Virginia Tech presenters will showcase several approaches to engaged scholarship at the Engagement Scholarship Consortium International Conference to be held Oct. 7–8 in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and students will participate in roundtables, workshops, research presentations, and poster presentations, tackling topics that range from K-12 partnerships and community health to robotics education and collaborative leadership.

Together, the sessions reflect the breadth of engagement work happening across the university and the many ways Virginia Tech is working with communities to build partnerships, address local needs, and put research into practice.

Here's where to find Virginia Tech-led sessions:

Wednesday, Oct. 7

RESEARCH AND PARTNERSHIP PRESENTATION: Mapping the K-12–higher education relationship
11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Higher education institutions interact with K-12 schools through programs, research, outreach, and other partnerships, but understanding the full scope of those relationships can be difficult.

From the Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI), Phyllis Newbill and Gary Kirk will present work aimed at systematically mapping those connections. The project draws on seven years of partnership-building with local school systems and examines how a more complete picture of university-school relationships can provide a foundation for stronger community engagement.

POSTER: Intersectionality of Non-modifiable Variables on Refugee Mental Health
5-6 p.m.

Leena Awni, a medical student at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, will present a qualitative retrospective analysis examining how age, sex assigned at birth, and region of origin intersect with the severity of mental health symptoms among refugee populations in the Roanoke area.

The research uses results from the Refugee Health Screener-15 questionnaire administered by the Roanoke City Health Department in non-psychiatric settings. 

POSTER: Creating a Data Dashboard to Track Health Department Engagement Outcomes
5-6 p.m.

Presented by Christopher Grubb, a research scientist for the Center for Biostatistics and Health Data Science, Lara Nagle of the Institute for Policy and Governance, and Nicole Davidson-Wert of the Roanoke City Alleghany Health Districts, this poster will explain how the Roanoke City Alleghany Health Districts worked with data specialists at Virginia Tech to build a custom data dashboard to track engagement outcomes for the Impactful Community Engaged Planning project from 2023-2026, funded by the American Rescue Plan Act.

Thursday, Oct. 8

RESEARCH AND PARTNERSHIP PRESENTATION: Assessment-Driven Planning for LGBTQIA+ Health in Southwest Virginia
10:45–11:45 a.m.

A community health assessment in Southwest Virginia is helping identify the needs of LGBTQIA+ residents and inform future planning.

Nagle will join community partners Nicole Davidson-Wert of the Virginia Department of Health in Roanoke and Charlie Rickard, a community health worker, to share findings from an assessment conducted by the Roanoke City Alleghany Health Districts. The effort included an online survey of 185 people and focus groups with 23 participants and was designed to help guide the Rainbow Wellness Alliance’s strategic action plan.

RESEARCH AND PARTNERSHIP PRESENTATION: Seniors and University Students Co-create Continuing Care Retirement Community Campus
1:30-2:30 p.m.

Terry Clements, professor and chair of the landscape architecture program in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design will present a long-term partnership between Covenant Woods and the landscape architecture program. The partnership has used co-creation of campus landscape plans to build a stronger sense of community among residents, train students in community-engagement practices, and increase university students’ social comfort in intergenerational groups.

RESEARCH AND PARTNERSHIP PRESENTATION: Coalescing Undergraduate & Graduate Student Community-Engaged Learning Experiences
2:45-3:45 p.m.

Rachael Budowle, a collegiate associate professor in the Honors College, and Catherine Cotrupi, assistant dean for student services and strategic partnerships in the Graduate School, will share how their undergraduate/graduate community-engaged course collaboration leverages shared experiences and community member participation while supporting graduate students’ community-engaged teaching practice. Following these courses, a funded pilot summer fellowship program allows community partners, undergraduate students, and graduate students as near-peer mentors to extend projects beyond the curriculum, maximizing community benefit and learning.

ROUNDTABLE: Leadership-as-Practice and Community Engagement: Process Approaches to Partnership
10:45–11:45 a.m.

Inga Haugen, a librarian with University Libraries, will lead an interactive session examining leadership and community engagement through the lens of dialogue, relationships, and the conditions surrounding collaborative work.

Participants will discuss how process-based approaches can strengthen partnerships tackling real-world challenges. The conversations also will contribute to development of a co-created edited volume featuring practical examples of Leadership-as-Practice.

RESEARCH AND PARTNERSHIP PRESENTATION: Co-Designing at the Boundary: Examining a Transnational Robotics Curriculum Partnership
1:30–2:30 p.m.

Kirk and Newbill from CENI will explore lessons from a multisector, transnational partnership that developed a youth robotics curriculum in Anguilla.

The session will examine how partners learned from one another while co-designing the curriculum, including the use of shared tools and stakeholder observations. Presenters also will consider how participatory values aligned with the methods used in the partnership and offer lessons that could be applied to other collaborative projects.

ROUNDTABLE: Maximizing Engagement Impact: Managing Adaption-Innovation Gaps to Solve Community Problems
4–5 p.m.

Community partners may be working toward the same goal while approaching problems in very different ways. Jerald Walz, collegiate assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education, will lead a roundtable examining how differences in creative problem-solving styles can affect communication, trust, and collaboration. Using Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Inventory as a framework, the session will explore ways partners can recognize those differences and work across them more effectively.

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