Equity-Oriented Partnerships - Micro-credential

The Equity-Oriented Partnerships Micro-credential will develop participants' abilities to address questions of power, diversity, equity, and inclusion in partnerships with colleagues, students, community partners and more. Participants will engage in a community of practitioners, build their theoretical and practical knowledge, and apply a praxis model (e.g. a cycle of reflection and action) to the design of equity-oriented practices for projects related to their disciplines and community-engaged scholarship. Activities will consist of workshops, discussion, field based application, and the development of practical tools and resources.

The Office for Outreach and Engagement and the Renée Crown Wellness Institute are dedicated to the campus’s mission of building partnerships with the local community. While the potential for impact is great, there is also risk that university-community partnerships can unintentionally generate harm and reproduce historical patterns of inequity. This micro-credential builds capacity across campus by providing a learning opportunity around how to design university-community partnerships that are oriented towards equity and implemented with a high level of integrity.

This micro-credential provides participants with skills that are broadly transferable to diverse disciplines and that will support them in leading collaborative and equity-oriented work in their respective fields. It will provide them with theoretical and practical tools and resources and skills to prepare them to engage in diverse forms of collaboration and address arising challenges and opportunities in ways that promote equity and justice.

It is imperative that our work force have a deep understanding of both collaboration and equity and justice. This micro-credential will provide learners with an applied learning opportunity that will signify to employers that they are dedicated to the work of developing equity-oriented practices in partnership with stakeholders.

Requirements

• Attend all Engaged Arts and Humanities (EAH) Scholars meetings associated with equity-oriented partnership practices. These sessions will be part of the cohort’s regularly planned meetings. At these meetings, members will receive guidance and “templates” for equity-oriented partnership practices

• “Workshop” an equity-oriented partnerships activity in a cohort meeting and complete a series of reflections on the process.

• Implement equity-oriented partnerships activity with community partners and complete additional reflections.  

• Create and publicly share (online) a “template” for equity-oriented partnership activity.

• Meet the evaluation criteria for implementing equity-oriented partnership practices. 

Criteria

Through their work on micro-credential requirement activities (attending workshops, and implementation and reflection of equity-oriented partnership activity) learners must demonstrate the following criteria listed below. These criteria will be assessed by the program leads and advisors through rubrics and benchmarks and through cohort members' self and peer assessments.

• An understanding of equity and justice grounded in key theories and practices associated with community-engaged scholarship (research, teaching and creative work).

• Fluency with discourse practices (e.g. ways of talking and acting) that invite equitable participation in the co-design of shared activity among partners.

• A practice of iterative reflection and action (praxis) oriented towards the continuous need to question structures of power and privilege in partnership activity.

• Evidence of the development of collaborative and inclusive partnerships across social contexts that center equity and justice. 

Skills

• Collaboration
• Community-engaged design
• Community-engaged scholarship
• DEI
• Design thinking
• Diversity
• Equity
• Inclusion
• Justice
• Participatory design
• Partnership development