A new advisor is taking over the community engagement role, focused on connecting academic work with real-world impact.
In an article published by the Gazette, Principal Patrick Deane announced the appointment of Michelle Searle, Ed ’99, Med ’08, PhD ’13, as the new Special Advisor to the Principal on Community Engagement, on July 1. Also working as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Searle is building on the work of Wendy Craig, the previous Community Engagement Advisor, to coordinate campus-wide efforts supporting community-engaged teaching, research, and service.
Searle explained in an interview with The Journal that what drew her to the role of Community Engagement Advisor was its deep tie to her past experiences as an educator. She said she was driven by the “power of collaboration, of relationships, of things that could happen, both within our traditional classrooms, but also in the relationships we create beyond them.”
Specifically, her role involves working with different groups on campus, such as the Innovation Centre and Equity Office, which offer training and certificate programs that help students build the skills to support community-based engagement. Searle would be working to support these initiatives and ensure that they are more accessible to students, such as through the community-engaged website.
She additionally mentioned her goal of aiming to allot about one day a week to address the responsibilities of the Community Engagement Advisor. Some of her weekly responsibilities include continuing to launch the Community Engagement Framework, and helping design a course focused on community engagement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Community Engagement Framework is an important part of the role, Searle said, as it will develop a strategic plan to embed meaningful, reciprocal, and sustainable partnerships with communities into its teaching, research, and institutional activities.
She explained this updated framework will be released at an event on Oct. 1, where students, faculty, staff, and community partners will engage in discussions and learn about ongoing community-based initiatives. Searle hopes these conversations fill gaps in the current framework and the community engagement role in general.
Searle said the role entails building on what Craig began, advising the University on how academic work can connect to real-world impact through communication and collaboration.
“I’ll be looking for ways to continue to support students, faculty, and staff who are engaged in community-engaged pedagogy, or community-engaged research, or community service-learning opportunities, all of which we have a fantastic amount of at Queen’s, but sometimes we don’t know about them as they’re happening.”
Searle also emphasized that community engagement shouldn’t be viewed as a top-down, expert-driven approach.
“I think sometimes people mistake community engagement at universities as universities going out there with sort of their expert hats on and knocking on doors […] That’s not what this is.”
After completing her undergrad at Western University, she came to Queen’s through the Artist in the Community Education program, where she obtained her teaching certificate. That program, one of her first paid opportunities as an environmental arts educator, became a key memory that inspired her to return to Queen’s to further explore how education and community can work together to make a difference.
She explained that the role’s meant to support students in finding ways to meet in the middle when engaging and learning from their communities in a meaningful way.
Tags
community, Community Engagement, First Year in Focus, Special Advisor
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