Community Engagement Fundamentals

Key Competencies

We define “key competencies” in the Community Engagement Fundamentals area as the knowledge, skills, and critical commitments that must be mobilized by CEPs to accurately and elaborately represent the foundations of the field and the breadth of community-engaged work.

By earning this core competency credential, an individual has demonstrated their knowledge and skills in the following areas:

1. Knowledge of various conceptualizations of community and a working definition of community engagement.
2. Knowledge of a set of guiding principles for ethical and effective community engagement.
3. Knowledge of different modes of public service and civic engagement.
4. Ability to explain how effective community partnerships are related to the community engagement work of a college or university campus.
5. Ability to describe the nature of a strong community-campus partnership.
6. Ability to articulate the importance of equity and inclusion in engagement work, including the opportunities and challenges inherent in engaging students and other partners/stakeholders across lines of social difference.
7. Ability to describe the roles of engaged faculty, staff, and students on an engaged campus and the issues they face.
8. Knowledge of the ways community engagement can intersect with both curricular and co-curricular campus activities.
9. Knowledge of examples of effective community and civic engaged teaching.
10. Knowledge of examples of effective community and civic engaged research.