College of Arts & SciencesStrategic Priority Three

Key Performance Indicators

By 2030, we aspire to:

• Document and expand the number of outreach and engaged scholarship opportunities across the college.
• Improve and expand annual reporting of external partnerships via Digital Measures.
• Document the percentage of students involved in undergraduate engaged scholarship, including preexisting activities such as the Undergraduate Research Center and College of Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Research Academy.
• Document and increase in the number of students involved in community-engaged learning with the Office of Outreach & Engagement.
• Increase the number of stories highlighting outreach and engagement on digital platforms.
• Increase the number of research products related to outreach and engaged scholarship. 

High-Impact Practices

• Through the New Faculty Forum Series, the CAS Associate Dean for Research and Engaged Scholarship emphasizes the importance of accurate reporting of all community outreach and engaged scholarly activities via Digital Measures (DM). New faculty are introduced to the DM reporting platform and institutional definitions are promoted, pertaining to outreach and engagement activities.
• The Department of Geosciences Geography & Youth Mappers student organization organize “Mapathons” that connect undergraduate and graduate students with university and community organizations around the world. Students use web-based open-source geospatial technologies to produce innovative solutions to various humanitarian challenges. Mapathons cultivate next-generation leaders and foster resilient communities through the development of talent and opportunities in places of extreme economic disadvantage. The production of fundamental data may be used to address civic development issues.
• The Preston Gott Skyview Observatory is teaching and research site operated by Texas Tech’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Located about twelve miles northeast of Lubbock in Shallowater, it was intentionally placed away from city lights to give students clearer access to the night sky. Each semester, roughly 600 undergraduate students enrolled in astronomy classes use the facility for hands-on observation and projects, including studies of stellar variability. The observatory also hosts scheduled Star Parties and outreach events that introduce the community to astronomical observational methods and practices.
• Anthropologists in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work incentivize and promote outreach and engaged scholarship by partnering with communities and state agencies to advance the understanding of Texas cultural heritage while also training the next generation of engaged Texans. SASW also incentivizes this activity through matching funds to support student involvement. From re-discovering a lost Spanish Mission with the Texas Historical Commission, to mapping African American Freedom Colony cemeteries, and partnering with CAS and Native American tribes on repatriation initiatives, students learn critical communication and technical skills that directly impact communities. 

Key Performance Indicators

By 2030, we aspire to:

• Increase and expand the number of internal funding opportunities for outreach and engaged scholarship support.
• Increase and expand the number of external funding applications for outreach and engaged scholarship support.
• Annually track externally funded outreach and engaged scholarship projects.
• Document percentage growth in industry and community partnerships.

Highlighted Initiatives

• The CAS Engaged Travelin’ Roadshow incorporates pragmatic information (e.g., institutional definitions, policy revisions) into an hour-long workshop for faculty, providing a roadmap for establishing and growing community partnerships and engaged scholarship. This roadmap conveys best practices for establishing impact intentions with a community partner and guiding discussions of ways to assess and report societal and community impact over time.
• CAS is one of the inaugural members of the Engaged College Program, supported by the Office of Outreach and Engagement. As part of this initiative, The Office of Outreach and Engagement and CAS reinvigorated Studio E, which is an interdisciplinary documentary studio housed in the Department of English. Studio E defines “documentary” broadly to include writing, photography, audio, and film. The space aims to support faculty members doing documentary work relevant to their engaged scholarship and with their community-engaged learning classes, as well as community partners who want to use its resources to tell their own stories in their own ways. Studio E has supported many projects, including “Lubbock’s Untold Stories,” which documents the firsthand accounts of longtime Lubbockites. For faculty in the Departments of English, History, and Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, Studio E has supported community-engaged learning and engaged scholarship related to documenting local lives.
• The “Two-Minute Paper” initiative, developed by Dr. Elias Aydi in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, is rooted in the idea that CAS serves the public good. Too often, the significance of published scholarship goes uncommunicated to wider communities. The goal of the new “Two-Minute Paper” project is to bridge that gap by translating research conducted at Texas Tech into brief, engaging, and accessible summaries, easily digestible by constituents on and off campus. While it began in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, the initiative has strong potential for broader impact by showcasing faculty research beyond disciplinary boundaries and strengthening connections between the college, the public, and the wider community. 
  
  
• Each year, the Department of Mathematics & Statistics coordinates two signature outreach programs, both of which support K-12 STEM pipelines, broaden participation with local and regional audiences, and connect faculty expertise to meet community needs. The first of those programs is TexPREP which has, since 1986, welcomed 6th to 12th graders to a summer enrichment program to major in STEM fields once they reach college. The second of these programs is the Emmy Noether Days event held each spring which is designed to provide a supportive environment for young women to explore mathematics.

