What is Outreach?

Reporting Outreach Activities

Why is this data collected? Who has access to the outreach information and how will it be used?

Outreach and engagement data collected through FRPA may be used for campus reporting by administrators to highlight the faculty's work with external audiences. It is important to accurately represent this connection so that the university can share stories about this work and how it  benefits communities in Colorado and beyond. 

The information will not automatically be included when you submit your FRPA to your department chair. However, campus administrators can review this data if they choose. 

What is Public Outreach and Community Engagement? 

The term "outreach" is used to describe the various ways in which the University extends its expertise for the direct benefit of Colorado communities and other external audiences. The University's exceptional resources of knowledge lie in the strengths of its faculty, research institutes, student body and academic programs.

Faculty have core responsibilities for teaching, research, creative work and service on campus. Outreach and engagement activities are an important and valued aspect of these responsibilities. It extends a faculty member's scholarship and is an integral part of the university’s mission.  

In 2010, the Council of Deans endorsed a campus definition for outreach and engagement:

At CU Boulder, we define outreach and engagement as the ways faculty, staff and students collaborate with external groups in mutually beneficial partnerships that are grounded in scholarship and consistent with our role and mission as a comprehensive, public research university.

For faculty, outreach rooted in scholarship enhances teaching, research, creative work and service while addressing larger societal issues. For students and staff, community engagement and service projects link campus teaching and learning to civic responsibility and community well being.

For communities, partnering with CU Boulder increases the capacity to address important social, economic and cultural issues. At their best, outreach and engagement activities provide significant learning and growth opportunities to faculty, students, staff and partnering communities.

Whether through research projects, teaching activities, civic engagement or service learning, the reciprocal nature of outreach and engagement enriches both our academic mission and the communities we serve.

Outreach activities extend and enhance a faculty member's scholarship in the following ways:

• Teaching
  • Faculty teaching traditional and nontraditional students credit or noncredit courses off-campus, including service learning.
  • Faculty conducting noncredit seminars, workshops, consultation or technical assistance, available to students either in-person or through the use of technology.
• Research and Creative Work
  • Faculty conducting research intended to respond to pressing problems or issues identified by external constituencies, such as local communities, state, national or international agencies, business, citizen groups, schools, hospitals, arts or other public and nonprofit organizations.
  • Research projects that result from a direct request or identified need from a community.
• Service
  • Faculty drawing on scholarly knowledge to provide medical, educational or therapeutic services, testify before the legislature or Congress, serve on state, national or international commissions or advisory groups, or work through professional societies to prepare studies and reports on significant societal or global problems.
  • Faculty applying professional expertise in volunteer situations.

As part of your outreach efforts, you may also want to share your work on CU Scholar, the university’s institutional repository that preserves and provides public, open access to the research activities of the CU Boulder community that meet its content policy. To enable outreach and public access, and in compliance with the Campus Open Access Policy, faculty should share appropriate versions of their published peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings via CU Scholar.

CU Scholar is maintained by the University Libraries. For questions about CU Scholar or the Campus Open Access Policy, please contact cuscholaradmin@colorado.edu.

Learn More

The CU Boulder Outreach Committee awards funds to faculty to support the extension of their expertise to external audiences. Visit the Public Outreach and Community Engagement website to learn more about the outreach and engagement programs and resources the campus has to offer across Colorado and beyond. Faculty are encouraged to add their outreach and engagement programs and events to the online database. 

Further questions on outreach data should be forwarded to the Office for Outreach and Engagement at outreach@colorado.edu.