asking you at the table is, ‘what is community engagement to you?’ So that we can get a host of perspectives and opinions on that idea,” Hampton said.
The purpose of the Division of OERD is to provide leadership, partnership and support for NIU in the terms of community engagement, said Rena Cotsones, vice president and chief engagement officer of the department.
The OERD will use Global Community Engagement Day as a chance to hear back from students about their involvement on campus and learn how they can better work together.
“We have students out working in organizations. We have faculty who are doing engaged research and just having a tremendous impact on our region,” Cotsones said. “So next week is all about hearing from students and faculty and staff about what their experiences are, and also very importantly, learning from them. What kinds of support would be helpful for them?”
This will be the OERD’s first time dedicating a week toward community engagement, and it is part of their larger campaign to raise the awareness of community engagement on NIU’s campus.
“It’s happening all across campus, but we want the campus to be able to talk about it in a kind of unified way,” Cotsones said.
Sergio Dondiego, a sophomore nursing major, will join the OERD Monday on behalf of the Honors program.
“I’m basically just informing people about the Honors Program and how we engage in community service and just overall engagement on campus,” Dondiego said.
Dondiego hopes to highlight to students that the Honors Program is not as intimidating as it might seem to some.
“I feel like, when a lot of people look at Honors, they get really stressed out because we think of the academic requirements,” Dondiego said. “We do have that aspect to it, I feel like, we are a lot about, and mostly about, student engagement.”
Students in the Honors Program have involvement requirements to fulfill alongside the good grades.
“We have, like, honors engaged experiences, which are a part of the honors requirements,” Dondiego said. “Those can include a whole multitude of community engagement, including, like, job internships, being a part of an executive board, community service.”
The Honors Program also promotes “Connect 10,” which encourages students to attend 10 events. Dondiego said the 10 events are not required to be academic or leadership based, so long as it is sponsored by the Honors Program.
NIU is a Carnegie Engaged Institution, one of 357 universities across the country with the title.
“That means that NIU was classified as an engaged institute,” Hampton said. “It demonstrates that not only is NIU an institute that’s very engaged in the community, but we’re also proud of that, and we want to promote that and continue to grow as an engaged institution.”
NIU first received the classification in 2010, reclassified in 2020 and is working on an application for reclassification in 2026.
“Having the Carnegie engaged classification says that we are among the leaders in the country of having engagement activities happening across campus with faculty, staff and students,” Cotsones said. “It also speaks to the quality of that community engagement work and engaged scholars. So, what we want to do is to build our capacity as an institution for community engagement.”
NIU has a Centering Engagement, Driving Impact task force which has a three year action plan.
Year one, 2023 to 2024, is aimed to establish a team to work toward the reclassification of a Carnegie engaged institute, hold a 2023 speaker event, take inventory of engaged activities at NIU, collaborate with NIU campus partners and hold a spring 2024 speaker event.
“We have an engagement executive and residents who will be coming onto campus in March,” Cotsones said. “So, that’s an opportunity for faculty and staff, and perhaps students as well, to hear from another community engagement professional who’s visiting us from another campus.”
Year two, 2024 to 2025, has the goals of launching the Office of Community Engagement within the OERD, creating an engaged scholarship community of practice, fulfilling the Carnegie application process – due April 1, 2025 – and establishing funding opportunities for community projects.
In year three, 2025 to 2026, the OERD plans to celebrate a redesignation of NIU being a Carnegie institute, have collaborative staffing for the Office of Community Engagement and launch the Summer Faculty Engagement Academy.
“We know that NIU students come here and they want to learn how to change the world, change their communities, and engaging with those communities is something that we do in this division and that a number of faculty and staff and students are doing on a regular basis,” Cotsones said.
