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Community Engagement Center Goals

• Facilitate: equitable, effective, and reciprocal partnerships and opportunities for students, faculty, and community partners in educational and co-curricular service and research experiences.
• Provide: opportunities to, and facilitate connections between, campus and community entities.
• Support: positive community engagement outcomes through educational workshops, trainings, and program implementation.

Learning Outcomes

• Civic Responsibility: Capacity to express an understanding of issues within the community and the responsibility to participate in democratic processes to work toward positive changes.
• Consciousness of Self: Ability to identify individual values and interests, to gain the confidence to act consistently with values, and to respect and appreciate the perspectives, values, and life situations of others.
• Academic Success: Ability to apply academic concepts to community issues and concepts of community issues to academic learning, alongside the development of professional skills.

Strategic Plans

• GOAL 1: Engage Our World and Region Through Discovery and the Advancement of Knowledge

  We are a young campus already recognized for the unparalleled trajectory and quality of our research. As we move toward joining the select number of campuses at the very high research classification (R1), we will continue to establish ourselves as a national hub for interdisciplinary and transformational research that supports equity and prosperity globally and locally, with particular sensitivity for the San Joaquin Valley. Research experiences, a hallmark of our educational programs, will provide fertile ground for our undergraduate and graduate students to develop the 21st century skills and knowledge essential to creating and leading positive change at global, national, and local levels.

• GOAL 2: Develop Future Scholars and Leaders

  As our campus continues to grow, we will provide our students with the personal and academic support to succeed through world-class educational experiences delivered by outstanding educators and researchers. Honoring our students' experiences as strengths upon which to build, our offerings will develop lifelong learners empowered by the habits of mind and tools of a researcher and address whole-student development, lead to career readiness, and encourage and enable civic engagement. Through a supportive community and educational experiences that are inclusive, high-impact, experiential, and research-based, we will foster the intellectual and personal development of diverse scholars and leaders. Our students will leave our campus recognizing the importance of global and local community and having contributed to the San Joaquin Valley. They will be prepared to be the next generation of diverse scholars, leaders, and agents of change.

• GOAL 3: Cultivate a Culture of Dignity and Respect for All

  Bold scholarship requires us to dismantle long-standing exclusionary practices in higher education. We aim to adopt research-grounded practices that drive our campus toward inclusive excellence. To do so, we will invest in the resources, and cultivate the skills, knowledge, and comprehensively inclusive and anti-racist attitudes necessary to ensure that each unit, department, division, and stakeholder clearly demonstrates their contribution to our Principles of Community.

View UC Merced Strategic Plan Goals and Objectives (opens in new tab)