Pre-Conferences

---

Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop (EESW)

Schedule:

Monday, October 6, 2025 | 1:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 | 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Cost: $200

Application deadline extended: June 30, 2025

This intensive professional development program provides advanced doctoral students and early career faculty with background literature, facilitated discussion, mentoring, and presentations designed to increase their knowledge and enhance their practice of community-engaged scholarship. Participation in the Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop (EESW) is limited, and interested applicants must apply and be accepted to participate in the workshop.

Learn more at the 2025 EESW webpage

---

Engagement Academy for University Leaders

Leading Through the Unraveling: Engagement Leadership in an Era of Disruption

Schedule:

Monday, October 6, 2025
8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. | Seminar
4:45 – 6:00 p.m. | Reception

Cost: $240

Across the nation, higher education institutions are experiencing the effects of political and structural upheaval. The defunding of cornerstone agencies, erosion of public trust, cuts in federal research funding, shifts in judicial and legislative norms, and regulatory volatility are complicating and undermining the credibility of our partnerships with communities.

What does this uncertainty mean for university engagement leaders in 2025?

Join us for a one-day seminar specifically designed for higher education leaders who manage community engagement functions as you navigate this turbulent landscape. Together, we’ll explore scenarios shaping our field and examine research-informed leadership practices that offer clarity, resilience, and hope.

This is more than just a seminar; it’s a safe space for learning, dialogue, reflection, and shared strategies. Come ready to think deeply, learn collaboratively, and leave better equipped to lead boldly.

Learn more at the 2025 EA webpage

---

Outreach and Engagement Practitioners Network (OEPN)

Back to Basics: Discovering Our Why — cultivating values, strengthening civic engagement, and inspiring action as boundary spanners

Schedule:

Monday, October 6, 2025 | 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. | Optional networking evening event  
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 | 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.  |  Pre-conference workshop

Cost: $125 - Participation fee includes programming materials and meals, including networking event

Join us for the 2025 Outreach and Engagement Professionals Network (OEPN) Pre-Conference, hosted by the Engaged Scholarship Consortium (ESC), and take a journey Back to Basics: Discovering Our Why — cultivating values, strengthening civic engagement, and inspiring action as boundary spanners.

In a time marked by rapid change, widening divides, and shifting trust in public institutions, the role of boundary spanners — those who build bridges across differences and sectors—is more vital than ever. As engagement professionals, scholars, and practitioners, we are called not only to build partnerships and design programs but to root our work in the foundational values of civic learning.

This year’s preconference is an invitation to pause, reflect, and realign your professional practice with the deeper “why” behind community-engaged scholarship and outreach. Together, we’ll explore how reconnecting with core values can strengthen our ability to navigate complexity, foster civic responsibility, and inspire meaningful action for the public good.

Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just beginning your engagement journey, you’ll leave with fresh insights and practical tools to cultivate a values-based approach to your work while connecting with a network of dedicated professionals and scholars.

Now more than ever, as boundary spanners, we must equip ourselves to guide conversations that bridge divides and foster collective action.

• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Learn more at the 2025 OEPN webpage

---

TRES Preconference Sessions

Who are we and who do we want to be together? Assessing and deepening community-campus partnerships through collaborative critical reflection

Schedule: TBA
Cost: Registration information will be available soon.

Community-campus partnerships are – or can be – vehicles for meaningful learning, growth, and change on the part of everyone involved. However, in order for such aims to be fulfilled, questions around partnership dynamics and quality must be asked: For example, how can partnerships deepen over time, especially through intentional collaborative actions of the partners themselves? How do we all – as partners – get on the same page about whether and in what ways we intend our partnerships to be transformational? How do we know whether partnerships are deepening, and what processes contribute toward (or hinder) that deepening? Beyond the growth of our particular partnerships, what questions might we pursue in order to continue advancing the field’s understanding of partnership processes? In this daylong preconference workshop, an interdisciplinary, interinstitutional team of facilitators will share and engage participants with an expansive (and deep!) body of work connected to TRES (pronounced “trees”), the Transformational Relationship Evaluation Scale, and the research-grounded Reflection Framework of which it is a part. 

