Reimagining Extension and Outreach at Cornell: Strategic Plan for “Public Engagement”

Have you heard about “Reimagining Cornell?” Universities like to reimagine themselves every once in a while, and Cornell is no exception. In Cornell’s case, this strategic planning process will have profound and long-term effects on the university – and not least for extension and outreach. Cornell’s approach should be of key interest to Cornell Cooperative Extension educators, as well as to others interested in university outreach efforts.

Reimagining Cornell is the name for  a coordinated planning and implementation effort upon which, as the leaders put it “the future health of our great university depends,” There are two main goals:  (1) to position Cornell for excellence in priority areas, and (2) to ensure the ongoing financial health of the university. Over the past year, activities have included gathering ideas from throughout Cornell, launching 20 task forces, and releasing a draft strategic plan. They’ve done a great job of putting all the information together on a user-friendly Reimagining Cornell web site.

There is major attention in the plan to the area of extension and outreach, included under the broad area of “Promoting Excellence in Public Engagement.”

The plan strongly endorses the importance of engaging with the community and extending the work of Cornell to benefit citizens of New York State and beyond. It also points to goals for extension that may imply a shift in focus. The plan proposes to integrate extension activities more closely with the many other public engagement activities at Cornell, including departments not part of the land-grant side of the university. It also calls for better integration of extension activities with the research and teaching efforts at Cornell, and an emphasis on evidence-based programming and evaluation of extension programs.

The five main recommendations are:

1. Construct a unified concept and coherent organizational model for the University’s outreach and public engagement mission.
2. Strongly connect extension and outreach to on-campus research and educational strengths.
3. Develop rigorous, systematic evaluations of all outreach and extension programs.
4. Promote stronger collaborations and partnerships between the University and stakeholders that can make use of and strengthen Cornell’s research (e.g., industry, K-12 schools, nonprofit organizations, government).
5. Make public engagement a distinctive feature of education at Cornell.

You can read more detailed discussion of these points on the web page.

What do you think? Feel free to start a dialogue by posting comments here. We are very interested in your reactions and thoughts about these recommendations and their relevance to work in the counties.