University-Community Partnerships (UCP) facilitates three types of partnerships/collaborations 1) faculty-to-faculty, 2) staff-to-staff, and 3) community-to-faculty.
Faculty Connections
AKTL Networks
University-Community Partnerships is facilitating AKTL (Advancing Knowledge Transforming Lives) Networks in major geographic areas across Michigan--Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and the Upper Peninsula. These networks bring together faculty and staff who collaborate with community agencies, organizations, schools, public institutions, and businesses. The primary aim of these networks is to enhance communication among MSU scholars who do work in the same geographic areas and to increase research and funding opportunities through multidisciplinary collaboration.
UCP has created an ANGEL group of faculty and academic staff who are interested in communicating and collaborating with others who do work in the various AKTL areas (Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and the Upper Peninsula). If you are interested in joining this ANGEL group, please contact us at partners@msu.edu.
Staff Connections
Engagement Specialists' 'Confab'
Confab (short for Confabulation) is a network that brings together MSU engagement specialists and other academic support staff who have outreach and engagement job responsibilities. This group of individuals is an important part of the academic community that nurtures and facilitates MSU's links with schools, businesses, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other public and private institutions. Confab's purpose is to:
- Coordinate, design, and implement engagement teams that will support new and existing AKTLs--networks of connection between the University and communities.
- Increase the competency of engagement work across the University by building engagement skills and promoting best practice techniques, methods, and models.
- Promote scholarship-based engagement, including the promotion of best practice evaluative strategies for measuring the effectiveness of the act of engagement.
Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about Confab at partners@msu.edu
University-Community Collaboration
UCP brings together community groups with faculty teams to engage in collaborative, multidisciplinary, community-based research on issues of mutual interest. Please contact us if you are interested in developing a university-community partnership.
