Skip to main content
Center for Civic Engagement
Student and professors at a conference

Faculty and Staff

The Center for Civic Engagement supports faculty and staff by providing resources, consultation, and networking opportunities to enhance Illinois State's core value of civic engagement.

Integrating Civic Engagement

Reporting Your Civic Engagement

Collaboratory

We encourage all faculty and staff to report civic engagement activities involving a community partner or public service activity in Illinois State's Collaboratory database. Collaboratory is being used to systematically collect a broad range of information on a variety of activities from all faculty/staff members (e.g., community engaged research, outreach programs, events, course-based experiences, co-curricular activities) that utilize community engagement principles, practices, and/or pedagogies. This public-facing platform can also be used to showcase faculty, unit, and college engagement and to identify potential cross-campus and cross-community collaborations, further enhancing Illinois State’s impact on student learning and community outcomes. More information about Collaboratory can be found in this Collaboratory guide. You can also refer to this activity entry summary to learn about the data collected for each activity in Collaboratory.

Watermark

Report basic information about your civically engaged teaching, scholarship, and service with Watermark Faculty Success (formerly Digital Measures) for each calendar year by the following January 5. See the civic engagement in Watermark reference guide for specific directions on how to add your activities to Watermark Faculty Success.

If you have any questions or need assistance in the reporting process, contact the Center's Assistant Director of Assessment, Rachel Waring-Sparks, PhD at raspar1@ilstu.edu or (309) 438-1100.

The Center for Civic Engagement Resouces

The Center for Civic Engagement offers a variety of academic literature in the fields of civic/political engagement and service learning introducing concepts and valuable lessons-learned. The selected toolkits give guidance to faculty and staff members eager in making a positive social impact in an academic setting and beyond.

Come visit the center and see the comprehensive range of resources we have at hand.

Illinois State University is a member of Campus Compact, which offers a searchable database of syllabi from a wide variety of disciplines.

Civically Engaged Learning Goals

Illinois State established the Civically Engaged Learning Goals, Civically Engaged Assessment Rubric, and Student Assessment Matrix to better understand what civic engagement looks like and to assess the extent to which students are civically engaged upon graduation. This framework of learning goals and assessment rubric identifies specific knowledge, skills, dispositions, and actions to describe how students develop their commitment to their community throughout their college experience and beyond.

The Civically Engaged Learning Goals come from multiple disciplines and scholars and can be used to assess all types of civic engagement within class instruction and program delivery. Use of the learning goals ensures faculty/staff are purposefully and overtly connecting what they are teaching (in a course or co-curricular activity) to the end goal of preparing students for a lifelong responsibility of civic engagement.

In order for students to become civically engaged, they first need to have a foundation of civic knowledge and skills and accompanying a disposition which involves one's values, motivation, and attitude. Effective civic engagement can occur when these foundational competencies are developed.

Explore More Tools for Faculty and Staff