Key Performance Indicators

By 2030, we aspire to:

• Document and increase the number of community partnerships and formal agreements/MOUs.
• Document and increase student collaboration involving community partnerships.

Highlighted Initiatives

• The Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive (VNCA) collects, preserves, and provides access to histories of the Vietnam War. Through outreach and engagement with veteran communities and their families, the VNCA archives donated historical documents and conducts oral history interviews with wartime participants to help preserve personal recollections of the war. The VNCA digitizes these collections and interviews and makes them freely available through the Virtual Vietnam Archive, promoting international scholarship and education. Coordinated in partnership with the Institute for Peace and Conflict (IPAC), the VNCA also organizes an annual conference series that attracts veterans, scholars, and students from around the world.
• Building on its ongoing multi-year partnership with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to conduct historical research to locate and identify the 80,000 Americans still missing from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, the VNCA and IPAC are now also collaborating with the Vietnam Wartime Accounting Initiative (VWAI) on a transformative, federally funded project to leverage historical collections in support of the people and government of Vietnam. Their goal is to locate potential gravesites and account for nearly 300,000 soldiers from the war who remain missing. This project, in tandem with ongoing engagement with communities and families in Vietnam, has led to “return ceremonies” in which copies of captured wartime documents are shared with surviving families and veterans, including personal diaries, letters, and other materials written by Vietnamese soldiers killed-in-action. 
• The Center for Public Service is a space where Texas Tech connects with the public and nonprofit leaders shaping West Texas. Rooted in the Department of Political Science, it brings together practitioners, faculty, and students to learn from one another and strengthen their communities. Through the nationally accredited Certified Public Manager program, hands-on research, and internship opportunities for MPA students, and a steady offering of workshops and speaker events, the center helps current and future leaders grow their skills with purpose. Its collaborative research supports public and nonprofit organizations with insights that make local governance more effective, ethical, and responsive. 
• The Institute for Forensic Science (IFS) in the Department of Environmental Toxicology has strong collaborations with local, state, national, and international forensic science organizations, and West Texas law enforcement and judicial systems. The IFS engages with the forensics community through intensive hands-on training that meets the needs of forensics professionals.
• The Renewable Energy program’s work with KidWind, the Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC), and the Building Training & Assessment Center (BTAC) to introduce K-12 students to renewable energy through hands-on turbine design, construction, and testing. The associated West Texas Regional Challenge brings more than 200 K-12 students to the Texas Tech campus each year to work directly with faculty and students.

Key Performance Indicators

By 2030, we aspire to:

• Increase the number of faculty, staff, and student awards for outreach and engaged scholarship.
• Increase the number of outreach and engagement-related professional development opportunities offered by the college.

Highlighted Initiatives

• CAS is working to revise promotion and tenure, as well as continuance, policies to align with university priorities and initiatives to recognize and incentivize engaged scholarship and creative activities, community-engaged learning opportunities, and community outreach. Pathways to earning promotion and tenure (or continuance) are delineated with guidance for faculty, staff, and administrators with outreach and engagement activities included as part of their effort allocation.
• The CAS Faculty Research Advancement Program (RAP) has established dedicated internal funding to support Outreach & Engagement activities to provide an internal source of monies to support faculty’s engaged scholarship as well as their active pursuit of extramural funding. This annual competition provides the opportunity to apply for (a) established project funding ($1,500) or (b) new project funding (2 awards of $750 each).
• CAS has established the annual Excellence in Engagement & Outreach Award to recognize and incentivize O&E initiatives by our faculty, staff, and students, respectively. Selection criteria emphasize: a) societal impact (i.e., activities that encompass emerging or sustained focus on addressing a specific community need or providing innovative solutions that address significant societal issues); b) excellence (i.e., innovative, exemplary, and/or represents “best practice” in working with community members and/or stakeholders); c) evidence (i.e., data to support that implemented changes or discernible results are relevant, based on nominees’ contributions; and d) strategic alignment (i.e., associated with strategic pursuits of CAS or the larger Texas Tech campus community).
• The CAS Internal Marketing Team (IMT) routinely catalogues the wide variety of faculty-led outreach and engaged scholarship initiatives taking place on campus, locally, and across our region, nation, and world. The IMT works with participating faculty and their departments to tell those stories in an effective way via digital media platforms and is striving to modernize and expand those efforts for maximum reach and impact.