The Community Engagement office at UBC’s Vancouver campus is a part of the External Relations portfolio. Together with our counterpart at UBC Okanagan, we provide support, services and strategic direction for local community groups, organizations and individuals so they can access resources and engage in mutually beneficial relationships with UBC.
Our Purpose:
To advance reciprocal community-university engagement for a more equitable and just world.
Our Goals
- Intentionally commit to equity in our work. Promote, develop and protect anti-racism and decolonization in our team and our programming.
- Co-lead a university-wide process for institutional learning and transformation of UBC’s commitment to community engagement.
- Coordinate engagement internally – Connect people, identify gaps/opportunities, and promote the sharing of knowledge and resources.
- Create mechanisms for our partners to access and navigate the university and pursue opportunities to steward strategic partnerships.
- Deliver CE funding initiatives that emphasize a culture of reciprocity and provide opportunities for high quality community engagement.
- Support and deliver engagement programming that fosters discourse and knowledge exchange.
- Embed CE in central narratives to inculcate engagement principles and engaged scholarship.
- Create a healthy, supportive, and sustainable work environment that supports CE staff wellbeing.
Our Values
We are sincere. We are open and honest in our communication and act according to our values.
We are respectful. We listen, seek to understand, and learn together across perspectives, ideologies, and disciplines.
We are collaborative. We cultivate reciprocal relationships and recognize the strength of a common vision shaped by multiple perspectives and collectively owned.
We are curious. We ask questions, we dig, we learn and we challenge ourselves.
We are creative. We strive to meet challenges with meaningful new ideas and bring these ideas to life with imagination.
We are action-oriented. We embrace opportunities for action that align with our values and goals.
We are adaptable. We understand the future is unpredictable. We are still there to support.
We are anti-racist. We believe racial groups are equal and we express anti-racist ideas and support anti-racist policies with our actions.
We are deliberate. We balance decisive action with careful thought, reflection and study.
We value leadership in each person, regardless of and while respecting our unique and valuable roles within the team.