In particular, we invite partnerships as a whole (whether dyads, triads, or larger groups) to register for and participate in this session together as we will spend a large portion of the session using - not just discussing - the hot-off-the-presses TRES III Reflection Framework in real time to not only gain familiarity with the tool but also explore your own partnership dynamics and from them co-generate concrete strategies for deepening the relationships, processes, and results that comprise your work together. [NOTE: If it is not feasible for more than one member of your partnership to participate in the workshop or if your goal is to build your own capacity to support other partnerships, you are welcome to join us as an individual.]

Specifically, we will walk together through the TRES III Reflection Framework, first getting oriented to its conceptual underpinnings and then using it together, as partners, to determine what aspects of your partnerships you most want to deepen and what actions you will take to move forward accordingly. Facilitators will share research on the impact of the TRES Reflection Framework, which demonstrates that commitment to and clarity around partnerships increases and partnership gatherings, communication, and inclusivity are enhanced through collaborative use of TRES. 

Participants will leave the workshop with concrete strategies for deepening partnerships (your own and/or those you support), ideas for future practice and inquiry, and an invitation to collaborate with the TRES team in ongoing research. Please join us for a highly interactive, enjoyable, and educational session as we play together with TRES!

Facilitators:

• Haden Botkin
• Robert G. Bringle
• Jasmina Camo-Biogradlija
• Patti H. Clayton
• Lori E. Kniffin
• Mary F. Price

 

TRES Train-the-Trainer

Schedule: The train-the-trainer event includes three primary components, with opportunities for both individual and collaborative reflection in each: 

Monday, October 6, 2025 | 3:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. (dinner included) | In-depth orientation to the TRES III Reflection Framework as well as time to begin exploring and sharing your potential goals for facilitating use of the tool in your context and to ask and discuss any questions you have about the process. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2025 | 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. (including breakfast and lunch)  |  preconference workshop, including customized space with one or two facilitators to reflect on the process as it proceeds in real time.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025  |  6:30-8:30 p.m.  |  Follow-up gathering with the TRES team to debrief the day’s experience, ask and discuss additional questions that have arisen during the day, and sharpen your thinking about potential uses in your own community-campus contexts.

Cost: Registration information coming soon

In response to requests during and since last year’s ESC preconference workshop on TRES, the developers (who are also the session facilitators) will offer a parallel and integrated opportunity for individuals interested in facilitating use of the TRES III Reflection Framework in your own community-campus contexts. This train-the-trainer opportunity has been designed such that participants will:

• Explore the utility of the tool and the quantitative and qualitative data it generates across multiple contexts (e.g., institutional, departmental, programmatic levels; curricular and co-curricular settings) as well as the variety of purposes it might help advance (e.g., generating data for the Carnegie Community Engagement Elective Classification, accreditation, program review, community relations, program and partnership improvement)
• Receive an in-depth overview of the tool’s structure and content (including rationale for why it is the way it is) as well as example ways earlier versions of it have been used
• Learn the conceptual frameworks (SOFAR, EUTT) and critical reflection model (DEAL) that underlie the design of the tool 
• Consider the implications of the planning orientation you bring to the process (e.g., the extent to which you will co-create approaches to using the tool with participants)
• Begin to design your potential use(s) of the tool (e.g., with whom, when, where, how, and why), exploring with one another and the facilitators the implications of various approaches
• Brainstorm together ways to frame this reflection opportunity for and with potential partnerships (including specific ideas about how best to invite them into it) as well as approaches to co-create conditions for meaningful reflection
• Observe and critique the tool’s developers as they facilitate the reflection process with partnerships participating in the pre-conference workshop, making note of approaches that may and may not work well in your context
• Build confidence and integrity as individuals who support, facilitate, administer, and participate in partnerships

Registrants in the train-the-trainer track will receive a short survey ahead of time, to help prepare you and us to maximize our time together before, during, and after the preconference workshop.

For questions about this opportunity, feel free to reach out to Patti (patti.clayton@curricularengagement.com)

---

Information on additional preconference sessions coming soon.