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Priority two: Engage communities

A group of people holding a long white net stand knee-deep in water.

Priority two

Engage Communities — Cultivate and enrich reciprocal partnerships with university stakeholders to ensure a lasting impact in the communities we serve.

Objectives

  • Champion the interests of rural and under-resourced populations through collaborations. 
  • Embrace and enhance the historic connection between the university and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe through active listening, cooperative partnering, and reciprocal learning to build on longstanding local connections and establish networks for broader collaboration with tribes across the Great Lakes region. 
  • Engage alumni, donors, community and business leaders, among others, to provide mutually beneficial real-world and hands-on experiences for students through curricular and co-curricular partnerships. 
  • Leverage and develop strengths of CMU with the needs and interests of our communities to build and sustain dynamic relationships. 

SMART goals

  • Develop strategies to identify and enhance relationships to meet community needs, beginning with healthcare and wellbeing in the mid-Michigan area, Great Lakes Bay Region, western and northern Michigan.
    • Measure: Develop the plan, a comprehensive tracking process, and annual goals, by December 2025.
  • Increase the number of students engaging in curricular and co-curricular real-world experiences with external stakeholders to achieve a long-term goal of 80% of undergraduate students.
    • Measure: Identify a comprehensive list of the experiences, partners of engagement, transcript-based tracking mechanism, and communication plan to students and faculty by June 2025 for a Fall 2025 rollout.

2024 Progress

Successes

  • Opened a physical location for CMU Innovation and Online and the CMU Rural Health Equity Institute at Traverse Connect in Traverse City, Michigan.
  • Expanded the impact of CMURC through the Great Lakes Bay Region with a new Great Lakes Bay Small Business Hub.
  • Increased access to teacher education (certification and ongoing professional development) in rural communities through the MiCAREER Resource Hub. 

Ongoing efforts

  • Identifying and collecting bids from consulting firms to perform unbiased needs analysis with communities served by CMU. 
  • Gathering information to develop a comprehensive list of community-wide immersive learning experiences and seeking mechanisms to track student participation in those programs.