Texas Tech is currently conducting its annual, institution-wide assessment of faculty and staff outreach and engagement via Raiders Engaged.  If during Academic Year 14/15 as part of your academic or professional role, you were involved in a program or project that was specifically conducted for or in partnership with individuals or organizations outside of the university (at the local, state, national, or international level), please participate in Raiders Engaged! The survey closes on December 1, 2015. For questions, contact the Office of Academic Engagement and Outreach (birgit.green@ttu.edu). 
 

COMMITTEE ON ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT AND OUTREACH

Texas Tech will soon have a campus-wide Committee for Academic Engagement and Outreach to advise the institution on the annual assessment of its outreach and engagement activities as well as other matters related to promoting university-community partnerships and aligning campus-wide engagement efforts. The committee will consist of representatives from each college and school, as well as key administrative areas.   

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC) has honored the East Lubbock Promise Neighborhood (ELPN) project with the 2015 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Award. The Kellogg Award recognizes four-year public universities that have made exemplary strides in becoming more closely and productively engaged with communities through their teaching/learning, discovery, and service activities. ELPN is a community-based partnership, led by Texas Tech’s College of Education, designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities for East Lubbock students. Funded by a $24.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the project is a multi-fac­eted collaboration between several TTU Colleges (Education, Arts & Sciences, Human Sciences, Visual and Performing Arts), the Health Sciences Center, local businesses, the Lubbock Independent School District, non-profit organizations, as well as neighborhood groups. Overall, over 70 partners have come together to provide a comprehensive approach to improving the health and economic well-being of East Lubbock families. Programs include early childhood literacy, after-school enrichment, community gardens, GED classes, health services and coming soon, an Early College High School.  Contact: Dr. Scott Ridley, College of Education; scott.ridley@ttu.edu

The College of Architecture received a $1.5 million gift from Mark E. Humphreys, a 1978 graduate of its program and founder and CEO of Humphreys and Partners Architects.  The gift established the Mark E. Humphreys AIA Chair in Urban Design. Tech’s Urban Design program focuses on revitalizing urban areas to create more people-friendly environments and encourage economic development. Its faculty and students are best known for their participation in Urban Tech, a program that partners architecture students with local governments and civic organizations to help redesign municipal areas. Through its community engagement, UrbanTech developed plans for the High Cotton Center, a facility for Lubbock’s homeless population. Last year, Urban Tech joined forces with Tech’s Departments of Theatre & Dance, Exercise and Sports Science, Geosciences, Recreational Sports, RHIM, the Climate Science Center, the Garrison Institute on Aging, and Digital Design and Fabrication to host Urban Stage in downtown Lubbock. The project highlighted environmental, cultural, economic and social sustainability in an urban environment. Community partners included Civic Lubbock Inc., Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Imagine Lubbock Together, City of Lubbock, Knights of Columbus, and many more. Contact: David Driskill, A.I.A., College of Architecture; david.driskill@ttu.edu